Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 2 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
Of the further details into which Aristotle enters, I shall only give
the following. As against atoms and their motion, he remarks (Phys.
VI. 10) that the indivisible has no motion and mutation, which is the
direct opposite of the proposition of Zeno that only simple indivisible
Being and no motion exists. For as Zeno argues from the indivisibility
of atoms against motion, Aristotle argues from motion against atoms.
“Everything which moves or changes is in the first division of this
time partly here and partly there. The atom, as simple indivisible
Being, can, however, not have any part of it in both points in space,
because it then would be divisible. The indivisible could thus only
move if time consisted of the Now; this is, however, impossible, as we
proved before.” Because atoms thus neither have change in themselves,
nor can this come to them from without through impulse, &c., they are
really without truth.
The determination of the pure ideality of change is important.
Aristotle says of this (Phys. VII. 3), “That which is changed is alone
the sensuous and perceptible (αἰσθητόν); and forms and figures, as also
capacities, are not changed, they arise and disappear in a thing only,
without being themselves changed.” In other words: the content of
change is unchangeable; change as such belongs to mere form. “Virtues
or vices belong, for example, to habits acquired. Virtue is the
perfection (τελείωσις) in which something has reached the end of its
nature. Vice, however, is the corruption and non-attainment of this.
They are not changes, for they only arise and pass away while another
alters.” Or the difference becomes a difference of Being and non-being,
_i.e._ a merely sensuous difference.
From these conceptions Aristotle now comes nearer to the first real
or physical motion (Phys. VIII. 6, 8, 9; De C\nlo, I. 4): The first
principle of motion is itself unmoved. An endless motion in a straight
line is an empty creation of thought; for motion is necessarily an
effort after something. The absolute motion is the circular, because
it is without opposition. For because movement has to be considered
in regard to the starting-place and the end in view, in the straight
movement the directions from A to B and from B to A are opposed, but
in motion in a circle they are the same. The idea that heavenly bodies
would of themselves have moved in a straight line, but that they
accidentally came into the sphere of solar attraction, is an empty
reflection which is far from occurring to Aristotle.