The Role of the Beautiful in Animal and Heavenly Motions

• In Event: The Socratics: Plato, Xenophon, Isocrates, and Aristotle

Abstract

Aristotle's On the Motion of Animals, on one hand, appears to belong the Parva Naturalia and thus to belong his biological writings. On the other hand, the work is remarkable insofar as it also treats questions, such as the eternity of the world and the cause of heavenly motion, that seem more clearly connected to "first philosophy." In particular Chapter 6 of the work addresses the question of whether beautiful can be a cause of motion and seems to suggest that it cannot. The paper explores how the investigation of animal motion may shed light on the argument in Metaphysics Lambda, Chapter 7 that the unmoved mover acts on the world in the same way that the beautiful acts on the appetite of an ensouled being.

Author

• Thomas Cleveland, The Jack Miller Center