Aristotle’s Conception of Motion

2.3.1 A Broad Conception of Motion

I start with Aristotle’s broadest conception of motion, as “the actuality of what potentially is, as such” (Phys. III 201a 10-11). To reiterate what I said in the introduction, the hope is that I can find a conception of motion that suits music better than the conception given by Scruton. Aristotle’s conception is promising, not just for the purposes of the thesis – that is, to elucidate the conception of musical motion – but also because it offers a conception that does not rely on the notion of change. As will become clear in the rest of the chapter, every other conception of motion (i.e. that of Newton, Leibniz, Descartes, and Scruton) stipulates that motion is some kind of change. Yet, the notion of change remains undefined.

Aristotle, by contrast, offers an understanding of motion that is not merely some kind of change.

In Book III of the Physics, he writes that motion is “the actuality of what potentially is, as such” – ἡ τοῡ δυνἀμει ὂντος έντελέϰεια, ἢ τοιοῡτον (Phys. III 201a 10-11). This definition has been subject to various interpretations throughout history up to the twentieth century.

Various interpretations were defended in the Middle-Ages, in particular that of Averroes and Aquinas (see Laird 2013). Aryeh Kosman’s (1969) understanding of this definition goes against William Ross’ interpretation. I only mention Kosman’s understanding in this section for space limitation (see his 1969 paper for a summary of Ross’s position and the reasons why he rejects it).

In order to grasp Aristotle’s definition, we need to understand the concepts of actuality (entelecheia) and potentiality (dunamis).¹⁸ Dunamis is “the inner tendency of anything to be at work in ways characteristic of the kind of thing it is” (Sachs 1995: 252). This meaning of dunamis (or potentiality) will become clearer once we will have explained what ‘being at work’ (energeia) means. Let us now simply say that any material thing – both animate and inanimate – has a dunamis. Bricks have the potentiality to be used to build a house.

Fish have the potentiality to remain the kind of thing they are, that is, fish; likewise with any other animal. The idea of remaining the kind of thing one is becomes clearer once we grasp the meaning of energeia.

Energeia comes from the adjective energon that means ‘active’, ‘busy’, or ‘at work’. This adjective is added to a noun-ending. The closest English translation would be ‘is-at-work-ness’. We can avoid the bizarreness of the term ‘is-at-work-ness’ by translating energeia as

‘being-at-work’. For Aristotle, to be something always means to be at work in a certain way. For instance, the being-at-work of a fish is its metabolism, that is, the work by which it transforms things from its environment and loses material from itself into the environment. This being-at-work enables the fish to maintain itself as a fish, and ceases only when the fish dies. Bricks, we said in the paragraph above, have a potentiality (dunamis) to be used to build a house. When they are actually used to build a house, then we speak of energeia. When, however, the bricks are lying on a field, then they merely have the potentiality of an energeia.

Thus far, we have understood the term dunamis in its relation to energeia. Dunamis is a thing’s potentiality and energeia is the actuality or being-at-work of this potentiality. The final term which we need to define in order to grasp the meaning of Aristotle’s definition of motion is entelecheia. The terms energeia and entelecheia have a close meaning, as explained below.¹⁹ We defined energeia as ‘being-at-work’, this idea of ‘being-at-work’

also applies to entelecheia. The root of the term is the verb exein, which means ‘to be’ in the sense of ‘to continue to’, ‘to remain’ (Sachs 2005). In addition to this sense of continuation, the idea of completenesss is given by the other root of the term entelecheia:

the adjective entelēs (meaning ‘complete’ or ‘perfect’). The combination of continuing to be and completeness can be best translated, Sacks suggests, as

18Dunamis is commonly translated as potentiality (e.g. Kosman 1969) or ‘potency’ (e.g. Sachs 1995).

I follow Kosman’s translation here, and speak as well of potentiality.

19Critiques widely agree that that the terms energeia and entelecheia were coined by Aristotle (Sentesy 2012: 215).

itself’ (Sachs 1995: 245). The idea that is emphasised by the term entelecheia – which is absent from energeia – is the sense of something being complete while the potentiality is being at work. The entelecheia of a fish’s potentiality for instance is the being-at-work which maintains the fish as the kind of thing it is, namely a fish. Another way to express this idea is to say that the fish qua fish is complete while its potentiality is being at work.²⁰ Although entelecheia is most frequently translated as actuality, Sachs’ translation of the term as ‘being-at-work-staying-itself’ is the one that most clearly renders the meaning of the word.²¹ I use below the most frequent translation below, i.e. actuality.

With these definitions in mind, we can now attempt to clarify what Aristotle means when he says that motion is “the actuality of what potentially is, as such”. Kosman (1969) and Sachs (1995) argue that the sense of completeness in Aristotle’s definition of motion characterises potentiality itself.²² This means that as the bricks are being used to build a house, they are reaching their complete potential of becoming a house. This is the meaning given by the words ‘as such’: entelecheia applies to potentiality. Kosman writes that motion is

[N]ot the actuality of a potentiality in the sense of the actuality which results from a potentiality, but rather in the sense of an actuality which is a potentiality in its full manifestation. (1969: 50)

Let us clarify this interpretation with an example. Suppose I am standing on one side of the bridge (side A) but I have the potential to stand on the other side (side B). Entelecheia concerns the potentiality to stand on side B as a potentiality. Once I have reached side B we can no longer speak of the entelecheia of a potentiality. The being-at-work-staying-itself occurs when reaching side B is a full potentiality, or in other words, as the potentiality (to reach side B) is realised in its full manifestation.

20Note that one may suggest that energeia and entelecheia have in fact the same meaning, but that all entelecheia does is to emphasise the sense of completeness. For reasons of space limitation, I do not engage further with the potential distinction between the two terms (see Sentesy 2012: 215-26 for a more in-depth characterisation).

21Kosman (1969) and Sentesy (2012) for instance speak of actuality. Only William Ross (1949) favours the term actualisation for reasons which become clear in the paragraph below.

22By contrast, Ross (1949) argued that the sense of completeness results from the actualisation of a potentiality (rather than the potentiality itself). If for instance bricks have the potentiality to become a house, then movement is that actualisation of this potentiality – and the sense of completeness is reached once the bricks have been turned into a house.

One may wonder when exactly a potentiality is being-at-work-staying-itself. When I am standing on side A and when I am crossing the bridge, being on side B is a potentiality.

However, only in the second case have I put it to work by the act of walking. In the first case, the potentiality exists as latent or inactive (Sachs 2005); as I am walking over the bridge however the potentiality is realised in its full manifestation. There are therefore different degrees of potentiality. Motion concerns not latent potentialities but active ones (see Kosman 1969: 51).

What about music? Is this definition helpful to understand what musical movement is? I will say two things, but admittedly it would be worth developing the potential significance of Aristotle’s conception of motion with respect to music in future work. The first point is that Aristotle’s conception is too broad to account for the specific musical phenomena we mentioned in the Datum. In Chapter 3, I will describe the beginning of Ligeti’s Atmosphères. In the first section of the piece, there is no perceptible (or at a very minimal level) change of pitch, no rhythmic pattern (we hear one continuous cluster of sound)²³, no change in dynamics. There is a compelling sense of stasis, as explained in Chapter 3. But, under Aristotle’s conception of motion, there is no difference between this passage – which exemplifies stasis – and a rising movement in a melody. Cast differently, there is movement in both passages.²⁴ Why so? In both cases, notes are being played to constitute some kind of musical unit. The notes, we may say, are in the process of realising their potentiality to be a musical unit. The potentiality (of notes constituting a musical unit) is complete qua potentiality. I concede that this phrasing is odd. But Aristotle’s conception of motion, we may say, is not a conception we are familiar with; hence the impression of this manner of speaking being odd. Besides appearing too wide-ranging, Aristotle’s conception of motion is not easy to grasp. We may find it easier to understand what he means by motion when looking at the kinds of motion he identifies.

23I define the notion of ‘cluster of sound’ in Chapter 3.

24 It may be the case that the kind of motion is different in both cases. As clarified below, there are three kinds of motion. I do not examine the potential differences here.

2.3.2 Various Kinds of Motion

For space limitation, I focus on one kind which he identified, namely change in quality.²⁵ The other two kinds are change in quantity and motion in place.²⁶²⁷ If a piece of cloth changes its size, it changes its quantity. It was, say, ten-centimetre-long and it is now eight centimetre long. For Aristotle, the piece of cloth getting smaller is an occurrence of motion.

To reiterate what we said above, motion occurs when there is the actuality of a potentiality being complete as a potentiality. The piece of cloth has the potentiality of having a reduced size. Motion is when the size is being reduced.²⁸

25Aristotle makes a distinction between change (metabolê) and motion (kinêsis), which I summarise only briefly. Motion is one kind of change, namely genuine change. Change can be accidental, intrinsic, or genuine. If for instance a musician, who happens to be Socrates, walks, the musician only incidentally walks – this change in the musician is accidental. If we say that one’s body has healed when it is in fact only one part of the body that has healed, the body has undergone an intrinsic change in virtue of a change of one of its parts. In a music performance, we may say that we see the musician moving, when there is only a body part – e.g. the hand and arm – that is moving. If we are Aristotelian, it would actually be wrong to talk about the musician moving – it would only be a kind of intrinsic change. It seems, however, right, to say that the hand moves. Examples of essential change, and hence genuine motion, include the walking of Socrates, the movement of the pianist hand, and the healing of the eye. As Socrates walks, he changes his place, and so does the hand of the pianist. As the eye is healing, the potentially (namely that to heal) is complete as a potentially.

But, one may say, we are speaking of the same event. when we say that Socrates walks and that the musician walks. Whether this event counts as genuine motion only depends on the way we speak of it. I do not for space limitation engage with this distinction Aristotle draws between change and motion.

26Until Physics V, Aristotle assumes that there are four kinds of motion. Besides the three already mentioned, there is change in the thing itself. This kind of change includes coming-into-being (i.e.

when a being that was not now is) and perishing (i.e. when a being that was no longer is). It would be too long to set out in detail the reasons why Aristotle says coming-into-being and perishing are mere change and not motion. Roughly, Aristotle claims that the coming-into-being or perishing of a substance is a change between contradictions (i.e. a change between what-is and what-is-not or vice-versa). However, there can be no genuine motion coming from something that is not or going towards something that is not. Hence, motion can only be between contraries and not contradictions.

One such contrary is motion from black to white. A change from not white to white is not however a genuine motion.

27Perhaps the most surprising thing to a contemporary reader is the absence of the concept of space in Aristotle. Aristotle does mention the idea of a space that would exist in the absence of bodies but rejects it as absurd. (212b25-7). Unlike Newtonian space, places are heterogeneous. Aristotle defines place as “the limit of the surrounding body ‘at which it is in contact with that which is surrounded’”

(Phys. IV 212a 6-6a). For space limitation, I do not discuss Aristotle’s notion of place, nor the kind of motion he defines as motion in place.

28I leave aside musicals individuals potentially changing their size.

Aristotle also claims that change in quality is a genuine kind of motion. For example, if a rabbit that was black is becoming white, it is changing its quality, hence moving. It seems plausible that there are musical individuals that change their quality. For instance, in Chapter 3 I describe a passage from Ligeti’s Atmosphères (Section G) where a musical individual changes its timbral quality. It seems right to assume, following Aristotle’s conception of motion, that the individual is undergoing motion as it changes its quality.

Likewise, a glissando is a sound that changes its pitch. It may start on a C and end on a E.

Again, we seem entitled to speak of motion in this case.

Aristotle’s conception of motion as including change in quality may seem appealing with respect to music. This would certainly allow for the suggestion that some aspects of music can literally move. I do not reject Aristotle’s conception. However, I do not think that it helps to account for the musical phenomena we tend to characterise as moving. As set out in the Datum, we want to understand what it means to say that there are ups and downs, rises and falls in music. This is different from a change in quality. It seems to inevitably involve a spatial dimension. Even the phenomenon of a glissando seems to involve space.

We say that a glissando slides upwards, not just that it changes its quality.