Aristotle’s Parmenidean Dilemma
Abstract: Aristotle’s treatment, in Physics 1.8, of a dilemma purporting to show that change is impossible, aims in the first instance to defend not the existence of change, but the explicability of change, a presupposition of his natural science. The opponent fails to recognize that causal explanation is sensitive to the differences between merely coinciding beings. This formal principle of explanation is implicit in Aristotle’s theory that change involves a third, ‘underlying’ principle, in addition to the two opposites, form and privation, and it allows him to avoid the two horns of the dilemma. Aristotle’s treatment of the dilemma does not address the the issues of persistence through change or generation ex nihilo, as is often thought.
© De Gruyter
