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This chapter evaluates the contributions of Aristotle to the completion of the Platonic project. Although it is undeniably true that Aristotle dissented from many claims made by Plato, it focuses on the principles he shared with Plato, his arguments for these, and some of the illuminating things he had to say about the application of these principles. Aristotle was as opposed to Naturalism as Plato. His argument for the subject matter of the science of being qua being supports Plato's identification of the subject matter of philosophy. Ultimately, one of Aristotle's greatest contributions to the Platonic project is the concept of potency. The chapter then discusses Aristotle's introduction of what has been called the immortal or agent intellect. The immortal intellect seems to be Aristotle's version of what Plato calls “the immortal part of the soul,” that which is separable from the body and capable of knowledge. The chapter also examines Aristotle's own account of a first principle of all, the Unmoved Mover, which had an enormous effect on how later soi-disant Platonists viewed Plato himself.

This contribution comments on Aristotle’s De Motu Animalium 4–5 (MA 4–5). In these chapters Aristotle points out, among other things, that the earth is at the centre of the universe, but the force it would take to move the earth from its position at the centre of the universe is finite. How can this result be reconciled with Aristotle’s conviction that the universe is eternal and indestructible? The contribution shows that Aristotle’s solution depends on the assumption of a mover of the universe that is unmoved, not in the universe, and no part of it. He also shows how this account of cosmic motion paves the way for Aristotle’s explanation of animal motion.

There is a long-running debate in political science about the nature and functioning of mass partisanship. The traditional conceptualization holds that partisan identity is the most stable and exogenous of all political predispositions; it is the “unmoved mover” of political behavior. The revisionist conceptualization holds that partisanship is unstable and responsive to party performance and policy agreement. Chapter 7 enters into this debate by offering a third alternative: that partisanship is conceptually heterogeneous, and that its variation is driven principally by partisan ambivalence. Specifically, the chapter demonstrates that when party and issue positions conflict, and when those issues are salient, univalent partisans will change their policy preferences to accommodate their partisan identities, whereas ambivalent partisans often switch parties to achieve consistency. Once again, traditional engagement variables show little moderating impact on this dynamic.

This contribution comments on Aristotle’s De Motu Animalium 1 (MA 1). In this chapter Aristotle gives a general introduction to the treatise, posing the question of what the common cause or explanation of animal self-movement consists in. For the first time he formulates a general requirement for all kinds of movement, namely movement presupposes something that is unmoved. Afterwards, he points out that within animals the joints serve as inner resting points and that they are required in order to facilitate the animal’s self-movement. The author argues that the structure of joints or something he calls ‘the joint model’ is significant for the understanding of some of the treatise’s key tenets.

Chapter 10 considers the structure of Proclus’ rarely discussed Elements of Physics and its original contribution to the understanding of physics in antiquity. It is argued that the purpose of the treatise is not only a systematic arrangement of the arguments scattered throughout Aristotle’s works on natural philosophy, using the structure of Euclid’s Elements as a model. Proclus also aims to develop a universal theory of motion or physical change that establishes the first principles as definitions, formulates and demonstrates a number of mutually related propositions about natural objects, and culminates in establishing the existence and properties of the prime mover. Unlike modern physics, which presupposes the applicability of mathematics to physics, Proclus shows that the study of natural phenomena in the more geometrico way can be a systematic rational science arranged by means of logic rather than mathematics.

Aristotle’s efficient cause differs radically from the mechanistic causes characteristic both of his atomist predecessors and of the post-Aristotelian science of the seventeenth century. Like Anaxagoras’ Mind, Aristotle’s efficient cause fundamentally differs from what it causes to move. It is importantly the first origin of a change, and so unsuited to be a link in a chain of causes-that-are-also-effects. Efficient causes are not substances, but rather forms: either powers, which cause changes in substances other than those in which they reside, or natures (including souls), which essentially reside in the substances which they cause to move. The analysis of these kinds of efficient cause, all in their own way unmoved movers, provides possible models for understanding the most enigmatic case of Aristotelian efficient causality: that by which eternal immaterial minds move the celestial spheres.

This chapter expounds on Aristotle’s optimistic theory. Despite opposing views, the “magnanimous” person, for Aristotle, is the philosopher. That person comes to devalue humanity and devotes her life and efforts to the divine. This devotion, which seems to go against the natural tendency of organisms, is nevertheless consistent with Aristotle’s natural teleology, on which nature exhibits a clear hierarchy of species, each teleologically oriented toward the good both of itself and of superior beings. On Aristotle’s view, the world functions optimally and is perfectly good as is. Thus, his view presents an alternative to pessimism. However, it also avoids a core feature characteristic of biblical and Spinozist optimism as characterized by Schopenhauer, of the optimistic features of Schopenhauer’s theory revealed by Nietzsche, and of Nietzsche’s optimism as analyzed by Camus. For Aristotle’s view devalues humanity by comparison to superior entities and resists overvaluing humanity or oneself.

In medieval times a metaphysical conception of God was developed from Greek and Islamic ideas. According to this, God is the unchangeable necessary being who is the ultimate cause for everything that contingently happens in the world. This chapter raises some doubts about the intelligibility of this conception.

Socrates is moved by the daimonion to not act, which causes a chain of reactions in the others who gather around. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, too, elicit a reaction in their interlocutors by way of an absence of momentum. Their followers, who are first called “students,” then “lovers,” seem to take pleasure in watching their victims go down. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus thus divide into two souls an experience that transpires in one: the coherence of the self is felt in thinking’s motion, and this feeling oddly intensifies the more one’s thoughts are consumed by doubt. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus attempt to isolate the pleasure of the activity of thinking from the perplexity that engages it. But if they, in turn, like their admirers, delight in their own passivity toward other people’s conflicts, this would mean that they are not the equal-opportunity refuters they present themselves as, but rather, interested assassins.