Instead, he viewed this ultimate cause as a “thought, thinking about itself.” Aristotle did not assume his first cause to be a person or even a deity. It is intellectual but not personal, in the sense of a being who interacts with others. It should be noted that Aristotle’s concept of an un-moved mover is purely an abstraction, not a person. Causality cannot end with multiple un-moved movers but must terminate with a single un-moved mover. So, it seems, Aristotle deduced there must, even behind the “movers” of the various celestial spheres, be a single, solitary, ultimate cause. This would then fall short as an ultimate explanation. In short, if there is more than one un-moved mover, there can be no unity in the uni-verse. Later, however, Aristotle’s writings reflect either a change of mind or a growing conclusion, which changed his basic premise. To Aristotle, these were not personal, relatable beings. Aristotle’s writings follow a chain of logic and observation to the idea that, in order for there to be “motion,” there had to be something to cause it: a “mover.” For Aristotle, however, this idea was applied individually to the various spheres of the heavens, which astronomers either numbered at 47 or 55.
He developed the idea of an un-moved mover from an earlier concept of un-moved movers (plural). Aristotle took a less personal and more abstract approach. However, there are crucial differences between the way Aristotle viewed his un-moved mover and the way later theologians such as Aquinas used it as a reference to the God of the Bible.Īristotle was a student of Plato, who taught that the ultimate reality was composed of ideal Forms, and that one primary “good” entity-the Demiurge-had created reality. This was part of Aquinas’ cosmological argument, one of his five ways. This line of reasoning and Aristotle’s argument in favor of it were later used in the context of Christian theology by Thomas Aquinas, who pointed to God as the Un-Moved Mover. Aristotle is most famously credited with establishing this idea, though he may not have been the very first to frame the concept this way. The concept of an “un-moved mover” has been discussed at least since the time of early Greek philosophers.
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