Sur la composition du traité dit De motu animalium: contribution à l'analyse de la théorie aristotélicienne du premier moteur

ABSTRACT. Based on Aristotle's technique of redaction as in other parts of the corpus, the paper firstly raises the question of the DMA's disciplinary relevance. This opens a range of independent perspectives on the DMA's composition and on its value as a whole. The paper thus analyses the DMA as a composition of two (or more) different parts (DMA1 and DMA2, the latter starting with chap. 6). The two parts would be connected by a common prologue (698a1-7, what I label Prologue A), setting a very comprehensive program "on the common cause of any kind of movement", which precedes the introductory remarks of each part (prologues B and C). The first part starts then with an outstanding summary (B) of Phys. VIII which subordinates the primary role of self motion to an unmoved principle for every kind of motion wherever in the world (698a7-11) and indicates the relevant inquiry's method (11-14); whereas the second part introduces an outstanding discussion on ensouled motion (namely: self motion) as a principle for every other motion (C, 6. 700b4-11). The hypothesis is aimed to promote a closer focus on the unique connection between DMA2, – but not of DMA1, – with Metaph. L (whose theory of the prime mover as orekton kai noêton is uniquely legitimated by DMA2e) via a revised theory of voluntary movement where thinking is prior to desire. This theory is less harmonized to the one of DA III (there is no movement without desire), then to the one at Lambda 7 about the primacy of thought (arche de hê noêsis, L 7. 1072a30ff.). As it appears, DMA (6ff.) outstandingly refers to Lambda as an existing treatise, which does not happen elsewhere in the corpus. By contrast, DMA is very much on Phys. VIII's path (once one understands Phys VIII in the way prologue B of DMA1 suggests) namely on the principle of movement as unmoved principle. No obvious internal development seems to unify the treatise. The paper also includes a main thesis concerning the traditional DMA's title as a treatise 'On animals' motion'. Different arguments are thus alleged so to show that such a title is neither entirely appropriate to the content, nor fitting with Aristotle's program as settled in DMA 1 (698a4-7). Moreover, a general inquiry about Aristotle's 'titles' has been prompted by some perplexities raised by the alleged 'title' of DMA: this has been developed in two further articles about the historical genesis of the corpus; as a result, it can be argued that Aristotle did not identify his writings with fixed titles – however fluent he may have been in programmatic statements and content's or method' indication: in a sense, therefore, if this holds to be true, no Aristotelian title is really appropriate, all of them being forged by later scholarship (see S. F., “Exordes, raccords, 'titres' chez Aristote”, in: Transmettre les Savoirs, ed. by F. Le Blay, Presses Universitaires de Rennes 2009, pp. 295-308; id., “Esordi e trattati in Aristotele”, in Linguaggio, mente e mondo, ed. M. Carrara – G. De Anna – S. Magrin, Padova, 2003, p. 19-38). On this basis, the paper argues that one has to take seriously into account the indication of content he gives for his treatise in the introduction: though being classified as a zoological work, DMA is a treatise about the 'common' principle and cause of every kind of movement (698a4-7), where cosmological remarks do not only function as external examples; if it were a piece of zoology, one had to say that for Aristotle's mature thought (DMA is the richest treatise of the corpus when quotations of other treatises are concerned), the whole world's behaviour fall's into zoology, being thought of as a living being, a zôion indeed, as Aristotle says in DC II.2. However, A. never says so in the DMA: one is thus left e silentio with the idea that cosmology and zoology do not need to be reduced one to the other but are kept and analysed in parallel, sharing one fundamental chain at the origin of any movement, starting from intelligibility and/or lack of movement, ensoulement, desire.