Os contrários como manifestação da potencialidade no devir determinado: a busca dos princípios na física de Aristóteles

Abstract

This dissertation aims to track the delimitation, in Aristotle, of the principles of becoming. The constitution of his system reveals how the structural tension between contrary principles, combined with an underlying subject, configures a determinate movement. It is progressively, through dialogue with his predecessors and by means of a structuring through language, that Aristotle elaborates his system of principles. The conceptual path to which the text will adhere is part of the development of an interpretative framework that: (a) clarifies the scenario that predisposes the development of the Aristotelian project; (b) presents the Physics through itself, highlighting its essential aspects; (c) develops how Aristotle presents his criticisms of the Pre-Socratics, while nevertheless embracing the inherited insight that contraries are principles and determine the course of becoming; (d) presents the necessity of demanding a third underlying principle, which enables the action of the contraries; and (e) deepens the specificity of privation as a principle that confers upon nature a character of regulated contingency. It is argued, ultimately, that the systematic arrangement proposed by Aristotle, already in the first book of the Physics, provides us with a structure of movement that rehabilitates phýsis as an intelligible reality, thereby reorienting debates on causality, teleology, and the condition of possibility of coming-to-be. The Aristotelian reading of movement reveals a nature that, in seeking to realize its potentiality, keeps the sphere of the possible open, offering a renewed perspective for the philosophy of nature.