Causal Priority in Metaphysics Θ.8

Aristotle’s Θ.8 argument for the priority of actuality to potentiality poses an immediate interpretive problem: the argument uses two distinct tests for priority, one of which threatens to reverse the results of the other. This paper argues that the standard approach to this passage, according to which one thing is prior to another when it satisfies the ontological independence test from Δ.11, fails to secure the argumentative unity of the passage. It introduces a new, causal account of priority which explains both Aristotle’s claims about priority and the way he argues for them.