The Concept Of Time In Aristotle’s Philosophy

‘Time’ is a key conception in the western philosophy history, which was interpreted by different philosophers from ancient Greek to Postmodernism, reflecting their comprehension about nature, being and essence. Therefore, the analysis on the concept of time, can not only be the Archimedes’ point to start a philosophical exploration, also the key to unfold the essence of western philosophy. Aristotle is the first person to make a systematic analysis on Time, whose concept can be traced back to the Greek philosophy about time and arche, Kant’ s metaphysical exposition of time which is the apriori form of intuition, and Newton’s concept of absolute time in classical physics. Aristotle’s theory of time,which is the cornerstone of the development of the theory of time, has produced profound influence on the history of western philosophy. Therefore, the research on the origin of Time should be started from Aristotle’s time. Aristotle’s theory of time is mainly exposited in his book Physics, and his solution to this problem, at the same time, also involves the content of these books: Categories, On Caelo and Metaphysics. On the one hand, he makes a physical rule for time in Physics. His view on time, on the other hand, is still contained in the Greece original thinking of physis, and presents its unification of his "first philosophy", which is the important link from the physis to the metaphysics in his philosophy. In the interpretation of Aristotle’s concept of time, most people just regard his concept of time as a kind of physical interpretation of time, but neglect the opportunity to make his “Time ”return to the origin of time.This article holds that Aristotle’s concept of time is a kind of conventional view of physical time on the whole. However, with the enormous analysis and rigorous reasoning of the concept of Time, there still implicates the possibility of various interpretation. Therefore, to really understand his concept of time, more efforts should be made to make an in-depth study of his classic text with no prejudice. To sum up, this article will first examine the original history of the concept of Time before his times. Secondly, the article will also examine the definition of Time and the arguments in Physics, mainly analyzing the core concept of “movement”, “change”, “number”, “now” and “soul”, and try to deconstruct the traditional interpretations of Aristotle’s concept of time preliminarily. Thirdly, the article will seek foundations for the breakthrough of Aristotle’s traditional interpretation,which is based on the Greece original thinking of physis and Aristotle’s system of "the first philosophy", and carry on a historical investigation of his concept of time from the angle of the history of western philosophy.