Aristotle's Argument For The Prime Mover

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Yet, still, Aristotle acknowledges a not insignificant implication: why is the God-thought/Prime Mover/embodiment and being of νοῦς so necessarily divine? Certainly, we have established that thought as such is the best possible activity, and the best possible thing, the Prime Mover, must perforce so ardently employ the best possible thing that He literally is that thing: νοῦς. But, is it thought as such that is so perfectly divine, or is it the metathought, the content of the thought that is most perfectly divine? The chief problem here is in determining whether, for the Prime Mover, νοῦς is a capability, ability, or a nature. The answer will definitively demonstrate whether it is thought-qua-thought or thought as content, which is most perfect. If we imagine that νοῦς is mere capacity, then it is not necessarily native to the God-thought, it is simply something the God-thought is capable of performing (the problem of something done rather than something in fact), and Aristotle imagines that executing a nonnative capacity is actually …show more content…
Thus, we conclude that νοῦς is native of and to the Prime Mover, and not an ability or capacity. In this way, then, if νοῦς is native, then the most perfect νοῦς is understandable in terms of content, in terms of νοούμενον, and not mere activity. Thought-qua-thought, as it turns out, cannot be by itself the most perfect thing, since thought as such inherently includes both base thought and perfect thought—said another way, thought is not distinguished by morality or goodness, and will include the full spectrum of ideation, from the perfect contemplation of the universe to the smell of old
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