Determinism and deliberation in Alexander of Aphrodisias.

In this paper I defend a minority position in contemporary scholarship on Alexander of Aphrodisias with regard to the theme of determinism and his theory of what is up to us. It seems to me, that many of the objections put forward in modern scholarship against his position follow from the fact that the internal logical structure of his argumentation has not been taken into account. The different human choices that can be made depend on the differences between the final causes, which however do not have a necessitating force. In deliberating, the goal is something that ‘shows itself’, in the same way that the circumstances show themselves to the decision maker. The goal is thus is not an external input, like the push that sets the cylinder and the spinning-top down the slope, to use Chrysippus’ classic example, but it is a term in the intellectual process of decision making, functioning in the search for an answer as an unmoving motor. For thinking beings the goal is thus not a moving cause.