Abstract

HOW DOES LIFE BEGIN? How is it and why is it that a child comes into being? To answer these questions about life and its origins requires a system of presuppositions about a great many metaphysical matters, such as causation and its modes of operation, relations of identity and difference, and, perhaps above all, the transition from not-being to actualized existence. In his treatise, Generation of Animals, Aristotle takes up the theme of the origins of animal and human life. His treatment of the subject is both empirical, offering descriptions of how the process occurs in nature, and metaphysical, pursuing the deeper how and answering questions about why it is that offspring are generated and how this phenomenon is meaningfully connected to the cosmos as a whole.