Motion occupies a distinctive and surprisingly central position across the depth-psychology corpus, ranging from its classical metaphysical treatment in Plotinus and Plato through its neuropsychological rehabilitation in McGilchrist, with Bergson mediating between these poles. The corpus does not treat motion as a mere mechanical category but interrogates it as an ontological primitive. Plotinus struggles to assign motion a proper genus, insisting it possesses an independent reality prior to its attribution as a relative predicate. Plato, in both the Timaeus and the Laws, makes motion constitutive of World-Soul and cosmic order, distributing it among planetary circuits and grounding psychic life in self-originated movement. McGilchrist radicalizes these intuitions in neuroscientific terms, arguing that motion is not an accidental feature but foundational to existence itself — that stillness is merely the limit case of motion, never its opposite or origin. Bergson's influence is pervasive in this claim: a pure static point, however multiplied, can never yield motion; analytical intellect must inevitably distort what is essentially flowing. Snell situates Aristotle's taxonomy of motion — quantitative, qualitative, locomotion — as foundational to natural science, while noting that Democritus converted the active verb of motion into passive being-moved. Rudhyar transposes the cosmological duality of rotation versus revolution into a psychological typology of subjective versus objective motion. Together, these voices frame motion not as change between fixed states but as the very medium in which being, soul, and cognition are enacted.
In the library
24 passages
motion is at the core of every aspect of our experience, and of our ability to make sense of it, in a way of which we are normally unaware, because our analytic intellect cannot deal with it; and that motion is foundational to existence, and stillness merely the limit case of motion
McGilchrist argues that motion is ontologically prior to stillness and constitutive of all experience, perception, and cognition, though analytical intellect systematically conceals this fact.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
motion is at the core of every aspect of our experience, and of our ability to make sense of it, in a way of which we are normally unaware, because our analytic intellect cannot deal with it; and that motion is foundational to existence, and stillness merely the limit case of motion
McGilchrist argues that motion is ontologically prior to stillness and constitutive of all experience, perception, and cognition, though analytical intellect systematically conceals this fact.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
motion is existent contradiction itself. An entity, Bergson would say, is never in a point in space, it is only in a movement. In fact it only is a movement. Could motion, then, be said to be in some sense foundational? Like time and space, motion cannot be derived from anything else.
Drawing on Hegel, Leibniz, and Bergson, McGilchrist establishes motion as irreducible and foundational, an existent contradiction that cannot be decomposed into static instants.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
motion is existent contradiction itself. An entity, Bergson would say, is never in a point in space, it is only in a movement. In fact it only is a movement. Could motion, then, be said to be in some sense foundational? Like time and space, motion cannot be derived from anything else.
Drawing on Hegel, Leibniz, and Bergson, McGilchrist establishes motion as irreducible and foundational, an existent contradiction that cannot be decomposed into static instants.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
once time – or motion – is retrospected on, it is no longer time or motion. In attempting to account for a pure process of change analytically, we can do so only by reducing it to parts time and again, until at last we reach something that no longer changes.
McGilchrist, via Bergson, shows that analytic decomposition of motion necessarily destroys its essence, since retrospective division replaces flow with static representation.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
once time – or motion – is retrospected on, it is no longer time or motion. In attempting to account for a pure process of change analytically, we can do so only by reducing it to parts time and again, until at last we reach something that no longer changes.
McGilchrist, via Bergson, shows that analytic decomposition of motion necessarily destroys its essence, since retrospective division replaces flow with static representation.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Motion neither starts from Motion nor ends in Motion. Again, the Form-Idea has Stability, since it is the goal of Intellect: intellection is the Form's Motion. Thus all the Existents are one, at once Motion and Stability; Motion and Stability are genera all-pervading
Plotinus identifies Motion and Stability as co-equal, all-pervading genera of Being, refusing to reduce one to the other and grounding intellection itself in the Motion of the Form-Idea.
since Motion, though an attribute has a reality prior to its attribution, it is incumbent upon us to discover the intrinsic nature of this reality. We must never be content to regard as a relative something which exists prior to its attribution
Plotinus insists that Motion possesses an independent ontological reality prior to any relational predication, and must be investigated as an intrinsic entity rather than a mere relative.
We must avoid identifying Motion with the objects moved: by walking we do not mean the feet but the activity springing from a potentiality in the feet… it must proceed from agent to patient without so inhering in the latter as to be severed from the former
Plotinus distinguishes Motion from both the mover and the moved, locating it as an activity that passes between agent and patient without being reducible to either.
motion is not just another accidental characteristic, like being blue or round, but is foundational in some deeper way. (I will argue that, along with time, with which it is intimately related, it is, in fact, foundational to being)
McGilchrist uses neurological evidence — that motion perception requires integrated right-hemisphere cortex, not isolated parietal regions — to argue that motion is ontologically foundational rather than one property among many.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
motion is not just another accidental characteristic, like being blue or round, but is foundational in some deeper way. (I will argue that, along with time, with which it is intimately related, it is, in fact, foundational to being)
McGilchrist uses neurological evidence — that motion perception requires integrated right-hemisphere cortex, not isolated parietal regions — to argue that motion is ontologically foundational rather than one property among many.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Motions may also be classed as natural, artificial and purposive: 'natural' embracing growth and decay; 'artificial' architecture and shipbuilding; 'purposive' enquiry, learning, government, and, in general, all speech and action.
Plotinus elaborates a tripartite taxonomy of motion — natural, artificial, and purposive — extending kinetic categories into ethical and intellectual domains.
Aristotle defines it as a permutation from one being into another being (Phys. 5.1). In this formulation the stages prior to and after the motion are fixed as finite magnitudes; motion is merely that which occurs between these two points.
Snell identifies Aristotle's definition of motion as transition between determinate beings, noting how this frames motion as interstitial rather than foundational — a contrast to later process philosophies.
Snell, Bruno, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953supporting
in the view of Democritus, motion is not an act of moving, but the being moved. Since the first whir… Democritus seizes upon the fact of motion, not only in the province of psychology, but even in his contemplation of nature.
Snell shows that Democritus transforms motion from an active to a passive category — being-moved rather than self-moving — marking a pivotal shift toward mechanistic natural philosophy.
Snell, Bruno, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953supporting
The first type of motion can be called 'motion in time' or 'subjective motion' as it does not create any change of location of the body as a whole… The second type of motion, on the other hand, is definitely 'motion in space' or 'objective motion'
Rudhyar distinguishes subjective motion (rotation within the self, analogous to Bergsonian duration) from objective motion (displacement through space), mapping this duality onto individual versus collective life-principles.
Dane Rudhyar, The Astrology of Personality: A Re-formulation of Astrological Concepts and Ideals in Terms of Contemporary Psychology and Philosophy, 1936supporting
If we say that the whole course and motion of heaven and earth is in accordance with the workings and reasonings of mind, clearly the best soul must have the care of the heaven, and guide it along that better way.
Plato in the Laws establishes that the motion of the cosmos is psychically governed — the quality of cosmic motion depends directly on whether the ruling soul is wise and good or foolish and vicious.
The two original motions are motions of the World-Soul, associated with its cognitive faculty of making judgments involving Sameness… every planet, accordingly, has a composite or double motion.
In the Timaeus, the two primal motions — of Same and Different — are identified as motions of the World-Soul itself, making planetary motion an expression of cosmic cognition.
Plato, Plato's cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997supporting
Everything which is thus changing and moving is in process of generation; only that which is at rest with itself is eternal and divine.
Plato in the Laws identifies motion with becoming and generation, reserving eternal divinity for that which rests in itself — a fundamental opposition that structures subsequent metaphysics of motion.
Smoothness of motion has disappeared from modern life: the strobe and the break-dance – are they in some ways reflections, even celebrations, of this? … the fragmentation of modern culture … mimics this loss of flow.
McGilchrist reads the fragmentation of motion in modern cultural forms — strobe, break-dance, postmodern discontinuity — as symptomatic of a civilisational loss of the flowing whole.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Smoothness of motion has disappeared from modern life: the strobe and the break-dance – are they in some ways reflections, even celebrations, of this? … the fragmentation of modern culture … mimics this loss of flow.
McGilchrist reads the fragmentation of motion in modern cultural forms — strobe, break-dance, postmodern discontinuity — as symptomatic of a civilisational loss of the flowing whole.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Are both Acts and motions to be included in the category of Action, with the distinction that Acts are momentary while Motions, such as cutting, are in time?
Plotinus interrogates the classificatory relationship between Acts and Motions, raising the question of whether temporal extension distinguishes motion from act as a category.
if they are to be in motion, and nothing is to be devoid of motion, all things must always have every sort of motion… did we not understand them to explain the generation of heat, whiteness, or anything else… each of them is moving between the agent and the patient
In the Theaetetus, Plato examines the Heraclitean thesis that all things are in motion, showing how perceptual qualities are themselves generated by motions between agent and patient.
we presumably do want to say about a spinning top both that the whole of it, rather than specifically some part or other of it, is in motion (rotation, that is), and that the whole of it… is at rest
Lorenz uses the spinning-top paradox to illustrate that the same object can be simultaneously in motion and at rest in different respects, a problem Plato uses to motivate the partition of the soul.
Hendrik Lorenz, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006aside
57D–58c. Motion and Rest. The next paragraph is concerned with… symmetry and proportion were introduced down to the smallest detail
This passage marks a section transition in the Timaeus commentary signalling the cosmological discussion of Motion and Rest as a paired topic in the treatment of elemental bodies.
Plato, Plato's cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997aside