SOURCE: "The Development of Aristotle's Thought," in Aristotle and Plato in the Mid-Fourth Century: Papers of the Symposium Aristotelicum at Oxford in August, 1957, edited by Düring and G. E. L., Göteborg, 1960, pp. 1-18.

In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture in 1957, Ross traces the contributions of various critics toward understanding the development of Aristotle's doctrines. Ross notes some of the difficulties in the sketchy chronology outlined by some critics, and discusses in particular Aristotle's plan for Politics as developed and articulated in Ethics. He also argues that Aristotle's concept of the "unmoved first mover" appeared in successive stages through a number of works, including Metaphysics.

It is only within the last forty years or so that a determined effort has been made to discover the line of development of Aristotle's thought; until forty years ago the tendency of scholars had been to treat the...