Abstract: Zeno of Elea argued ‘that the traveling arrow is motionless’. According to Aristotle, Zeno’s argument fails due to the tacit false premise that ‘time is composed of indivisible nows’: in other words, that temporal intervals are composed of unextended temporal instants. How exactly does Aristotle understand Zeno’s argument, and why does he give the solution he gives? Does it really matter whether instants are parts of intervals rather than, say, boundaries and divisions of intervals? I develop a reconstruction of Zeno’s Arrow argument under which (i) it is valid; (ii) it relies irreplaceably on the premise that temporal intervals are composed of instants; (iii) it can be shown that Aristotle accepts all its other premises. I propose that my reconstruction is a worthy contender against existing ones, giving Zeno a good argument and Aristotle a good response, and that it brings out important aspects of Aristotle’s thinking on continuity and on doing things in time.
