Abstract
The notion of a capacity (dunamis) in the sense of a power to bring about or undergo change plays a key role in Aristotle’s theories about the natural world. However, in Metaphysics Θ Aristotle also extends ‘capacity’, and the corresponding concept of ‘activity’ (energeia), to cases where we want to say that something is in capacity, or in activity, such and such but not, or not directly, in virtue of being capable of initiating or undergoing change. This paper seeks to clarify and confirm a certain view of how Aristotle wishes us to see the relationship between the two uses of ‘capacity’ and ‘activity’. To that end, I consider also Aristotle’s employment of the terms in the De Anima, which sheds light on the key examples which direct the discussion in Metaph. Θ.
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Notes
Since we have treated of the kind of capacity which is related to change, let us discuss activity -what, and what kind of thing, activity is. For in the course of our analysis it will also become clear, with regard to the capable, that we not only ascribe capacity to that whose nature it is to change something else, or to be changed by something else, either without qualification or in some particular way, but also use the word in another sense, which is the reason of the inquiry in the course of which we have discussed these previous senses also. Activity, then, is the existence of a thing not in the way which we express by 'in capacity'; we say that in capacity, for instance, a statue of Hermes is in the block of wood and the half-line is in the whole, because it might be separated out, and we call even the man who is not contemplating a man of science, if he is capable of contemplating; the thing that stands in contrast to each of these exists in activity. Our meaning can be seen in the particular cases by induction, and we must not seek a definition of everything but be content to grasp the analogy, that it is as that which is building is to that which is capable of building, and the waking to the sleeping, and that which is seeing to that which has its eyes shut but has sight, and that which has been shaped out of the matter to the matter, and that which has been wrought up to the unwrought. Let activity be defined by one member of this antithesis, and the capable by the other. But all things are not said in the same sense to exist actually, but only by analogy—as A is in B or to B, C is in D or to D; for some are as change to capacity, and the others as substance to some sort of matter (1048a25-b9 transl. after Ross).
And since ‘being’ is in one way divided into ‘what’, quality, and quantity, and is in another way distinguished in respect of potentiality and fulfillment, and of function, let us discuss potentiality and fulfillment. First let us explain potentiality in the strictest sense, which is, however, not the most useful for our present purpose. For potentiality and actuality extend further than the mere sphere of motion. But when we have spoken of this first kind, we shall in our discussions of actuality explain the other kinds of potentiality (1045b33–1046a4, transl. by Ross).
Cf. Metaph. Δ.6 1016b31–1017a2.
Cf. Metaph.Λ.4.
Cf. also DA III.10.
Cf. also Generation of Animals I.19 726b18–20 where it is indicated that semen’s being in potentiality (dunamei) a living being may be explained in terms of its having a dunamis, specifically that of the soul (b23).
See Beere (2009, 155–167) for an illuminating discussion of the problems of translating ‘energeia’.
The translation of the adverbial energeiai or kata energeian as actually or according to actuality is the correlative of the translation of dunamei as ‘potentially’. So if we choose to advert to capacity in our translation of dunamei we may wish to revise our translation of energeiai, correspondingly. In that case, it is natural to opt for the translation ‘in activity’. For the activity seems to manifest the capacity in the way Aristotle thinks a energeia manifests the dunamis. If we ask what a capacity is for it is natural to say that it is a capacity for a certain sort of activity. So sight is the capacity for the activity of seeing, the art of strategy the capacity for engaging the activity of warfare, and so on. However, as Beere (2009, p. 157) points out there are cases such the claim that the infinite is not in energeia where ‘activity’ is less apt.
‘Capably’ tends to apply to actions and imply ‘skilfully’.
So I agree with Makin (2006, p. 132) when he says that ‘The important point is that Θ.6 is not a “horizontal” move, from a discussion of one relation (change-capacity) “sideways” to discussion of another (substance-matter). It is rather a “vertical” move, from discussion of the change-capacity relation “upwards” to a consideration of the more general schema: actual-potential being.’ This insight is due to Frede (1994, p. 184).
As Beere (2009, pp. 191–195) argues, it is the first case, which forms the basis of the analogy, but this stills allows us to see roughly two kinds of case involved (1)–(3) and (4)–(5).
Contrast Frede (1994, p. 185), who denies that seeing is a change or a mode of change. While there is a point, as I go on the argue, to (1)–(3) not being ordinary changes, denying that they are changes in any sense disconnects the analogy from the idea that we are supposed to get from the core notion of change as activity to the substance cases. Admittedly, is not clear how being awake as such might count as a change, though Aristotle may take it to imply that certain changes happen to the waking animal, such as perceiving or moving.
Cf. in particular 417b5–16. See Heinaman (2007), for a strong view of the importance of the distinction in this chapter.
See the helpful comments in Makin (2006, pp. 172–173).
Notwithstanding Aristotle’s preference for the latter expression at DA 408b13–15.
Metaph. 1017a35–b8: Again, ‘being’ and ‘that which is’, in these cases we have mentioned, sometimes mean being potentially, and sometimes being in fulfilment. For we say both of that which sees potentially and of that which sees in fulfilment, that it is seeing, and both of that which can use knowledge and of that which is using it, that it knows, and both of that to which rest is already present and of that which can rest, that it rests. And similarly in the case of substances we say the Hermes is in the stone, and the half of the line is in the line, and we say of that which is not yet ripe that it is corn. When a thing is potential and when it is not yet potential must be explained elsewhere’ (transl. after Ross).
Metaph. 1045b32–1046a2: And since ‘being’ is in one way divided into ‘what’, quality, and quantity, and is in another way distinguished in respect of potentiality and fulfillment, and of function, let us discuss potentiality and fulfillment. First let us explain potentiality in the strictest sense, which is, however, not the most useful for our present purpose. For potentiality and actuality extend further than the mere sphere of motion’. (transl. by Ross).
‘Work’ is an appropriate translation of the Greek ergon also because it is ambiguous between the activity of working and its result.
One might in principle take to gar ergon telos to mean the activity is the work, and so as an identity claim, but Aristotle’s careful use of the article with the subject complement to make such a claim in the following proposition, hê de energeia to ergon, suggests that its omission here is deliberate and significant.
For a helpful account of the distinction, see Charles (2010, pp. 171–172). The answer I develop involves taking the temporal question as a way of posing the question about minimal conditions since the case of becoming is, for Aristotle, the most perspicacious way of showing that way in which being in capacity is teleological notion.
See Frede (1994, pp. 188–190).
Charles (2010, p. 172) for one.
See Beere (2009, chap. 11) for an illuminating account.
Cf. Metaph. Ζ.17 1041b6–8: ‘Why is this individual thing, or this body in this state, a man? Therefore what we seek is the cause, i.e. the form, by reason of which the matter is some definite thing; and this is the substance of the thing.’
Cf. Metaph. Η.6.
Cf. On Generation and Corruption I.7.
Putting aside outliers in the tradition of Plato’s receptacle, such as prime matter and passive nous.
This is one of the points on which my interpretation differs from that of Charles (2010, pp. 192–193), who explains the potentiality of synchronic matter primarily in terms of its retaining properties that made it suitable for becoming the substance.
1049a21–23: ‘something is always potentially (in the full sense of that word) the thing which comes after it in this series. E.g. a casket is not earthen nor earth, but wooden; for wood is potentially a casket and is the matter of a casket, …’ (transl. by Ross).
For a fuller account, I refer the reader to Chap. 1 of my book The Powers of Aristotle’s Soul (Oxford 2012).
Aquinas in his commentary on the De Anima (Foster and Humphries 1951, §222) suggests that if Aristotle had said that the body had actual life, then he would have implied that the body itself was a form-matter compound. However, Aristotle’s claim is put in terms of the body’s having life, not being life, and there seems to be no greater threat to the status of the body as matter by saying that the body has actual life than by saying that it has the form actually.
DA II.1 412a6–10: We say that substance is one the things that are, and we speak of one kind of substance as matter, which is not in itself (kath’ hauto) something determinate (tode ti), and another as shape and form, according to which it is said to be something determinate, and a third is what is composed out of these. For the matter is capacity, and the form fulfilment...
Cf. oikeios at 414b27.
Cf. GA II.6 742a27–33: ‘So we have three things: (1) the end, which we describe as being that for the sake of which; 2) the things which are for the sake of the end, namely, the activating and generative, qua such, is relative to what it produces and generates; (3) the things which are serviceable, which can be and are employed by the end’.
It is possible that (2) and (3) are meant to be no more than co-extensive and that ‘instrumental’ is not supposed to imply ‘potentially having life’ but simply offer an alternative, independent specification of the body which serves the job of specifying what kind of the thing ‘soul’ is. But if so, it is odd that Aristotle after stating (2) immediately adds the notion of instrumentality by saying ‘but such a body would be instrumental’, as if the notion of the body’s instrumentality somehow linked up with the notion of its having potential life.
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Johansen, T.K. Capacity and Potentiality: Aristotle’s Metaphysics Θ.6–7 from the Perspective of the De Anima. Topoi 31, 209–220 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-011-9115-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-011-9115-6