Senses of Dunamis and the Structure of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Θ1

Abstract

This essay aims to analyze the structure of Aristotle's Metaphysics Θ by explicating various senses of the term δύναμις at issue in the treatise. It is argued that Aristotle's central innovation, the sense of δύναμις most useful to his project in the treatise, is the kind of capacity characteristic of the pre-existent matter for substance. It is neither potentiality as a mode of being, as recent studies maintain, nor capacity for 'complete' activity. It is argued further that, in starting with the κύριος sense of δύναμις as capacity for change, Aristotle begins with the most familiar and acknowledged kind of capacity, in order to move to the less familiar but ultimately more useful notion of capacity for substance, and to bring these two kinds together through an analogical relation.

The Non-kinetic Origins of Aristotle’s Concept of Ἐνέργεια

“…6 Cf. Graham 1987, 184-185, Rist 1989, 106-107, Berti 1990, 47-51, Code 2003, 252, Makin 2006, xxviii, 133-135 and Burnyeat 2008 Many recent interpreters rely on Menn in support of their own arguments (e.g., Anagnostopoulos 2011, 412: "Menn (1994 has shown that in apparently early works, δύναμις and ἐνέργεια as a rule do not discriminate between activities that do, and those that do not, contain their ends"; Politis & Su 2015 rely heavily on Menn for their critical appraisal of Kosman's position. Cf.…”