“The notion of dunamis is present from the earliest writings of Aristotle, associated each time with an ethical context” (Aubry, Dieu san la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 4, p. 100, my translation throughout). She cites studies of this issue by D. W. Graham and E. Berti.
The Protrepicus is an Aristotelian dialogue, famous in antiquity as an exhortation for people to learn philosophy, but surviving only in fragments quoted by other authors. According to Aubry, it discusses dynamis in terms still based on those of Plato’s Theaetetus — a kind of having, as distinct from use — but it already introduces Aristotle’s neologisms of energeia and entelecheia, or act and the closely related notion of entelechy. Significations according to act are already treated as focal, relative to significations according to dynamis.
“Finally, the distinction also shows a normative and teleological sense” (ibid).
“The notion of energeia is found associated not only with that of usage, but also with that of good usage and that of end, and by the latter ultimately with that of ergon [a completed work] — the text having ultimately for objective the determination of the ergon of the soul, not only its function but the act in which its end properly resides” (p. 101).
We saw recently that Plato already used ergon in a sense like this. Aristotelian energeia is the fulfilling activity from which the Platonic ergon emerges.
“It is with a normative and teleological sense that the notion of ergon intervenes again in fragment 6: the accomplishment of the ergon in effect is that in virtue of which a thing can be called good, agathos, that in which also resides its virtue, arete. For in the case of a composite being, this work cannot be immediately determined: constituted of different parts, such a being is also constituted of multiple acts and multiple powers. Its end resides in the accomplishment of its best work, its most proper dunamis, indeed that of that part of it in which its identity most resides. For the human, her end and her happiness reside in the accomplishment of the power of thinking, phronesis, which is at the same time her divine part and her most proper identity. The notion of dunamis is thus articulated to those of ergon and of energeia, which themselves are articulated to that of end, telos” (ibid).
Much of Aristotle’s most characteristic thought is expressed here. (On a side note, I am especially intrigued that phronesis or practical judgment is here explicitly assigned the same ultimate role that theoria or contemplation plays in the Nicomachean Ethics. I have long been skeptical of any sharp contrast between these two. See Aristotelian “Wisdom”.)
“The Protrepicus strongly associates notions that were present but disjoint in Plato: that of effective usage, of ergon and end, which are conjoined in Aristotle’s invented terms of energeia and entelecheia” (ibid).
She also points out a discussion of dynamis in book IV of the Topics, where it is opposed to choice based on deliberation. No one should be blamed for a dynamis. “One does not say of a human who is capable of acting badly that she is bad…. The bad is the one who is not only capable of evil, but chooses it…. Contrary to what Platonic aristocratism affirms, there are no naturally good or bad [rational beings]; in particular, it makes no sense to speak of someone as naturally virtuous: because virtue, the Nicomachean Ethics says, is not a dunamis, a native power, an innate quality, any more than vice is. It is a hexis, a disposition acquired… by means of repetition of one same act, and of which the actualization, in its turn, is suspended from prohairesis [choice grounded in deliberation]” (p. 102).
Next in this series: Potentiality for Interaction
The Postmodern Peripatetic 