“At the conclusion of Theta 3, we had recognized in dunamis at the same time the condition of becoming and a mode of being, and in energeia the mode of being that is opposed to it and which characterizes, beyond movement, all that which is effective. In defining what is in-potentiality as that which is not in-act, we have also distinguished it from non-being, in characterizing it as that which can be in act. Now we need to pursue the examination of what is in play in this division, or the modality of the relation of the in-potentiality to act” (Aubry, Dieu san la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 4, p. 124, my translation throughout, with Becker number citations to Aristotle’s Greek text elided).
“The discussion of Theta 4 concerns neither dunamis nor what is dunamei, but rather the dunaton. This term nonetheless can designate both the possible and that which has power, or the capable, just as much as adunaton can designate the impossible as well as that which lacks power. In Theta 3, the dunaton had been defined in terms of dunamis as ‘that for which nothing makes it impossible for the act (energeia) to exist, when it is said to have power (dynamis)'” (ibid).
Clearly, dynamis, dynamei, and dynaton all have related etymologies. My Greek isn’t strong enough to just casually read Aristotle’s original the way I can mostly read Aubry’s French without a dictionary, so this is a bit of an eye-opener. This is why Aristotle’s discussions of what we render by English words that have different etymologies are so closely related.
Because the English words do not have this visible relation to one another, it is easy to be confused by the ways in which Aristotle relates the corresponding Greek terms. For years, I have been puzzled by English translators’ seemingly random alternations between respective uses of power, potentiality, and possibility for what was supposed to be the “same” concept in Aristotle. Aubry’s highlighting of the Greek words tells me I should have long ago studied this more carefully with the side-by-side Greek and English texts in the Loeb edition. The translators’ alternations are probably not random at all, just not commented upon. We are not dealing here with things confusingly said of one same concept, but rather with things more clearly said about each of several related concepts. This is just the kind of disambiguation that Aristotle himself pioneered.
“Book Delta defines [the possible] differently, as that of which the contrary is not necessarily false; that which is true; that which can be true. Thus characterized without relation to dunamis, dunaton no longer means having power, but possible. Delta opposes it to the impossible, adunaton, defined as ‘that of which the contrary is necessarily true’ (for example, the commensurability of the diagonal of a square with its sides), and distinguishes the possible and the impossible thus defined, from power (dunamis) and the lack of power (adunamia)” (ibid).
“Nevertheless, the definitions of Delta again carry an equivocity: in its second sense (that which is true), the possible includes the necessary, or what cannot not be: according to the first and third definition, on the other hand, it is identified with the contingent (to endekhomenon). It is this last sense that is mentioned in Prior Analytics book I: ‘that which is not necessary, and of which one can think that it exists without that leading to any impossibility'” (pp. 124-125).
“The possible is indeed defined sometimes as including, sometimes as excluding the necessary. In its first sense, it can be identified with logical possibility: that is called possible which is not contradictory; the necessary — that which cannot not be the case — can thus be called possible, in the sense that it is true (noncontradictory) to say that it is the case. But the possible can also be identified with the contingent: it thus no longer [indifferently] designates that which cannot not be, or again that which can be this or that. In this second sense, the possible is opposed no longer to the contradictory, but seems to be identifiable with power, understood as the power of contraries (being A or not-A), and of contradictories (being or not being” (p. 125).
We saw previously that both of two contradictories cannot be in act or be the case at the same time, but contradictories can both potentially be in act or be the case.
“The remainder of Theta 4, up to the beginning of Theta 5, nonetheless has the object of opposing determinism. This begins from the distinction between the impossible and the false. A strong determinist position in effect comes back to saying that nothing is possible that is not and will not be true. This position assumes a triple reduction, not only of the possible to the potential and of the potential to the actual, but also of the actual to the true” (p. 126).
This leads back to the position of the Megarians. But Aristotle clearly affirms that the non-actual is not impossible. She quotes, “It is false that you are standing right now, but it is not impossible” (ibid).
Aristotelian potentiality encompasses alternate possibilities.
Next in this series: An Aside on Necessity
The Postmodern Peripatetic 