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  • 8 - Metaphysics Θ.7 and 8: Some issues concerning actuality and potentiality

  • Edited by James G. Lennox, University of Pittsburgh, Robert Bolton, Rutgers University, New Jersey
  • Book:
    Being, Nature, and Life in Aristotle
    Published online:
    06 December 2010
    Print publication:
    18 November 2010, pp 168-197

  • Summary

    Aristotle's strategy in Metaphysics ϴ appears relatively clear: he begins by examining a basic sense of 'capacity' and 'actuality' in which the active power to produce a change in something else is called a 'capacity' and the change it produces (an activity) is called 'an actuality'. This chapter offers a reading of parts of ϴ.7 and of certain lines in ϴ.8. It sketches Aristotle's answers to the questions, commenting on their significance for his account of matter and substance. Aristotle, in introducing talk of actuality and potentiality, provided a way of conceptualizing matter and form so as to make his teleological commitments perspicuous and explicit. The nature of the matter and the composite are clear to us once one can follow Aristotle's advice and see them as teleologically explained and defined by the presence of the relevant goal-laden actuality. Aristotle's master-builder exemplifies the kind of intelligibility sought.