Doing and Being: An Interpretation of Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta

Doing and Being confronts the problem of how to understand two central concepts of Aristotle's philosophy: energeia and dunamis. While these terms seem ambiguous between actuality/potentiality and activity/capacity, Aristotle did not intend them to be so. Through a careful and detailed reading
of Metaphysics Theta, Beere argues that we can solve the problem by rejecting both actuality and activity as translations of energeia, and by working out an analogical conception of energeia. This approach enables Beere to discern a hitherto unnoticed connection between Plato's Sophist and
Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta, and to give satisfying interpretations of the major claims that Aristotle makes in Metaphysics Theta, the claim that energeia is prior in being to capacity (Theta 8) and the claim that any eternal principle must be perfectly good (Theta 9).


Author: Jonathan Beere
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 04/07/2012
Pages: 382
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.20w x 0.40d
ISBN: 9780199652044

About the Author

Jonathan Beere is a member of the Department of Philosophy, as well as the Graduate School of Ancient Philosophy and the Excellence Cluster Topoi, at the Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin. He was previously Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.

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