Doing and Being
Jonathan Beere
Oxford, 2009

In reference to Aristotle's Protrepticus, Beere writes: "[H]appiness is not the mere possession of wisdom, but the exercise of wisdom in actively thinking about and understanding the world. In this case, energeia is a certain doing: thinking (noesis), exercising one's wisdom (theoria). [fn3: See fragments B38, B85-86, B93-96, among others]" (BEERE, p. 4)

"Aristotle recognizes cases of *doing* that are not *changes*. And it is precisely in order to cover these cases that Aristotle seems to have introduced the term energeia (activity). So some energeiai are not changes. It is surely no coincidence that living and thinking are two of his cardinal examples of energeiai that are not changes.... But not just any case of thinking counts. Aristotle seems primarily to have in mind the exercise of knowledge you already have in order to understand something: the geometer gazing on a diagram simply understands it, and attending to this understanding is not a change." (BEERE, pp. 12-13)

"[I]t is important to see that Aristotle's conception of *being-in-capacity* is the concept of being a certain way, not the concept of having a capacity." (BEERE, p. 13) [PSA: perhaps this way is being ready to engage in a certain activity.]

"[W[hile things can be x either in capacity or in energeia, being x in energeia is *really* and *fully* being x." (BEERE, p. 13) [PSA: another way of saying this is that being x in energeia is being completely x.]

Referring to the difference between energeia and entelecheia (1045b27-35, 1047a30ff, 1050a21ff, 1049a5-6), Beere writes: "Aristotle requires two terms in order to emphasize two aspects of one way of being.... The term 'fulfillment' (entelecheia) emphasizes the *stable* character of this way of being: emphasizes, that is, that it is a way of *being*. The term energeia, by contrast, picks up and emphasizes the connection with doing - rightly understood, however, it covers all the cases of (stable) fulfillment as well." (BEERE, p. 21)

"Aristotle seems already to hint, here, that fulfillment (entelecheia) is connected with energeia by way of the notion of something's work, function, or job. Energeia is thus, from the outset, connected with the view that things have jobs or functions. There seems to be a fairly straightforward way to understand the connection between something's fulfillment and its function or job. Given that something has a function or job, it would seem to achieve fulfillment in carrying out its function or performing its job." (BEERE, p. 21)

"In its second derivative usage, a capacity is 'the state of not being affected for the worse and towards destruction by something else, or as something else, by a principle of change' (1046a13-15) ... For example: trees that can withstand strong winds, human beings who can walk unharmed over hot coals, armor that can absorb mighty blows, virtuous souls that can endure pernicious influences.... [N]ot just any privation of passive power counts as a power in this usage. The powers in question are constituted by something's being in a *good* condition, in such a way that it cannot be changed *for the worse*.... The Greek words have connotations that are lost in translation. The adjective, 'dunaton,' has connotations of 'powerful.'" (BEERE, pp. 44-45) [PSA: synonyms might include "steadfast" and "true" - this latter is cognate with trust and tree.]

"Two further usages of power are identified in chapter 12 of book Delta... One of them is a power to perform well: 'Moreover, there is a power to accomplish this [i.e., the end in question] well (kalos), or in the way one chooses (prohairesin). For sometimes we do not say that people who can merely walk or speak, but not well or not as they choose, can speak or walk. And likewise for being acted on.' (1019a23-26)." (BEERE, p. 47)

"The priority of active powers over passive derives from the relationship of these powers with one another in the changes that they bring about: it is the active power that determines not only how the change proceeds, but also what change takes place. This is because it is the active power that determines the end to which the change is directed. The passive power is merely a condition for the change taking place. In each case, the passive power is not only understood with reference to, but has its very being with reference to, the active power. Aristotle will argue that being-in-energeia, like active powers, is specially connected with ends, both the ends towards which changes are directed and the ends for the sake of which things have being." (BEERE, p. 67)

"[W]hen an agent acts to change a patient, the agent imposes on the patient a form [PSA: way of being] that the agent already possesses. In the most straightforward case, an agent possesses the form F by being F. And when such an agent acts on a patient, the agent makes the patient like itself: hot stones make water hot. But there are also other ways of possessing the form F. An artisan has the form F in the sense that he has a rational grasp of it." (BEERE, p. 74) [PSA: the same might be true of internal change within the psuche, whereby the actively thinking part of the soul makes the receptively rational or trainable part like itself.]

"Sometimes, when Aristotle uses the word 'energeia,' it seems simply impossible to translate it with 'actuality.' For instance, in saying that pleasure is an energeia, Aristotle is surely not saying that pleasure is an actuality, but rather that it is an activity. Happiness, the energeia of virtue, is an activity, not an actuality. It is the exercise of theoretical knowledge or, secondarily, of practical wisdom. In Theta 6 itself, Aristotle explicitly divides the class of 'doings' (praxeis) into changes and energeiai - again, 'activities' is intelligible, but 'actualities' is not. Someone who has a body of knowledge, but is not using that body of knowledge, is actually a knower - but Aristotle denies that such a person is a knower in energeia. This makes sense if being a knower in energeia is *using* one's knowledge, i.e., engaging in the relevant thinking, by contrast with merely having the knowledge. On the other hand, it is sometimes impossible to translate 'energeia' as activity, but 'actuality' makes sense. For instance, Aristotle claims that the infinite has being only in potentiality, not in actuality. It would not be illuminating to translate, 'the infinite is not in activity.' Similarly, the points on an undivided line are there only in potentiality, not in actuality. The association between form and energeia, and between matter and dunamis, also seems to require formulation in terms of actuality and potentiality, not activity and capacity." (BEERE, p. 157) [PSA: if eidos is a way of being and energeia is working at one's task, then it might be perfectly sensible to understand form as energeia in the sense of activity, not actuality.]

With regard to the traditional view of energeia, Beere comments: "This ambiguity of 'energeia' is an unacceptable consequence of such an interpretation. It would be utterly astonishing if Aristotle had coined a term, given it an importance second to none in his writings, and then used it in a systematically ambiguous way, without any comment whatsoever on that fact." (BEERE, p. 159)

Citing 1047a30-32 and 1050a21-23, Beere writes: "In both passages, Aristotle emphasizes the connection between 'energeia' and teleology. In the first passage, he connects 'energeia' directly with 'fulfillment' (entelecheia). In the second passage, he connects 'energeia' and 'entelecheia' via a third concept, that of a function (ergon)." (BEERE, p. 162)

"Aristotle appears to have introduced the term 'energeia' as a near synonym for chresis, 'use.'" (BEERE, p. 163)

"Aristotle, in the Protrepticus, wants to show that the highest human good is not a thing, like food or wealth, but is knowing - not in the sense of *having* some knowledge stored away in your mind, but in the sense of *using* your knowledge to understand the world (B17). He introduces the term 'energeia' as a label for what one is doing in exercising the capacity that consists in a body of knowledge: 'It appears there are two ways that things are said to live, one in the sense of capacity, one in the sense of energeia...' (B79) .... The point of the term 'energeia' ... is precisely that, in exercising the capacity, one puts it to work, i.e., the capacity carries out the task towards which it is intrinsically directed." (BEERE, pp. 164-165)

"The word 'use' suggests exploitation for the sake of a further end. But the word 'energeia' does not. It is a 'doing,' the exercise of a capacity rather than the mere possession of it, but it is an end, the performance of one's work (ergon), and not a use for further purposes or change." (BEERE, p. 165)

"The same concern is presumably in the background of the later ergon arguments of the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics. Aristotle writes in the Eudemian Ethics, 'For to do well and to live well are the same as being happy, and each of them - both living and acting - is a using (chresis) and an activity (energeia)' (EE II.1 1219b1-3). In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle first concludes that the human work is 'a certain practical [life]' (1098a3; praktike tis [zoe]). Then he insists that practical life is 'spoken of in two ways,' and that a practical life in the sense of activity (energeia) is meant (1098a5-7). The ergon arguments in both works echo the Protrepticus. They show that the human good, whether it is knowledge, or virtue, consists in the exercise of the relevant capacity: becoming a virtuous human being is not achieving the highest good, if that means simply acquiring the virtues; the highest good is not simply the excellences that one might acquire, but the 'use' of those excellences. The virtues make especially vivid Aristotle's reasons not to be satisfied with the term 'use' (chresis), and to coin another term. It sounds peculiar to say that a courageous person, in acting courageously, *uses* his courage - as if he exploits it for some further end. Surely Aristotle's point is rather that the contribution courages makes to a flourishing life does not simply consist in some state of the soul, but consists rather in putting your courage to work in your life - and that means living in a courageous way." (BEERE, p. 166) [PSA: here 'activation' is an apt rendering of energeia.]

"The last example, that of the knower, is a touchstone for the notion of energeia. As I argued above, there is reason to think that the notion of energeia was originally introduced [in the Protrepticus] in order to make a point about the sense in which knowing is the highest human good. In later writings, the case of knowing, in particular the contrast between having and using knowledge, occurs again and again in connection with being-in-capacity and being-in-energeia. [fn18: Cf. DA II.1 412a9-11 and II.5 417a21-b2; Metaphysics Delta 7 1017b2-5; Physics VIII.4 255a33-b5.]" (BEERE, p. 175) [PSA: see also the discussion of akrasia in EN VII]

Citing Metaphysics Delta 1017b2-5 'we say that ... both the person who *can* use their knowledge and the person who *is* using their knowledge know', Beere explains: "Consider, for instance, being a knower of geometry. There are two ways of having this property. There is the way characteristic of geometers at lunch: they have the knowledge of geometry, and are able to understand any geometrical fact you present them with, but they are not then using their knowledge of geometry to understand anything. And then there is the way characteristic of geometers at work." (BEERE, p. 177) [PSA: more relevant for ethics is being a knower of the good as that manifests in arete vs. akrasia.]

"[O]nly when awake is the animal active in ways that properly and fully express what the animal is. For only then does it move in the voluntary ways that show its cognitive response to its environment. The similarity between sleep and death is striking: the activities that express a specifically *animal* life - perception and locomotion - are waking activities, and when they are absent, one is liable to find it difficult to tell whether a creature is alive at all. Aristotle remarks on this in On the Generation of Animals: '... the transition from not-being to being is effected through the intermediate state, and sleep would appear to be by its nature a state of this sort, being as it were a borderland between living and not-living: a person who is asleep would appear to be neither completely [pantelos] not in being nor completely in being: for of course it is to the waking state par excellence that life pertains, and that in virtue of sensation [aisthesis].' (778b23-33) This passage already anticipates the priority of the waking state: it constitutes full-fledged or authentic being." (BEERE, pp. 195-196) [PSA: note the connection to completeness and to awareness.]

"Aristotle sometimes uses energeia and entelecheia as if they were synonyms. It is agreed, I think, that entelecheia is fundamentally a teleological notion ... the term suggests the property or state of fulfillment and completion.... Where energeia implicitly invokes an ergon, entelecheia implicitly invokes a telos. But entelecheia, unlike energeia, is not, in the first instance or intuitively, associated with change or activity. That's because chance is progress towards the fulfillment of an end, and it would seem ... that this is to be contrasted with the fulfillment itself. Energeia and entelecheia converge when the relevant function (ergon) is an end (telos). Thus it makes sense, for instance, that Aristotle typically describes the soul as an entelecheia rather than an energeia.... That is because it is more natural to think of the soul as the way the body is, in virtue of which it lives, rather [than] as the living (the energeia) in which it engages." (BEERE, p. 218)

"Aristotle seems to want to focus our attention on the connection between being and activity, perhaps because he thinks that, in the paradigmatic substances - such as living things, the heavenly bodies, and God - the relevant energeiai are activities." (BEERE, p. 219)

"The essential feature of the energeiai (which are actions strictly speaking) is that they are themselves ends (1048b22-23). The changes, by contrast, are not themselves ends, although they are means to an end (1048b19). The fundamental distinction is between events that are identical with their own ends and events that are not." (BEERE, p. 223)

"We are supposed to understand that being-in-capacity consists in the mere possession of capacities by contrast with their exercise (and analogous states). This, however, leaves open which properties constitute the relevant capacities. Is it only the trained geometer, when not doing geometry, who is in capacity a geometer? ... Or is someone who has the capacity to learn geometry, but is not now in possession of the science, already in capacity a geometer? .... The question asked presupposes a series of states in the development of an organism." (BEERE, p. 234) [PSA: it would be interesting to ask these questions of phronesis and sophia, or in general the person who takes life seriously (i.e., the spoudaios).]

"Our questions about which things have being-in-energeia are simultaneously questions about the essences of things. A question about which human beings are human beings in energeia is a question about the essence of a human being and the end of human life." (BEERE, p. 235)

"Aristotle's question ... makes the robust assumption that a thing of a certain sort comes into being by a process of a certain sort.... The idea seems to be that there are *ordered sequences of things*, where each item in the sequence becomes the next. These sequences *terminate*, and we focus, in asking about when things are in capacity such-and-so, on the last items in those sequences.... The items in the processes, Aristotle assumes, come in a *sequence*. Some items come before others in the sequence. We can see this in his example: the seed is closer to the human being than the earth from the seed was formed: and (we infer) the foetus is closer to the human being than the seed." (BEERE, pp. 236-237) [PSA: similarly in the development of character, a certain kind of upbringing comes before the capacity to be a phronimos, sophos, or spoudaios; perhaps also it's necessary to be a phronimos before becoming a sophos?]

AI: On pages 239 and 240, Beere performs an analysis of the kinds of things that cannot be made healthy. It might be fruitful to perform a similar analysis of the kinds of beings that cannot achieve wisdom or fulfillment (e.g., inanimate things, plants, animals, children). See also Beere's discussion of transitivity or the lack thereof on page 274.

"[P]riority is ... relative to some temporally extended process of change. The sequence of stages of the change is ordered according to priority in being, so that stages that are prior in being occur later in the change. Part of the idea is that each change is directed towards some final state, in which something *is* something: the matter *is* a human being; the human being *is* wise. These are states of *being*. Becomings unfold into beings. Priority in being is relative to this final state. There is an ordering relation among the stages that lead up to the final state. What is closer to that state has priority in being." (BEERE, p. 300)

"There is priority in being because, say, a boy is directed towards becoming and then *being* different from the way he now is, whereas a full-grown flourishing man is not. The boy is directed towards becoming a man. The man is simply supposed to go on being himself." (BEERE, p. 302) [PSA: biologically yes, but the process of maturation toward complete fulfillment might last a lifetime.]

"[I]t makes sense that what is posterior in genesis should be prior in being. The process of genesis is the path by which something that is not (in energeia) F comes to be F. As the subject of change traverses that path, it comes closer and closer to being F. As it comes closer and closer to being F, it becomes a fuller and fuller realization of an F." (BEERE, p. 308) [PSA: that is, it becomes more complete.]

"Aristotle does not say, either in the Nicomachean Ethics or anywhere else, how we ought to understand goodness. The arguments about badness in Theta 9 strongly suggest an answer to this question: that Aristotle thinks goodness is (roughly speaking) energeia." (BEERE, p. 329)

"[V]ice is the corruption of a capacity to develop into a virtuous person. That is, what it is to have a vice is to have a settled disposition for the sake of performing certain actions, such that this disposition is the outcome of a developmental process that started from a disposition that was for the sake of performing precisely *not* those actions, but other actions instead. The very essence of vice is bad in the sense that the essence of vice includes the very norms of virtue that vice systematically rejects. It includes those norms because vice is the bad outcome of a change that starts with a capacity for something to change so as to become virtuous." (BEERE, p. 343)

"[T]he development of the argument in Metaphysics Theta, particularly chapters 8 and 9, strongly suggests that goodness ought to be understood simply as energeia - with the important restriction to energeiai that are *not* posterior to a capacity." (BEERE, p. 349)

"[B]adness is posterior to capacities that are for the sake of good energeiai. Sometimes, badness is mere privation, the non-fulfillment of a capacity.... Sometimes, badness is the misuse of a capacity. Sometimes, badness is the 'proper' user of a perverted capacity, as in vicious action. In every case, goodness and badness are related not as opposites, but rather as prior and posterior." (BEERE, p. 350)

"Badness is essentially deviation from the norms embodied in capacities, but the explanatory role of capacities gives Aristotle a variety of resources for explaining how it is that our world, despite depending on a good principle, is not perfect. This theory of goodness and badness is a remarkable philosophical achievement." (BEERE, p. 351)

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