Aristotle
John Hermann Randall, Jr.
Columbia University Press, 1960

"Everything in the world has the power to operate in a distinctive, characteristic way, the way of the kind of thing it is. And everything has also a drive, an impulse, a tendency - Aristotle calls it a horme - to put its powers into operation.... Aristotle's horme is an endeavor to become different, to fulfill all a thing's powers." (RANDALL, p. 127)

"The fundamental drive in mankind is to set its distinctive power of nous in operation, and thus to become the kind of thing truly which men alone can become, 'knowers'.... To understand man, for instance, we need to find, not merely impulses, reflexes, habits, but what man can do, his powers and possibilities, his end: the good life, living well." (RANDALL, p. 128)

"The functioning itself is the end, as seeing is the end of the power of seeing, or vision. Such an activity is in the most precise sense an 'entelechy,' a complete, self-inclosed functioning, a 'consummation.'" (RANDALL, p. 131) [PSA: we could say that "fulfillment follows function"...]

"[B]oth goal and activity are in the actor: seeing is in the seer, thinking is in the thinker, living and living well in the psyche." (RANDALL, pp. 131-132)

"[O]usia is an activity which is in its own right a fulfillment or consummation." (RANDALL, p. 132)

Randall quotes Aristotle's definition of the infinite at 206b35-207a10: "'What has nothing outside itself is complete (to teleion) and whole (holon), for we define a whole as that from which nothing is left out, like a man or a chest.' This definition also throws light on what Aristotle means by teleios, conventionally translated as 'perfect'.... the infinite as infinite is unknowable... the infinite is at the opposite pole from the complete, the knowable, the graspable, the divine." (RANDALL, p. 195)

"We know that we are dealing with a single motion or process when it has been completed (teleios); for anything that can be said to be a unity is always completed and whole. It is this feature of reaching a goal or end that makes a process self-delimiting." (RANDALL, p. 204)

"The life of man is the life of an animal both 'political' and 'rational'.... The best life is the life of the most complete operation of all the powers of such an animal: it is the life of a social animal lived on a rational level." (RANDALL, p. 247)

"[T]here is no human good that is or could be common to all men on all occasions - save that of always acting intelligently. What is good is always smething plural, specific, and relative to a particular situation or context." (RANDALL, p. 251)

"[A] polis must exist for the sake, not merely of common living, but for the sake as well of 'worthy and beautiful actions,' ton kalon praxeon heneken. A true polis is one that has achieved its entelechy, that is, that has actually become a partnership in a perfected and complete life, and hence in living well and beautifully, to zen eudaimonos kai kalos. The best polis is the one that best fosters all human excellences." (RANDALL, p. 255)

"Nature in general is an order of productive enterprises, and human production, human art, is not a completely novel and unique addition to nature, but rather an instance of nature at work, the most complex, and in a certain sense the most successful instance, carrying nature's enterprises to a happy fruition." (RANDALL, p. 274)

Quoting 199a16-18: "'In general, then, art in a sense completes what nature is unable to finish, and in a sense imitates nature.' Art, that is, overcomes the difficulties of matter. Aristotle does not mean that art 'mimics' nature: art does not mitigate nature's products - that would be quite impossible. Art does better, more successfully, just what nature does or tries to do: it brings that which is possible in materials to a realization, and thus 'completes nature.'" (RANDALL, p. 275)

"[F]or Aristotle there is no distinction at all between what have come to be called in modern times the so-called 'fine arts' and the 'practical arts'.... the 'artist' is a maker, a craftsman, like the shipbuilder or the physician. The different and separate arts are distinguished only by the fact that they make different kinds of thing.... Good ships, good health, and good plays are all a delight to behold, because each does something well." (RANDALL, p. 278)

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