Aristotle's Metaphysics
Joe Sachs
Green Lion Press, 1999

"Aristotle praises Plato for inquiring whether the philosophic road is down from or up to first principles (1095a32-24).... If all knowledge is connected, what becomes most needful for us is the upward way of reasoning (cf. 82a23-24) that travels from where we are to the things that can transform our opinions and perceptions into knowledge." (SACHS-1999, pp. xiv-xv) 

Aristotle "recognizes the fact that plant activity keeps itself in being, by seeking out and soaking up water and sunlight and soil minerals. The plant's relation to its own being is active and self-maintaining, at least to some extent, and to that extent it displays being as such, or being as being." (SACHS-1999, p. xviii)

"Because that inquiry is dialectical, nothing so crude as proof is attempted, but rather there is a sharpening and converging of a number of ways of getting at and behind the being of all sorts of beings." (SACHS-1999, p. xxvi)

"Motion in the Physics, soul in On the Soul, and both form and being in the Metaphysics, are ultimately understood as kinds of being-at-work [i.e., energeia], and even the notions of virtue and character, in the Nicomachean Ethics, depend on it. Without a grasp of what he means by being-at-work, then, one cannot get hold of any important idea in any of Aristotle's writings." (SACHS-1999, p.xxxix)

"The idea of being-at-work pervades Aristotle's thinking. His characteristic vocabulary emphasizes it everywhere. He chooses a common noun (energeia) built on the root erg that signifies work. He finds the same meaning in the common verb echein that means to be by continuing or holding on in some way, and attaches it to an adjective (enteles) that signifies completeness, to form the coinage entelecheia, which redoubles its meaning by punning on a common word (endelecheia) that means continuity or persistence. He makes Socrates's favorite question ti esti (what is it?) by changing the verb to the past tense (ēn), in which alone its progressive aspect can be made unambiguous. And he chooses for the primary explanatory word in his ethical works the noun hexis made from echein, to signify an enduring state of character that is also an active condition. His language pulses with this dynamic conception of being..." (SACHS-1999, p. xl)

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