Dunamis in Book IX of Aristotle's Metaphysics
Subtitle: the sphere of motion and the sphere of being.
Published: 2006
Language: eng
Number of pages: 235
ISBN-13: 9780494160312
Description: This thesis provides a detailed analysis of chapters one to eight of the ninth book of Aristotle's Metaphysics; a book which has received little scholarly attention even though it includes Aristotle's only extended treatment of potentiality and actuality. The first task of this thesis is to provide an account of Aristotle's theory of powers; that is, of his treatment in this book of   duna&d12; m3iv  as principles of motion and change. I argue that the scope of this sense of   du&d12;na miv  is much broader than is generally acknowledged such that it covers not only both rational and nonrational   duna&d12; m3iv , but also   duna&d12; m3iv  for incomplete motions like building and complete motions like seeing. Moreover, I argue that the best way to understand the existence of   duna&d12; m3iv  is not through dispositional analyses but by taking   duna&d12; m3iv  to be one in number with but different in essence from categorical features of being such as hot and cold and the arts. These claims, while important in their own right for our understanding of Aristotle's theory of powers are also important insofar as they contribute to our understanding of the ultimate point of the book which is an examination of being according to actuality and potentiality.The second task of the thesis is to show that book nine of the  Metaphysics contains a sustained argument rather than several disconnected discussions as many suppose. I argue the second task of the thesis is to show that book nine of the Metaphysics contains a sustained argument rather than several disconnected discussions as many suppose. I argue that the main point of the book is to distinguish perishable from imperishable substances by drawing a division between things that exist potentially and things that exist actually. Making sense of Aristotle's claim that perishable things exist potentially, in particular, finding a way to construe this claim that does not conflict with his insistence that being is not a univocal predicate, requires that we begin with his treatment of   du&d12;na miv  as a principle of motion and draw on the set of distinctions Aristotle develops throughout the course of the book as he transforms the notion of   du&d12;na miv  from its use within the sphere of motion and change to its use within the sphere of being.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-07, Section: A, page: 2607.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2006.

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