Comments on Kosman’s account of ἐνέργεια

Marco Saccà

Abstract
Assuming that is correct to say that Aristotelian τὸ ὂν is activity, in section 1. I present A.
Kosman’s interpretation (2013) of the Aristotelian notion of activity and its consequences on
the notion of the θεός; in section 2. I shall consider some problems of Kosman’s reading and
some gaps too.

1. Kosman’s account of ἐνέργεια

A. Kosman (2013) states, against some commentators1, that the Metaphysics is a unitary work
and this is shown by: 1) placing at the core of being’s inquiry the notion of activity, 2)
considering a series of paronymic explicative bonds between the beings of the different types
of οὐσίαι2.
Here I shall discuss only (1)3, reporting the main Kosman’s observations about ἐνέργεια.

(1) We have to distinguish two types of realization.

(K1) Transition or privative realization: ¬P(x) → P(x). Not-P of x becomes P of x, that is the
coming to be from a privation, and is called “transition”, where not-P and P are contraries; so,
when there is being not-P, being P is not yet and when there is being P, being not-P is no
more. This type of realization entails the annihilation of a being  i.e. Nathan’s being
uneducated becomes being educated, and the uneducated one is no more  .

1
In example W. Jaeger (1923), who questions the authenticity of Met. Ε and considers Met. Λ as an independent
analysis added to the other books by some later editor.
2
Briefly, according to Kosman there are three types of beings in Aristotle: 1) κατὰ συμβεβηκός, 2) καθ'αὑτό
qualified, 3) καθ'αὑτό unqualified. These beings are paronymically related (πρὸς ἒν), because the definition of
(1) (i.e. 'Socrates is white') is given referring to the combination of (2) ('being white') and (3) ('Socrates'); but
also the definition of (2) refers to something else, namely (3) (accidents are said of a subject, in this sense are
"qualified"); only (3) is said per sé, because is being does not refer to something else, thanks to the fact that
matter and form are a unity, that is, they have the same being. Only natural beings are (3) but they are also πρὸς
ἒν the θεός, that is the highest unity.
In this reading, there are at least two problems. a) Stating that only natural beings are (3), artefact beings are
excluded  they are (1)  , because according to Kosman artefact's ὕλη has an independent being, it exists before,
during and after the artefact's existence. This is a very problematic claim  assumed also by the contemporary
mereological hylemorfism  because Aristotle very clearly states about οὐσίαι that their ὕλη is re-identified by
their μορφή: οὐσία’s ὕλη does not exist before οὐσία and does not exist after οὐσία (i.e. look at Met. Z.7 or at the
homonymy phenomenon, as in De Anima 412b10-22 or Politics 1253a9-29). b) The πρὸς ἒν relation seems not
problematic, but i) if we are stating that (3) is πρὸς ἒν the θεός, then Metaphysics' inquiry is no more made by
οὐσία's inquiry, but by θεός's inquiry and also it is not clear how definitions of (3) could refer to θεός; ii) if we
are stating a less demanding position, i.e. that (3) is explained by θεός’s being, we should specify what is this
explanation relation and above all why this entails the unity of the Metaphysics work. But Kosman does not.
3
Given that the name of Kosman’s work is The Activity of Being and that the central topic is the concept of
ἐνέργεια, namely of the activity, it is surprising that only few pages are dedicated to the analysis of ἐνέργεια and
that this analysis is also referred to a certain interpretation of the κίνησις.
(K2) Activation or subject realization: P-δυ (x) → P-εν (x). P-δύναμιςly of x come to be P-
ἐνέργειαlly of x, that is the coming to be of a subject; Kosman calls it “activation” or
“conversion” and this type of realization doesn’t entail any annihilation, because there is the
same being that activates itself. It could be rendered as the pair ‘ability - exercise’  i.e., about
Nathan’s “being an English speaker”: at t1 Nathan is silent and has the ability to speak but he
is not speaking, and at tn+1 is speaking and actualizes his ability: both in t1 and in tn+1 the being
is the same  .

(2) We have to distinguish two types of ἐνέργεια as stated in Met. Θ.6.

(K3) Ἐνέργεια as κίνησις  like building  :

a. Is different from the completion (is ἕτερον)  the act of building and the house built
are different  .
b. Is ἀτελής, is not in the perfection, because it requires perfection  the act of building
is made out to obtain a house  .
c. It isn’t at the same time of the completion, the process has a “suicidal mode of being”:
when the completion is, process is no more and while there is the process there is no
completion, but the process is for the sake of the completion, is for being no more.
d. It takes time, because, according to Kosman, «uses up time, in the act of accomplishing
its perfection»4.

(K4) Ἐνέργεια in the proper sense  as seeing  :

a. It is the same of the completion  if a is seeing, then a has seen: the perfect doesn’t
indicate a past action, rather, in Greek, perfect signifies a present state  .
b. It is ἐντελής, is in the perfection, so it doesn’t require a further perfection.
c. It is at the same time (ἅμα) of the completion.
d. It occupies time, that Kosman explains as «it is complete and perfect at each and every
present moment of its duration»5.

(3) Kίνησις is defined in terms of ἐνέργεια.

(K5) Kίνησις is considerable in its potentiality, as we have seen from K3  it is ἀτελής and is
in the process of achieving the completion that hasn’t yet  .
(K6) Kίνησις is considerable in its actuality.

4
A. Kosman (2013: pos. 1114).
5
A. Kosman (2013: pos. 1127).
Aristotle’s definition of κίνησις is: «The realization [ἐντελέχεια] of what is able [δυνάμει] to
be <something> as such [ᾗ τοιοῦτον], is motion»6.
This is Kosman’s scheme of κίνησις:

A (Kί)→ B
• A: Ἐν-A, Δύ(Δύ-B)
• (Kί)→: Ἐν(Δύ(Δύ-B)), Δύ-B
• B: Ἐν(Δύ-B)]

If in the passage from A to B is required a motion, there are three stages to consider:
The first stage: when x is in A, it is being effectively in A (i.e. is being stone) and has the
ability to be able to be in B  the (i) δύναμις of the (ii) δύναμις to B, i.e., the (i) ability to (ii)
be buildable in a house  , that is, the ability to be able to be and not the ability to be. In fact,
on December 23 I am in Lugano sitting in my chair and I want to be in Palermo, at this moment
I am only able to move towards Palermo, because, having no ticket for the plane and having
lost the one for the ship, I can be able to be in Palermo only driving for 18 hours: in conclusion,
only who has left has the (ii) ability to arrive.
The second stage is to be in motion, to be actively able to be in B, or simply able to be in B
(i.e. the ability to be a house), that is the activity, referring to Aristotle’s definition, of the
ability to be a house as such ability and not as such the product, that is to say being buildable
and not being a house.
The third stage, being in B, being a house, being in Palermo, is the realization of this active
ability.
(K7.1) According to Kosman, this double face of the motion, as activity and as ability, allows
to consider the motion as a first activity.
Referring only to De Anima B.5, Kosman introduces the pair first activity-second activity. I
don’t know how Kosman can conclude what follows, but we should have the following
distinctions, with two degrees of ability and two levels of activity7.

First degree ability, the ability to Fing, but actually not-Fing  as someone who is able
to speak French, who doesn’t know it yet  that becomes first activity, the dispositionally
Fing  as someone who is able to speak French, who is dispositionally speaking, but is
silent  .

6
Physics, 201a11.
7
«[…] we may say that speaking French in the sense in which an adult is said to speak French when silent
(dispositionally speaking French, or being dispositionally able to speak French) is the realization of the ability
to be able to speak French (actively), that ability that is exhibited by an infant Parisian, or by humanity in
general» (A. Kosman 2013: pos. 1537, my italics).
 Second degree ability / first activity, the dispositional ability to Fing, but actually not-
Fing  as someone who is dispositionally speaking French, but is silent  that activates
itself in second activity, actively Fing  as someone who is speaking French  .

According to this scheme, first activity is the realization of an ability and is also potentially
something else, as κίνησις that realizes the ability-of-the-ability and is also perfected by
something else8.
(K7.2) Motion is also explained in terms of second activity, because both realize an ability in
the activation way, there is no change of being: ability to be buildable → actively being
buildable9.

(4) The essential form is defined in terms of first activity and second activity.
(K8) Wondering if the form is a first or a second activity have no sense.
For sure is not a first activity10 because since something is being its form, then it is exercising
that form. If a human being is existing, then he is fully realizing his form only because he is
existing. Therefore, form is a second actuality11. But this observation doesn’t entail that form
is only a second actuality, because, «ability and his exercise are always and of necessity
together»12 having the same being, the exercise does not replace the ability, while I am
speaking I’m still able to speak, that is, being human does not replace the body’s ability to be
human.
(K9) Wondering what kind of activity is the essential form have no sense.
There isn’t a specific activity that constitutes the form: if an infant dies we say that a human
being is dead, though he did not speak and has not realized any distinctively human activity.
Cases of this sort suggest that the essence, the being what something is, is not founded in a

8
«This account may provide a sense of relative degrees of ability of the sort that we sought, and considering it,
we might be led to depict motion as comparable to a first realization, intermediate as it is between a subject’s
ability to become other than it is and the resultant state of actually being other» (A. Kosman 2013: pos. 1518).
9
«The analogy, in other words, ought to be drawn in the following way: as the exercise of a disposition is to that
disposition, for example, actively speaking French to the dispositional ability to speak French, so is motion to
the ability of something to be other than it is, for example, the motion by which bricks and stones are built into
a house to the ability for being a house which those bricks and stone exhibit when they are not being built, and
so in general is the movable in motion to the movable at rest» (A. Kosman, 2013: pos. 1632).
10
«[…] these considerations show how wrong it would be to think of something what it is [viz. essence / form]
as first-level realization» (A. Kosman, 2013: pos. 4248).
11
«The activity of being human, for example, is fully realized by any individual human at all, simply by virtue
of his existence. And in general, the defining activity of any substance, as the substance’s being what it is, is
fully realized in that being and is so in the way that thinking, for example, is realized not simply in the ability to
think, but in the active exercise of thinking, the activity that Aristotle calls θεωρία» (A. Kosman, 2013: pos.
4212).
12
A. Kosman (2013: pos. 4250)
particular activity or in any collection of activities. Even better, the essence could be only in
the ability mode:

The activity of a substance’s being what it is (most paradigmatically a living being of such-and-
such a specific sort) includes its being some complex of abilities or capacities for the activities
as well as for the further capacities characteristic of that substance. These abilities, however,
need not be realized for the substance actively to be what it is. […] that being, as I earlier
argued, may at any given moment be manifest only as capacities for those activities.13

(5) The activity of θεός’s motion is between imperfect κίνησις and perfect ἐνέργεια.
(K10) Physics’ θεός is the unmoved principle of motion14, so it can’t be moved by something
else. Therefore, it is not a self-mover as animal beings, because they truly move themselves,
but their internal principle of motion can be accidentally moved: if the penguin moves from
A to B, its soul causes this motion, but, being embodied, it is accidentally moved by the body
too, or when the animal is at rest, it can be moved by the feed that activates its digestion.
Assuming that the θεός is the ultimate mover, if it were a self-mover then it would be moved
accidentally as in the animals.
(K11) Metaphysics’ θεός is the ultimate mover15, but is unmoved also because it is the highest
activity, it has no potentiality, then it can’t be in motion, since motion entails potentiality.
(K12) On the Heaven’s θεός is the ultimate mover (on the contrary there would be something
more divine); it is embodied in the ultimate heaven; it moves moving itself; its motion is
unceasing and is circular (it begins and ends in the same place); it is unchanging and it has
nothing bad and lacks anything because its motion does not end in something outside the
mover16.
(K13) K10 and K12 can be read coherently because to be unmoved is not incompatible with
being self-mover, as in K12. In Physics the θεός is not a self-mover because of the accidental

13
A. Kosman (2013: poss. 4258-4276), my italics.
14
«Positing that everything that is moved is moved by something, and that this is either unmoved or moved, and
if moved is moved either by itself or by some other thing, and so on, we proceeded to conclude that the principle
of what is moved is, on the one hand, of moving things, that which moves itself, but of all things, that which is
unmoved, and we see clearly that there are such beings that move themselves, namely living beings in the genus
of animals» (Physics, 259a29–259b2).
15
«[…] there is something that is moving with an unceasing motion, which is a circular motion, […] and
therefore the first heaven must be eternal. There is therefore also something that moves it. But since that which
is moved and moves is also intermediate, there is therefore something [3] that is not in motion but moves [οὐ
κινούμενον κινεῖ], something eternal that is both substance and activity [ἀίδιον καὶ οὐσία καὶ ἐνέργεια οὖσα]»
(Metaphysics, 1072a21–26).
16
«And in the popular philosophical works upon the divine, it is frequently made clear by argument that the first
and highest divinity is of necessity altogether unchanging, which confirms what we have said. For neither is
there anything superior that can move it (for then that would be more divine) nor has it anything bad nor does it
lack anything fair appropriate to it. And it moves with an unceasing motion, as is reasonable. For all things only
cease moving when they arrive at their appropriate place, but for the body that moves in a circle it is the same
place from which its motion proceeds and in which it ends» (On the Heaven, 279a29–279b4).
motion, but if to be unmoved entails that there is anything that moves it and if over the
outermost ultimate heaven there is nothing, no feed can move accidentally the divine self-
mover; and if moving from A to B implies an accidental motion of the soul, in the case of the
circular motion there is no B, but the motion goes from A to A, then no accidental motion.
K11 and K12 can be read coherently too. The arguments are17:1) that motion is defined in
terms of ἐνέργεια, so there is not an absolute distance; 2) the circular motion is a mediating
figure between pure motion and ἐνέργεια because, as the latter, it has no τέλος outside itself.

2. Problems of Kosman’s account

(R0) Kosman’s account of ἐνέργεια is based on only two textual references, on Met. Θ.6. and
on De Anima B.5. This seems too little.
(R1) K1, K2, K3, K4 are not problematic, they are common Aristotelian thesis and Kosman’s
interpretation is quite standard. Maybe, he had to say more about the difference between “to
take time” and “to occupy time” in K3-K4.
(R1) Neither K5, the κίνησις’s potential dimension, is problematic, and also K6 seems a
plausible sketch of the “energheial” aspect of κίνησις.
(R2) Concerning K7.1, first of all a pragmatic problem: how is possible, staying silent,
dispositionally speaking? What is dispositionally speaking? Is it moving only the lips? I could
be at tn in a dispositional state that allows me to speak at tn+1, but I really do not know how is
possible to be in a state and at the same time acting, but without really acting.
Moreover, from an Aristotelian point of view, there are no room for the first activity to be the
realization of any type of δύναμις. This account cut off the fundamental notion of ἕξις, from
ἔχειν, to stay or to possess actually a form. The possession of a state could be natural (οὐσῶν)
or acquired by the exercise (ἔθει), that is, the former does not need a previous exercise
(προενεργήσαντας) which instead is required by the latter («τὰς μὲν [τῶν δυνάμεων] ἀνάγχη
προενεργήσαντας ἔχειν, ὅσαι ἔθει καὶ λόγῳ»)18.

17
Other arguments, or maybe suggestions, are not really informative. I simply quote some parts of them:
«For activity, as the principle of motion in general, is most specifically and immediately figured in circular
motion, that species of motion which, since any part of its journey is as much the end as any other, is activity’s
closest analogue. Circular motion may thus be said to aspire to activity as to a principle, that is, precisely in the
way Aristotle spells out in his celebrated description of the divine bringing about motion by love and attraction
[…]» (A. Kosman, 2013: pos. 4882).
«In one sense energeia is figured in the axis of such motion, in the still point at the center of the most energetic
activity. This image of ceaseless activity made serene by its unmoved center as a figure of the cosmos and its
individual modes of activity alludes to earlier figures. Think of the Republic’s figure of a spinning top’s
immovable peg, the unwobbling pivot that is a type of the calm and ordered soul at the center of the dialogue’s
politically active hero (Republic IV 436D). Or recall the shining, singing axles of the chariot that takes the
Parmenidean neophyte to the place of his revelation, a revelation of “the unmoving heart of full-circling truth”»
(A. Kosman, 2013: pos. 4886).
18
Metaphysics, 1047b31-35
Therefore, someone has the ability to speak English, the acts that he does during his learning
activate that ability. While he is learning, he is also building his disposition. Once he succeeds
to speak without mistakes and indecisions, then he has acquired the disposition, the state of
English speaker (not of speaking), thanks to which he will speak when he wishes. K7.1 is
totally misleading.
(R3) According to K2, K7.2 seems the most acceptable statement.
(R4) Concerning K8-K9, first of all it is surprising that Kosman states two really contrasting
thesis with no caution and without placing at least a possible problem, but that is.
Secondly, both K8 and K9 are incorrect from the Aristotle’s point of view. Neither the
individual essence is pure potentiality nor a kind of full realization.
To say that it is a pure potentiality is to subtract to the notion of activity its primacy and to put
Aristotle under an easy accuse of essentialism. But all the Aristotelian metaphysics is for the
sake of the activity, τὸ δὲ ζεν τοῖς ζῶσι τὸ εἶναι ἐστιν.
And also, when, i.e., could a living being be, during his life, in a state of entire potentiality?
This question is related also to K8. If K8 is stating that if a exists its simply presence entails
a full realization, then there is no room for the first activity, nothing could be more realized,
maybe a’s life is only the succession of second activities. But the point is to interpret
adequately Aristotle, and this reading is not Aristotelian. Even Aristotle considerers the
moment of rest when the animal does not exercise its faculties. Someone could reply that in
this case we are in K8 but this would be misleading. Look, i.e., at extreme cases as Lazarus
syndrome19 or cardiac arrests, cases in which no second activity of no type is exercised for a
time t, but after that time the body restarts its operation.
According to Aristotle no human being can come out dead flesh, human being is a natural
being and only the natural generation can create it, «a dead human is not a human»20, it is a
corps or flesh humanly-arranged, namely a corps with a human σχῆμα, and σχῆμα is not the
individual human μορφή, but simply the configuration (τοδὶ ἔχον) of a continuous quantity
(μέγεθος).
Therefore, despite no particular activity is exercised, the body is still a human body with its
own being, that being that allows to exercise the particular activities, namely its perfections,

19
Many are the Lazarus around the world, i.e. Watson Franklin Mandujano Doroteo woke up in the coffin during
its funeral before being buried. Or Walter Williams who was waiting to be embalmed, or a woman in
Thessaloniki who was not lucky as Mr. Doroteo, because after that the custodian of the cemetery heard hers
screams from below the ground, the rescue arrived late. And this is a real and diffused problem, in fact in some
cultures it is custom to put in the coffin a bluebell in the case that the dead man should wake up.
20
De Interpretatione 21a23.
and also that allows the body to restart the exercise of them. And likewise, the case of the dead
baby cited by Kosman: the dead baby, although he has not exercised any human activity like
speaking or thinking, came to exist, and existing he acquired the natural (οὐσῶν) ἕξις, that is
an activity albeit a first activity, and not a mere nucleus of potentiality. Potentiality is the pure
determinable, and without the determinate it does not exist at all.
(R5) There are less problematic ways to highlight the centrality of the activity in the
Aristotelian metaphysics. We ought to think, i.e., to the semantic relations between ἔργον and
ἐνέργεια or between ἐνέργεια and ὑπάρχειν (and its derivates), a term that is fundamental in
the Aristotelian texts, but that is not adequately underlined.
(R6) K10, K11, K12 are textual evidences. Instead, the arguments of K13 are not so definitive.
For sure they could be a good starting point to read coherently K10, K11, K12, but there are
few textual references and about the strongest tension, between K11 and K12, the first
argument is very poor and recalls the problematic account of motion given by Kosman, the
second is too general, because even in a circular motion there could be different stages from
which one can move to another (A0 → A1 → An → A0), therefore there are slots to speak of
potentiality from a stage to another.
Bibliography

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