48. Entelecheia: Action Without Movement and Time
In his work Metaphysics, Aristotle makes an important distinction between two types of activities: those which do not have their end or goal (telos) within themselves and those which do (1048b20). Aristotle gives an example of one that does not: the activity of exercising to lose weight. This activity is not undertaken for its own sake but for the sake of becoming thinner. Thus the end lies outside the activity not within it. Activities which do not have their ends within them at every moment are actually to be classified as motions insofar as they are processional, that is, they are step by step processes which culminate in ends that were not present during these steps (like the process of building a house).
Conversely, the activity of seeing is complete at every single moment: when I look at a work of art I am not seeing as a means to greater goal or telos. In this activity “seeing seems to be at any moment complete, for it does not lack anything which coming into being later will complete its form…” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1174a15). Aristotle’s word for this type of activity is entelecheia (en, in; telos, end or goal; and echein, to have, to remain, to stay). This complex word seems to mean, as Joe Sachs put it, “continuing in a state of completeness, or being at an end which is of such a nature that it is only possible to be there by means of the continual expenditure of the effort required to stay there” (see his Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry “Aristotle: Motion and its Place in Nature” here). When we are thinking we are engaging in an activity complete at every moment. When we play music we are also engaging in an activity that is complete at every moment. The same goes for something as simple as taking a walk. We don’t start walking, and then begin walking more, and then reach, finally, walking; rather there is just walking in a continued state of completeness. If we were building a house then we would finally reach the house that was not present in any previous moment of building. Of course, we may be thinking about a problem; we may be playing a piece of music that has a beginning, a middle, and an end; and we may be walking to someone’s house. But walking itself, thinking itself, and playing music itself are not motions that have their ends external to them: they are complete at every moment.
Now the really interesting point is that entelecheia, this active continuing in a state of completeness, cannot be understood in temporal terms. When there is motion, like there is in the process of building a house, there is a temporal sequence and one moves towards an external end until one reaches it. This end point marks the moment when the whole house appears. Prior to this whole appearing, we have parts of the whole: a roof, a foundation, a door, etc. But in an entelecheia there is a functioning whose end is consummated at every moment; one might say that the whole is always present. This relates to time as follows. For Aristotle, there is no time without motion and change; and the way we discern whether there is change is by seeing if a moment of an activity, say moment B, is different from another moment of that activity, moment A. Now, as we have seen, motion has its end outside it and so each moment prior to its realization will be different: we will, at one moment, have a house with a roof but not a door; at another moment a door, roof, and not a staircase; and so on. Thus the building of a house is in time. But with an entelecheia, we cannot discern any differences between moments of seeing itself, playing music itself, and thinking itself; all the moments are the same. This is why Aristotle, in referring to seeing, notes that “we are seeing and at the same time have seen” (Metaphysics, 1048b23). This means no change or motion can be discerned; and, since time depends on motion and change, an entelecheia co-exists with temporal processes but is not itself in time.
Why does this matter? Because sometimes it strikes us that everything we do is a mere means to an end. We work for money, get money to buy this and that, and buy this and that for, well, this and that. And so on. We sometimes feel that everything is a passing tone to another passing tone and that there is no rest in the sequence, no place to stop moving. But of course we don’t want to just stop and die. Rather, we want to be active but not move. And this is indeed possible if Aristotle is right about entelecheia. If he is right then we can be fulfilled in just walking, thinking and playing even if we don’t make it to our destination, a problem eludes us, or we don’t play to the end of the piece of music. Thus we see entelecheia provides a way to grasp how our lives are full of actions that can be complete at every moment. This is a consoling and beautiful thing to realize among so many motions which are on their way and will never get to where they are going.
For my analysis of Aristotle’s vision of God who is pure act with no time at all go here.
For my overview of Aristotle’s interdisciplinary account of happiness, go here.
For my overview of Aristotle’s account of the motivations for friendship, go here.
5 replies on “48. Entelecheia: Action Without Movement and Time”
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Activities that are entelechies are similar to expressions of Being With in Heidegger’s language. In each kind of activity (entelechy/BW) there is a way of being that is both one of the potentials of the actor, is practiced or engaged without regard to anything outside its activity (at least on some level), and its possibility is both within time (it takes time to be walking, seeing, &c) and has the possibility of flow – taking us to a feeling of timelessness, or no time passing. This latter possibility makes the activity a possible desire for the being and allows for a relationship of the being/actor to the being itself or with others so engaged. In fact, the entelechy seems a potential, the engagement with which leads to actualizing the being/actor- which neither depletes the potential nor becomes final. Socrates, via Plato’s _Symposium_, describes a similar human condition in terms of a “lack” felt addressed in different ways, possibly drawing us to a desirable state that is possible for, but outside most of the interlocutors. Aristotle’s turn to potentiality/actualization can be seen as clarifying the relationship of self to that for which it yearns, when applied to conscious beings. In the _Meno_, Plato has Socrates urging his interlocutors to engage in looking for that which they do not know, for the reason of making themselves better versions of themselves and no other reasons (like, perhaps, scoring debate points that would bring them renown or business, as some of them certainly were).
I’m decidedly rusty on my Aristotle, but recently re-intrigued with this concept and its permutations in the history of our thought. Thanks for your reflection, in the true spirit of philo-sophia. I look forward to reading more.
Hello Christine! Thanks for reading and sharing. It is interesting to see how the notion of entelecheia, or something very similar to it, can appear in other thinkers with different terminology and your examples are very helpful. I was recently teaching Plato’s Symposium and focused a bit on Diotima’s point that, when the soul reaches the top of the ladder of love and beholds The Beautiful Itself with its own eye, it can achieve true virtue since, rather than unifying with images of beauty – things which have the potential to be ugly – one is unifying with fully actualized beauty. And this unification then allows Eros, that passionate seeking for something we don’t have that we think will complete us, to finally be satiated. Our potency is removed, we become fulfilled by actualizing true virtue, and we can thus be immortal. Of course, Alcibiades soon enters and casts some interesting doubts on such a metaphysical story. But I think Socrates’ speech does contain a notion of achieving something akin to Aristotle’s entelecheia.
If I understand this correctly, almost every activity can either be telos or entelecheia, depending if the activity is done with an ulterior motive in mind or not. So, the example of walking can go both ways, since I might be walking in order to get exercise (in order to stay healthy) or to take my dog out on the one hand, or, on the other hand, to walk for the pleasure of walking. Is that then connected to the “disinterested” attitude you talked about at the Collegium class? When we’re “in the moment” without attaching a moral, intellectual, or utilitarian value to it?
I really enjoy your class this spring and look forward to keep expanding my mind.
Thanks for reading and commenting Jeanette. As I interpret Aristotle, a motion doesn’t have the end it seeks and, while a change in motive may help bring about the end, the change in motive as such doesn’t convert the motion into an activity with its end within it. For example, a student who seeks to graduate is in motion since she is actualizing her potential to be an actualized graduate (change or motion just is the actualization of potential for Aristotle). She may change certain motives (to study more, come to class on time, etc.) in this process which may contribute to the end eventually being reached. But no change in motive will suddenly convert the motion towards being a graduate into her being a graduate. She could, however, notice that, while seeking an end outside her like being a graduate, she is engaged in activities that do have their ends within them such as seeing and walking. Thus by shifting a perspective she could become aware self-sufficient activities occurring as well. But the important thing to note if we are following Aristotle is that there are real objective activities and motions: they are not what they are because we change adopt a disinterested attitude towards them. No shift in attitude alone will get me a degree let alone get me across the street to a place I want to go; and no shift in attitude will make seeing a self-sufficient activity. These are objective realities in nature that we can come to discover and articulate in some cases with a change in perspective, attitude, motive or whatever. But they aren’t created by those changes. However, when we get to formalists in aesthetics such as Anthony Ashely Copper (the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury), Kant, and, later, Clive Bell and Clement Greenberg, we do come across the idea that we should adopt the “aesthetic attitude” and see things in a disinterested way (no use value, truth value, or moral value) to appreciate their formal properties alone. For some, this grants the mind the power to potentially aestheticize anything and see it through a formalist lens. But even in this formalist tradition, there is usually a claim that we can see something in a disinterested way because it has formal properties that are inherently valuable and inexhaustibly interesting. This is the case in Kant and especially in Bell who claims the “aesthetic emotion” we have when encountering form in a disinterested manner is in response to “significant form” that is present in the thing upon which we are completely focused. Anyway, just some thoughts that might help. I talk more about some of these ideas in this post on Bell:
https://philosophicaleggs.com/224-clive-bells-explanation-for-inherent-value/
In this post on beauty and freedom:
https://philosophicaleggs.com/72-beauty-and-freedom/
And in this post on the Kantian sublime:
https://philosophicaleggs.com/159-an-overview-of-the-kantian-sublime-2/
Enjoy…