Entelechy

The term "entelechy" combines the three Greek terms enteles (complete), telos (end, purpose, completion), and echein (to have). Aristotle coined the term "'entelechia' (and 'energia') in contrast with 'dunamis' in discussing the distinction between "actuality" and "potentiality." One example used by Aristotle to illustrate the distinction concerns knowledge. A given person might have the potential to know something, and so can be described as a potential knower. Once he learns the relevant fact or skill, he is an actual knower (New World Encyclopedia, par. 3). This idea was a major development in thinking. Aristotle stated that "what Plato called chôra is internal to the thing itself in the world (immanent)" (class notes): "a thing becomes what it already is through time" (class notes):

Raffaello Sanzio (1483–1520)

Aristotle's most historically influential application of 'entelecheia' outside of his metaphysics is his claim in the second book of On the Soul that the soul is the form or actuality of an organic body that makes it alive. The idea is that the various organs that make up a living body only add up to an actually living creature when they are organized in a certain way (as a rather vivid example, one might imagine the assembly of the monster in Shelley's Frankenstein). At the same time, Aristotle asserts that the entelecheia of the body (the soul) is also, in a sense, the purpose of living things, and part of the explanation for their movement. The actions of animals are directed at preserving their particular arrangement of organs and the production of new animals with the same form. This naturalist picture is complicated, however, by Aristotle's suggestion in book three of On the Soul that some aspect of the soul is not a part of the body. (New World Encyclopedia, par. 4)

[Sanzio's Painting Description: "Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. Aristotle gestures to the earth, representing his belief in knowledge through empirical observation and experience, while holding a copy of his Nicomachean Ethics in his hand, whilst Plato gestures to the heavens, representing his belief in The Forms" (Wikipedia).]

 The Greeks asked themselves what the nature of humankind is: what is our essence, our potential.  Aristotle founded his answer to this question in ethics: human essence consists of happiness, well-being, and thriving.  He specified that the way/telos of happiness is "good" (class notes).

In modernity, science translates the notion of entelechy in terms of complexity theory (class notes).

From class notes:

• There is no measure in the world. From the classical world up to modernity we have to question what is the distinction between 'actual' (energia)and 'potential' (dunamis) today.
• Question: actual - potential - should be.
• Code: habitus formation. Code of morality.
• How should something be? (What is the measure?)
• How do we know the right policy?
• We have to decide what to do using policies and ethics.
• Today, there is no measure. The only measure is money/commodity
• Money as a semiotic system.
• Entelechy: human beings are becoming 'open,' emergent.