Doing and Being by Jonathan Beere

Doing and Being by Jonathan Beere

Doing and Being confronts the problem of how to understand two central concepts of Aristotle's philosophy: energeia and dunamis. While these terms seem ambiguous between actuality/potentiality and activity/capacity, Aristotle did not intend them to be so. Through a careful and detailed reading of Metaphysics Theta, Beere argues that we can solve the problem by rejecting both "actuality" and "activity" as translations of energeia, and by working out an analogical conception of energeia. This approach enables Beere to discern a hitherto unnoticed connection between Plato's Sophist and Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta, and to give satisfying interpretations of the major claims that Aristotle makes in Metaphysics Theta, the claim that energeia is prior in being to capacity (Theta 8) and the claim that any eternal principle must be perfectly good (Theta 9).

Jonathan Beere's Doing and Being is a thorough, well informed and insightful chapter-by-chapter commentary on the bulk of Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta* Boris Hennig, Philosophical Quarterly *
an excellent textual analysis * Anna Marmadoro, Mind *

Jonathan Beere is a member of the Department of Philosophy, as well as the Graduate School of Ancient Philosophy and the Excellence Cluster Topoi, at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. He was previously Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780199652044
ISBN 10	019965204X
Title	Doing and Being
Author	Jonathan Beere
Series	Oxford Aristotle Studies Series
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Year published	2012-03-01
Number of pages	382
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.