this: κίνησις takes place only in the transition or crossing from δύναμις to ἐνέργεια or ἐντελέχεια. Movement takes place only in the crossing from potentiality to actuality or completedness. It is rather simple. If movement is only in the transition, then the “from where” (δύναμις) and the “to where” (ἐνέργεια) are not in movement – in the one case a static “not yet” and in the other a static “no longer.”
When the same thing cannot be in actuality as result and in the crossing, then it is evident that the movement takes place in the crossing or transition and not in the actuality – in the κίνησις or μεταβολή (change) and not in ἐνέργεια or ἐντελέχεια. This we have inherited, both in translation and in interpretation.
What we have inherited from the traditional reading/interpretation of these things seems simple. For Aristotle, in this interpretation, whatever has reached its aim or end (τἐλος) – and now is a “static” reality or actuality – has as one of its conditions a “passive, inert potentiality,” which is then transformed into an actuality (ἐνέργεια) through movement (κίνησις) – this end Aristotle then calls ἐντελέχεια, something completed.
This is a brief summary of the received traditional interpretation of Aristotle on these matters. But a more precise reading of Aristotle calls for a new translation and a new rendering of these components, which will then show that all three are dynamic and active – not only κίνησις but δύναμις as well as ἐνέργεια/ἐντελέχεια. Heidegger’s reading and translating of these key points in Aristotle’s metaphysics move in this direction. And it is based on going back to the Greek texts, to see what they said and thought, that is, not determined by how these texts have been translated into English in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
What Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle opens up is the “but.” But, if/when Aristotle calls ἐντελέχεια a movement, then what? The inherited reading of Aristotle ignores this “ἐντελέχεια as movement”18 and explains that movement can “only” be in the κίνησις and not in actuality (ἐνέργεια). Such an interpretation/ reading has to see ἐνέργεια as a result that is completed, thus no longer in movement.
18 A little later I will delve into this issue by looking at several Aristotle texts and watching how they get translated. For now let me mention how Joe Sachs translates and reads entelecheia. He translates the Greek word in Aristotle as “being-at-work-staying-itself” and says that the word is a “fusion of completeness with that of continuity or persistence.” If continuity means change and movement, then within the core of entelecheia is movement. See Sachs, Aristotle’s Physics: A Guided Study (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 245. We will return to this issue later, in more detail.