2. 1047a30 (ἐνέργεια: energeia) connected to ἐντελέχεια: being-at-work-in-telos.
The traditional translations use such words as “actuality” (ἐνέργεια), which is connected to “completedness” or “complete reality” (ἐντελέχεια). But Sachs translates this passage this way:
The phrase being-at-work [ἐνέργεια], which is designed to converge in meaning with being-at-work-staying-complete [ἐντελέχεια], comes to apply to other things from belonging especially to movements.
In his glossary Sachs writes that energeia is being-at-work. There he says:
Activity comes to sight first as motion, but Aristotle’s central thought is that all being is being-at-work … Since the end and completion of any genuine being is its being-at-work, the meaning of the word [ἐνέργεια] converges (1047a 30–1, 1050a 22–4) with that of following: Being-at-work-staying-itself (ἐντελέχεια). A fusion of the idea of completeness with that of continuity or persistence. Aristotle invents the word by combining ἐντελες (complete, full grown) with ἔχειν (= ἔξις, to be a certain way by the continuing effort of holding on to that condition), while at the same time punning on ἐνδελέχεια (persistence) by inserting τέλος (completion) This is a three-ring circus of a word, at the heart of everything in Aristotle’s thinking, including the definition of motion. Its power to carry meaning depends on the working together of all the things Aristotle has packed into it. Some commentators explain it as meaning being-at-the-end, which misses the point entirely, and it is usually translated as “actuality,” a word that refers to anything, however trivial, incidental, transient, or static, that happens to be the case, so that everything is lost in translation, just at the spot where understanding could begin.19
3. 1050a21 τὸ γὰρ ἔργον τέλος, ἡ δὲ ἐνέργεια τὸ ἔργον, διὸ καὶ τοὔνομα ἐνέργεια λέγεται κατὰ τὸ ἔργον καὶ συντείνει πρὸς τὴν ἐντελέχειαν.
The traditional translations use such words as “actuality” having the meaning of “complete reality.” But Sachs translates this passage this way:
19 Glossary in Sachs, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, li–lii.
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