For the end [τέλος] is work [ἔργον], and the work is a beingat-work [ἐνέργεια], and this is why the phrase being-at-work [ἐνέργεια] is meant by reference to work and extends to being-atwork-staying-complete [ἐντελέχεια].
Sachs explains:
That is, beings do not just happen to perform strings of isolated deeds, but their activity forms a continuous state of being-at-work, in which they achieve the completion that makes them what they are. Aristotle is arguing that the very thinghood of a thing is not what might be hidden inside it, but a defnite way of being unceasingly at-work, that makes it a thing at all and the kind of thing it is.20
Once again, notice how, all along, the traditional-inherited translations use words that are static and disconnecting:
• δύναμις: passive potentiality, “mere” potency (no indication of anything “dynamic” or a “being-in-movement” as part of its being).
• ἐνέργεια: actuality, static result, complete reality.
• ἐντελέχεια: complete, static reality, completedness.
What Sachs does in his translations is pretty much turn everything upside down.
Gathering Heidegger’s retrieval. Let me finish our reading of Aristotle in translation here by hearing how Heidegger gathers the issue, as he “retrieves” what Aristotle says about δύναμις and ἐνέργεια and ἐντελέχεια as names for being and “ways of being-inmovement.” The “starting” for this mindful thinking comes from the final pages of Heidegger’s Aristoteles, Metaphysik Θ 1–3. Von Wesen und Wirklichkeit der Kraft (GA 33).* To start, I quote Heidegger:
[T]he right way of distinguishing δύναμις and ἐνέργεια can only happen with an earlier and continual adhering to κίνησις. What does that
* Numbers in parentheses in this section refer to this text.
20 Sachs, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 179. Bold by me.