Reviewed by:

• Aristotle's Ontology of Change by Mark Sentesy
• Charlene Elsby

In this monograph, Sentesy defends the revolutionary Aristotelian claim that change is. Change is, insofar as it exists and can be defined; it has identifiable aspects and is subject to analysis, as much as anything else that is. The contradictory claim would be, of course, that change is not—that change is the opposite of being, a becoming that itself is nothing. The fundamental claim of this book is that such conceptions are mistaken, that Aristotle has an ontology of change that accounts for it as both real and existent, and also that the possibility of describing said ontology of change is itself evidence for the claim that change is. Sentesy writes, "In showing what change is, Aristotle also shows that it exists" (48).

The concept of change the author defends in the early chapters is that change, like being, is composite. Sentesy identifies three elements of change, each of which he describes as a "phenomenal element discovered in the articulate experience of change" (29): the form (eidos/morphe¯), its privation (enantion/stere¯sis), and the underlying material (hupokeimenon/hule¯). These "aspects of change" (39) make it possible to speak about change without rendering it a mix of being and nonbeing (which Sentesy aims to avoid). Relying mainly on the Physics, the ultimate definition of change the author defends is that it is a completion of a potency—the entelecheia of a dunamis. Sentesy notes that in order to avoid the threat of nonbeing's reinserting itself into the ontology of change, we must avoid some common tendencies—that of equating actuality with being, and then opposing actuality and potency (which would result in the equation of potency with nonbeing). Sentesy writes that potency, instead, must be a "distinct and independent way of being" (87). On my reading, this is Sentesy's boldest claim.

The claim that potency is a way of being appears unintuitive, because we tend to describe things in potency according to the fact that they are not what they are in potency—to be something in potency is to be not that thing—for it is only by virtue of the fact that I am not a lawyer that I am a lawyer in potency. But in support of Sentesy's interpretation, I point to what Aristotle says at Met. IX.3, 1047b1–2: τῶν γὰρ μὴ ὄντων ἔνια δυνάμει ἐστίν· οὐκ ἔστι δέ, ὅτι οὐκ ἐντελεχείᾳ ἐστίν. The implication is that potency's nonbeing is only a relative nonbeing (a nonbeing relative to actuality, i.e. not being an actuality). Not everything that is not [End Page 512] something is in potency that something (Met. IX.7). That is to say, it is not by virtue of the fact that I am not a lawyer that I am in potency a lawyer—it is by virtue of the fact that I am a human capable of attending law school. When formulated such, the threat of nonbeing disappears. (By much the same reasoning, "privation" does not count as nonbeing in the above description of the aspects of change.) The interpretation becomes more intuitive if we allow, as Sentesy does, that potency-activity is an analogue of matter-form, for the opposition of matter to form is less likely to be described as a relation of nonbeing to being, and we are less likely to say of matter than we are of potency that it in no way exists.

The rest of the book is devoted to analyses of the aspects of change—potency, energeia and entelecheia, genesis and epigenesis, and, of particular interest, an analysis of sources (archai). There is a compelling argument toward the redemption of teleology, for insofar as there is movement from potency to actuality, there is a telos involved—"dunamis points toward entelecheia" (62). The etymology supports this argument, just because the word we are translating as "actuality" is entelecheia, or the "in-telos-having," which is the subject of Sentesy's third chapter (along with entelecheia's distinction from and relation to energeia, which we also translate as "actuality").

The book's rigor does...

审核人：

• Mark Sentesy 的亚里士多德的变化本体论
• 夏琳·埃尔斯比

在这本专着中，Sentesy 捍卫了革命性的亚里士多德式的主张，即变革是。变化是，只要它存在并且可以被定义；它具有可识别的方面，并且与其他任何事物一样，都需要进行分析。矛盾的主张当然是，变化不是——变化是存在的对立面，成为本身什么都不是。这本书的基本主张是这些概念是错误的，亚里士多德有一个变化的本体论，将它解释为真实的和存在的，并且描述所述变化的本体论的可能性本身就是关于变化是这样的断言的证据。 . Sentesy 写道，“在展示什么是变化时，亚里士多德也表明它存在”（48）。

作者在前几章中捍卫的变化概念是，变化和存在一样是复合的。Sentesy识别变化的三个元素，其中的每一个他描述为“在变化的口齿经验发现惊人的元素”（29）：形式（的Eidos / morphe ¯），其穷困（enantion /立方米¯ SIS），和底层材料（hupokeimenon/hule ¯）。这些“变化的方面” (39) 使谈论变化成为可能，而不会将其呈现为存在和非存在的混合（Sentesy 旨在避免这种情况）。主要依托物理，笔者捍卫变化的最终定义是，它是一种潜能的的完成entelecheia一个的词dunamis. Sentesy 指出，为了避免非存在重新插入变化本体的威胁，我们必须避免一些共同的倾向——将现实等同于存在，然后反对现实和效力（这将导致效力与非存在的等式） ）。Sentesy 写道，相反，效力必须是一种“独特而独立的存在方式”（87）。在我的阅读中，这是 Sentesy 最大胆的主张。

声称效力是一种存在方式的说法似乎不直观，因为我们倾向于根据以下事实来描述具有效力的事物，即它们不是它们具有效力的东西——成为具有效力的某物就是不是那样的东西——因为它只是由于我不是律师这一事实，我是一名有效的律师。但是为了支持 Sentesy 的解释，我指出了亚里士多德在Met所说的话。IX.3, 1047b1–2: τῶν γὰρ μὴ ὄντων ἔνια δυνάμει ἐστίν· οὐκ ἔστι δέ, ὅτι οὯεσἐἯὅτι οὐτων ἔνια δυνάμει 这意味着效力的非存在只是相对的非存在（相对于现实的非存在，即不是现实）。并非所有不是 [End Page 512]某事的效力（Met. IX.7)。也就是说，它不是凭借的事实，我不是律师，我在效力律师，也正是凭借这样的事实，我是一个人能够就读法学院。当这样表述时，非存在的威胁就消失了。（根据大致相同的推理，在上面对变化方面的描述中，“匮乏”不算作非存在。）如果我们允许，如 Sentesy 所做的那样，效能活动是物质形式的类似物，那么解释就会变得更加直观，因为物质与形式的对立不太可能被描述为非存在与存在的关系，我们不太可能说物质，而不是我们认为它根本不存在的效力。

该书的其余部分是专门的变化效力，各方面分析energeia和entelecheia，成因和后生，并特别感兴趣的，来源（分析archai）。有朝向目的论的赎回令人信服的理由，对于只要有从效力实际上运动，还有一个目的论involved-“词dunamis朝向点entelecheia ”（62）。词源支持这一论点，只是因为我们翻译为“现实”的词是entelecheia，或“in-telos-have”，这是 Sentesy 的第三章（连同entelecheia与energeia的区别和关系，我们也将其翻译为“现实”）。

这本书的严谨确实...