Doing and Being

<em>Doing and Being </em>confronts the problem of how to understand two central concepts of Aristotle's philosophy: <em>energeia </em>and <em>dunamis</em>. 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 <em>Metaphysics </em>Theta Beere argues that we can solve the problem by rejecting both actuality and activity as translations of <em>energeia</em> and by working out an analogical conception of <em>energeia</em>. This approach enables Beere to discern a hitherto unnoticed connection between Plato's <em>Sophist </em>and Aristotle's <em>Metaphysics </em>Theta and to give satisfying interpretations of the major claims that Aristotle makes in <em>Metaphysics </em>Theta the claim that <em>energeia </em>is prior in being to capacity (Theta 8) and the claim that any eternal principle must be perfectly good (Theta 9).