Citations:entelechy

English citations of entelechy

1. (Aristotelian metaphysics) The complete realisation and final form of some potential concept or function; the conditions under which a potential thing becomes actualized.
   • 1825 May 18, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “XXI. On the Prometheus of Æschylus; an Essay, Preparatory to a Series of Disquisitions Respecting the Egyptian in Connection with the Sacerdotal Theology, and in Contrast with the Mysteries of Ancient Greece”, in Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom, volume II, part II, London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, published 1834, →OCLC, page 396:

     [I]n the lower animals, we see this process of emancipation commence with the intermediate link, or that which forms the transition from properties to faculties; viz. with sensation. Then the faculties of sense, locomotion, construction; as, for instance, webs, hives, nests, &c. Then the functions; as of instinct, memory, fancy, instinctive intelligence, or understanding, as it exists in the most intelligent animals. Thus the idea (henceforward no more idea, but irrecoverable by its own fatal act) commences the process of its own transmutation, as substans in substantiate, as the Entelech, i.e. the vis formatrix, and it finishes the process as substans e substantiato, i.e. as the Understanding.

   • 1859, John Smith with Simon Patrick and Henry Griffin Williams, Select Discourses by John Smith, M.A. Late Fellow of Queens' College in Cambridge. To which is Added a Sermon, Preached at the Author's Funeral by Symon Patrick, D.D. [...]; Containing a Brief Account of his Life and Death. [...] By Henry Griffin Williams, B.D., 4th corr. and rev. edition, Cambridge: at the University Press, →OCLC, pages 108 and 471:

     [H]e [Aristotle] tells us expressly, that that which we call the rational soul is 'separable from the body, because it is not the entelech of any body.' […] Wickedness is the form and entelech of all the wicked spirits: it is the difference of a name, rather than any proper difference of natures, that is between the devil and wicked men.

   • 1962, Samuel I. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan: Seventeenth-century Reactions to the Materialism and Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 74:

     And Aristotle taught in his Analytics (l.l.c.l.) that the rational soul is separable from the body because it is not the ‘entelech’ of any body.

   • 1977, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins (lyrics and music), “Funkentelechy” (track 4), in Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome, performed by Parliament:

     How's your funk entelechy?

   • 2012, Gustav Shpet, translated by Thomas Nemeth, Appearance and Sense: Phenomenology as the Fundamental Science and Its Problems [Phaenomenologica; vol. 120], Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, →ISBN, page 159:

     We know that "der Tisch" means the table, that table means an instrument for such and such an end. Here is its sense, its entelechy. We know that birds have wings for flying, that a given pamphlet was written for a protest. Finally we know that something simply lies here for some reason!

2. (chiefly philosophy) A particular type of motivation, need for self-determination, and inner strength directing life and growth to become all one is capable of being; the need to actualize one's beliefs; having both a personal vision and the ability to actualize that vision from within.