This essays focuses on the relationship between the categorial couple Potency and Act, considering the lexical significance of the Greek terminology: dynamis
points to being able to feel, to be, to do, and therefore to a condition of passivity, of potential and capability; energheia means working, being in action, functioning,
and therefore doesn’t indicate a power resolving in a definitive realization, but rather a dynamic energy. Aristotle’s distinction becomes more complex in Plotinus’ view, because he thinks of the principle not as necessity or as accident, but as free volition, which radiates in the different levels of life. The philosopher Luigi Pareyson (whose centennial celebration happens this year) provides a key to interpret the original source through the category of “inexhaustibility”, which allows us to think of the principle and life as dynamis that is not exhausted in any energheia.
