Having immersed myself recently in Heidegger's interpretation of Aristotle and the Metaphysics Theta, I deeply appreciate Beere's marvelous work on this crucial chapter of The Metaphysics.
The basic issue is the concept of energeia, and our translations of the term as 'activity' and 'actuality' e.g. from page 3:
"`Activity' and `actuality' are even now the two standard translations of `energeia.' Sometimes `energeia' can be translated only by a word for doing like `activity,' while `actuality' and related words yield absurdity. For instance, when Aristotle says that pleasure is unimpeded energeia, he must mean that it is unimpeded activity, not unimpeded actuality."
But why must he mean that? Following Heidegger's interpretation of Aristotle, fully actual Dasein-in-the-world is an almost exact definition of pleasure and not absurd in the least. It is the modern distortion of `pleasure' to `hedonism' as we understand it (a very different concept to the Greeks) that forces such an `absurdity'. In fact, the opposite holds: the translation of energeia as `activity' produces absurdity. Unimpeded activity is mere self-indulgence, the opposite of Aristotle's intention in the Nichomachean Ethics as I read it, and of Greek ethics and philosophy in toto.
Later in the book Beere examines this example in further detail. I agree with the point he makes concerning energeia, but find the example used to be confusing, and does not illustrate the point clearly to me. His argument concerning Theta 6. taken as a whole, I find to be convincing.
The final piece of the puzzle is his pointing out that 'actuality' derives from the Latin 'in actus', which is more closely related to 'activity' than one first suspects.
Seeking clarity in Aristotelian metaphysics, I have discovered further depths and wonders I had not anticipated (I was just looking for another point of view than Heidegger's). Beere and Aristotle do not disappoint.
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