The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Entelechy

one of the central concepts of Aristotelian philosophy, expressing the unity of the four causes, or fundamental principles, of existence—matter, form, efficient cause, and final cause.

The various definitions of entelechy encountered in Aristotle may be reduced to the transition from potentiality, or possibility, to the organized manifestation of energy—such energy containing within itself its own material substance, its own cause, and the end of its own motion, or development. In modern times the concept has been used by G. von Leibniz, who used the term “entelechy” to designate his monads. Entelechy was given a particular interpretation in the vitalism of the German biologist H. Driesch.

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References in periodicals archive

Driesch defined entelechy as an intensive manifoldness.

THE EVOLUTION CONCEPT: THE CONCEPT EVOLUTION

But the way it unfolds/evolves is always already in its "seed." This understanding sees entelechy as an eventless process.

Media Ecology in a Jazz Mode

(11) As already mentioned, the soul consists moreover of the formative involuntary entelechy for the body, as well as the voluntary capacity for self-mastery and self-possession that masters the very actualities of the soul, namely, understanding, sense appetite, and will.

The heart of the matter: Edith Stein on the substance of the soul

Entelechy is a matter of becoming, a matter of emergence, not something to be rationally predetermined.

Aristotle's fourfold causality, tetralemma, and emergence

New York, NY, July 10, 2013 --(PR.com)-- Featuring Entelechy (Layla Isis and Mariyah) with special guests Dalia Carella, Darshan, Kristina Melike, Sira, and Tava.

Entelechy Dance Presents: The Siren Revival

He was rigorously seeking a form that might revolutionize perception--conjure a different kind of visual schema, and so his best paintings present a staggering entelechy of psycheciel la .

Peter Young: Museum of Contemporary Art

In this world, Art is refused the comfort of entelechy.

Disturbing dichotomies, Adrian Ghenie: Adrian Ghenie: new paintings

It was something we didn't know in advance; maybe this might have been composed, for all we knew, of some ethereal entelechy. Now imagine an object occupying this very position in the room which was an ethereal entelechy.

Definition of necessity with entailment

In 'Circe', echoing Melies, Stephen argues for body-subject communication: gesture is 'a universal language', which 'render[s] visible not the lay sense but the first entelechy' (U 15.105-7).

Laughing matter: phenomenological takes on the mind/body problem in Ulysses and early cinema

After a rather simplistic discussion of bees as representative examples of instinctive 'drivenness' among animals, he focused particularly on the work of Hans Dreisch on entelechy and on Jakob von Uexkull's careful demonstrations of the subjectivity and agency of various animals.

Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and the question of biological continuism