SOURCE: "Potential and Actual Being," in On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle, by Franz Brentano, edited by Rolf George, translated by Rolf George, University of California Press, 1975, pp. 27-48.

In the following essay, originally published in 1862, Brentano discusses the nature of potential and actual being as analyzed by Aristotle in Metaphysics. Brentano examines Aristotle's definitions of potential and actual being and presents readings of them designed to resolve some difficulties within them. Finally, he explores the relationship between the two concepts, maintaining that "movement is the actuality of the potentiality."

The two senses of being …, namely, being which is divided into the categories and potential and actual being, belong together and are intimately connected with each other.¹ Thus they have in common that the science of being, metaphysics, is concerned in the same way with one as with the other,² while, as we saw, both accidental...