title: The Aristotelian Conception of δύναμις in Arendt’s Understanding of Power
metadata.name: dc.contributor.author
metadata.value: Iurina, Ekaterina S.
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.accessioned
metadata.value: 2024-12-02T20:53:58Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.available
metadata.value: 2024-12-02T20:53:58Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.issued
metadata.value: 2023-09
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.citation
metadata.value: Iurina E. S. The Aristotelian Conception of δύναμις in Arendt’s Understanding of Power. Philologia Classica 2023, 18 (2), 329–338. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu20.2023.213
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.identifier.other
metadata.value: https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu20.2023.213
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.uri
metadata.value: http://hdl.handle.net/11701/48081
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.description.abstract
metadata.value: Hannah Arendt, one of the most significant political and philosophical intellectuals of the 20th
  century, frequently brought up the issue of power. In The Human Condition, to distinguish
  power from force, strength, and, particularly, violence, she pointed out that the word ‘power’
  had been derived from the Aristotelian conception of δύναμις. Since Arendt had written about
  power as the capacity to act together in the political realm, her understanding of the term
  δύναμις was credited to Aristotle. In order to make the distinction between power and its
  extremity, that is, violence, in Arendt’s theory more comprehendible, it is crucial to examine
  the Aristotelian conception of the term δύναμις and its original definitions, which are mostly
  found in Metaphysics. This paper aims to provide a philosophical analysis of δύναμις in Aristotle
  to clarify Arendt’s notion of power as well as her theory of action. In the first part of the
  article, the author discusses the word δύναμις which had a variety of meanings in antiquity
  including power, potentiality, potency, capacity, possibility, and force. Unlike common meanings,
  Aristotle used the word δύναμις in its relation to the term ἐνέργεια, which were usually
  translated as ‘potentiality’ and ‘actuality’. Aristotle defined δύναμις as the principle of change,
  that is, the power or capacity to act and be affected, which reveals itself when it achieves its
  fulfilment, or ἐνέργεια. In the second part, the author demonstrates that Arendt’s concept
  of power is based on the Aristotelian δύναμις as the power to act together, which cannot be
  stored up and exists only in its actualization. The author concludes by saying that power in the
  Aristotelian sense cannot be substituted for violence but instead manifests itself in the ability
  to be a political human being.
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.description.sponsorship
metadata.value: The study was supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation no. 23-28-00925, https://
  rscf.ru/project/23-28-00925/, “Hannah Arendt and Literature Issues: Poetical Thinking as a Special Way of
  Philosophizing”; Russian Christian Academy for Humanities named after Fyodor Dostoevsky.
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.language.iso
metadata.value: en
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.publisher
metadata.value: St Petersburg State University
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.relation.ispartofseries
metadata.value: Philologia Classica;Volume 18; Issue 2
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: power
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: δύναμις
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: Aristotle
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: Hannah Arendt
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: capacity
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.title
metadata.value: The Aristotelian Conception of δύναμις in Arendt’s Understanding of Power
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.type
metadata.value: Article
metadata.lang: en_GB
resources.filename: 13.pdf
resources.url: https://dspace.spbu.ru/bitstream/11701/48081/1/13.pdf
resources.format: Adobe PDF
resources.size: 690,4 kB