[peirce-l] Re: Entelechy

[Cassiano Terra Rodrigues]

Hello list:

It's been a long while I don't write, but the subject interests me.
I run the risk of repeating everything that was said here about entelechy, but a look up at the form of the word seems appropriate:
entelechy in ancient greek is a form of saying (as literally as I can see) en telos echein, that is, something like "to have the end [aim?] in", "the obtaining of the end" (since the verb "echein" has a wide semantic range).
In this sense, it is possible to think of it as a process rather than the final result of the process itself - if we think in analogy to the ultimate interpretant, it's perfectly fit: although the interpretant is called "ultimate", it's nonetheless still an interpretant, sign-process in sum.
Now, the substantive "entelechia" seems to indicate exactly this, as I can see, in Aristotle: a process of attaining the end (telos), which should not as I see be defined as a definite outcome, final and not capable of being fowarded furthermore - because the idea of telos carries the notion of possible aim to be reached - the final cause is of the nature of a general desire, in Peirce's interpretation (which seems a very plausible way to read Aristotle's theory of the four causes - the formal cause being in the end the same as the final cause, the material cause the same as the efficient cause). So, entelechy would be a process of causation, the finalization of the  process of attainment a telos, or of fulfillment of the end, if I can say this in English. So, it continues to be a process, as I tend to read it; not the same as before, but still a process.
I hope I'm understandable in this poor English of mine, and I also hope I'm not completely out of the discussion.
All the best to all,
Cassiano
(from the Center for Studies on Pragmatism, Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC), Brasil).

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