Abstract

The distinction between potentiality and possibility in Aristotle’s modal teleology is frequently conflated by the implicative conjunction that potentiality implies possibility and possibility implies potentiality. In his unpublished doctoral dissertation, Richard Rorty warns that attempting to pin down Aristotle’s definition of potentiality often leads to treating the term as a “mere façon de parler.” Consonant with Rorty—and engaging commentators such as Jaakko Hintikka and Giorgio Agamben—this paper observes that the definition of possibility in Aristotle’s works presents its own share of semantic snags. Subsequently, this study abides by Rorty’s caveat not only to resist the lure of expressive convenience in describing potentiality, but also to elucidate possibility’s twofold field of modal application. Through a critical analysis of key treatises (including Metaphysics, Prior Analytics, De Interpretatione, and On Generation and Corruption), the paper demonstrates that while Aristotle bounds possibility within temporal constraints—requiring that a possible state or entity be actualized at some point in time—potentiality pertains to an inherent capacity or teleological orientation toward an end that may remain unactualized without yielding impossible consequences. Consequently, this paper presents a nuanced account of both modal categories to demonstrate that the two sides of the potentiality/possibility conjunction do not mutually imply, ultimately refuting their biconditional equivalence in Aristotelian philosophy