Perfection and completeness

Use in the book

The explanation of actuality uses bronze and a statue: bronze is potentially a statue, whereas shaped bronze has attained the appropriate form and end. Completeness thus concerns realization of a specified kind. A thing may be complete as the thing it is without possessing every possible excellence.

Places to read

1. I.12.1b.2A statue is complete when the bronze receives its appropriate form.
2. Arith.10bEven number is described as incomplete in a numerical interpretation.
3. I.49.65.2Some thinkers deny intellect’s need for further perfecting.

Translation in this edition

“Complete” is often the most precise rendering in accounts of actuality; “perfect” suits contexts stressing excellence as well as fulfillment.

Incompleteness in arithmetic

Atelēs means incomplete or lacking completion. Arith.10b calls even number incomplete and odd number full and complete, drawing on addition and division to support that contrast. The arithmetic relations are distinct from the evaluative conclusion: evenness is not thereby a mathematical defect in the modern sense.

Perfecting and fulfillment

Teleiōsis means completion or perfecting, the process rather than only the completed condition. I.49.65.2 reports thinkers who deny that essential reason and intellect need such perfecting, reserving purification for lower activities. The noun’s occurrence thus expresses a debated requirement, not agreement that every level of soul remains equally incomplete.