Dunamis — the Greek term for capacity, potentiality, or power — enters the depth-psychology and philosophical-psychology corpus at a critical intersection between ontology, character theory, and the metaphysics of action. The major axis of discussion runs from Aristotle’s tripartite division of soul-states into pathē, dunameis, and hexeis, through Stoic reformulations of psychic powers, to Ricoeur’s phenomenological reappropriation of act and potency as foundational categories for the self. In Aristotle, as reconstructed by Cairns and confirmed by the De Anima glossary, dunamis designates the neutral capacity to undergo or exhibit a quality — prior to and distinct from the stable disposition (hexis) that emerges through habituation. The Stoics, as Inwood demonstrates, recast dunameis as real, physically grounded dispositions within the governing mind (hēgemonikon), bringing the term into direct contact with impulse theory and the ethics of action. Vernant’s reading of early Greek cosmology illuminates a pre-philosophical register in which dunamis names a domain-bounded cosmic power, contained and defined by its limits. Ricoeur synthesises these threads, insisting that the Aristotelian dyad of act and power constitutes a metacategory indispensable for any ontology of the acting self. The central tension across the corpus is whether dunamis names a merely formal capacity, an innate tendency, or an already-organised disposition with ethical weight.
It usually contrasts with dunamis (capacity) or some cognate word, and is close in sense to entelecheia.
Aristotle’s De Anima glossary establishes dunamis as the canonical counterpart to energeia/entelecheia, anchoring its meaning as unrealised capacity within the soul’s ontological framework.
, De Anima (On the Soul), -350thesis
a dunamis ‘brings on many events and controls the activities governed by it’. Thus we may say that the dunamis ‘impulse’ mentioned by Iamblichus is a hexis.
Inwood demonstrates that in Stoic psychology dunamis functions as a governing hexis within the mind, collapsing the Aristotelian distinction and grounding psychic power in a physically real disposition.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985thesis
the Eudemian Ethics alone succeeds in identifying something like the second-order disposition for aidos, calling it the dunamis of being aischuntēlos, but makes the mistake of regarding this quality as innate.
Cairns argues that the Eudemian Ethics uniquely locates the dispositional basis of shame-sensitivity in the category of dunamis, but errs by treating this capacity as congenital rather than acquired.
, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993thesis
a statement that aidos the pathos is innate does not actually require that the dunamis by virtue of which one is called aischuntēlos be innate — it may be an acquired capacity to experience an innate effect to a greater degree than is normal.
Cairns carefully distinguishes between the innateness of the pathos and the possible acquired character of the dunamis, showing dunamis to be the modifiable capacity layer above raw affect.
, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993thesis
there is no quality in respect of pathē (one is just affected), but there is in respect of dunameis.
Following Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics, Cairns establishes that dunameis, unlike pathē, admit of qualitative predication, making them the proper locus of evaluable character traits.
, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting
There follows the division, found in the finished discussions, of the pathēmata, the dunameis, and the hexeis. By pathē I mean such things as thumos, fear, aidos, and appetite.
This passage reconstructs the Aristotelian tripartite taxonomy of soul-states, positioning dunameis as the middle term between raw affect and stable dispositional character.
, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting
the Eudemian dunameis, such as anaischuntia, in the same way, as referring only to qualities such as the innate impudence which hardens into shamelessness in the mature
Cairns extends the analysis to show that Eudemian dunameis may function as pre-habitual raw tendencies that become fully formed character defects only through the maturation process.
, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting
the being of the self to the reappropriation of one of the four primordial acceptations of being, which Aristotle places under the distinction of act and of power.
Ricoeur situates the ontology of selfhood within Aristotle’s act-power dyad, treating dunamis (power) as a metacategory that preserves the analogical unity of human action across its diverse modes.
, Oneself as Another, 1992thesis
the ‘rational’ potentiality alone is a potentiality of contraries, namely realization or its privation; the passage from potentiality to act in production, however, takes place without encountering any obstacle
Ricoeur elaborates Aristotle’s differentiation of rational from non-rational dunamis, stressing that rational potentiality uniquely encompasses both fulfilment and its absence.
, Oneself as Another, 1992supporting
a dunamis appears to be ‘dominated’ by what extends beyond it, what surrounds and envelops it, or, in other words, what fixes its limits, its peirata.
Vernant reconstructs the archaic cosmological sense of dunamis as a spatially bounded power defined by the limits imposed upon it, connecting the term to pre-Socratic notions of cosmic governance.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting
It does not by itself establish that they were called powers or dunameis; but this is in fact the case, as we shall see.
Inwood cautiously establishes the terminological identification of Stoic psychic powers with dunameis, situating Aristotelian influence behind the Stoic theory of soul.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985supporting
When Protagoras places human beings’ technical knowledge on the same level as animals’ dunameis, when he compares the order of the trades with the balance of the species in the cosmos, it is not a mere figure of speech.
Vernant shows Protagoras deploying dunamis to equate human techne with animal natural capacities, naturalising the division of labour through the framework of psychic and biological powers.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting
dunamis 398, 401–11
The index entry confirms the sustained and page-specific treatment of dunamis as a technical term throughout Cairns’s analysis of Aristotelian character psychology.
, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993aside