LA FORMAZIONE E LE RICEZIONI DELLA TRIADE ΟYΣΙΑ – ΔΥΝΑΜΙΣ – EΝΕΡΓΕΙΑ. UNA PRESENTAZIONE DEL PROBLEMA STORICO E STORIOGRAFICO

This essay, introductory to the volume La triade dell’Essere (The Triad of Being), opens with a survey on the presence of the triad ‘essence – power – operation’ in the historiography of the last century, focusing in particular on the interpretations related to its origin and its theoretical value. These two aspects are deepened through a comprehensive and original reconstruction of the textual and conceptual steps that led to the formation of this structure, which is configured as a reworking of Aristotelian ontology within Neoplatonic thought. The receptions, adaptations and transformations of the triad are then traced from Late antiquity to Humanist age. The outcome of the singular chapters of the volume are here recomposed in the framework of a unitary presentation, aimed at highlighting the continuities and discontinuities between different speculative paradigms, ages, schools and authors who have referred to the triad, ultimately drawing a history of its reception. On the basis of this reconstruction, an interpretation of its theoretical significance is proposed as an ontological model, attested over a millennium of history of Western thought, introduced in several speculative contexts and adapted to different paradigmatic purposes. In particular, it emerges how the approaches to the triad vary in relation to the acceptance of the distinction among its three terms within the first principle. The triad, being a conceptual tool intended as a description of the internal structure of being, as well as an illustration of the dynamics of cosmic becoming, has decreed the success of the Aristotelian term enérgeia, reinterpreted in a non-Aristotelian sense by Neoplatonic philosophers and medieval theologians in Latin, Byzantine and Islamic context.