Perfection is, broadly, a state of completeness and flawlessness.

The term "perfection" is actually used to designate a range of diverse, if often kindred, concepts. These concepts have historically been addressed in a number of discrete disciplines, notably mathematics, physics, chemistry, ethics, aesthetics, ontology and theology.

The term and the concept

The form of the word long fluctuated in various languages. The English language had the alternates, "perfection" and the Biblical "perfectness."

The word "perfection" derives from the Latin "perfectio", and "perfect" — from "perfectus." These expressions in turn come from "perficio" — "to finish", "to bring to an end." "Perfectio(n)" thus literally means "a finishing", and "perfect(us)" — "finished", much as in grammatical parlance ("perfect tense").

Many modern languages have adopted their terms for the concept of "perfection" from the Latin: the French "parfait" and "perfection"; the Italian "perfetto" and "perfezione"; the English "perfect" and "perfection"; the Russian "совершенный" (sovyershenniy); the Croatian "dovershiti"; the Czech "dokonalost"; the Slovak "dokonaly" and "dokonalost"; the Polish "doskonały" and "doskonałość."

The genealogy of the concept of "perfection" reaches back beyond Latin, to Greek. The Greek equivalent of the Latin "perfectus" was "teleos." The latter Greek expression generally had concrete referents, such as a perfect physician or flutist, a perfect comedy or a perfect social system. Hence the Greek "teleiotes" was not yet so fraught with abstract and superlative associations as would be the Latin "perfectio" or the modern "perfection." To avoid the latter associations, the Greek term has generally been translated as "completeness" rather than "perfection."

1. which is complete — which contains all the requisite parts;

2. which is so good that nothing of the kind could be better;

3. which has attained its purpose.

Paradoxes

The parallel existence of two concepts of perfection, one strict ("perfection," as such) and the other loose ("excellence"), has given rise — perhaps since antiquity but certainly since the Renaissance — to a singular paradox: that the greatest perfection is imperfection. This was formulated by Lucilio Vanini (1585–1619), who had a precursor in the 16th-century writer Joseph Juste Scaliger, and they in turn referred to the ancient philosopher Empedocles. Their argument, as given by the first two, was that if the world were perfect, it could not improve and so would lack "true perfection," which depends on progress. To Aristotle, "perfect" meant "complete" ("nothing to add or subtract"). To Empedocles, according to Vanini, perfection depends on incompleteness ("perfectio propter imperfectionem"), since the latter possesses a potential for development and for complementing with new characteristics ("perfectio complementii"). This view relates to the baroque esthetic of Vanini and Marin Mersenne: the perfection of an art work consists in its forcing the recipient to be active—to complement the art work by an effort of mind and imagination.