The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna
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ent.
FIFTH TRACTATE
On Potentiality and Actuality
I.
A distinction is made between things existing actually and things existing potentially ; a certain Actuality, also, is spoken of as a really existent entity. We must consider what content there is in these terms.
Can we distinguish between Actuality (an absolute, abstract Principle) and the state of being-in-act ? And if there is such an Actuality, is this itself in Act, or are the two quite distinct so that this actually existent thing need not be, itself, an Act ?
It is indubitable that Potentiality exists in the Realm of Sense : but does the Intellectual Realm similarly include the potential or only the actual ? and if the potential exists there, does it remain merely potential for ever ? And, if so, is this resistance to actualisation due to its being precluded (as a member of the Divine or Intellectual world) from time-processes ?
First we must make clear what potentiality is.
We cannot think of potentiality as standing by itself ; there can be no potentiality apart from something which a given thing may be or become. Thus bronze is the potentiality of a statue : but if nothing could be made out of the bronze, nothing wrought upon it, if it could never be anythmg as a future to what it has been, if it rejected all change, it would be bronze and nothing else : its own character it holds already as a present thing, and that would be the fuU of its capacity : it would be destitute of potentiality. Whatsoever has a potentiality must first
II. 5. 2]
POTENTIALITY AND ACTUALITY
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have a (definite) character of its own ; and its potentiality will consist in its having a reach beyond that character to some other.
Sometimes after it has turned its potentiality into actuality it will remain what it was ; sometimes it will sink itself to the fullest extent in the new form and itself disappear : these two different modes are exemplified in (i) bronze as potentially a statue and (2) water (= primalliquid) as potentially bronze or, again, air as potentially fire.
But if this be the significance of potentiality, may we describe it as a Power towards the thing that is to be ? Is the Bronze a power towards a statue ?
Not in the sense of an effectively productive force : such a power could not be Ccdled a potentiality.
e.
But if this be the significance of potentiality, may we describe it as a Power towards the thing that is to be ? Is the Bronze a power towards a statue ?
Not in the sense of an effectively productive force : such a power could not be Ccdled a potentiality. Of course Potentiality may be a power, as, for instance, when we are referring not merely to a thing which may be brought into actualisation but to Actuality itself (the Principle or Abstract in which potentiality and the power of realising potentiality may be thought of as identical) : but it is better, as more conducive to clarity, to use “ Potentiality ” in regard to the process of Actualisation and “ Power ” in regard to the Principle, Actuality.
Potentiality may be thought of as a Substratum to states and shapes and forms which are to be received, which it welcomes by its nature and even strives for— sometimes in gain but sometimes, also, to loss, to the annulling of some distinctive manner of Being already actually achieved.
2.
Then the question rises whether Matter — potentially what it becomes by receiving shape— is actually something else or whether it has no actuality at all. In general terms : When a potentiality has taken a definite form, does it retain its being ? Is the potentiality, itself, in actualisation ? The alternative is that, when we speak of the “ Actual Statue ” and of the “ Potential Statue,” the Actuality is not predicated of the same subject as the ” Potentiality.” If we have really two different subjects, then the potential does not really become the actual : all that happens is that an actual entity takes the place of a potential.
p. 198
PLOTINUS
The actualised entity is not the Matter (the Potentiality, merely) but a combination, including the Form-Idea upon the Matter.
This is certainly the case when a quite different thing results from the actualisation — the statue, for example, the combination, is distinctly different from the bronze, the base ; where the resultant is something quite new, the Potentiality has clearly not, itself, become what is now actualised. But take the case where a person with a capacity for education becomes in fact educated : is not potentiality, here, identical with actualisation ? Is not the potentially wise Socrates the same man as the Socrates actually wise ?
But is an ignorant man a being of knowledge because he is so potentially ? Is he, in virtue of his non-essential ignorance, potentially an instructed being ?
It is not because of his accidental ignorance that he is a being of Knowledge ; it is because, ignorant though he be by accident, his f knowledge because he is so potentially ? Is he, in virtue of his non-essential ignorance, potentially an instructed being ?
It is not because of his accidental ignorance that he is a being of Knowledge ; it is because, ignorant though he be by accident, his mind, apt to knowledge, is the potentiality through which he may become so. Thus, in the case of the potentially instructed who have become so in fact, the potentiality is taken up into the actual ; or, if we prefer to put it so, there is on the one side the potentiaUty while, on the other, there is the power in actual possession of the form.
If, then, the Potentiality is the Substratum while the thing in actualisation— the Statue for example — is a combination, how are we to describe the form that has entered the bronze ?
There will be nothing unsound in describing this shape, this Form which has brought the entity from potentiality to actuality, as the actualisation ; but of course as the actualisation of the definite particular entity, not as Actuality the abstract ; we must not confuse it with the other actualisation, strictly so called, that which is contrasted with the power producing actualisation. The potential is led out into realisation by something other than itself ; power accomplishes, of itself, what is within its scope, but by virtue of Actucdity (the abstract) : the relation is that existing between a temperament and its expression in act, between courage and courageous conduct. So far so good : — n.5-3]
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p. 199
3-
We come now to the purpose of all this discussion ; to make clear in what sense or to what degree Actualisation is predicable in the Intellectual Realm and whether all is in Actualisation there, each and every member of that realm being an Act, or whether Potentiality also has place there.
Now : if there is no Matter there to harbour potentiality ; if nothing there has any future apart from its actual mode : if nothing there generates, whether by changes or in the permanence of its identity ; if nothing goes outside of itself to give being to what is other than itself ; then, potentiality has no place there : the Beings there possess actuality as belonging to eternity, not to time.
Those, however, who (with us) assert Matter in the Intellectual Realm will be asked whether the existence of that Matter does not imply the potential there too ; for even if Matter there exists in another mode than here, every Being there will have its Matter, its form and the union of the two (and therefore the potential, separable from the actual).