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    "slug": "ennead-2",
    "name": "Ennead II — The Physical Cosmos"
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    "num": 5,
    "slug": "5-on-potentiality-and-actuality",
    "title": "II.5 — On Potentiality and Actuality",
    "of": 9,
    "words": 2388,
    "text": "## FIFTH TRACTATE\n\n\n#### FIFTH TRACTATE.\n\nON POTENTIALITY AND ACTUALITY.\n\n\n## Section 1\n\n\n##### Section 1\n\n1. A distinction is made between things existing actually and\nthings existing potentially; a certain Actuality, also, is spoken of\nas a really existent entity. We must consider what content\nthere is in\nthese terms.\n\nCan we distinguish between Actuality [an absolute, abstract\nPrinciple] and the state of being-in-act? And if there is such an\nActuality, is this itself in Act, or are the two quite distinct so\nthat this actually existent thing need not be, itself, an Act?\n\nIt is indubitable that Potentiality exists in the Realm of\nSense: but does the Intellectual Realm similarly include the\npotential\nor only the actual? and if the potential exists there, does it\nremain merely potential for ever? And, if so, is this resistance to\nactualization due to its being precluded [as a member of the\nDivine or\nIntellectual world] from time-processes?\n\nFirst we must make clear what potentiality is.\n\nWe cannot think of potentiality as standing by itself; there can\nbe no potentiality apart from something which a given thing may be\nor become. Thus bronze is the potentiality of a statue: but\nif nothing\ncould be made out of the bronze, nothing wrought upon it, if it\ncould never be anything as a future to what it has been, if it\nrejected all change, it would be bronze and nothing else: its own\ncharacter it holds already as a present thing, and that would be the\nfull of its capacity: it would be destitute of potentiality.\nWhatsoever has a potentiality must first have a character of its\nown; and its potentiality will consist in its having a reach beyond\nthat character to some other.\n\nSometimes after it has turned its potentiality into actuality it\nwill remain what it was; sometimes it will sink itself to the\nfullest extent in the new form and itself disappear: these two\ndifferent modes are exemplified in (1) bronze as potentially a\nstatue and (2) water [= primal-liquid] as potentially bronze or,\nagain, air as potentially fire.\n\nBut if this be the significance of potentiality, may we describe\nit as a Power towards the thing that is to be? Is the Bronze a power\ntowards a statue?\n\nNot in the sense of an effectively productive force: such a\npower could not be called a potentiality. Of course Potentiality may\nbe a power, as, for instance, when we are referring not merely to a\nthing which may be brought into actualization but to Actuality\nitself [the Principle or Abstract in which potentiality and the\npower of realizing potentiality may be thought of as identical]: but\nit is better, as more conducive to clarity, to use \"Potentiality\" in\nregard to the process of Actualization and \"Power\" in regard to the\nPrinciple, Actuality.\n\nPotentiality may be thought of as a Substratum to states and\nshapes- and forms which are to be received, which it welcomes by its\nnature and even strives for- sometimes in gain but\nsometimes, also, to\nloss, to the annulling of some distinctive manner of Being already\nactually achieved.\n\n\n## Section 2\n\n\n##### Section 2\n\n2. Then the question rises whether Matter- potentially what it\nbecomes by receiving shape- is actually something else or whether it\nhas no actuality at all. In general terms: When a potentiality has\ntaken a definite form, does it retain its being? Is the\npotentiality, itself, in actualization? The alternative is that,\nwhen we speak of the \"Actual Statue\" and of the \"Potential Statue,\"\nthe Actuality is not predicated of the same subject as the\n\"Potentiality.\" If we have really two different subjects, then the\npotential does not really become the actual: all that happens is\nthat an actual entity takes the place of a potential.\n\nThe actualized entity is not the Matter [the\nPotentiality, merely]\nbut a combination, including the Form-Idea upon the Matter.\n\nThis is certainly the case when a quite different thing results\nfrom the actualization-statue, for example, the combination, is\ndistinctly different from the bronze, the base; where the\nresultant is\nsomething quite new, the Potentiality has clearly not, itself,\nbecome what is now actualized. But take the case where a\nperson with a\ncapacity for education becomes in fact educated: is not\npotentiality, here, identical with actualization? Is not the\npotentially wise Socrates the same man as the Socrates actually wise?\n\nBut is an ignorant man a being of knowledge because he is so\npotentially? Is he, in virtue of his non-essential ignorance,\npotentially an instructed being?\n\nIt is not because of his accidental ignorance that he is a being\nof Knowledge: it is because, ignorant though he be by accident, his\nmind, apt to knowledge, is the potentiality through which he may\nbecome so. Thus, in the case of the potentially instructed who have\nbecome so in fact, the potentiality is taken up into the actual; or,\nif we prefer to put it so, there is on the one side the potentiality\nwhile, on the other, there is the power in actual possession of the\nform.\n\nIf, then, the Potentiality is the Substratum while the thing in\nactualization- the Statue for example a combination, how are we to\ndescribe the form that has entered the bronze?\n\nThere will be nothing unsound in describing this shape, this\nForm which has brought the entity from potentiality to actuality, as\nthe actualization; but of course as the actualization of the\ndefinite particular entity, not as Actuality the abstract:\nwe must not\nconfuse it with the other actualization, strictly so called, that\nwhich is contrasted with the power producing actualization. The\npotential is led out into realization by something other than\nitself; power accomplishes, of itself, what is within its scope, but\nby virtue of Actuality [the abstract]: the relation is that existing\nbetween a temperament and its expression in act, between courage and\ncourageous conduct. So far so good:\n\n\n## Section 3\n\n\n##### Section 3\n\n3. We come now to the purpose of all this discussion; to make\nclear in what sense or to what degree Actualization is predicable in\nthe Intellectual Realm and whether all is in Actualization\nthere, each\nand every member of that realm being an Act, or whether Potentiality\nalso has place there.\n\nNow: if there is no Matter there to harbour potentiality: if\nnothing there has any future apart from its actual mode: if nothing\nthere generates, whether by changes or in the permanence of its\nidentity; if nothing goes outside of itself to give being to what is\nother than itself; then, potentiality has no place there: the Beings\nthere possess actuality as belonging to eternity, not to time.\n\nThose, however, who assert Matter in the Intellectual Realm will\nbe asked whether the existence of that Matter does not imply the\npotential there too; for even if Matter there exists in another mode\nthan here, every Being there will have its Matter, its form and the\nunion of the two [and therefore the potential, separable from the\nactual]. What answer is to be made?\n\nSimply, that even the Matter there is Idea, just as the Soul, an\nIdea, is Matter to another [a higher] Being.\n\nBut relatively to that higher, the Soul is a potentiality?\n\nNo: for the Idea [to which it is Matter] is integral to the Soul\nand does not look to a future; the distinction between the Soul and\nits Idea is purely mental: the Idea and the Matter it includes are\nconceived as a conjunction but are essentially one Kind:\nremember that\nAristotle makes his Fifth Body immaterial.\n\nBut surely Potentiality exists in the Soul? Surely the Soul is\npotentially the living-being of this world before it has\nbecome so? Is\nit not potentially musical, and everything else that it has not been\nand becomes? Does not this imply potentiality even in the\nIntellectual\nExistences?\n\nNo: the Soul is not potentially these things; it is a Power\ntowards them.\n\nBut after what mode does Actualization exist in the Intellectual\nRealm?\n\nIs it the Actualization of a statue, where the combination is\nrealized because the Form-Idea has mastered each separate\nconstituent of the total?\n\nNo: it is that every constituent there is a Form-Idea and, thus,\nis perfect in its Being.\n\nThere is in the Intellectual Principle no progression from some\npower capable of intellection to the Actuality of\nintellection: such a\nprogression would send us in search of a Prior Principle not\nprogressing from Power to Act; there all stands ever realized.\nPotentiality requires an intervention from outside itself to bring\nit to the actualization which otherwise cannot be; but what\npossesses,\nof itself, identity unchangeable for ever is an\nactualization: all the\nFirsts then are actualizations, simply because eternally and of\nthemselves they possess all that is necessary to their completion.\n\nThis applies equally to the Soul, not to that in Matter but to\nthat in the Intellectual Sphere; and even that in Matter, the Soul\nof Growth, is an actualization in its difference; it possesses\nactually [and not, like material things, merely in image] the Being\nthat belongs to it.\n\nThen, everything, in the intellectual is in actualization and so\nall There is Actuality?\n\nWhy not? If that Nature is rightly said to be \"Sleepless,\" and\nto be Life and the noblest mode of Life, the noblest Activities must\nbe there; all then is actualization there, everything is an\nActuality,\nfor everything is a Life, and all Place there is the Place\nof Life, in\nthe true sense the ground and spring of Soul and of the Intellectual\nPrinciple.\n\n\n## Section 4\n\n\n##### Section 4\n\n4. Now, in general anything that has a potentiality is actually\nsomething else, and this potentiality of the future mode of being is\nan existing mode.\n\nBut what we think of as Matter, what we assert to be the\npotentiality of all things, cannot be said to be actually any one\nbeing among beings: if it were of itself any definite being, it\ncould not be potentially all.\n\nIf, then, it is not among existences, it must necessarily be\nwithout existence.\n\nHow, therefore, can it be actually anything?\n\nThe answer is that while Matter can not be any of the\nthings which\nare founded upon it, it may quite well be something else, admitting\nthat all existences are not rooted in Matter.\n\nBut once more, if it is excluded from the entities\nfounded upon it\nand all these are Beings, it must itself be a Non-Being.\n\nIt is, further, by definition, formless and therefore\nnot an Idea:\nit cannot then be classed among things of the Intellectual Realm,\nand so is, once more, a Non-Being. Falling, as regards both worlds,\nunder Non-Being, it is all the more decidedly the Non-Being.\n\nIt has eluded the Nature of the Authentic Existences; it has\neven failed to come up with the things to which a spurious existence\ncan be attributed- for it is not even a phantasm of Reason as these\nare- how is it possible to include it under any mode of Being?\n\nAnd if it falls under no mode of Being, what can it actually be?\n\n\n## Section 5\n\n\n##### Section 5\n\n5. How can we talk of it? How can it be the Matter of\nreal things?\n\nIt is talked of, and it serves, precisely, as a Potentiality.\n\nAnd, as being a Potentiality, it is not of the order of the\nthing it is to become: its existence is no more than an announcement\nof a future, as it were a thrust forward to what is to come into\nexistence.\n\nAs Potentiality then, it is not any definite thing but the\npotentiality of everything: being nothing in itself- beyond\nwhat being\nMatter amounts to- it is not in actualization. For if it\nwere actually\nsomething, that actualized something would not be Matter, or at\nleast not Matter out and out, but merely Matter in the limited sense\nin which bronze is the matter of the statue.\n\nAnd its Non-Being must be no mere difference from Being.\n\nMotion, for example, is different from Being, but plays about\nit, springing from it and living within it: Matter is, so to speak,\nthe outcast of Being, it is utterly removed, irredeemably what it\nwas from the beginning: in origin it was Non-Being and so it remains.\n\nNor are we to imagine that, standing away at the very beginning\nfrom the universal circle of Beings, it was thus necessarily\nan active\nSomething or that it became a Something. It has never been able to\nannex for itself even a visible outline from all the forms\nunder which\nit has sought to creep: it has always pursued something other than\nitself; it was never more than a Potentiality towards its next:\nwhere all the circle of Being ends, there only is it manifest;\ndiscerned underneath things produced after it, it is remoter [from\nReal-Being] even than they.\n\nGrasped, then, as an underlie in each order of Being, it\ncan be no\nactualization of either: all that is allowed to it is to be a\nPotentiality, a weak and blurred phantasm, a thing incapable of a\nShape of its own.\n\nIts actuality is that of being a phantasm, the actuality of\nbeing a falsity; and the false in actualization is the veritably\nfalse, which again is Authentic Non-Existence.\n\nSo that Matter, as the Actualization of Non-Being, is\nall the more\ndecidedly Non-Being, is Authentic Non-Existence.\n\nThus, since the very reality of its Nature is situated in\nNon-Being, it is in no degree the Actualization of any\ndefinite Being.\n\nIf it is to be present at all, it cannot be an Actualization,\nfor then it would not be the stray from Authentic Being which it is,\nthe thing having its Being in Non-Beingness: for, note, in\nthe case of\nthings whose Being is a falsity, to take away the falsity is to take\naway what Being they have, and if we introduce actualization into\nthings whose Being and Essence is Potentiality, we destroy the\nfoundation of their nature since their Being is Potentiality.\n\nIf Matter is to be kept as the unchanging substratum, we\nmust keep\nit as Matter: that means- does it not?- that we must define it as a\nPotentiality and nothing more- or refute these considerations.",
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