Concept

Potentiality and actuality

Overview

In philosophy, potentiality and actuality are a pair of closely connected principles which Aristotle used to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, and On the Soul. In this context, the concept of potentiality generally refers to any "possibility" that a thing can be said to have. Aristotle did not consider all possibilities the same, and emphasized the importance of those that become real of their own accord when conditions are right and nothing stops them. In contrast to potentiality, actuality is the motion, change or activity that represents an exercise or fulfillment of a possibility, when a possibility becomes real in the fullest sense.

Potentiality and actuality reflect Aristotle's belief that events in nature are not all natural in a true sense. As he saw it, many things happen accidentally, and therefore not according to the natural purposes of things. These concepts, in modified forms, remained very important into the Middle Ages, influencing the development of medieval theology in several ways. In modern times the dichotomy has gradually lost importance, as understandings of nature and deity have changed. However the terminology has also been adapted to new uses, as is most obvious in words like energy and dynamic. These were words first used in modern physics by the German scientist and philosopher, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. More controversially, Aristotle's concept of entelechy retains influence on occasional calls for the use of "entelechy" in biology.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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Hence the Philosopher says (Metaph. v) that they are called relative, not forasmuch as they are related to other things, but as others are related to them. Likewise for instance, "on the right" is not applied to a column, unless it stands as regards an animal on the right side; which relation is not really in the column, but in the animal.
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
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147.] (γ) When this externality (of actuality) is thus developed into a circle of the two categories of possibility and immediate actuality, showing the intermediation of the one by the other, it is what is called Real Possibility. Being such a circle, further, it is the totality, and thus the content, the actual fact or affair in its all-round definiteness.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
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Thus intelligence and soul are prior to nature; the soul, therefore, is not a spirit, and consequently no body. Other reasons for the incorporeality of the soul have been advanced; but the above suffices (as thought Aristotle).[73] II. THE SOUL IS NEITHER THE HARMONY NOR ENTELECHY OF THE BODY--THE SOUL IS THE HARMONY OF THE BODY; AGAINST THE PYTHAGOREANS. (12). a. Since the soul is not corporeal, its real nature…
Plotinus, Plotinos
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Philosophers who discussed Potentiality and actuality

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Scientific Revolution

Place in the tradition

Part of American philosophy.

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