Mixing Up Plato and Aristotle

Chapter 3 of Gwenaëlle Aubry’s Dieu sans la puissance analyzes Aristotle’s discussion of ousia (“substance”) in book Zeta of the Metaphysics, and the transition toward potentiality and act in book Eta. The discussion is very dense, and will merit at least one further post. The whole chapter elaborates her argument for an important distinction between form and act. Here I will focus on her introductory remarks.

The key Aristotelian term ousia already had established usages in Plato, some of which conflict with the meanings Aristotle gave to it. According to Aubry, the traditional interpretations that attribute to Aristotle a notion of separate form independent of the composite depend on reading distinctly Platonic (and non-Aristotelian) meanings of ousia into Aristotle’s text. I won’t get to the full justification of this here, but it is coming. The term “separate” is also used differently by Plato and Aristotle. In Plato, it means apart from sensible things, but in Aristotle it means able to subsist independently.

“Contrary to that of potentiality and act, the couple of matter and form is never counted by Aristotle among the senses of being. It nonetheless became one of the fundamental motifs of scholastic Aristotelianism, to the point where the notions of dunamis and energeia are happily identified the one with matter, the other with form. This had the effect, in particular, that one could affirm generally that the unmoved First Mover is a ‘pure form’, even though Aristotle only designated it as act, and never used terms for which the translation could be ‘pure form’. This indistinction of act and form is also at the origin of the affirmation, also very widespread, according to which Aristotle would accept the existence of ‘separate forms'” (2nd ed., p. 67, my translation throughout).

She notes that many esteemed modern commentators, including Werner Jaeger and W. D. Ross, have followed this scholastic interpolation. For the absence in Aristotle of any terms translatable as “pure form”, she cites a 1973 article by E. E. Ryan, “Pure Form in Aristotle”.

“[I]t is hard to see what would lead Aristotle to forge two neologisms [energeia and entelecheia, or act and entelechy] to designate what a concept in the repertoire [eidos, or form] already sufficed to name. But what is more surprising is that in identifying act and form, and attributing to Aristotle the assertion of separate forms, one thereby attributes to him a doctrine he had himself combated in Plato, only in the end to reproach him for finally remaining a Platonist” (p. 68).

Modern criticisms of Aristotle have often targeted his alleged reliance on a notion of pure or separate form.

“The indistinction of form and act appears to us in effect to be at the source of numerous criticisms addressed to the Aristotelian metaphysics: thus one demands to know how it can at the same time admit the existence of separate forms, and affirm that the form is never given without the matter; one asks oneself about the coherence of an ontology having for its object both substances composed of matter and form and pure forms; one deplores the abstract character, the intellectualism, of a theology of pure form. But nevertheless, the reduction of act to form is also the basis of the traditional (‘onto-theological’) reading of the Metaphysics” (ibid).

According to Aubry, there are two principal differences between act and form.

First, “Only act implies subsistence; or again, only act is fully ousia — that which says also ‘separate entelechy’…. Form, on the contrary, is not [simple substance], because it does not exist in a separated state. If it is separable, it is only in a very limited sense, [according to the logos], writes Aristotle, or ‘according to the formula’; in the sense, certainly, where it can be thought and defined without the matter, but not in the sense where it could subsist by itself, independent of any material instantiation” (pp. 68-69).

Again, Aristotelian separateness is not Platonic separation from sensible being, but rather the capacity of a thing to subsist on its own.

Second, “Act nonetheless does not say being solely as separate, capable of subsisting by itself, but also as identical to the end and the good. This axiological significance only appears, before being confirmed in Lambda, in book Theta, at the end of the course by which the notion of act is substituted for that of form” (p. 69).

What she here calls the axiological significance of act — its essential involvement with valuations and ends — stands in contrast to its traditional “onto-theological” interpretation. Also, there now seems to be a question whether some of my own expansive remarks about form should perhaps be applied to act alone.

“[The substitution of act for form] explains the possible confusion between the two notions, but at the same time it indicates the procedure and the conditions which mark well that they are not simple synonyms. The principal operator for these appears to us to be the central notion of books Zeta and Eta and, to a lesser degree, of book Theta: the notion of ousia, as well as that of separation, which is strongly correlated with it. One of the great difficulties of book Zeta comes in effect from a partial conservation of the Platonic sense of the notions of ousia and of separation, which leads to a conservation of the primacy of form. Aristotle nonetheless also elaborates his own concept of ousia, which he associates with separation not in the sense of existence outside of sensibles, but as a capacity for independent existence. Thus redefined, ousia excludes form” (ibid).

That is to say, what Aristotle calls ousia malista [what is substance above all] excludes form. As we will see, she says that ousia in a broader sense subsumes form in the way that energeia and entelecheia subsume form, but this relation is not convertible — ousia, energeia, and entelecheia for Aristotle all cover more cases than eidos [form] does.

“This tension between two senses of ousia is reflected by the distinction, in Zeta, between ousia malista [what is substance above all] and ousia prote [primary substance], and by the correlative promotion of two candidates to the status of ousia: the composite of matter and form, and form. It is the intervention, in book Eta, of the notion of act that allows this tension to be resolved: act in effect satisfies at the same time both the Platonic criteria and the Aristotelian criteria for ousia, making it possible as a result to think both intelligibility and permanence, both essence and substance” (ibid).

“In Plato, the term ousia indifferently designates the reality, the existence, or the essence, the ‘what-it-is’ (the ti esti); it applies equally well to being in opposition to becoming, as to the totality of the real, or inversely to its terms in composition” (p. 70).

“Plato nonetheless also calls intelligible being, the Ideas and the Forms, ousia. Its distinctive characteristics are thus, along with intelligibility, permanence, immutability, eternity. On the other hand, Plato never makes separation, understood in its Aristotelian sense as capacity for independent existence, a distinctive criterion of ousia” (ibid, emphasis in original).

Whether Plato really must be read as asserting that the Forms are separate in an Aristotelian sense is a separate question, but there is no doubt that Aristotle and most others have attributed such a view to him.

For Aristotle, “Platonism consists in distinguishing from the sensible its principle of intelligibility (the universal and the definition), and giving to the latter an autonomous existence” (ibid). But for Aristotle, “That which is, is not walking, or good health, or a seated position, but the thing that walks, has good health, and is seated” (p. 71).

“Nonetheless, like being, primacy is said in many ways” (ibid).

“Among the traits characteristic of ousia, Aristotle preserves, alongside the criterion of separation, those which, in Plato, justify the primacy of form, such as permanence or intelligibility. These allow it to be well said that form is ousia, but in a qualified sense. Book Zeta is thus presented as a combinatory hierarchy of criteria that in turn serves to determine a hierarchization of different beings pretending to the title of ousia, but also a distinction of different degrees of ousia” (p. 72).

“[I]f form cannot be called ousia absolutely, it nonetheless retains a primacy from the point of view of the formula and of knowledge” (p. 73).

“It is precisely this conflict that is resolved in Eta by substitution of the notion of act for that of form…. [Act] thus names the unity of the subsistent or separate individual, … as well as its principle of permanence and intelligibility. Thus only the notion of act satisfies all the criteria of ousia, in that it permits the reconciliation of the Aristotelian requirement of autonomous subsistence and individuality with the Platonic one of permanence and intelligibility” (ibid).

“For the combinatory hierarchy of Zeta is thus substituted an integrative synthesis [in book Eta]” (ibid).

“Considering form as act is in effect considering that in it which acts as an end, that is to say the principle of a becoming at the end of which matter is fully determined by form, and the form realized in a matter” (pp. 73-74).

“[I]f there can be no form without matter, there can on the other hand be an act without potentiality” (p. 74, emphasis added).

In an upcoming post(s), I’ll treat Aubry’s substantiating analysis of books Zeta and Eta.

Next in this series: Form and Entelechy

Being and Becoming

“Our hypothesis is the following: the division of being into [being] in potentiality and [being] in act has a greater extension than that according to the categories. If the latter only determine the mobile and composed substances, act is said also of the immobile, and its priority over potentiality allows the relation of the immobile substance to the mobile substances to be thought” (Gwenaëlle Aubry, Dieu sans la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 2, p. 51, my translation throughout).

“Dunamis [potentiality] and energeia [act] are the foundation of an anti-Parmenidean ontology, which articulates movement with being. They respond thus to the requirement defined in [book capital Alpha] for a science capable of giving account of both being and movement, both the one and the multiple. Since book Gamma, the notion of dunamis serves to resolve the dilemma of becoming: the posing of being in potentiality allows overcoming the impasse of emergence (that it is from non-being that being comes) as well as that of coexistence (that it is from contraries pre-existing in act that all being comes)” (pp. 51-52).

As Aristotle well recognizes, these impasses related to becoming imply that pre-Socratic notions of “being” were severely flawed.

“Invoked to think not only becoming, but the being of becoming, sensible and mobile substance, the notions of potentiality and act serve, over books Zeta and Eta, to replace those of matter and form. It is in book Theta, in backwards order, that the process finds its justification: the ontological pertinence of the two notions is there underlined, and their transfer from the field of movement to that of being, elucidated. At the end of book Theta, finally, are formulated the conditions for an extension of dunamis and energeia from the field of corruptible substances to that of eternal substances” (p. 52).

Again, for Aristotle, “eternal” means not radically outside of time as it does in Augustine, but simply persisting forever.

Aubry wants to recover a sense for Aristotelian being-as-such that is not the “absolutist” one of a first Being, argued for by excellent Thomist scholars like Joseph Owens. In passing, she cites Aristotle’s aversion to pursuing ultimate explanation in terms of “numbers, lines, or fire” (p. 53). As Aristotle says in book Gamma, “for us too it is the first causes of being as being that must be gotten hold of” (ch. 1, Sachs tr., coincidentally also p. 53). Aubry notes that this also takes us beyond any consideration of being as a genus or species.

But in spite of the fact that being is not a genus, the first causes for Aristotle are common to all beings. She refers to the “focal” meaning of being as ousia, while arguing that ontology is not reduced to the study of substance. She alludes to Aristotle’s inclusion of the knowledge of axioms and the principle of non-contradiction in the knowledge of being, while pointing out that the principle of non-contradiction is not a cause. She notes how Aristotle first mentions then dismisses incidental sayings of being, and the saying of being in the sense of true and false.

She discusses Pierre Aubenque’s argument that being in the senses of the Categories is more fundamental than potentiality and act, commenting that it encounters a difficulty in Aristotle’s explicit development of a sense for potentiality and act that goes beyond their use in the explanation of motion. She notes that Franz Brentano among others argues the opposite: potentiality and act are not reducible to the categories. She doesn’t think Aristotle addresses this question of priority explicitly; any answer will be based on analysis of what Aristotle does with the respective terms.

Both the categories and potentiality and act are at the basis of a non-Parmenidean ontology. The pair of potentiality and act in particular allows for the articulation of “a certain non-being” within being. Saying according to the categories, too, generates affirmations that from a Parmenidean point of view would be paradoxical. Every predication says that something “is” something other than just what it is.

“Potentiality is in effect the place where contraries can coexist” (p. 61). “It allows becoming to be thought without violating the founding principle of being and of discourse [non-contradiction]” (p. 62). “In opposition to the Eleatics, the distinction of potentiality and act plays the same role as that of substance and accident against the Sophists: it founds the possibility of predication. The accent is nonetheless inverse: if it serves, in Gamma 3, to reconnect the diversity of predicates to the unity and the identity of a subject, it serves here to relate one same subject to the possible plurality of predicates” (ibid).

“There is nonetheless one thing that dunamis and energeia say that the categories do not say: the becoming other of the same, the becoming multiple of the one” (ibid). Here she recalls Aristotle’s polemic against the Megarians in book Theta. The Megarian denial of the difference between act and potentiality makes becoming unintelligible, because it eliminates all continuity within change. This makes the explanation of change impossible.

“Dunamis thus appears as the very instrument of the thought of becoming” (p. 66). And “not only becoming, but being in becoming” (ibid).

Next in this series: Mixing Up Plato and Aristotle

Distinguishing Act and Form

“In fact, the notions of form (eidos) and of act (energeia or entelecheia) are not equivalent; and if the first belongs to a Platonic vocabulary, the second is an Aristotelian invention. It belongs, as such, to an anti-Platonic project: there is no sense, for Aristotle, in posing ‘pure’ or ‘separated’ forms, that is to say forms subsisting outside of and independent of the composites that they define. Form is not separable except ‘by logos‘, ‘according to the formula’, which signifies also that form is not fully ousia, fully substance” (Gwenaëlle Aubry, Dieu sans la puissance, 2nd ed., part 1, introduction, p. 23, my translation throughout).

For Aristotle, form is only separable from the embodied composite analytically, in speech or in thought. Though he was Plato’s star pupil for 20 years and continued to be influenced by Plato in other ways, his project is “anti-Platonic” in the sense that he specifically criticizes the notion of separate form, with which Plato is famously associated.

“It goes otherwise for act, which implies separation, understood as autonomous subsistence, and therefore has the value of another name for ousia. Act, nonetheless, is not only another name for substance. Identified with the end, it is also [identified] with the good. Being in act is not only to subsist, it is to subsist as adequate to its form and to a form that, posed as end, is also posed as good…. Act thus is not only another name for being, but also for the good: or more, insofar as it says the good as real, or as realized, [it] names the identity of being and the good” (p. 24).

Here it is important to recall once again that all the senses of “being” Aristotle discusses in the Metaphysics involve being as a transitive verb (i.e., being this or that), not being as a noun. Being in the sense of existence simply has no place in this account. The identity of the senses of being as a transitive verb with those of the good tells us that the saying of transitive being for Aristotle has a normative character. Talking about the being or essence of things is talking about value, and making value judgments.

“Certainly, [the idea of] the unmoved First Mover does not come in response to the question of the emergence of being, but to that of the eternity of movement — both the continuity of the movement of the stars, and the perpetuity of the cycle of generation and corruption. This is why [book] Lambda [chapter] 10 [of the Metaphysics] can also designate the good as the cause of taxis [order], associated both with the movement of the eternal sensibles and that of the corruptible sensibles. If it is not an efficient cause, the First Mover nonetheless has an efficacity, or an influence on the world, which follows from the very fact that it has no power. For the purely actual substance, indeed excluding power as much as movement, is required as the condition of movement (Lambda 6 and 7). Again, it is necessary to determine the way in which it is [required]; Lambda 7 invokes the notion of final cause, which it is nonetheless necessary to understand in a particular sense: not in a sense in which the unmoved substance is itself the act and the end of the other substances, but in the sense in which, aiming at their proper act, the latter aim at the same time at its characteristic necessity. To understand this, it is not necessary to have recourse to the notion of imitation: the relation of the pure act to the substances mixed of act and potentiality is determined by the different relations of the anteriority of act to potentiality distinguished in Theta 8.” (p. 25).

Aristotle is saying that the good in general or value in general is a condition for the possibility of all movement, both celestial and terrestrial. Every being is moved by some good or other. Aubry is here explaining the difference between Aristotle’s own view and the “ontotheology” that Heidegger and others have attributed to him.

“[The pure act’s] efficacy could be called non-efficient; its strength merges with the desire it arouses. Designating god as act, Aristotle identifies his mode of being; determining the mode of relation of act to potentiality, he identifies his mode of action….”

“But by this, Aristotle also identifies the mode of being and the mode of action proper to the good. It is perhaps thus that it is necessary to understand his insistence in affirming that he is, of all the philosophers, the first and the only to have posed the good as a principle….”

“The singularity of the Aristotelian theology as a theology of the good, and of the power proper to the good, can nonetheless not be known except on the condition of taking seriously the designation of the First Mover as pure act. This supposes in particular that the Aristotelian inventions that are act and potentiality are not reduced to form and power. The Aristotelian theology, that is to say the science of unmoving and separate substance, appears only in effect as one of the areas of application of an ontology or, at least, a general ousiology, which has for its foundation the notions of act and potentiality” (p. 26).

In contrast to the ways being is said in the senses of the Categories, which are “inadequate for speaking about the first unmoving being, [act and potentiality] allow both the difference and the relation of moved and unmoved substances to be thought. In a more general way, act and potentiality are at the foundation of an anti-Parmenidean ontology, …allowing being, movement, and their correlation equally well to be thought” (p. 27).

Aubry points out that the notions of act and potentiality first arise in the discussion of motion. But book Theta of the Metaphysics is dedicated to reshaping them in a way that applies to “being” as well as to motion. It is more particularly through act and potentiality that beings are constituted as the beings they are.

“Movement, in effect, should not be understood only in the order of interaction, but also in that of actualization. Or again: movement should not be understood only in the order of the correlation of an active dynamis and a passive dynamis, partitioning the field of efficiency into an agent and a patient, but in that of the correlation of dynamis and energeia” (ibid).

“But the dynamis found thus to be correlated to act, and which designates a state of being, is therefore irreducible to power: being in potentiality, coordinated with and determined by act, is neither passive nor efficient. Or again, potentiality is reducible neither to active power nor to passive power. The notion of potentiality serves to name the very possibility of the interaction of an agent and a patient in view of a change determined and finalized by act.”

“The correlation of potentiality to act nonetheless does not exclude that of passive power to active power: but it subsumes it, or subordinates it, insofar as it carries a greater intelligibility. It invites us to consider that which, in an impact, a meeting, or an interaction, is the occasion of an accomplishment. It is a point of view taken on that which, in movement, makes itself, that is to say not only makes itself but perfects itself…. Aristotle’s universe is not exempt from impacts and meeting: the substances that populate it are not Leibnizian monads…. The order of efficiency is a real order, but subordinate to that of finality” (pp. 28-29; see also The Four Causes Revisited).

“Potentiality is indeed for a being the real possibility, inscribed in the very qualities that give it its essence, of realizing that essence. Potentiality is the index and the principle of the becoming that leads a being to its accomplishment. It bears at the same time the distance between a being and what it has to be, and the possibility of crossing that distance. If act names the identity, real or realized, of being and the good, potentiality names this identity as to be realized. It inscribes into being at the same time as the concreteness of mediation, the possibility of perfection” (p. 29).

“The ontology of potentiality bears with it at the same time the thought of a possible perfection, realizable here and now, and that of failures, of accidents, of bad encounters, of unsuccessful mediations that could counter it” (ibid).

For Aristotle there is no “problem of evil”. Things are at one and the same time both imperfect and perfectible.

Again, I prefer to drop the term “ontology” altogether, because it is strongly associated with a (non-Aristotelian) approach to first philosophy that focuses on being as a noun, and in the sense of existence. Aubry retains the traditional term, but gives it a different meaning that is less prejudicial.

Far be it from me to claim to have the one true interpretation of these sharply contested points about Aristotle’s Metaphysics, but the key features of Aubry’s account seem to fit very well with my own examination of the text.

Aubry has emphasized the role of Plotinus in the historic re-interpretation of Aristotelian act and potentiality. I would note that the later neoplatonic school at Alexandria under Ammonius (5th/6th century CE) — especially Ammonius’ students Simplicius and John Philoponus — also produced extensive commentaries on Aristotle with a neoplatonic slant, which helped shape the way Aristotle was read in medieval times.

Ammonius argued that Aristotle’s first cause is after all also an efficient cause. Simplicius, who is also a major source for quotes from lost works in the history of Greek philosophy, added two more distinctly neoplatonic kinds of causes to Aristotle’s four. Philoponus was a Christian Aristotelian who defended creation from nothing, and was cited by Galileo as an inspiration for the impulse theory of motion. The impulse theory decouples physical motion from any teleology, paving the way for early modern mechanism.

Next in thus series: Aristotle on the Platonic Good

Pure Act

I just received the 2nd French edition of Gwenaëlle Aubry’s God Without Power: Dunamis and Energeia in Aristotle and Plotinus (2020), which is now also labeled Archaeology of Power volume 1, reflecting publication of her second volume, Genesis of the Sovereign God (French ed. 2018).

“But the notion of act (energeia or entelekheia) says something else that that of form does not: not only substance, but also the good. Of Aristotelian invention, contrary to that of form which belongs entirely to Platonism, it appears first in ethical contexts; and if its axiological significance is not explicitly formulated in [book Theta of the Metaphysics], but only suggested via the identification of energeia with telos [end] and with ergon [work], it is on the other hand clearly readable in book Lambda. Furthermore, the project formulated in book capital Alpha of a ‘wisdom’ (sophia) capable of determining the good and the end, like that, defined in [book Gamma], of a science of ‘being qua being’, are both accomplished in the knowledge of a single object: act.”

“For such a project, Aristotle claims originality. He underlines that he is the first to have posed the good as a principle, and to have dissociated principle and power. Reading the history of philosophy reversed in relation to the one familiar to us, he considers thus that position of the good as principle is not a Platonic gesture. But if the Platonists have failed to think the status of the good as principle, that is in part because they did not identify its proper mode of causality. The double Aristotelian decision thus bears a unique formula: the principle is act. For to designate it thus, is to say at once that it is an essentially good substance, and that it acts not as power, but as the end of that which is in potentiality.”

“It is however also, and in conformity always with the project of Metaphysics [capital Alpha], to leave a place for the diversity of goods and of ends. For, like being, the good is said in many ways. And if the Ethics identify the good according to substance with god and with intellect, this is not the essence of all that could be called ‘good’, any more than it is the act of the other substances. So here again, Aristotle succeeds where Plato had failed: he succeeds at the same time in thinking the good’s status as a principle and the causality of the good, as well as taking into account the plurality of goods (which also says: the good is neither a power nor an Idea). However, a relation of foundation holds between the essentially good substance and the goods of the diverse substances. And this relation doubles itself, for the substance that is the human, in a relation of resemblance and a relation of knowledge, if theoria [contemplation], in which ethics finds its energeia and its supreme end, at the same time is similar to the divine act, and can have the latter as its object” (introduction, pp. 15-16, my translation).

The mode of causality of the good as first principle is as the end or that-for-the-sake-of-which, as a kind of attractor for potentialities. I’ve presented most of these ideas before, but this provides a very nice overview. Aubry gives a bit more weight to book Gamma’s proposed knowledge of being as such than I do, but the content that she ultimately gives to it is very close to what I end up with in reading book Lambda as a teleological meta-ethics (she calls it “axiology” or theory of values, but the concept is similar). In upcoming posts, I’ll take a look at her detailed analysis of the text of the Metaphysics. (See also The Four Causes Revisited; On the Good as a Cause; Aubry on Aristotle; Properly Human, More Than Human?.)

Aristotle’s main historical influence began only centuries after his death. His manuscripts were claimed by a relative and left to deteriorate in an attic. They were only edited around the 1st century BCE. Even then, they attracted only limited interest. Stoicism had meanwhile become dominant in Greek philosophy. The great early commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias did not flourish until late 2nd/early 3rd century CE, and was influential mainly via Plotinus and the neoplatonic schools. It was only with the late Platonic school of Alexandria in Egypt under Ammonius (late 5th/early 6th century CE) that Aristotle’s works became central to the teaching curriculum, and then they were read with a heavy neoplatonic slant. (See Fortunes of Aristotle.)

Next in this series: Distinguishing Act and Form

Power and Act

I would say without hesitation that having a concept of power and act is better than not having one. Nonetheless, despite my tremendous admiration both for the work of Paul Ricoeur and for the classic developments of Leibniz and Spinoza, I think Ricoeur was mistaken to associate Spinoza, Leibniz, Freud, or Bergson with a properly Aristotelian notion of potentiality and actuality (see The Importance of Potentiality; Potentiality, Actuality). Ricoeur on several occasions in his late works identified Spinoza’s conatus, or the desire and effort of beings to continue being — as well as the appetite or desire of each monad in Leibniz, and desire in Freud — with potentiality in Aristotle.

I think Ricoeur was absolutely right to emphasize both the great value of potentiality and actuality in Aristotle and the generally salutary role of the other concepts mentioned, but I don’t think they are the same. Aristotelian actuality refers not just to a current state of things, but more profoundly to what is effectively operative in a process. In Aristotelian terms, I take notions like Platonic “power”, desire, or conatus to express aspects of this more profound, higher-order, and “dynamic” notion of actuality. This is all good as far as it goes, but such richer notions of actuality still do not give us true Aristotelian potentiality or its pairing with actuality, which I regard as an even greater treasure.

Potentiality consists in the concrete counterfactual conditions that give shape, generality, and a kind of substance or “thickness” to the determination of things in the present. It is always indexed to a specific actuality, supplementing and complementing it. It gives us an explicit way to talk about incomplete determination, multiple possibilities, and openness within that actuality, while still recognizing the reality of determination and concrete constraints. It helps us express real determination without overstating it. It is not itself a power, but rather what defines what our power can do.

Spinoza, in consistently following through his idea that there is only one substance, developed a fascinating relational perspective on things, but he strongly adhered to the early modern notion of a complete and univocal determination analogous to what is found in mathematics, which is ultimately incompatible with the Aristotelian notion of incomplete determination expressed in the idea of potentiality and actuality.

Leibniz’s notion of determination had a teleological as well as a mathematical component. He gave admirable consideration to variety, multiplicity, and alternate possibilities in the development of his thought. Nonetheless his notion of pre-established harmony seems to be a sophisticated variant of theological doctrines of predestination, according to which every tiny detail of the world’s unfolding follows from a divine plan.

A notion that each being has or is a kind of Platonic power is actually compatible with a notion of complete determination. For many years, this was the kind of answer I would have given as to how freedom and determination can be reconciled. In a view like this, the freedom of a being is explained in terms of its having a finite power and efficacy, and determination is explained in terms of how all the powers interact. (Leibniz of course denied real interaction, virtualizing it all into the pre-established harmony.)

In more recent years, I have wanted to stress instead that determination is real but incomplete. This is how I now read Aristotle and Hegel. Of all the major modern philosophers, it now seems to me to be Hegel who actually comes closest to recovering an Aristotelian notion of actuality and potentiality. Unlike Aristotle he does not explicitly talk about potentiality, but Hegel’s rich notion of actualization implicitly captures the nuances of the interaction of actuality and potentiality. (See also Aristotelian Actualization.)

Last post in this series: Ricoeur on Foucault