Tag: Translation

Potentiality and Possibility

“At the conclusion of Theta 3, we had recognized in dunamis at the same time the condition of becoming and a mode of being, and in energeia the mode of being that is opposed to it and which characterizes, beyond movement, all that which is effective. In defining what is in-potentiality as that which is not in-act, we have also distinguished it from non-being, in characterizing it as that which can be in act. Now we need to pursue the examination of what is in play in this division, or the modality of the relation of the in-potentiality to act” (Aubry, Dieu san la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 4, p. 124, my translation throughout, with Becker number citations to Aristotle’s Greek text elided).

“The discussion of Theta 4 concerns neither dunamis nor what is dunamei, but rather the dunaton. This term nonetheless can designate both the possible and that which has power, or the capable, just as much as adunaton can designate the impossible as well as that which lacks power. In Theta 3, the dunaton had been defined in terms of dunamis as ‘that for which nothing makes it impossible for the act (energeia) to exist, when it is said to have power (dynamis)'” (ibid).

Clearly, dynamis, dynamei, and dynaton all have related etymologies. My Greek isn’t strong enough to just casually read Aristotle’s original the way I can mostly read Aubry’s French without a dictionary, so this is a bit of an eye-opener. This is why Aristotle’s discussions of what we render by English words that have different etymologies are so closely related.

Because the English words do not have this visible relation to one another, it is easy to be confused by the ways in which Aristotle relates the corresponding Greek terms. For years, I have been puzzled by English translators’ seemingly random alternations between respective uses of power, potentiality, and possibility for what was supposed to be the “same” concept in Aristotle. Aubry’s highlighting of the Greek words tells me I should have long ago studied this more carefully with the side-by-side Greek and English texts in the Loeb edition. The translators’ alternations are probably not random at all, just not commented upon. We are not dealing here with things confusingly said of one same concept, but rather with things more clearly said about each of several related concepts. This is just the kind of disambiguation that Aristotle himself pioneered.

“Book Delta defines [the possible] differently, as that of which the contrary is not necessarily false; that which is true; that which can be true. Thus characterized without relation to dunamis, dunaton no longer means having power, but possible. Delta opposes it to the impossible, adunaton, defined as ‘that of which the contrary is necessarily true’ (for example, the commensurability of the diagonal of a square with its sides), and distinguishes the possible and the impossible thus defined, from power (dunamis) and the lack of power (adunamia)” (ibid).

“Nevertheless, the definitions of Delta again carry an equivocity: in its second sense (that which is true), the possible includes the necessary, or what cannot not be: according to the first and third definition, on the other hand, it is identified with the contingent (to endekhomenon). It is this last sense that is mentioned in Prior Analytics book I: ‘that which is not necessary, and of which one can think that it exists without that leading to any impossibility'” (pp. 124-125).

“The possible is indeed defined sometimes as including, sometimes as excluding the necessary. In its first sense, it can be identified with logical possibility: that is called possible which is not contradictory; the necessary — that which cannot not be the case — can thus be called possible, in the sense that it is true (noncontradictory) to say that it is the case. But the possible can also be identified with the contingent: it thus no longer [indifferently] designates that which cannot not be, or again that which can be this or that. In this second sense, the possible is opposed no longer to the contradictory, but seems to be identifiable with power, understood as the power of contraries (being A or not-A), and of contradictories (being or not being” (p. 125).

We saw previously that both of two contradictories cannot be in act or be the case at the same time, but contradictories can both potentially be in act or be the case.

“The remainder of Theta 4, up to the beginning of Theta 5, nonetheless has the object of opposing determinism. This begins from the distinction between the impossible and the false. A strong determinist position in effect comes back to saying that nothing is possible that is not and will not be true. This position assumes a triple reduction, not only of the possible to the potential and of the potential to the actual, but also of the actual to the true” (p. 126).

This leads back to the position of the Megarians. But Aristotle clearly affirms that the non-actual is not impossible. She quotes, “It is false that you are standing right now, but it is not impossible” (ibid).

Aristotelian potentiality encompasses alternate possibilities.

Next in this series: An Aside on Necessity

Act and Action

Still pursuing roots of the modern “subject” in medieval Latin scholasticism by way of Alain de Libera’s Archéologie du sujet, I’ve reached the point where de Libera reviews Bernard Lonergan’s detailed account of act, action, and related terms in Aquinas. The most noteworthy conclusion is that Aquinas distinguishes “act” from “action” in opposite ways in different texts, when he combines it with his other distinction between cases of immanent and transient action. This confusion appears not to have originated with Aquinas himself, but rather with the Latin translations of Greek texts that he used.

In any event, the way these distinctions are deployed by Aquinas is to say the least highly fluid, which is to say that any attempt to interpret them univocally would result in contradictions. (Burrell, who considers the analogy of being a later development attributable to Cajetan, nonetheless suggests that there is an analogy of action in Aquinas.)

De Libera constructs a table of Latin terms (vol. 3 part 1, p. 325) used by Aquinas for the Greek energeia (literally “in-actness”, for which I’ve been using the conventional translation of “actuality”) in the agent and in an external product, respectively. Energeia may be actus in the agent and actio in the product, or vice versa. It may be operatio in the agent and either actio or factio in the product. It may be actio in the agent and factio in the product.

“What it is necessary to understand in this context is that for Aristotle it is one and the same principle that accounts for act, whether in the agent or the product. That principle is form” (ibid, my translation, emphasis added). According to de Libera, for Aquinas too form is the principle of both the act that remains in the agent, and that which passes to the product. (Burrell reads Aquinas in a relational way that avoids de Libera’s suggestion of something passing between agent and product. The idea of something passing between agent and product suggests Suarez’s later explanation of efficient causation by “influence”.)

De Libera takes note (pp. 327-332) of the Latin translation of the influential definition of praxis (ethical action or practice) in the treatise On the Nature of Man by the 4th century CE Syrian bishop Nemesius of Emesa used by Aquinas. In Greek, Nemesius says “praxis is energeia logiké“. The Latin translation by Burgundio of Pisa says “gestio is actus rationalis“. But the same translator rendered the same Greek sentence in The Orthodox Faith by the 7th century monk John of Damascus as “actio is operatio rationalis“.

This might seem like a complete muddle. But if we take act as form as the guiding thread as de Libera suggests, it may be possible to get something coherent out of it. On the other hand, some adjustment would still be required if we also accepted the identification of act with action and of action with an efficient cause. If act is supposed to be understood as form and end and action as the efficient cause or means by which an end is accomplished, then act cannot be identified with action.

It is one thing to recognize the limits of attempting to apply univocity and formalism in logic to the real world, and quite another to affirm a contradiction. But this is a quite delicate area, and sometimes there are arguments whether there is truly a contradiction or merely an implicit distinction between cases. The answer to this depends on interpretation, and every interpretation is subject to dialogue.

De Libera says that Burgundio’s translation of John of Damascus “introduces nothing less than the ‘modern’ vocabulary of action” (p. 327). Thus it seems that Aquinas ends up with an unstable combination of Aristotelian and “modern” meanings for act and action, but the instability was already present in the sources he used.