ALEJANDRINO, MICHAEL S.

BSEE – 4A

Actuality and Potentiality

Actuality and Potentiality are contrasting terms for that which has form, in Aristotle‘s sense,
and that which has merely the possibility of having form. According to Wikipedia that in
philosophy, potentiality and actuality are principles of a dichotomy which Aristotle used to
analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean
Ethics and De Anima, which is about the human psyche.

Actuality (energeia in Greek) is that mode of being in which a thing can bring other things
about or be brought about by them, the realm of events and facts. Actuality, in contrast to
potentiality, is the motion, change or activity that represents an exercise or fulfillment of a
possibility, when a possibility becomes real in the fullest sense. Within the works of Aristotle the
terms energeia and entelecheia, often translated as actuality, differ from what is merely actual
because they specifically presuppose that all things have a proper kind of activity or work which, if
achieved, would be their proper end. Greek for end in this sense is telos, a component word
in entelecheia (a work that is the proper end of a thing) and also teleology. This is an aspect of
Aristotle's theory of four causes and specifically of formal cause (eidos, which Aristotle says
is energeia]) and final cause (telos).

By contrast, potentiality (dynamis in Greek) is not a mode in which a thing exists, but rather
the power to effect change, the capacity of a think to make transitions into different states. n his
philosophy, Aristotle distinguished two meanings of the word dunamis. According to his
understanding of nature there was both a weak sense of potential, meaning simply that something
"might chance to happen or not to happen", and a stronger sense, to indicate how something could
be done well. For example, "sometimes we say that those who can merely take a walk, or speak,
without doing it as well as they intended, cannot speak or walk". This stronger sense is mainly said
of the potentials of living things, although it is also sometimes used for things like musical
instruments.
References:
https://www.the-philosophy.com/actuality-potentiality-aristotle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiality_and_actuality

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