Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Aktive, passive Potenz; aktive Potenz = zweiter Akt, insofern ...; Definition: Wirkursache; Proportion: Wirkursache - Wirkung

Kurzinhalt: Passive potency: an order towards receiving an act; active potency: an order towards producing an act; efficient cause as 'that which produces something else

Textausschnitt: 14/4 Potency in general is an order towards act (ordo ad actum), and it is of two kinds (DES:58). Passive potency - the kind of potency with which I have principally been concerned up to this point - is an order towards receiving an act; a given passive potency is designated as either essential or accidental depending upon whether it is ordered to a first or a second act. The act of a passive potency, considered in itself, is the immanent perfection of some accidental potency. As such it is simply an act, not the exercise of efficient causality. (97; Fs)

15/4 Active potency, by contrast, is an order towards producing an act (DES:58, 62); moreover, it is identical with second act 'not viewed in itself or insofar as it is second act, but considered according to its own property, that is, according to the capacity of second act to produce [something] similar to itself (DES:62). Only to the extent that anything is in act can it produce an effect; in order to be an efficient cause, a thing must first have the immanent perfection of second act that, in itself, constitutes the possibility of operating an effect. In other words, the same act both perfects the subject and grounds the production of an effect: (97; Fs)

16/4 Lonergan defines an efficient cause as 'that which produces something else,' that is, 'the subject of an active potency as actuated [subiectum potentiae activae qua actuatae].' A being is in active potency insofar as it is in second act and insofar as that second act is capable of producing an effect; the same being becomes an efficient cause insofar as the effect is in fact produced. The sense of this definition will require a good deal more probing in connection with the efficacy of divine concourse. (98; Fs) (notabene)
17/4 In anticipation of that lengthier discussion, only one other comment needs to be made at this point, and it regards the proportionality between an efficient cause and its effect: (98; Fs)

This proportion is measured according to the perfection of form; hence, the active potency of an efficient cause is due to second act, but the proportion of the cause to its effect is due to form (first act), which is perfected by second act. The basis of this is the fact that second act is not of itself limited to some finite proportion, but is limited generically by the potency in which it occurs and specifically by the form which it perfects.


It is one and the same act which is both produced by an active potency and received in a passive potency [...] This selfsame act, inasmuch as it is from an active potency, is action [actio] (an act of a subject as from another), and inasmuch as it is in a passive potency, is passion [passio] (an act of a subject as in the subject). Hence, action is from the agent and in the patient [that is, the receiving subject].