Autor: Schmitz, Kenneth L.

Buch: The Gift: Creation

Titel: The Gift: Creation

Stichwort: Schöpfung - Geschenk; ex nihilo; potior; Ordnung des Seins (Seinsakt) - Entstehung aus Chaos (vom Unbestimmten zum Bestimmten); Thomas: Akt als erstes Prinzip; Heidegger: Kritik (Primat von Akt); Nicht-Reprozität: Akt - Potenz (Geber - Empfänger)

Kurzinhalt: Because act is a first principle, and because first incomplex principles (prima simplicia) cannot be defined, it does not follow that act cannot be known. For it can be grasped (videri) by the relation (proportio) two things have to each other ...

Textausschnitt: 103a St. Thomas insists that act is prior to potency, and more potent, too.12 In so saying, he knowingly puts his foot upon a path already trodden a goodly way by Aristotle. It is important, however, to point out another path that lies at the beginning of our philosophical and poetic tradition; especially, since it is a path that others have trod and which still has travellers on it today. It begins with the radical ambiguity expressed by the Latin term potior. What is it to be potent? Now, this alternative to the Aristotelian way combines commonality with a certain kind of indeterminacy, so that determinacy will be derivative and secondary. Along the Aristotelian path, on the other hand, the radical ambiguity in the conception of potency is disentangled by the distinction between potency as the capacity to receive actualization or determination and potency as the capability to actualize or determine. This distinction between passive potency and active potency is further resolved into the more fundamental distinction between potency (matter in the order of substance-formation, and substrate in the order of accidental modification) and act (form in the first order, and accident in the second). In accordance with this Aristotelian distinction, the origin of any change must be sought in the actual principle appropriate to the change: in the order of being, act is prior and more potent than potency. Along the alternative way, however, the origin must be sought in the recovery of an original ambivalent unity, so that the differentiated orders of things can be returned, in thought at least, to their undifferentiated source. This source is represented poetically among the Greeks as a fecund Chaos, the mother of all things. It seems to reign in the same mythical atmosphere mentioned at the beginning of this lecture. But it passed over into the philosophical tradition as well, where it became an alternate form of the principle of plenitude; for this primordial fullness was conceived neither as material nor formal, neither physical nor spiritual, neither potential in the Aristotelian sense of passive potency nor actual. (Fs) (notabene)

104a Heidegger's reflection upon the conceptions of genesis, moira, logos, aletheia and physis at the beginning of our Greek tradition attempts to show that the religious poets and the earliest philosophers articulated a fullness out of which a differentiated order came by a process of original self-distinction. At first the regions were taken over by mythical divine presences (as in Hesiod), and later by the elemental principles of the philosophers (the Presocratics). The emergence of order led both thought and being towards greater determinacy. (Fs)

105a But in a tradition which represents the origin as an original plenitude, an unlimited source of being, power and good, determinacy forecloses upon that boundless source; and so the determinate is always derivative. According to Heidegger under the sponsorship of Plato and Aristotle philosophy tended to rest content with an understanding of beings as determinate beings (Seienden). In this view, the distinctions drawn by Aristotle, therefore, cannot be primary ones, because they are built upon the determinate results of the process of the origination of things. It follows, then, that the Aristotelian claim to the primacy of act over potency rests upon an understanding of being that is itself derivative, merely entitative, categorial and ontic. The true task of philosophy is, instead, to "get behind" these determinate beings in order to recover and reawaken the more original process by which things come to be. Reflecting upon the primordiality of things, authentic philosophical thought is meant to recapture the morphology of the mythical process of origins. The Aristotelian path is one that thought had to tread, but it is a cul de sac from which we must retrace our steps to the beginning. (Fs) (notabene)

105b St. Thomas lived too early to heed Heidegger's advice,13 of course, but he knew of the alternative path just the same. Moreover, he retraced the steps taken by Aristotle by writing commentaries on the Philosopher's most philosophical treatises. But this simply confirmed for him the primacy of act over potency, for he agrees with Aristotle that it is prior to and more potent than potency: prior et potior. We are certainly entitled to ask how he knows this. He tells us that just because act is a first principle it cannot be demonstrated. On the other hand, he never suggests that we must have a privileged intuition if we are to become initiates of the Aristotelian way. Nor is act something irrational, as though it had to be posited arbitrarily, felt obscurely or based upon a groundless belief. Indeed, St. Thomas insists that being is by its very nature most intelligible (maxime intelligibilis); all the more, then, is act intellegible, for act is the distinctive character of being. Moreover, the primacy of act over potency is not a mere postulate (positio) to be accepted without full certitude, but is rather a maxim (dignitas) or maximal proposition, firmly and adequately knowable, even if it requires study.14 Because act is a first principle, and because first incomplex principles (prima simplicia) cannot be defined, it does not follow that act cannot be known. For it can be grasped (videri) by the relation (proportio) two things have to each other; as for example, how the builder relates to what is buildable, or someone awake to someone asleep.15 From such particular examples, then, we can come to the knowledge of both act and potency indirectly (proportionaliter). (Fs) (notabene)

106a Not only is the primacy of act relevant to creation ex nihilo, but so too is the nature of the order that properly obtains between potency and act. Their relation is not in itself one of reciprocity. Act alone is absolute; potency is only relative. Act stands to potency somewhat in the way in which Aristotle's primary subjects of predication stand to their predicates; for predicates are referred to them, but they are not predicated of anything else.16 So, too, act alone is in its full and proper sense non-referrable, for there is nothing to refer it to.17 Within a certain order, act stands for that which is most fully determinate in that order; and in the order of being, act stands for that which is absolutely determinate. Capacity or passive potency, on the other hand, can be understood only by reference to another, viz., to the actuality that fulfills it. Precisely as potency, it has no other meaning or reality than such other-directedness.18 The relation of what is potential in the thing to what is actual is one of real dependence, that is, dependence for the actuality it has or may receive (participation). Act, on the other hand, can be referred to potentiality only by a relation of reason, that is, one of our own making.19 We can put act into a relation of equivalence and reciprocity, since both of them are terms equally at our disposal; but the equivalence and reciprocity do not preside in the thing. In the thing there is inequality and non-reciprocity between the actual and the non-actual or potential features of the thing. Act is related to potency in the way in which the knowable is related to the knowledge of it, and God is related to creatures: by relations of reason alone. The very non-reciprocity that we found to hold between giver and receiver does not hold only between creator and creature; it is also reflected in the ontological interior of the creature itself. (Fs) (notabene)