potency and act

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POTENCY AND ACT
Potency and Act is a division of being which is analogical, it is a metaphysical analogy of being which is not based on sensible but on the division of being into perfect and imperfect. It offers a new understanding of being through a two broad division of being into perfect and imperfect.
            The substances and the accidents of the predicamental world constitute a state of imperfection with respect to a higher world of being. In other words, that change/motion is from imperfect to perfect, from potency to act.
            This movement leads us to the first cause that is pure actuality.
            Pure actuality is infinite, since it admits of no motion/change; we can only know the existence of this by knowing the principles of finite beings for it is from the examination of the principles of finite being that reason leads us to accept the existence of the infinite.
            A profound observation about the natural world is its composition of contrary element/principles. Correlative and imperfect principles – in growing, moving things/substance.
            Our world is moving towards perfection, its inner constitution of potential and actual being, of partially attained goodness with (ever present) capacity for greater good.
POTENCY
Our knowledge of act and potency stems from our world of beings in motion.
Potency is always traceable to being in act, so ontologically, act is prior to potency, but since our knowledge starts from what is in motion – imperfect, cognitively, potency I s prior to act.
The starting point is potency in beings of sensible world, but metaphysics aims  at knowledge of  potency as it is applicable to being in general or common being, applicable to material and immaterial being.
ACTIVE POTENCY: the ability to effect change in others.
PASSIVE POTENCY: the capacity to receive something from something else.
So, the prior potency is the active one, since the passive is defined in relation to the active. This is the primary motion of being (active) found in changeable things of nature.
This is related by analogy to other kinds of potency in animate, inanimate, rational, irrational, spiritual, corporeal.
The nature of potency differs in a proportional manner among all the potencies, just as life differ in all animate things.
THE ETYMOLOGY OF POTENCY – is from powerful/authoritative. The potency of someone or a natural agent is impeded insofar as it can be impeded by another. So, the first meaning of potency is – not-being-affected by another. E.g. a hard thing is potent – it cannot be cut.
Just as the operation or action in which an active potency is completed corresponds to active potency, so what corresponds to passive potency as its perfection and complement is called act.
Active potency = completion => Operation/act
Passive potency รง perfection = Act

THE REALITY OF POTENCY
Some argue for non-existence of potency or such distinction in being as being posited. Such a position will certainly deny motion/change or misconstruct it. E.g. Parmenides, pragmatic philosophers, atheist existentialists, contemporary existentialists.
For this deterministic of being, nothing is (known) except what is - no potency, tendency, essence, purpose, except actuality. Fact is the only law – sensible fact.
Everything happens by necessity – what does not happen is impossible. E.g. there is no potency to build in a carpenter who is not actually building.
They do not deny accidental occurrences, but that there can be a real potentiality to something that will never be realized.
It denies substantial becoming – i.e. perfection of being
Que sera sera:
Things are absolutely predetermined in the elements that already exist. This is a wrong formulation of the mathematical aspect of occurrence = existence.
It delves real contingency in the world but allows it in the mind of the observer.
Reality is determined.
COUNTERING THE DETERMINIST/EXISTENTIALIST
Two ways:
1.      Dialectical
2.      Logical
1          The dialectical tries to show that the logical conclusion of this position is untenable. It goes this way:
If one holds existence of potency only when it is actualized



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