Q43: Describe Aristotle’s account of the relation between potentiality and actuality, on the one hand, and matter and form, on the other hand. From Aristotle’s views about these two sets of paired concepts, what implications follow for the nature of the prime mover as discussed in Metaphysics XII (Lambda)?

43. Describe Aristotle’s account of the relation between potentiality and actuality, on the one hand, and matter and form, on the other hand. From Aristotle’s views about these two sets of paired concepts, what implications follow for the nature of the prime mover as discussed in Metaphysics XII (Lambda)?

1.   Matter and form

a. Matter is the stuff out of which a thing is made.

                                               i.     e.g. In a statue of David, the matter is the clay.

b. Form is the way that stuff’s arranged.

                                               i.     e.g. In a statue of David, it’s the shape of the statue.

2.   Actuality and Potentiality

a. Actuality is that by which something that is able to be something is that something

b. Potentiality is the capacity to undergo a change of some kind, to become something

3.   Comparison

a. actuality : potentiality :: form : matter

b. When you look at the distinction between matter and form synchronically, you see matter and form.  When you look at the same distinction diachronically, you see potentiality and actuality.

c. Actuality is to potentiality as that which has been shaped out of some matter (e.g. a table) is to the matter out of which it has been shaped (e.g. wood)

4.   Priority of Act to Potency

a. Actuality is prior to potentiality in logos, time, and substance.

                                               i.     Logos – because we must cite the actuality whenever we talk of the potentiality. (e.g. ‘visible’ means ‘capable of being seen’)

                                             ii.     Time – “The actual which is identical in species but not in number with a potentially existing thing is prior to it” (1049b18-19)  (e.g. some actual oak tree is prior to this acorn, i.e. to this potential oak tree.)

                                            iii.     Substance –

1.   Form or actuality is the end towards which natural processes are directed (boy becomes a man, e.g.)

2.   More strictly:

a.     A potentiality is for either of a pair of opposites; so anything capable of being is capable of not being.  What is capable of not being is perishable.  So anything with the mere potential to be is perishable.

b.     What is eternal is imperishable.  So something eternal cannot exist potentially.  What is eternal must be fully actual.

c.     The eternal exists only actually, and the perishable exists potentially. The eternal is prior to the perishable because the former can exist without the latter but not the other way around.  So actuality is prior to potency.

5.   How the above pertains to the Prime Mover:

a. The prime mover functions to explain motion, and motion is explained in terms of actuality and potency.

                                               i.     “The actuality of what is F potentially, insofar as it is F potentially, is motion.”

b. Characteristics of the prime mover:

                                               i.     ETERNAL

1.   Motion is eternal and so its cause must be eternal

2.   Why motion must be eternal: If motion at one time was not then came to be, then the mover and the moved must have at one time been in a state where the mover was not moving the moved, and altered out of that state.  But that would have required some motion within the mover or the moved. And so on, ad infinitum.

                                             ii.     UNMOVABLE

1.   If the prime mover were moveable, then there would have to be something else that causes its motion, etc.  Infinite regress.

                                            iii.     PURE ACTUALITY -- If it weren’t pure actuality, it wouldn’t be eternal.

                                            iv.     PURE FORM -- If it had any matter in it, it would be part potentiality. 

                                             v.     NECESSARY -- If not, then part potentiality.

                                            vi.     SPIRITUAL -- Has no matter, so not material.  Therefore, spiritual.

                                          vii.     INTELLECTUAL

1.   The Prime Mover cannot perform any bodily action.  Rather, its activity must be purely spiritual and therefore intellectual.

2.   The object of its thought must be (a) the best possible object (b/c the prime mover is the best) and (b) unchanging (because otherwise, the Prime Mover would change when the object of its thought changed).  So the object of its thought is itself.

                                         viii.     How it moves the universe:

1.     By being the final cause of the first moved movers.

Possibly helpful secondary source quotes:

“[T]hat which is eternal is prior in substance to that which is perishable; and that which is eternal, imperishable, is in the highest sense actual.  God, for example, exists necessarily, and that which exists necessarily must be fully actual: as the eternal Source of movement, of the reduction of potentiality to act, God must be full and complete actuality, the Unmoved First Mover.  Eternal things, says Aristotle, must be good: there can be in them no defect or badness or perversion. […] The First Unmoved Mover, being the source of all movement, as final cause, is the ultimate cause why potentiality is actualized, i.e. why goodness is realized.” – Copleston (pg. 53 in 1962 ed.)

“Every motion, every transit from potentiality to act, requires some principle in act, but if every becoming, every object in movement, requires an actual moving cause, then the world in general, the universe, requires a First Mover. [“First” meaning “supreme” not temporally first.] The First Mover is the eternal source of eternal motion.  Moreover, the First Mover is not a Creator-God: the world existed from al eternity without having been created from all eternity.  God forms the world, but did not create it, and He forms the world, is the source of motion, by drawing it, i.e. by acting as final cause.  In Aristotle’s view, if God cuased motion by efficient physical causation – “shoving” the world, as it were – then He Himself would be changed: there would be a reaction of the moved on the mover.  He must act, therefore, as Final Cause, by being an object of desire.” – Copleston (pp. 56-7 in 1962 ed.)