Scholastic Metaphysics: Act, Potency, Being and Causality

Act and Potency

Act is the reality by which something exists in its perfection. In the first sense, the term refers to the notion of change or movement. Potency is the capacity of a thing to act or to be acted upon. Potency is only understood in relation to act, since we can only grasp what potency is by considering the act to which it is ordered.

Act is divided into pure act (perfection without any admixture of potency) and act of potency, which is the perfection of a being that is in potency. The first division of act, formally the first of the constituent categories, is substantial act (subsisting, existing in itself) or accidental act (not subsisting, dependent on a substance).

Terminus and Tendency

Terminus is the tendency of something, which presents itself as an end.

Appetite

Appetite is the tendency or inclination toward an end. According to its object, there are two classes of appetitive faculties:

• Sensitive appetite, which originates in sensuality.
• Intellectual appetite (will), which originates in the intellect.

The sensitive appetite is divided into two:

• Concupiscible: the tendency toward what is sensibly good.
• Irascible: the tendency toward what is sensibly difficult to attain.

Apprehension

Apprehension (aprehensión) originally means to grasp or take hold of the first thing. In intellectual acts, it means to conceive the first thing.

Axiom

An axiom is the principle that constitutes the foundation of all science. It consists of propositions to which all others are reduced.

Chance

Chance refers to what happens accidentally in things that are not natural. It designates that which occurs exceptionally. Its accidental causality implies that it is not necessary, but it does not exclude or make inexplicable what is otherwise absurd. It designates an event that occurs when causal series intersect, several independent series crossing one another.

Being

Being is of two kinds: the first is the metaphysical property of being, that which is true and one; the second is moral, that which is desirable, something desirable because it is.

Absolute Good

Absolute good refers to someone in whom God gives fullness of good in its totality.

Boethius

Boethius was an eclectic philosopher of Rome, whose holistic efforts aimed at ordering, compiling and interpreting philosophical works.

Efficient Cause

The efficient cause is that which gives rise to a positive principle that necessarily produces its effect. The concept of dependence on the cause is Aristotelian, but it acquires a new meaning: the cause is that by which the effect comes into existence. Between cause and effect there is an ontological dependence, as in productive causality.

Knowledge

In a structuralist sense, knowledge is the taking up of an object, the reality of the thing as part of a subject. It can be sensible, depending on the external senses and internal acts, and intelligible, depending on the understanding. In intelligible knowledge, there is apprehension and reasoning.

Natural Bodies

Natural bodies exist as physical objects in nature, and their sensible properties are caused by them, as in living biological organisms, including humans.

De Ebdomadibus

De Ebdomadibus (On the Hebdomads), also known by its abbreviated title, is a metaphysical treatise of the Middle Ages, very commonly studied by medieval thinkers. It addresses goodness and concludes that being and all good things are good because God is good.

Demonstration

Demonstration is true reasoning. It reaches a conclusion based on causes, seeking the reason for what a thing is. There are several types: propter quid demonstration, which gives the complete reason through causes and principles, and quia demonstration, which does not give the principles or complete reason.

God

God is the supreme being, pure act without any potency. Since there is no composition of essence and existence in God, the existence of God is not composed as in other beings. In God, there is no difference between essence and existence.

Ens (Being)

Ens is a Latin term meaning that which is. Whatever participates in being is an ens.

Essence

For Aristotle, essence is the thing itself. In its conceptual sense, it is that which does not change. It is the metaphysical sense of essence: what the thing is, and it answers the question of what a being is.