Comparing Aristotle's Loyalty And Act

Plato did not solve the problem of the ONE and MANY. Aristotle did so brilliantly. He held that the principles of being are POTENCY and ACT. These two states of being answer the problem of Change as well as that of the One and the Many. Potency and Act divide being in such a way that whatever is, is either pure Act (the ultimate Being, or God), or is composed of potency and act as its primary intrinsic principles (all other beings). For example, Wood has the qualities of wood, hard or soft, from this or that tree, of different colors, and so on: These are actually some of its qualities, thus it is actualized (ACT) in possessing the attributes of ” woodiness,” a concept; but it has the potential of becoming a table, a window frame, …show more content…
Existence and Essence. How is it possible for this thing (a tree, or a piece of wood) which is being and nothing but being, to be opposed or totally different from that thing (man, or bird) which also is being and nothing but being? Every finite being is subject to two affirmations or principles of being which are real, incomplete parts, yet essentially unified and related as ACT and Potency. One is a principle of fullness, perfection, infinitude, similarity, actuality called Existence. The other principle is one of limitation, imperfection, finitude, diversity, potency called Essence, but with the capacity toward perfection (due to the principle of Potency that makes it able to add on more functions, qualities--- or faculties in the case of living organisms thus becoming more actualized, as they say in …show more content…
He denied innate knowledge at birth. He said at birth our mind is a tabula rasa, an empty slate. But knowledge is one way in the senses and another way in our intellect. The process of knowledge begins with sense experience, sense data is unified by sensus communis (how else would we know that the white pigeon (our visual faculty), which was cooing (our hearing faculty) and smelled awful (olfactory faculty) and had rough feathers (touch) will be tasty (taste buds) is one and the same.) Nowadays we would equate the sensus communis with our association areas in the brain. But that changes only the name; Aristotle’s concept is still valid about the joining of knowledge from the senses by a faculty other than the external senses. After the unification of the sense experience, our perception is elaborated into an image by another internal faculty that Aristotle called Imagination. (Memory is only the remembrance of the moment in time that we recall that the perception has occurred.) This image stored in the Imagination, is still material, particular, an individual copy of the material object witnessed. We would call it a change in chemical and neurological reactions in the brain. Aristotle knew that it was not an immaterial or spiritual phenomenon yet in its progress toward ideation or