ABSTRACT
The term ‘potentiality’ has been used with many different meanings (ma‘nā-hā but in this context we are using only two senses of the term: the one is active potentiality and the other is passive potentiality. Inherent in the agent of an act is active potentiality which will make it possible for the agent to realize the action in question, as heat is the condition of fire. Passive potentiality is that condition due to which something is receptive to something else, as wax, for example, is receptive to form. Whatever is realized is called an actuality (ḥāṣil, which is the act of realization rather than the act of affecting something else. By virtue of having a double meaning, the act of realization is often mistaken. Since it is possible for it to be actualized while it does not yet exist, its possibility of being (i.e. existing as a possible x when the x itself does not yet exist) is called a potentiality. And for this reason it is said that anything exists either potentially or actually. For that being the state of being possible must be something real, because that which is possible exists, though it does not yet exist as an actuality. If the possibility of its being is not something real, then being possible is of no advantage to it. Hence, the entity would not be in the state of being a mere possibility. Thus, it will not be possible for it to be. For this reason it will never exist. Accordingly, being possible is a state which no longer exists when an entity is being realized. Whatever exists is either a substance or an accident. The being of a substance is due to its own essence (nature, dhāt) while the being of being possible is due not to its own essence but to that thing which is its possibility of being. Thus, being possible is not a distinct substance (jauhar-i mufrad). 2 Being possible is then either a condition (ḥālī) of a substance, or a substance to which a condition is connected. If it is a substance with a condition, then it is this condition, without doubt, which is the possible being. It will, no doubt, be an element (‘unṣur), and, furthermore, it will be the matter (substratum) of a thing, for any entity which contains the possibility of another thing is its matter. If it is a condition within a substance, then that substance in which the condition subsists will be a matter. And for each condition there will logically be first a matter on which the existence of that thing will depend, for it is from and due to matter that being possible can be realized. Thus, for whatever exists, after it ceases to exist and is no longer in time, there is a matter in which its potentiality subsists. If one asserts that the power of the agent is the possibility of its being, one is mistaken, for it is contrary to reason to say ‘Until a thing has a power over it, it will not have a power’. Instead, it is reasonable to say “Until something does not have the possibility of being due to its own nature, there cannot be a power in it’, since there cannot be a power in an absurdity (i.e. something which cannot be). Therefore, being possible in itself is necessarily something else by which it is to be realized in that matter, as we shall explain later.
