ABSTRACT
Action is the realization of the power of a
person or thing to effect change in itself and
its environment. To act or to actualize is to
make real the potential or power that an actor
possesses. In the language of Aristotle’s
three modalities of possibility, necessity and
actuality, action is the movement from ‘I
can’ to ‘I do’, or from ‘I must’ to ‘I do’. I
cannot act if I lack the power or possibility
to do so; though sometimes I must act, even
if I lack the power to do so. To make actual
or become actual thus is to move from a
state of possibility to a state of reality, or
from a state of the future (‘not yet’) to a state
of the present (‘now’).
