Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T14:18:50.857Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 3 - Active Powers

from Part I - The Elements of Paradigm Instances of Efficient Causation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2022

Gloria Frost
Affiliation:
University of St Thomas, Minnesota
Get access

Summary

This chapter is about Aquinas’s views on active powers. Aquinas uses the Latin term potentiae to refer to active powers in general. Accordingly, the chapter begins with Aquinas’s understanding of the distinction between potentiality and actuality and the different types of potentialities. The chapter next considers his views on how active potentialities are individuated. Aquinas claims that active potentialities are distinguished by the acts that immediately arise from them. The chapter then examines Aquinas’s views on what active powers are ontologically. Aquinas identifies active power with form. Forms are both that by which a substance is actual in a determinate way and that through which a substance is capable of causing the same type of form in another substance. Although Aquinas thinks that active powers are forms, he denies that every form is an active power for material change. For example, the form of redness is not an active power for making other substances red. The final sections of the chapter discuss Aquinas’s views about which forms are and are not active powers for initiating material change.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Active Powers
  • Gloria Frost, University of St Thomas, Minnesota
  • Book: Aquinas on Efficient Causation and Causal Powers
  • Online publication: 11 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009225403.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Active Powers
  • Gloria Frost, University of St Thomas, Minnesota
  • Book: Aquinas on Efficient Causation and Causal Powers
  • Online publication: 11 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009225403.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Active Powers
  • Gloria Frost, University of St Thomas, Minnesota
  • Book: Aquinas on Efficient Causation and Causal Powers
  • Online publication: 11 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009225403.005
Available formats
×