We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
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 .
To save content items 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.
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.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.