Absalom, Absalom! Time and the Virtual

Abstract

The human bears an easier relationship to potentiality than to virtuality. We might even say that the human is only properly to be spoken of as human so long as it remains within the limits of potentiality. Once that limit is exceeded, once we are in the realm of the virtual, we are also in the realm of the nonhuman. In fact, one of Aristotle’s most important definitions of potency is also a kind of de facto description of the human. In The Metaphysics, Aristotle explains how the human (only one example of the many instances of potentiality and actuality he employs, but the one in which, for obvious reasons, I am interested) must be moved by its own principle.

For example, is earth potentially a man? No, but rather when it has already become a seed, and perhaps not even then… [T]he seed is not yet potentially a man; for it must be placed in something else and change. And when it is already such that it can be moved by its own principle, it is then potentially a man; but prior to this it has need of another principle. It is like the earth, which is not yet potentially a statue, for it needs to be changed and become bronze. (153)

When there is an outside influence, a movement across a threshold, a becoming-other. potency is not vet at work.