POTENTIALITY AND ITS RELATION TO CONSCIOUSNESS

The Nature-Person Relation in the Potentiality of the Man -Subject The integration of nature in the person achieved by way of the metaphysical

reduction brings to light the unity and the identity of man as a subjective being. The integration of humanness by the person, which is equally the integration of the person by humanness, does not however abolish in any way that difference between the person and nature which is manifest in the total experience of man, especially in its inner aspect. The fact of the unity and identity of the human being as the subject of the dynamism proper to him does not abolish in any way the fact of the difference between man's acting and all the things only happening in him, between action and the various activations. Neither does the integration of nature in the person abolish or in any way obscure the fact that man's personality is ascertained from his actions, that is to say, from his conscious acting, while everything else is contained in the person because of the identity and the unity of that subject which acts consciously and performs actions. "Personality" as here used means that man is a person. Man's being a person and the fact that this is manifested or visualized in his conscious acting as well as in his consciousness was discussed in the preceding chapter. We owe to consciousness and especially to its reflexive function, that man - the

subjective autonomous being - has the experience of himself as the subject, which makes his being fully "subjective."

The difference between person and nature within the frame of the same ontological structure of man is obvious, even when we consider their metaphysical integration: if there were no distinctiveness, there would be no need to integrate. Humanness and personality (the fact of being a person) are two different things. In this study, where we are striving to arrive at the deepest possible understanding of the structure of man's acting, nature as humanness may be but another step in our analysis and comes in only as if it was its background. In the foreground there is nature as the ground of causation for the human ontological basis, and following it comes a certain form of dynamization of that ontological basis. In other words, we are interested in the relation of nature to the person from the viewpoint of the potentiality of the man-subject. We may even say that hitherto our whole analysis was indirectly an analysis of his potentiality.

Potentiality Indicates the Source of the Inner Dynamization of the Subject The reason for this last conclusion lies in the fact that we take note of the

potentiality of the man-subject by ascertaining its dynamism. Either form of this dynamism - man's acting or action, and all that happens in him and that we have

called "his activation" - issues from within and has its origin in the subject, which in our account we have rightly defined as dynamic. The dynamism of the subject is derived from his potentiality; for potentiality consists in having at one's disposal certain powers inherent in the subject. At this point, however, we have to define some of our terms. Dynamism, etymologically derived from the Greek dynamis, means force or power, while potentiality, derived from the Latin potentia, here denotes power or faculty. We thus see that etymologically the two terms are very closely related. But their application in the present discussion also shows the clearly marked differences between them. Thus dynamism, as we could see, refers primarily to that actual dynamization of the man-subject which issues from within and may have the form either of acting or of happening. Potentiality, on the other hand, denotes the source itself of this dynamization of the subject, the source that is

inherent and that ceaselessly pulsates in the subject, and which comes to the surface in one or the other form of the subject's dynamization. In the traditional conception of man based on metaphysical premises this source is called "faculty"; a faculty is equivalent to the point where a force is focused, the center where power resides and is wielded.

We ascertain the potentiality of the man-subject while ascertaining his dynamism.

Accordingly, our knowledge of it is in fact experiential: contained in either form of dynamism - whether acting or happening - there is also potentiality as the basis and as the source of the then existing dynamization. This basis is not, however, as apparent in experience as is the dynamization itself of the subject and the actual form of the dynamism. Our interpretation of it, that is, of the dynamic source of either form of the actual dynamism, rests on a reasoning that is strictly connected with the overall object of experience; far from being detached from the object, our reasoning goes deeper into the heart of the matter than when the dynamism in any of its forms is merely taken note of. When man acts and when anything happens in him, it is first of all this concrete form of the dynamization of the man-subject that is given us experientially, whereas its basis and its source are given us only indirectly, as if they came at secondhand; for experience clearly shows that this form of dynamism issues from within. But, while revealing the innerness of the source, experience must also show what is the source of the dynamization within the

subject; it must point not just to the subject as a whole but to the particular, clearly defined dynamic source for one or other form of the dynamization of the subject.

Without these well defined but varied sources it would be difficult to explain why the subject is dynamized in such different ways.

The Different Basis of Activity and Passivity in the Potentiality of Man The most striking difference is that which occurs between the dynamization of the subject when man acts and when there is something happening in him. Underlying this difference in the dynamism of man there must be a different potentiality of the human ontological nucleus with its regulative organization. To grasp and define the specific nature in the structure of man's acting from the point of view of the subject's potentiality is one of the chief aims in this study. We advance toward this objective step by step, by analyzing the separate contents of both structures. The structure of something happening in man indicates a different basis for the potentiality of the man-subject than for the structure of man's acting. However we may venture to guess that if the difference in the forms of the dynamism itself is so striking, then

there has to be a corresponding difference in the potentialities, which means that different faculties must lie at the dynamic roots of acting and happening, of action and activation.³³ The problem was fully investigated by traditional philosophical anthropology (psychology), and as we are here striving to focus our attention on the person with all his specific dynamism, we will not follow the traditional path of

discriminating between man's particular faculties as such. The road of tradition being well trodden and fully explored we must abandon it at this point. We shall instead follow the basic intuition of the person as it manifests itself in actions. Accordingly, in approaching the end of the analysis of this dynamism, which has already brought out the specific role of the efficacy of the personal ego in every action, we have now to turn again to our earlier discussion of consciousness. In doing so our aim is to develop a more precise conception of the relation of consciousness to potentiality in man.

The Relation of Consciousness to Psychoemotive Potentiality

With this purpose in view we are going to consider two very different kinds of both dynamism and potentiality, which may also be spoken of as two structural levels of the dynamic man-subject. They also constitute two levels of the subjectiveness of every concrete ego, because at these levels the ego has the experience of itself only as the subject and not as the actor, which it would have when acting consciously, that is, in actions. The two levels in the dynamism as well as in the potentiality of man are the psychoemotive and the somato-vegetative.

It is worth noting that we are always concerned with the relation of dynamism to potentiality, so far as the relation is visualized in the experience of man (and

especially with reference to his inner aspect). It is in this aspect that, because of the different relation to consciousness, the vegetative dynamism and indirectly the vegetative potentiality differs in man from the emotive dynamism and also indirectly from the emotive potentiality. Consciousness in its mirroring function, and the reflexive consciousness that follows, is the condition of having a subjective

experience, in this case of having the experience of what is happening in man. Thus we are not at present concerned with the objective difference between those acts and faculties as such which pertain to the somato-vegetative and the psychoemotive levels, but with what we may call their position in the reflecting of consciousness and in experience, and with the range of consciousness in these areas of man's

potentiality. All this is not without significance for the complete image, in which we consider the man-person not only as an objective being who is the subject, but also in connection with the experience he has of the subjectiveness of his being and acting. These conditions are not without significance in the effort to understand the vegetative and emotive forms themselves of both the dynamism and the potentiality.

The difference between the two forms of the dynamism as well as between the two levels of man's potentiality manifests itself among others in our awareness of one but not of the other. This refers first of all to the character of the dynamism itself, that is to say, of the corresponding actualizations. The acts of the emotive sphere - or, in other words, that form of dynamism which in the subject is based on and springs from the psychoemotive potentiality - are clearly mirrored in consciousness.

They have, if one may say so, their place in the field of consciousness, and they proceed in the subject as more or less distinct experiences. We may even say that

not only are we aware of them, but that they are inherently accessible to

consciousness, which means that consciousness must necessarily reflect them and include them as experiences in the inner profile of man's subjectiveness.

The Relation of Consciousness to Somato-Vegetative Potentiality

The acts of the vegetative sphere - that sphere or form of the human dynamism which in the subject is based on and springs from the somato-vegetative potentiality - do not on the whole attain man's awareness, and they even seem to be

inaccessible to consciousness. It is to be stressed that the somato-vegetative dynamism and its corresponding potentiality in the man-subject are connected with the human body so far as it constitutes the organism. The term "vegetative" is used here in a wider sense than when we speak, for instance, of the vegetative system in medicine. Its meaning corresponds approximately to the old Aristotelian idea of the vegetative soul. The somato-vegetative dynamism is that form of the dynamism proper to man which is vital to the human body as an actual organism and, moreover, so far as the organism conditions the various psychical functions.

The whole of this dynamism and consequently also its corresponding potentiality seems to have an entirely different margin in the field of consciousness, one that is much more restricted and indirect than that of the psychoemotive dynamism. Man is aware of his body but as something that has its specific life. Having the awareness of the body leads indirectly to having the awareness of the organism. But the human being has no direct and detailed consciousness of his organism; he is not conscious of the particular dynamic instances of acts which compose the whole of the

vegetative dynamism. These factual instances, these forms of the dynamism of the human subject, remain inaccessible to consciousness. They occur and develop spontaneously without the accompaniment of their being mirrored in consciousness.

The dynamic facts, the acts of the somato-vegetative nature, are not included as experiences in the inner profile of the human subjectiveness. It is only by means of sensations that we can have the experience of anything that happens at this

structural level of the human subject, a fact already mentioned in the preceding chapter. Accordingly, when we have, for instance, the experience of physical pain or physical well-being and fitness, then the nature of the experience is basically

psychical and not vegetative, though its objective roots are on the somato-vegetative level, in the potentiality of this level.

The total experience of the body and the consciousness of the body seem to rely extensively on the sphere of sensations, the so-called bodily sensations. Since the significance of somato-vegetative and psychoemotive factors in the study of the acting person is indubitable, and since these questions deserve a fully detailed and comprehensive analysis, their discussion is deferred to a separate chapter.

7. THE RELATION OF POTENTIALITY TO CONSCIOUSNESS