THE BASIC CONCEPTIONS AND DIFFERENTIATIONS OF HUMAN DYNAMISM

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THE BASIC CONCEPTIONS AND DIFFERENTIATIONS OF HUMAN DYNAMISM

Introductory Remarks on the Relation of Dynamism to Consciousness We now abandon the aspect of consciousness in order that we may understand better its functions through an analysis of the fact that man acts. The fact is given us first in the experience of "I act." Because of the experience we ourselves are placed, as it were, right inside this fact. Similarly, the fullness of an experience is inherent in our process of experiencing, and thus by analogy and generalization it is the basis for the formation of the human act. For every ego is a human being and every human being is this, that, or any other ego. Hence, when it is "you," "he," or

"anybody else" who acts, their acting can be understood on the ground of

experiencing our own acting, in "I act." The experience of acting is subjective in the sense that it keeps us within the limits of the concrete subjectivity of the acting human ego, without however obscuring the intersubjectivity that is needed for the understanding and interpretation of human acting.

The objectivation of the fact of "man-acts" requires an equally objective presentation of integral human dynamism.²⁶ For this experiential fact occurs not in isolation but in the context of the entire human dynamism and in organic relation to it. The

dynamism in question is the total dynamism that is present in the complete

experience of man. Not everything belonging to the human dynamism is reflected in consciousness. For instance, practically nothing' of the vegetative dynamism of the human body is mirrored in consciousness. Similarly, not all the factors of the human dynamism may be consciously experienced by him. We already had the opportunity to mention briefly the disproportion between the totality of man's life and the scope or range of his experiences, and we shall return to the question to expound and complement it. At any rate, it is the conditions themselves of experience that seem to dictate in the analysis of the human dynamism the need to put aside at present the aspect of consciousness and the questions bearing only upon experiencing. It is not by accident that in the Introduction we discriminated the total experience of man from its various aspects, of which its inner aspect was even then seen as being closely connected with consciousness.

All the same, it is not only the dynamism proper to man that receives its basic reflection in consciousness; the human being is aware as well of the main trends in his dynamism, this awareness being connected also with his experiencing them.

Indeed, he experiences acting and doing as something essentially different from the mere happening, that is to say, from what only takes place or goes on in him and in what he as man takes no active part. Having the experience of the two, objectively different structures - of the "man-acts" and the "something-happens-in-him" - together with their differentiation in the field of experience, provides the evidence, on the one hand, of the essential contiguity of man's consciousness with his being;

on the other hand, the differentiation of experience gives each of these structures that innerness and subjectiveness which in general we owe to consciousness. At present, however, we are not interested in experiencing as such but in those structures which to be objectively differentiated require that we rely upon the total experience of man and not merely on the evidence which might be supplied by our consciousness. The immanent experience itself is insufficient with respect to all the processes, operations, events and states of the human body, all that pertains to the life of the organism. We always have to reach to other sources than the merely spontaneous and instantaneous evidence of consciousness itself and the experiences associated with it; we have to supplement it continuously from the outside in order to make our knowledge of man in this dimension as complete as possible.

The Juxtaposition of "To Act" and "To Happen" as the Experiential Basis of Activeness and Passiveness

The two objective structures, "man-acts" and "something-happens-in-man,"

determine the two fundamental lines of the dynamism proper to man. Their directions are mutually opposite, so far as man's "activeness," that is to say, his acting, is visualized - and actualized -in one, while his certain passiveness, and passivity, are in the other. In each of these elemental lines of the dynamism proper to man the phenomenon or the content of visualization corresponds to the actual structure, and, conversely, each structure manifests itself as the phenomenon. The activeness and the passiveness visualized in either line are the constituents of the structures and the objective ground for their differentiation. The "activeness" in the

"man-acts" structure is something different from the "passiveness" of the

"something-happens-in-man" structure, the two being mutually opposite. In this opposition the whole structure, the one and the other, takes part.²⁷

Just as we may consider "activeness" and "passiveness" to be not only mutually opposed but also conditioned and determined by each other, so we can draw a line separating what we do from what happens in us, though the things on either side of the line not only differ but also mutually account for themselves. This has the greatest importance for understanding the "man-acts" structure and subsequently for its possibly complete interpretation. We may say that man's actions and all that happens in him are not only mutually opposed but also distinctly correlated in the sense of a certain parity of both facts or both structures. For speaking of acting we say "man acts," and of what takes place in him we say it "happens in man," so that in either statement man stands as the dynamic subject. Man's actions just as much as the things that happen in him provide - all in their own way - the realization of the dynamism proper to the human being. Both have their source in man; and thus if in another aspect we speak of activeness and passiveness as of two different directions

in the same dynamism, we thereby assert that the direction "from within" is common to both - the more so as it forms part of the essence of all dynamism. Though

activeness and passiveness differentiate the dynamism they do not deprive it of the unity issuing out of the same dynamic subject; this, however, in no way alters the fact that action differs from the rest of the dynamic manifestations of the man-subject, the manifestations that are included in the category of passiveness.

It also seems necessary to call attention to two different forms of passiveness that are expressed in the propositions, "Something happens in man" and "Something happens with man." In ordinary speech these propositions may sometimes be used indiscriminately; often, in speaking of something happening with a person, we actually think of what takes place in him. Actually, when speaking of what happens with a person we refer to what the person undergoes from outside. This is an entirely different kind of passiveness. Rather than the dynamic subject, and the source of what occurs, man is then merely an object that only undergoes what another subject or even another force is doing with him. Undergoing as such refers to the

passiveness of man, the subject, but says nothing, at least not directly, of the subject's inner dynamism, in particular nothing of the dynamism referred to in the proposition "Something happens in man."

The Potency and Act Conjugate as Conceptual Homologue of Dynamism In the traditional approach to the person and to action the dynamism proper to man is interpreted by analogy to the dynamism of all beings. The dynamism of being is the subject of traditional metaphysics, and to metaphysics - in particular to its great founder, Aristotle - we owe the conception in which the dynamic nature of being is expressed in philosophical terms. This is not limited to the concept of "act" alone but includes the conjugate conceptual whole formed by the pair, potency and act. The dialectic - as we would say nowadays - conjugation of the pair makes them so essentially referring to each other that when pointing to one we at the same time indicate the other; for to grasp the correlated meaning of either, the understanding of the other is indispensable. It is for this reason that act cannot be understood apart from potency and vice versa.²⁸ The terms potency and act need little explanation.

Potency, the Latin potentia, may be defined as a potentiality, as something that already is but also is not yet: as something that is in preparation, is available, and even ready at hand but is not actually fulfilled. The act, the Latin actus, is the actualization of potentiality, its fulfillment.

As is to be seen, the meanings of both concepts are strictly correlated and inhere in the conjugate they form rather than in each of them separately. Their conjugation reveals not only the differentiated, though mutually coincident states of existence, but also the transitions from one to the other. It is these transitions that objectivize the structure of all dynamism inherent in being, in being as such, which constitutes the proper subject of metaphysics, and at the same time in every and any being, regardless of the branch of human knowledge whose specific concern it constitutes.

We may with justice say that at this point metaphysics appears as the intellectual soil wherein all the domains of knowledge have their roots. Indeed, we do not seem to have as yet any other conceptions and any other language which would

adequately render the dynamic essence of change - of all change whatever occurring in any being - apart from those that we have been endowed with by the philosophy

of potency and act. By means of this conception we can grasp and describe precisely any dynamism that occurs in any being. It is to them we also have to revert when discussing the dynamism proper to man.

The concept of the "act" - we may call it so, for short, once we keep in mind the correlate it implies - has primarily an existential significance. The two different states of being, to which correspond two different forms of existence, are not indicated solely by the two terms (potency and act) essential to this conception. In addition, the transition from potency to act, termed actualization, is a transition in the order of existence; it indicates some sort of becoming, not in the absolute sense - this is possible only when something comes into being out of nonexistence - but in the relative sense, that is to say, becoming based on an already existing being and from within its inner structure. The dynamism of being is intrinsically connected with its very existence and is also the basis for, and the source of, all the structures that may be distinguished in it. Every actualization contains in itself both the possibility and the act, which is the real fulfillment of the possibility; hence it contains them not as two entities but as two interrelated forms of existence. Actualization always implies the following pattern of existences: what exists as a possibility may, because it thus exists, come into existence in an act; and conversely, what came into

existence in the act did so because of its previous existence as potentiality. In actualization possibility and act constitute, as it were, the two moments or the two phases of concrete existence joined together in a dynamic unity. Moreover, the act does not signify solely that the state of fulfilled potentiality has ended; it also signifies the transition itself from potentiality to fulfillment, the very fulfillment. It now becomes evident that there is need of a factor that would allow this transition or fulfillment to be accomplished; this problem, however, we will not discuss at present.

The Ambiguity of the Concept of "Act" and Differentiation of the Experiences of Acting and Happening

Applying the conception of the act to the dynamism that is proper to man and constitutes the vital core of the dynamic conjugate of action and person, we have to assert at this stage of the discussion that it fits both essential forms of the human dynamism known from and by experience. The structure of "man-acts" as well as the structure of "something-happens-in-man" constitute the concrete manifestation of the dynamism proper to man. Some of their equivalence consists in man being present in either as its dynamic subject. The equivalence exists from the point of view of the human dynamism itself. From this viewpoint, having assumed the analogy of being, we may regard man's acting as well as what happens in him to be the fulfillment of a potentiality. The one and the other is an actualization, the

dynamic unity of potentiality and act. This way of grasping the problem is justified by the general dynamism of man. It also enables us to search for and determine those potentialities which are inherent in man at the beginning of his various actings and of what we may perhaps call the various happenings, the different things that happen in him.

The difference of the activeness-passiveness type that occurs between the acting of man and the happening in man, the difference between dynamic acting and certain dynamic passiveness, cannot obscure or annul the human dynamism, which is inherent in one as well as in the other form. It does not obscure in the sense of the phenomenological experience and does not annul in the sense of the need of a realistic interpretation. Essentially, the human dynamism is interpreted by the

concept of the "act." In this sense the term "act" adequately denotes the dynamic content of both structures: "man acts" and "something-happens-in-man." The question remains whether it is equally adequate to show the specific nature of action. To put the problem precisely we have to ask whether the word "act," while designating the dynamism of all being, as well as every human dynamism - activeness as well as passiveness - has also the capability of revealing the whole specific nature of action.