First actuality (prote energeia); the Substance as such, which holds within itself the possibility of a plurality of further actualizations. The Person is prote energeia: she is before she acts. Personhood ontologically precedes every person-behavior and can be constituted by no person-behavior (Bexten 2017, p. 235 ff.) (German).
First Actuality and Second Actuality
The distinction between first actuality (prote energeia) and Second Actuality (deutera energeia) is fundamental: first actuality is the substantial being of the person; second actuality is the exercise of the activities and faculties that are laid down in the first actuality. Person-behavior — actual thinking, willing, feeling — is deutera energeia, which presupposes personhood as prote energeia but does not constitute it.
Significance for the AI Debate
An AI has no prote energeia: there is no substantial being that ontologically precedes its operations. What AI produces is deutera energeia without prote energeia — actualization without a Substance that is actualized. In the domain of art, this means: AI can generate images, but there is no “self” that precedes these images.
Ontological classification:
- Superordinate concept: Act
- Related concepts: Second Actuality, Substance, Form
Ontological relations:
- ontologically precedes: Second Actuality
- mutually exclusive with: person-behavior (as a principle of constitution)
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: What is human personhood? (German)
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Aristotle, De Anima II.1 (distinction between first and second actuality).
- Aristotle, Metaphysics IX (energeia and dynamis).
- Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 48, a. 5 (actus primus and actus secundus).