Second actuality (deutera energeia); the exercise of the activities and faculties laid down in the First Actuality (Substance) — for instance actual thinking, willing, and feeling. The deutera energeia presupposes the First Actuality (prote energeia) ontologically: one must be before one can act (Bexten 2017, pp. 235 ff.) (German).
Personal Conduct as Second Actuality
Personal conduct — the actualisation of personal faculties — is deutera energeia. It is the ground of our knowing personhood, not the ground of its being. From this it follows: even a human being who actualises no deutera energeia (such as an embryo or a human being in a coma) possesses full personhood as prote energeia.
Second Actuality without First Actuality
In the context of the AI debate it becomes evident: an AI produces deutera energeia without prote energeia — output without substantial being. In the domain of art, AI can produce patterns that appear aesthetic, but the being out of which production occurs is lacking. The artist’s most important creative exercise is the return from the deutera energeia to the prote energeia — from mere producing to being.
Ontological classification:
- Genus: Act
Ontological relations:
- presupposes: First Actuality
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).
- Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 48, a. 5 (actus primus and actus secundus).