The Potentiality Principle from Aristotle to Abortion

‘Master of Those Who Know’: Aristotle as Role Model for the Twenty-first Century Academician

“…Potentiality, surely, is relevant to more than embryology. Potentiality is inherently political because it ‘can be used to formulate, activate, or resist particular imagined futures.’ 28 Humans who have been born also have potentiality, and they have travelled much further along the road to the development of the rational intellect than embryos under 23 weeks old. If we embrace Aristotle’s dynamis in one of the contexts he found it most fascinating – intellectual potentiality – we remember that it may or may not be actualised depending on whether circumstances are right.…”

“…Such intellectuals, on both sides of the debate,who carry ‘potentiality’ in their conceptual tool kits are called on to comment publicly on subjects such as abortion, cloning, contraception, in vitro fertilization, stem cell research, and the like. Their expertise, then, is germane when potentiality is invoked to make moral claims on the bodies of human (as well as nonhuman) animals 26 …”

“…But the potentiality principle surely has a more edifying potential . Catholic moral philosophers have turned ‘potentiality on its head; they use ideas about potentiality to flow into fertility, pregnancy, and gestation rather than, as Aristotle imagined, out from them.’ 27 Aristotle would have been baffled by the narrowness of the field in which his idea of potentiality is invoked, since for him a central issue was the development of the rational soul or intellect, for which the embryo wars have no room.…”

The placenta economy: From trashed to treasured bio-products

“…Feminist and consumer studies scholars add important theoretical framings to critical understanding of the workings of biovalue and potentiality. For example, Morgan (2013) points out how potentiality is gendered and always highly political. Potentiality is, she argues, embedded in moral reasoning.…”

“…Potentiality is, she argues, embedded in moral reasoning. She notes that in the specific case of abortion debates in the United States, the choice to view the developing foetus in its early stages as a potential future citizen or human being paradoxically takes place, ‘at the expense of the potential for pregnant women to exercise their own interpretations of liberty and choice’ (Morgan, 2013: S17). The ways in which female bodily emissions (such as menstruation) become framed as sources of impurity, dirt, or bodily waste – fluids with no potential – are predicated on a gendered hierarchy.…”