Abstract

That which distinguishes the actual from the possible is part of the possible or actual, is neither or both. The Platonist thinks it is the first. For him the possible is an ideal possessed of an excellence no actuality does and perhaps can ever have. The possible, it would seem, precisely because it contains all the actual does and more, must contain the element which differentiates the possible from the actual. Yet the actual, possessed though it is in his eyes of an imperfect and perhaps only apparent reality is, even for him, something produced, an outcome achieved, brought about by doing something with or to the possible. The actual has for him, as it has for almost everyone else, such features as temporality, activity, diversity, extensionality. These are not features of the possible.