Commentary Aristotle Physics
313. Then, at “but will the act be one” (202a36), he develops the other possibility. For it could be said that action and passion are not two motions, but one.
But this leads to four difficulties.
The first is that the acts of things of different species would be the same. For it has been already pointed out that action is an act of the agent and passion an act of the patient, and that these are specifically diverse; but, if action and passion are the same motion, then the acts of specifically different things will be the same.
The second difficulty is that, if action and passion are one motion, then action is the same as passion, such that teaching, which is in the teacher, is the same as learning, which is in the learner.
The third difficulty is that acting would be the same as being acted upon, and teaching would be the same as learning.
The fourth difficulty that follows from this is that every teacher would be learning and every agent would be being acted upon.
314. Then, at “one may reply” (202b5), he solves the difficulty. From what was settled previously, it is clear that action and passion are not two motions, but one and the same motion; for insofar as motion is from the agent, it is called action, and insofar as it is in the patient, it is called passion.
315. Hence, not all the conflicts that follow from the first case, in which it was supposed that action and passion are two motions, have to be solved. But one remains to be solved even on the supposition that action and passion are one motion: since action is an act of the agent, then, if action and passion are one motion, it follows that the act of the agent is somehow in the patient. Thus, the act of one thing will be in something else.
This remaining difficulty, together with the four listed above, leaves five to be solved.
316. He says in the first place that there is nothing wrong with an act of one thing being in something else, for teaching is an act of the teacher, an act continuously tending from him into someone else without interruption; hence, this act that is the agent’s as being from this is the very one that is in the patient as received in him. But it would be wrong if the act of the one were the act of the other in precisely the same way.
317. Then, at “there is nothing to prevent” (202b8), he solves another difficulty: two things would have the same act.
And he says that there is nothing to prevent one act belonging to two things, so long as it is not one and the same in thought, but only in reality, as was already explained above, when it was pointed out that the distance from one to two and from two to one are the same, and of that which is in potency looking toward the agent and conversely.
For in these cases, the same one reality is assigned to two things according to different accounts: it is assigned to the agent inasmuch as it is from it and to the patient inasmuch as it is in it.
318. The three remaining difficulties, of which one followed logically from the other, he takes care of in reverse order.
He disposes first of the last difficulty introduced, because it is so evidently improper.
Thus, he settles the fifth difficulty third. He says that it is not necessary to say that one who is teaching is learning or that an agent is being acted upon just because to act and to be acted upon are the same, as long as we understand that they are not the same in the way that dress and clothing are the same (for these are the same in account), but in the way that the road from Thebes to Athens and that from Athens to Thebes are the same, being the same as to subject but differing as to account, as said above.
For it is not necessary that things that are somehow the same should be the same in all ways; that is true only of things that are the same in subject or reality and also in account. And, therefore, even granting that to act and to be acted upon are the same, yet, since they are not the same in account, it will not follow that it is the same for an object to act and to be acted upon.
319. Then, at “but, indeed” (202b16), he answers the fourth difficulty. And he says that, even though teaching and the learning of the learner were the same, it does not follow that to teach and to learn are the same, since teaching and learning are abstract terms but to teach and to learn are concrete.
Hence, they are being applied to ends or to terms that serve as the basis for the difference in account between action and passion. For just as the distance between two points is one and the same space in the abstract, yet it is not one and the same if we apply it to two concrete places, as when we say that there is a distance between here and there and between there and here.
320. Then, at “to generalize” (202b19), he answers the third difficulty by destroying the inference that, if action and passion are one motion, they are the same. And he says that ultimately it must be said that it does not follow that action and passion are the same, nor that teaching and learning are, but rather that both are in the same motion. This motion, as a matter of fact, is action from one viewpoint and passion from another. For it is one thing as to account to be an act of a thing as being in that and another to be the act of a thing as being from that.
Now, motion is called action inasmuch as it is an act of the agent as from the agent; it is called passion inasmuch as it is an act of the patient as in the patient. Thus, it is clear that, although the motion of the mover and that of the moved are the same thing due to the fact that motion as such abstracts from these accounts, yet action and passion differ due to the fact that these accounts are included in their signification. From this, it is also apparent that, since motion abstracts from the account of action and passion, it belongs neither in the predicament “action” nor in the predicament “passion,” as some supposed.
321. But two difficulties still remain with respect to this.
The first is this: if action and passion are one motion, and they differ merely in thought, as said above, it seems that they should not be listed as two distinct predicaments, since the predicaments are genera of things.
Second, if motion is either action or passion, motion will not be found in substance, quality, quantity, and place, as said above, but only in action and passion.
322. To settle this matter, it should be known that being is divided into the ten predicaments not univocally, as a genus into species, but according to the different modes of existing. Now, the modes of existing are proportional to the modes of predicating. For in predicating something of something else, we say, “this is that”; hence, the ten genera of being are called the ten predicaments.
Now, every predication takes place in one of three ways.
One way is to predicate of a subject that which pertains to its essence, as when I say, “Socrates is man” or “man is animal.” According to this, the predicament of substance is taken.