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The Potentiality Principle from Aristotle to Abortion

Anthropological theorizing about “potentiality” should include an understanding of the contemporary legacy of Aristotle’s potentiality principle. This paper approaches potentiality as an object of anthropological scrutiny to show how it is evoked, presented, debated, and circulated among people interacting in a social realm. The potentiality principle, I argue, has been kept alive by Catholic moral philosophers who argue that embryos should not be killed because they possess the attributes that they will have later in life. Catholic moral philosophers and their feminist critics and interlocutors emerge in this paper as active agents who condition and shape the contemporary uses of the concept of potentiality. By looking at how potentiality debates are intellectually and historically situated, I argue for reflexive ethnographic attention to the politics of potentiality.