Michael-Thomas Liske (Passau): Nach Verwirklichung strebende Aktivkräfte versus schlummernde Potenzen: Kann Leibniz’ Vermögensbegriff die Konzeption eines Potentials erhellen?

A potential is a special dispositional property: it enables its bearer to develop a new positive feature. Owing to this future related dynamic, the concept of potential corresponds to Leibniz’s concept of force. Leibnizian force is a power amplified by a striving so that it can transfer itself into actualization. It is always active as an invisible internal motion and manifests itself in an outward development as soon as all hindrances are removed. So, its status is located between potency and act. Derived physical force, e. g. the conatus, is instantaneous: the present state, tending toward and thereby transforming itself into the following one. Derived physical force is thus grounded in primary metaphysical force (that is, the enduring basic tendency of striving), being its transient modification. Only this basic tendency of striving is a potential, persistently determining the development of the mental states according to a law that is peculiar to the individual and thus constitutes its individual nature. So, the causal-mechanic approach of physics and the teleological approach of metaphysics are reconciled.

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