ACTE / Act

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Adail Sobral

Modifié le May 29, 2007

Par GG

ÉTYMOLOGIE / Philology

Acte, a masc. subst. in French by 1338, from the Latin actus: "a doing" and actum:"a thing done," past part. of the verb agere: “to do, drive, urge, chase, set in motion ” (Root *ag- : "to drive, draw out or forth, move", from the Gk. agein : "to guide, lead, drive, carry off.";" Skt. ajati : "drives," ajirah : "moving, active;" O.N. aka : "to drive;" M.Ir. ag: "battle").

act in late middle English c.1384, through the French.

The theatrical (1520) and legislative (1458) senses of the word derive from its Latin typical connotations.

To act: general sense first attested 1475 and in the theatrical performance, 1594 (v. article ACTE DE THÉÂTRE/Theatrical act.

Related to activity, which is attested from 1530, and actuality (see).

See also article ACTION / Action.

ÉTUDE SÉMANTIQUE / Definitions.

1. (Currently). The process of doing or performing something. Something done or performed; a deed.

2. The product of a decision delivered by a legislative or a judicial body, such as a statute, decree, or enactment.

A formal written record of proceedings or transactions.

3. (Latin actus. Theatre). One of the major divisions of a play or an opera.

A theatrical performance that forms part of a longer presentation.V. article ACTE DE THÉÂTRE/Theatrical act.

4. A manifestation of intentional or unintentional insincerity; a pose.

5. (Philosophy, Aristotle. Linked to potency, defined as a conception). The process that brings potency about.

6. (Psychology). Exercice of a power, a faculty.

acting out : reaction to a drive consisting in putting it into practice.

7. (Linguistics).

Act of reference; communicative act; face-threatening act (FTA); illocutionary act; locutionary act; perlocutionary act; phatic act; phonetic act; propositional act; rhetic act; verbal act.

(Austin and Searle) speech act/acte de parole ; -de langage: An assertive, commissive, directive, exercitive, expositive, expressive, performative, representative, veridictive declaration.

(Psychanalyse). acte manqué :

V. article LAPSUS .

8. (French literature, André Gide) acte gratuit :

9. (Metaphysics). acte pur/pure act : Aristotle's pure act is completely separate from potency; potency tends to pure act, although it is ignored by it.

In theology, St. Thomas Aquinas’ pure act proposes God as being alone Pure Act.

10. (Psychoanalysis) acte manqué/Fehlleistung/bungled action:An act by which a subject, substitutes, in spite of ourself, an unexpected behaviour to a project that be intends deliberately. V.article Lapsus.

CORRÉLATS / Collocations

ABRÉACTION/ABREAGIEREN/Abreaction, ACTE DE THÉÂTRE/Theatrical act, ACTES/Acts,ACTE-DE-LANGAGE/Speech act, ACTEUR/Actor; Player; Performer, ACTION/Action, Acting out, ACTIVITÉ/Activity,

ACTUALISATION/Actualization, ADJUVANT/Helper, ADRESSIVITÉ/Addressivity, AGENT/Agent, ANTICIPATION/Anticipation,

CATASTROPHE/Catastrophe,CAUSE/Cause,CHANGEMENT/Change,CHŒUR/Chorus, CLIMAX,COMMUNICATION/Communication,COMPLICATION/Complication, CRÉATION/Creation, CRITIQUE/Criticism,

DESCENTE/,

ENTRACTE/Intermission,ÉPISODE/Episode,ESSENCE/Essence, ÉVÉNEMENT/Event, EXPOSITION/Exposition,

FAIRE/Doing, FREYTAG/Freytag’s pyramid,

GESTE/Gesture,

ILLOCUTION/Illocution, ILLOCUTOIRE/Illocutary, ILLOCUTIONNAIRE/Illocutionary act,

LANGUE/Language, LANGAGE/Language,

MONISME/Monism,

OPPOSANT/Opposer; Opponent,

PAROLE/Speech; Parole, PERFORMANCE/Performance, PERFORMATIF/Performative, PIÈCE/Play, PIÈCE EN UN ACT/One act play, POSTUPOK, POUVOIR/Power,

PRAGMATISME/Pragmatism; Pragmaticism, PRAXIOLOGIE/Praxiology, PROLOGUE/Prologue,

RÉPONSE/Answer; Response, REPRÉSENTATION/Representation, RESPONSABILITÉ/OTVETSTVENNOST’/Auswerability, RÔLE/Role,

SCÈNE/Picture, SOMMET/SPANNUNG/Summit,

Speech-act-theory, SUJET/Subject,

TABLEAU/Picture;Scene,THÉÂTRE/Drama,TRANSGRESSION/Transgression.

NOMENCLATURES / Families of terms

ACTIONS/Operations, ARISTOTE/Aristotle,

BAKHTIN (Mikhail),

COMMUNICATION/Communication,

ÉNONCIATION/Expression,

LINGUISTIQUE/Language,

OPÉRATIONS/Acts,

PARTIES/Parts of texts,

PHÉNOMÉNOLOGIE/Phenomenology, PHILOSOPHIE/Philosophy PRAGMATIQUE/Pragmatics,PRATIQUES/Praxis,PSYCHOLOGIE/Psychology, PSYCHANALYSE/Psychanalysis,

STRUCTURES/Structuralism and Post-structuralism,

THÉÂTRE/Drama.

MOTS-CLÉS

Accompli, actantiel, Acteur, Action, Action dramatique, Actualité Agent, Âme,

Bien,

Communication, Critique,

Efficace, Entéléchie, Être,

Faculté, Fait,

Illocution, Illocutionnaire, Illocutoire, Impulsion,

Langage, Langue, Linguistique,

Opération,

Parole, Performatif, Phénoménologie, Philosophie,

Résultat, Rôle, Sujet.

Volonté.

Keywords

Action, Actor,

Communication, Criticism, Critique,

Deed,

Ethics,

Illocution, Illocutionary act, Impulse,

Karman,

Language,

Narrative,

Operations,

Parole, Performative, Performer, Phenomenology, Philosophy, Player,

Speech, Subject,

Thing done,

Wittgenstein (**), Word.

ÉQUIVALENTS / Correspondences

Allemand / German : Akt ; Tat; Aktus.

Anglais / English : act.

Arabe / Arabic : فعل, عمل, فعلي بالفعل, عقد, صنيع, صك, قانون, مرسوم.

Chinois / Chinese : –¼ s?;s?;™r?;ð—á;[??]–‹;’i ; ? ?;˜ô;•¯‰‰;?Á;??;?¥Í§@¥Î;‰º”»™r

Coréen / Korean : ÇàÀ§, Çàμ¿, Çàμ¿Áß, ¸, ÇÁÎ+×¥ ÁßÀÇ ÇÏ³ª, °áÀÇ, ÇÐÀ§ ³í¹®ÀÇ °ø°³ +¸¼ú ½ÃÇè, »çμμ ÇàÀü

Danois / Danish : handling (act/action).

Espagnol /Spanish : acto.

Français / French : acte.

Grec / Greek : πραξις praxis ; πραγμα pragma ; ἐργον ergon (also « action » : ἐργασια ergasia).

Hongrois / Hungarian : aktus, cselekedet.

Italien / Italian : atto. Plur.

Hébreu / Hebrew : dabar.

Japonais / Japanese : ð•¶(‚¶‚å‚¤‚Ô‚ñ) maku (rideau).

Latin : actum factum. Also: acta (plur.) : « writings, proceedings », v. article ACTES;not to be confused with actus : “part of a play”, v. article ACTE/ACTUS/Act. Cf. action : “action”.

Néerlandais / Dutch : actie.

Persan / Farsi : Polonais / Polish : czyn.

Portugais / Portuguese : ato, ação ; acto/acção.

Roumain / Romanian : act.

Russe / Russian : поступок postupok ; акт akt, действие deystvye.

Viêtnamien / Vietnamese : haÌnh ðôòng, viêòc laÌm, cýÒ chiÒ, haÌnh vi.

COMMENTAIRE / Analysis

The concept of act (linked to the one of activity) is the object of a difficult critical discussion in the field of philosophy that goes back to Plato (fourth century B.C.), to Megarian philosophers (c. 400-c.330 B.C) and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.).

Aristotle understands the act as the opposite of potency, the latter being the conception the act brings about or, actualizes, implying “transformation”; his ideas are still present in discussions about the act, even though his exact definition is in a way almost irreconciliable with the modern philosophy understanding of the act. Act comes to be related to action, sometimes understood as activity, and also as actualization (the actualization of a possibility: the act as the reality of being). Besides, act relates to actuality (as opposed to potentiality), sometimes used as synonyms.

Act plays an important role in Renaissance philosophy and in several modern philosophical systems, not to mention the idealist neo-Kantians’ notion of the absolute and Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy (1632-1677), the first author to propose a thoughtful and incisive non-dualist system in which the act has preeminence. For Spinoza’s monism, to every act of knowledge there corresponds an act in the practical sphere, but there is a constitutive relation between them.

Act and actual are important objects in Giovanni Gentile’s (1875-1944) “actualism” which sees the act as a concrete process Alfred Whitehead (1861-1947), considers actual entities as the building blocks of the world; Louis Lavelle’s (1883-1951) envisions act metaphysically but at the same time as the active reality of being, linked to an agent; Edmund Husserl distinguishes act (Akt) from the classical actus and from action (Tat), and gives it a “neutral” character. Husserl also distinguishes act from activity and sees act linked to “intentional life experiences” whereas activity has no intentional component.

Act and activity, understood as “action”, are present both in the so-called action philosophies (Henri Bergson, 1859-1941, for one) and other philosophical trends, like Friedrich Schelling’s process philosophy, the pragmatism of [Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), William James (1842-1910), James Mead (1863-1931) and John Dewey (1859-1952], existentialism (mainly Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905-1980, who examines ethical aspects of act), marxism (mainly as social acting to bring a transformation of the world, this latter being understood as the result of human actions (Marxist authors prefer to talk of “praxis") and analytical philosophies (George Edward Moore [1852-1933] and Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]) and post-analytic ones (Ludwig Wittgenstein [1889-1951] and Willard Quine [1908-2000) — these last having gone beyond the scientist and positivist reductionism these philosophies have known from the beginning.

It also had an important role on the neo-Kantian Marburg School, founded in Germany in 1896 by Hermann Cohen. The German school’s conception of the act, represented e.g by Heinrich Rickert – a neo-Kantian – and Martin Heidegger – a phenomenological existentialist who “dialogues” with Husserl — understands it on the basis of two senses of history: history as “to happen” (from which geschichtlich : «historical» in German), as a process, and history as “happened”, “already brought about” (historisch, also : «historical», in German), as a product. In this sense, act is both the process of something happening and the product of this happening.

The contribution of Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) to the concept of act(V. article POSTUPOK), a contribution that only now begins to be acknowledged, makes a cogent effort do go beyond many extant conceptions there are even today. The concept of act has in Bakhtin not the sense of material neutral processes, being understood as ethical act, be as theoretical, practical or aesthetic dimensions (the Kantian division of reason/acts) opposed to moral (that is, formally and abstractly ethical) and purely material ones (that is, acts which involve no intentional nor volitional component : ethical acts are concrete acts of an agent in situation, not acts based on an abstract morality valid for all human beings nor an act exempt from an agent urged by intentionality, that is, a purely material act.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) proposed a well known and influential division of reason in three categories: theoretical reason, practical reason and aesthetic judgment, all of them acts that he understood cognitively: the object of reasoning seems to be the factor accounting for the difference he sees among them. The Kantian theoretical, practical and aesthetic acts are reinterpreted procedurally by Bakhtin so as not to be restricted to their product or to their theoretical structure. Nevertheless, Bakhtin’s monist understanding of act does not separates concretely process and product, nor does it see them apart from an agent (V.article POSTUPOK).

We can see in several accounts of act here given that only one or the other component of acts (the process or the product) are overemphasized, most of the time the product, and in some cases only one of them is seen as the act per se, even in some philosophies of life. Schelling’s process philosophy seems thus to be more complete that most, for it legitimately emphasizes process without discarding the product: it is only from the product we can derive the process producing it.

Mechanist psychologies like behaviorism also take act as a unit or at least a factor of human behavior, but they see only the material part of act and not its sense for the subject. Construtivist theories like Jean Piaget’s see act as biological act, for their understanding of the human subject is also biological. Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) have of act an understanding similar to Bakhtin’s, for there is a process, a product and a subject as their producing agent in society and history. Yves Clot has constructed a psychology of work on the basis of a Vygotskyan perspective, and sees acts/activities as something happening in collective social-historical contexts. Not only does act/activity involve process and product, and producing agents, but these agents redefine continuously, in acts/activities themselves, the manner of practicing these acts. This unites cogently, from a psychological point of view, both Bakhtin’s and Vygotsky’s perspectives. Unfortunately, there isn’t until now an effort to do this in other fields. Although there are efforts to do this in education, these only take this or that aspect of the authors, but fail in offering a real integration of the background understanding they have of human beings, human acts, actions, activities, the very being-in-the world of human subjects.

Adail Sobral

PUC-SP

USP

Bibliographie / References

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