power of thought

The Power of Thought

Giorgio Agamben

Translated by Kalpana Seshadri

What Does It Mean: “I Can?”The concept of power [potenza] has a long history in Western philosophy

and, at least since Aristotle, occupies one of its central positions. Aristotleopposes—and binds together—power [dynamis] to the act [energeia], andthis opposition, which traverses as much across his metaphysics as his physics,has been transmitted as a legacy first to philosophy and then to science, me-dieval and modern. If I choose to speak about the concept of power [potenza],it is because my scope is not simply historiographical. For me, it is not aboutrestoring currency to philosophical categories that have fallen from time intooblivion; I am convinced, on the contrary, that this concept has never ceased tooperate in the life and in the history, in the thought and in the practice of thatpart of humanity, that has grown and developed its power [potenza] to a pointof imposing its force [potere] over the whole planet. Rather, following LudwigWittgenstein’s suggestion that philosophical problems become clearer if wereformulate them as questions on the meaning of words, I could enunciate thetheme of my research as an attempt to understand the meaning of the syntagmI can. What do we mean when we say “I can, I cannot”?

In a brief introduction to the collection Requiem, Anna Akhmatovarecounts how her poems originated. During the years of the Great Purge(Yezhovshchina), the poet stood in line for months in front of the Lenin-grad prison, hoping to have news of her son, who had been arrested forpolitical crimes. With her were dozens of other women who found them-

An earlier and shorter version of this essay was first published in English as GiorgioAgamben, “On Potentiality,” Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, trans. and ed. DanielHeller-Roazen (Stanford, Calif. 1999), pp. 177–84.—TRANS.

Critical Inquiry 40 (Winter 2014)

English translation © 2014 by The University of Chicago. 0093-1896/14/4002-0002$10.00. All rights reserved.

Used with permission from Stanford University Press and Giorgio Agamben.

480

selves every day in the same place in line. One morning, one of thesewomen recognized her and turned to her with this single question: “‘Canyou describe this?’” Akhmatova was silent for one instant, and then, with-out knowing why, she found on her lips the response “‘Yes, I can.’”1

I have wondered many times what Akhmatova intended to say. Perhapsthat she had such great poetic talent, that she knew how to handle thelanguage with so much ability, that she could describe this atrocious expe-rience that was so difficult to speak? I don’t think so; it was not this that shewanted to say. There comes to every man a moment in which he mustpronounce this “I can” that neither refers to any certainty nor to anyspecific capacity and that nevertheless obligates him and puts him entirelyin play. This “I can” beyond every faculty and know-how, this affirmationthat signifies nothing immediately, confronts the subject with perhaps themost exigent—and, nevertheless, ineludible—experience with which he orshe is given to measure him- or herself: the experience of power [potenza].

What Is a Faculty?

There is, however, an aporia: why there is no sensation of the sensesthemselves [ton aistheseon . . . aesthesis]? Why, in the absence of exter-nal objects they do not procure sensation, although having in them-selves fire, water, and other elements of which there is sensation? Thishappens because the faculty of sensibility [to aisthetikon] is not in theact, but only in power [potenza] [dymamei monon]. This is why itdoes not feel sensation, just as the combustible does not burn by it-self, without the principle of combustion: otherwise it would con-sume itself and would not have need of fire existent in the act[entelecheiai . . . ontos].2

We are so accustomed to represent sensibility as a faculty of the soul thatthis passage of De anima does not appear to pose problems. The vocabu-lary of power [potenza] has so deeply penetrated us that we do not realizethat in these lines appear for the first time a fundamental problem that, as

1. Anna Akhmatova, Requiem, in Selected Poems, trans. D. M. Thomas (New York, 2006),p. 87; trans. mod.—TRANS.

2. Aristotle, De anima, 417a 2–9; hereafter abbreviated DA.

G I O R G I O A G A M B E N is an Italian philosopher and author of numerous books,including the recent series in economic theology The Kingdom and the Glory(2011), The Highest Poverty (2013), and Opus Dei (2013). K A L P A N A S E S H A D R I

is professor of English at Boston College and author most recently ofHumAnimal: Race, Law, Language (2012).

Critical Inquiry / Winter 2014 481

such, emerges into the light in the history of Western thought only atseveral decisive moments (in modern thought, one of these moments is thework of Immanuel Kant). This problem—that is the original problem ofpower [potenza]—is announced in the question “What does it mean tohave a faculty? In what mode (or way) does something like a faculty exist?”

Ancient Greece did not conceive the sensibility, the intelligence (or,even less, the will) as a faculty of a subject. The same word aesth �esis is, in itsform, a name of an action in –sis, which expresses a real activity. How,therefore, can a sensation exist in the absence of sensation, an aesth �esisexist in the state of anesthesia? This question immediately introduces us tothe problem that Aristotle called dynamis, power [potenza] (a term withrespect to which it will be good to remember that it signifies as much power[potenza] as possibility and that the two meanings would have never beenseparated, as they came to be, unfortunately, in modern translations).When we say that a man has the faculty to see, the faculty to speak (or, asG. W. F. Hegel writes and Martin Heidegger will repeat in his way, thefaculty for death), when we affirm simply “this is not within my faculties,”we are already moving in the sphere of power [potenza]. The term facultyexpresses, namely, the way in which a certain activity is separated fromitself and is assigned to a subject, the way in which a living being “has” hisor her vital practice. Whatever faculty of feeling comes to be distinguishedfrom feeling in the act can be referred to as the subject’s own. In this sense,the Aristotelian doctrine of power contains an archaeology of subjectivity;it is the way in which the problem of the subject is announced to a thoughtthat does not yet have this notion. Hexis (from echo; “to have”), disposition[abito], faculty is the name that Aristotle gave to this in-existence of thesensation (and to other faculties) in a living being. In this way had [avuto]is not simply absence but has, rather, the form of a privation (in the vo-cabulary of Aristotle, ster �esis [privation] is in a strategic relation withhexis), namely, of something that attests to the presence of that which islacking in the act. To have a power [potenza], to have a faculty means tohave a privation. This is why the sensation does not sense itself, as thecombustible does not burn itself. Power [potenza] is therefore the hexis ofa ster �esis. “At times,” one reads in the Metaphysics, “the powerful [il po-tente] is such because it has something, at times because it lacks it. If pri-vation is in some way a hexis, the powerful [il potente] is such because it hasa certain hexis or because it has the ster �esis of it.”3

3. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1019b 5–8; hereafter abbreviated M.

482 Giorgio Agamben / The Power of Thought

To Have a PrivationThat that which interests Aristotle is this second form of power [po-

tenza, to have a privation] is evident in the passage of De anima that followsfrom that quoted above. Aristotle distinguishes here a generic power [po-tenza] (see DA, 417a 21 ff.), according to which we say that a child has thecapability [potenza] for science or that he or she has capacity [potenza] tobe an architect or head of state, from a power [potenza] that concerns thosewho already have the hexis corresponding to a certain knowledge or acertain ability. It is in this second sense that one says that the architect hasthe power [potenza] to build even when he is not building or that themusician of the zither has the power [potenza] to play even when notplaying. The power [potenza] that is here in question differs essentiallyfrom the generic power [potenza] of the child. The child, writes Aristotle, iscapable [potente] in the sense that he must undergo an alteration throughlearning; he who already possesses a skill, instead, does not have to un-dergo an alteration but is powerful [potente] from a hexis that he or shecannot put in the act or even actualize, passing from a not-to-be-in-the-actto a to-be-in-the-act (ek tou . . . m �e energein de, eis to energein) (M, 417a32–b I). Power [potenza], therefore, is defined essentially by the possibilityof its nonexercise, just as hexis means the availability of a privation. Thearchitect, namely, is powerful [potente] to the extent that he can not-build,and the musician of the zither is also because of the difference between onewho is said to be capable [potente] only in the generic sense and one whosimply cannot play the zither.

It is in this way that Aristotle replies, in the Metaphysics, to the thesis ofthe Megarins who affirmed, not however without good reason, that power[potenza] exists only in the act (energ �e monon dynasthai, hotan de m �eenerg �e ou dynasthai) (M, 1046b 29–30). If that were true, objects Aristotle,we could not consider an architect the architect even when he does notbuild nor call a physician the physician in the moment in which he is notexercising his art. In question is, namely, the way of being of power [po-tenza], which exists in the form of hexis, of dominion over a privation. It isa form, a presence of that which is not in the act, and this privative presenceis power [potenza]. As Aristotle affirms without reservation in an extraor-dinary passage of the Physics, “ster �esis, privation, is like a form [eidos ti, aspecies of face: eidos from eidenai; “to see”].”4

4. Aristotle, Physics, 193b 19–20.


Of DarknessOne of the most significant figures of this privative presence of power

[potenza] is, in De anima, darkness (skotos). Aristotle is dealing here withthe sensations and, in particular, with that of vision (see DA, 418a 26–418b31). The object of sight, he writes, is color, for which, moreover, we do nothave a name but which he suggests we call the diaphanous (diaphanes). Theterm does not refer here simply to transparent bodies, such as air or water,but to a certain nature (physis) present in them that constitutes what isproperly visible in every body. Aristotle does not define this nature, butrather limits himself to postulating its existence (“esti de ti diaphanes”; it isdiaphanous); he affirms, however, that the act of this nature is as such thelight and that the darkness of it is the power [potenza] (DA, 418b 9–10).And if the light is, as he adds a little later, the color of the diaphanous in act(“to de pho�s hoinon chro�ma esti tou diaphanous, hotan e� entelechia di-aphanes”) (DA, 418b 10), it would not therefore be mistaken to definedarkness, that is, the ster �esis of light, as the color of power [potenza]. In anycase, it is a single and same nature that he presents at times as darkness andat times as light (“e� gar aute� physis hote men skotos hote de pho�s estin”)(DA, 418b–419a I).

(The commonplace that wants ancient metaphysics to be a metaphysicsof light is not, therefore, exact. It deals, above all, with the metaphysics ofthe diaphanous, of this nameless physis capable [capace] as much of dark-ness as of light.)

Several pages later, speaking of common sense, Aristotle wonders howit happens that while we see, we feel seeing (“aisthanometha hotihoro�men”) (DA, 425b 12) or, while we hear, we sense hearing. As far assight is concerned, this can occur because we feel sight with another senseor with the same sense of sight. Aristotle’s answer is that we feel sight withthe same sense with which we see. That implies, however, an aporia:

Since to feel with sight means to see, and that which is seen is colormore than that which has color, then, if that which we see is here thesame seeing, it is necessary that the principle of sight [to horo�n proton]is in turn colored. It is clear, therefore, that “to see with sight” hasmore than one meaning, since also when we do not see, we neverthe-less distinguish with sight darkness from light. Therefore the principleof vision is in many ways colored. [DA, 425b 17–25]

In this extraordinary passage, in which the problem of power [potenza]shows its essential relation with that of auto-affection, Aristotle returns toand develops the initial question: “why, in the absence of external objects,is there no sensation of the senses themselves?” to which he had replied


affirming that this is because the sensation is in potential [potenza] and notin the act. The successive considerations permit us to better understandthe meaning of this answer. When we do not see (that is, when our sightremains in potential [potenza]) we nevertheless distinguish darkness fromlight, seeing, in other words, the darkness as the color of vision in potential[potenza]. The principle of vision “is, in many ways, colored,” and itscolors are darkness and light, power [potenza] and act, privation and pres-ence. This signifies that to feel seeing is possible [possibile] because theprinciple of vision exists more as a power [potenza] to see than as the power[potenza] to not see, and this latter is not a simple absence but somethingexisting, the hexis of a privation.

Modern neurophysiology, on this point, seems to agree with Aristotle.When, for the absence of luminous sources or because we keep the eyesclosed, we do not see external objects, this does not mean, for the retina,the absence of every activity. What happens, on the contrary, is that theabsence of light puts to work a series of peripheral cells known as off-cellsthat produce the particular auto-affection of the retina that we call dark-ness. Obscurity is truly the color of power [potenza], and power [potenza]is essentially available as a ster �esis, power [potenza] to not see.

Power [Potenza] for DarknessIn his commentary on De anima, Themistius gathered with particular

acuity all the implications of this passage:

If sensation were not to have more power for the act than for not-being-in-act, if it is always and only in the act, it could never perceivedarkness [tou skotous] nor hear silence; in the same way, if thought[nous] were not capable . . . as much of thought as non-thought[anoian], it could never know evil, the formless [amorphon], the fig-ureless [aneideon]. . . . If thought did not have community withpower, it could not know privations [tas ster �esis].

The greatness—but also the misery—of human power [potenza] is thatit is also, first of all, power [potenza] to not pass to the act, power [potenza]for darkness. If one considers that skotos, in Homeric Greek, is first of allthe darkness that invades man at the moment of death, it is possible tomeasure all the consequences of this amphibolic vocation of power [po-tenza]. The dimension that it assigns to man is the consciousness of priva-tion, that is, nothing less than the mystical as the fundamental secret of hisevery knowledge of every action (the medieval idea of an Aristoteles mys-ticus [mystical Aristotle] shows here its pertinence). If power [potenza]were, in fact, only power to see or do, if it existed as such only in the act that


realizes it (and one such power [potenza] is that which Aristotle calls nat-ural and assigns to elements and to alogical or nonspeaking [alogici] ani-mals), then we could never have the experience of darkness (obscurity)and of anesthesia; we could never know and, hence, dominate ster �esis. Manis the master of privation because more than every other living creature heis, in his being, assigned to power [potenza]. But this means that he is, also,consigned and abandoned to it, in the sense that his every power to act[poter agire] is constitutively a power to not act (poter non-agire); everyknowing is a power [un poter] to not know.

Every Power [Potenza] Is Powerless [Impotenza]In book Theta of the Metaphysics, Aristotle sought to engage in the most

exhaustive way with the ambiguity and the aporia of his theory of power[potenza]. The decisive moment perhaps in this confrontation is in thesteps in which he defines the constitutive cobelonging of power [potenza]and powerlessness [impotenza]. “Powerlessness [adynamia],” he writes,“is a privation contrary to power [dynamei]. Every power [potenza] isnonpower [impotenza] of the same and with respect to the same [of whichis power (potenza); tou autou kai kata to auto pasa dynamis adynamia]” (M,1046 a 29–31). Adynamia (powerlessness) [impotenza] does not mean hereabsence of every power [potenza] but power [potenza] to not (pass to theact), dynamis m �e energein. The thesis defines, in this way, the specific am-bivalence of every human power [potenza] that in its original structuremaintains itself in relation to its own privation; it is always—and withrespect to the same thing—power [potenza] to be and not to be, to do andnot to do. It is this relation that constitutes, for Aristotle, the essence ofpower [potenza]. The living being that exists in the mode of its power[potenza] is capable of its own powerlessness [impotenza] and only in thisway possesses its own proper power [potenza]. It is capable of being anddoing because it maintains a relation with its own nonbeing and nondoing.In power [potenza], sensation is constitutively anesthesia, thought non-thought, work worklessness.

A few lines later, Aristotle further specifies this amphibolic statute ofhuman power [potenza]: “That which is powerful [potente] [to dynaton]can [endechetai] not be in the act [m �e energein]. That which has power tobe [potente di essere] is more capable of being than nonbeing. The same is,in fact, power to be [potente di essere] and to not be [to auto ara dynaton kaienai kai m �e einai]” (M, 1050b 10–12). Dechomai means “I welcome, I re-ceive, I admit.” Power [potente] is that which welcomes and lets happennonbeing and this welcoming of nonbeing defines power [potenza] asfundamental passivity and passion. And it is in this double character of


power [potenza] that, as is evident in the same terms with which Aristotleexpresses the contingent (to endechomenon), he radicalizes the problem ofcontingency, of the possibility of not being.

If we recall that, in the Metaphysics, the examples of the power-to-not(potenza-di-non) were almost always treated within the ambit of tech-niques and of human knowledge (grammar, music, architecture, medi-cine, and others), we can then say that man is the living being that existseminently in the dimension of power [potenza], of being able [potere] andnot being able. Every human power [potenza] is, co-originally, powerless[impotenza]; every ability to be [poter-essere] or do is, for man, constitu-tively in a relation to his own privation. And this is the origin of the im-mense human power [potenza] that is all the more violent and forcefulwith respect to other living beings. Other living beings are capable only oftheir specific power [potenza], are capable only of this or that behaviorinscribed in their biological vocation; man is the animal that is capable ofhis own powerlessness [impotenza]. The greatness of his power [potenza] ismeasured against the abyss of his powerlessness [impotenza].

Power [Potenza], Not FreedomIt would be possible to glimpse in this doctrine, in the amphibolic na-

ture of every power [potenza], the place in which the modern problem offreedom may be discovered at its foundation. Since freedom as a problemarises just as the fact that every capability [potere] is, immediately, also acapability [potere] for not, every power [potenza] is also a powerlessness[impotenza]. He who is authentically free, in this sense, could not be hewho can simply accomplish this or that act, nor simply he who cannotaccomplish it, but he who maintains himself in a relation with privation iscapable of his own powerlessness [impotenza].

How is it then that Aristotle not only never mentions the term freedomin this context but does not even evoke in other ways the problem of thewill and of the decision? Certainly, as Shlomo Pines has shown with clarity,for a Greek the concept of freedom defines a status and a social conditionand not, as for the moderns, something that refers to the experience and tothe will of the subject. But what is decisive is that, for Aristotle, power[potenza], insofar as it determines as hexis a privation, as power [potenza]not to do and not to be, cannot be assigned to a subject as a right or aproperty. In the philosophical dictionary contained in book Delta of theMetaphysics, one reads that the hexis is a relation between that which he hasand has had, and therefore “it is impossible to have a hexis [echein hexin;hexis, habitus is, as we have seen, the deverbative of ‘to have’], as it could go


to infinity, if it were possible to have the disposition of having of that whichone has” (M, 1022b 7–10).

That the hexis of a power [potenza] cannot in turn be possessed meansthe impossibility of a subject in the modern sense, namely, of an auto-reflexive consciousness imputed as the center of its faculties and its disposi-tions [degli abiti]. But that means, also, that the problem of power [potenza]does not have, for a Greek—and probably within reason—anything to do withthe problem of the freedom of a subject.

Nothing Will Be of the Powerless [Impotente]The moment has come to interrogate more closely the relation between

power [potenza] and powerlessness [impotenza], between to-be-able-to [ilpotere] and to-be-able-not-to. How can, in fact, a power [potenza] pass tothe act if every power [potenza] is already always power [potenza] to notpass to the act? How can we think the act of the power [potenza] to not?The act of a power [potenza] to play the piano is certainly, for the pianist,the execution of a piece at the piano; but what will be, for him, the act of hispower [potenza] to not play? And what happens to this power [potenza] tonot play in the moment in which he begins to play? So too the act of power[potenza] to think will be to think this or that thought; but how to think theact of power [potenza] to not think? Perhaps the two powers [potenza] areso asymmetrical and heterogeneous that this question simply does notmake sense? Yet if, in the words of Aristotle, “every power [potenza] ispowerlessness [impotenza] of the same and with respect to the same,” theproblem of the fate of powerlessness [impotenza] in the passage to the actcannot be simply set aside.

The response that Aristotle gave to this question constitutes, even in itsdrastic brevity, one of most extraordinary performances of his philosoph-ical genius; and, nevertheless, it has been left unheard in the philosophicaltradition:

Esti de dynaton touto o� ean hyparx �e �e energeia ou legatai echein teendynamin, outhen estai adynaton.

Power [potente] is that for which it so happens that in the act of whichit is said to have power [potenza], nothing will be of the powerless.[impotente]. [M, 1047a 24–25]

The common reading implies that in this phrase Aristotle had wanted tosay “it is possible, that with respect to which nothing is impossible.” Al-ready Heidegger, in his course on book Theta of the Metaphysics, had been


ironic about this “vacuous subtlety” of the interpreters who, with an “ill-concealed sentiment of triumph,” attribute to Aristotle a similar tautology.The powerlessness [impotenza] of which one says that, at the moment ofthe act, nothing will remain cannot be, on the contrary, of that adynamia,which, according to Aristotle, belongs to every dynamis, power [potenza]to not (be or do). The correct translation will be, therefore, “power [po-tente] is that of which, it so happens in the act of which it is said to havepower [potenza], nothing will remain of the power [potente] not [to be ordo].” But what is meant then by “nothing will remain of the power [po-tente] to not”? How can power [potenza] neutralize powerlessness [impo-tenza] that cobelongs to it?

A passage of De interpretatione furnishes precise indications. Aproposthe negations of modal enunciations, Aristotle distinguishes and juxta-poses the problem of power [potenza] and that of the modal enunciations.While the negations of a modal enunciation must negate the mode and notthe dictum (for which the negations of possible that it might be is not possiblethat it might be and the negations of possible that it might not be is notpossible that it might not be), on the plane of power [potenza] things aredifferent and negations and affirmations do not exclude them. “Since thatwhich is power [potente] is not always in the act,” writes Aristotle, “so alsothe negation that belongs to it; indeed, the one who is capable [capace] ofnot walking is capable of walking, and one who cannot see can also see.”5

For this, in book Theta and in De anima, the negation of power [potenza](or, better still, of its privation) has, as we have seen, always the form: “it isable not” [puo non] (and never that it not be able). It seems therefore thatthe expressions possible that it might be and possible that it might not bederive from one another, as the same thing can be and not be. Enuncia-tions of this type are not therefore contradictory. Rather, possible that it beand not possible that it be are never together.6

If we call privation the statute of negation in power [potenza], what isimplied in a privative mode by the second negation is contained in thephrase “nothing will remain of the power [potente] to not (be or do)”? Asfar as noncontradiction with respect to power [potenza] to be is concerned,the power [potenza] to not be must not here simply annul itself, but, ad-dressing itself, it should assume the form of an able [poter] to not–not be.The privative negation of “power to not be” [potente non essere] is, namely,“power not–not to be” (and not “not able [potente] not to be”).

That which Aristotle says in this passage in question is, then, greatly

5. Aristotle, De interpretatione, 21b 14–16.6. See Ibid., 21b 35–22a 2.


different and more interesting than what the tautological reading of themodern commentators say. If a power [potenza] to not be belongs originallyto every power [potenza], only that will be truly powerful [potente], which, inthe moment of passage to the act, will not simply annul its own power [po-tenza] to not nor leave it behind in respect to the act but will make it passintegrally in it as such; it will be carried, that is, not–not pass to the act.

Gift and SalvationWe can now answer the questions that we posed: What is the power

[potenza] to not, at the moment in which the act is realized? How to thinkthe act of a power [potenza] to not? The interpretations that we proposeoblige us to think in a new way and not banalize the relation betweenpower [potenza] and act. The passage to the act does not annul nor exhaustpower [potenza], but it conserves it in the act as such and, notably, in itseminent form of power [potenza] to not (be or do). Aristotle says it withclarity in a passage of De anima, which we can now understand in its fullimplications:

To suffer [paschein] is not a simple term, but, from a certain angle, itis a certain destruction of the action by its contrary, from another it israther the conservation [so�t �eria] of that which is in power [potenza]in the act and is similar to it, in the same way that power [potenza][conserves] with respect to the act. Indeed he who possesses sciencebecomes contemplative in the act [theo�roun], and this is not an altera-tion [alliousthai; “becoming other”], since it is a gift to itself [eis hauto. . . epidosis] and to the act. [DA, 417b 2–7]

Power [potenza] (the only power [potenza] that interests Aristotle, fromthe point of view of a hexis) does not pass to the act undergoing a destruc-tion or an alteration; its paschein (passivity) consists rather in a conserva-tion and in a perfection of itself (epidosis, literally “supplementary gift,”also means “enhancement”; William of Moerbeke translates in ipsum id as“addition,” and Themistius glossed teleio�sis, “accomplishment”).

We must once again measure all the consequences of this figure ofpower [potenza] that, giving itself to itself, saves and increases in the act. Itobliges us to rethink from the start not only the relation between power[potenza] and act, between the possible and the real, but also consider in anew way, in its aesthetics, the statute of the act of creation and of the workand, in politics, the problem of the conservation of constituting power inconstituted power. But it is our entire understanding of the living being inquestion that must be revoked, if it is true that life must be thought as apower [potenza] that incessantly exceeds its forms and its fulfillment. And


perhaps only from this perspective will we be able to finally understand thenature of thought if it is true, as Aristotle does not tire in repeating, that itis power [potenza] to define the essence. As he writes in a conclusive pas-sage of De anima:

When [thought] became each and every thing, in the sense in whichhe who knows is said to be as such in the act (and this occurs when itcan pass to the act by itself), it remains also then in several ways inpower [potenza] . . . and can then be thinking thinking itself. [DA,429b 5–9]

That which the philosophical tradition has habituated us to consider asthe vertex of thought and, at the same time, as the same canon of energeiaand of the pure act—the thought of thought—is, in truth, the extreme giftof power [potenza] to itself, the accomplished figure of the power ofthought [potenza del pensiero].


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