Western Cosmology and the Becoming of Possibility: 2 Spheres and Harmony: Pythagoras, Plato, and the Musical Cosmos

Following the relational and mythic mapping of early Greek cosmology, the Pythagorean and Platonic traditions introduced a decisive abstraction of cosmic order through mathematics and harmony. Possibility was no longer apprehended solely through observation or narrative; it became structured, intelligible, and amenable to formalisation. The cosmos itself was construed as an ordered field, a system in which potentialities resonated according to principles of proportion, symmetry, and relational consistency.

Pythagoras and his followers emphasised number as the generative principle of possibility. The ratios underlying musical intervals were not merely auditory phenomena; they were reflections of cosmic order. The very structure of potential — what could occur, align, or harmonise — was thought to be encoded in numerical relations. In this sense, mathematics became both the medium and the measure of construal, offering a universalised framework in which possibility could be articulated and anticipated.

Plato extended this approach in his cosmology and metaphysics, positing the cosmos as an intelligible whole governed by forms, harmonics, and geometric order. In the Timaeus, the cosmos is presented as a living, rational entity, where the “world-soul” organises matter according to harmonious proportions. Potentiality is therefore not arbitrary; it is embedded within relational structures that define what is possible, coherent, and aesthetically resonant. The cosmos becomes a field in which constraints and freedoms are simultaneously specified by the underlying mathematical-harmonic order.

This period marks a critical shift in construal: the cosmos is no longer merely relational in the mythic sense, nor solely observed for patterns; it is rationalised and formalised. Possibility is now understood as structural resonance, actualisable when elements align according to pre-existing mathematical relations. The horizon of potential expands in abstraction, yet remains deeply relational, reflecting the interplay between number, proportion, and cosmic intelligibility.

In sum, the Pythagorean and Platonic innovations inaugurate a cosmos in which mathematics mediates, constrains, and enables possibility. Potential is not unbounded: it is relationally structured, intelligible, and harmonically coherent. The musical cosmos establishes a paradigm in which human thought can apprehend, anticipate, and participate in the unfolding of cosmic potential — a pattern of construal that will echo through Aristotle, the medieval synthesis, and the mechanistic universes of early modern science.

Western Cosmology and the Becoming of Possibility: 1 The Celestial Order: Early Greek Cosmology and Mythic Mapping

Before the abstraction of reason and the formalisation of mathematics, the cosmos was construed through narrative, pattern, and relational imagination. Early Greek cosmology, emerging from a synthesis of mythos and observation, mapped the heavens as a structured, intelligible domain in which possibility was inseparable from order. The stars, planets, and natural cycles were not merely objects of perception; they were relational agents shaping the horizon of what could occur in the human and cosmic spheres.

In this period, the distinction between what exists and what is possible was fluid. The gods, celestial bodies, and elemental forces were entwined in networks of causality, influence, and meaning. Construal was thus relational: humans understood potentiality through stories, rituals, and observation, integrating the cosmos into a coherent, if mythically mediated, field of becoming. Possibility was bounded and structured, yet intimately tied to lived experience and collective imagination.

The early Greeks began to move from purely mythic explanation toward rational patterning. Figures such as Thales, Anaximander, and Heraclitus introduced notions of underlying principles—arche, logos—that governed cosmic change. These abstractions did not yet constitute formal scientific law, but they represented a first cut of possibility: construal through principle rather than caprice. Potentiality was no longer entirely determined by narrative, but began to be understood as emerging from relational patterns that could be observed, inferred, and anticipated.

This period also foregrounded relational temporality. Cosmic cycles—solstices, equinoxes, lunar phases—provided rhythm to human activity and temporally bounded possibility. The unfolding of events was understood as nested within cosmic regularities, offering a horizon in which action, expectation, and transformation could be intelligibly situated.

In sum, early Greek cosmology represents the first historically traceable field in which possibility was actively construed through relational, narrative, and observational frameworks. The heavens were at once object and agent: they constrained, enabled, and shaped potentialities in ways that were both intelligible and existentially meaningful. This foundational moment sets the stage for the abstractions of mathematics, the hierarchy of Aristotelian spheres, and the eventual decentring of humanity in modern cosmology.

Possibility, in this celestial order, was at once structured, relational, and open to the interpretive imagination—a primordial horizon in which humans first began to recognise that the cosmos itself is not merely given, but must be construed.

Western Philosophy and the Becoming of Possibility: 13 Modulatory Voices: Supplementary Perspectives on Construal and Possibility

While the main series traces decisive re-cuts of construal through history, these thinkers serve as modulatory voices, offering critical inflections that nuance, deepen, or complicate the genealogy without restructuring it.

Locke (1632–1704) — Empiricism and the Tabula Rasa

Situated after Renaissance humanism, Locke reconceives possibility through experience. The mind is a blank slate, shaped by sensory input. Construal is grounded in empirical interaction; potential is realised through observation and engagement with the world. His work introduces the individual as a situated agent, prefiguring perspectival and relational accounts of knowledge.

Berkeley (1685–1753) — Idealism and the Primacy of Perception

Following Locke, Berkeley radicalises relationality: existence depends on perception (esse est percipi). Possibility is co-constituted by perceivers, and ultimately grounded in divine observation. His insight reinforces the ontological interdependence of subject, world, and divine relationality.

Hume (1711–1776) — Skepticism, Habit, and Contingent Construal

Hume anticipates Kant by foregrounding contingency and habit. Causal relations are not necessary but inferred; possibility is probabilistic, emerging from patterns of experience. Knowledge is relationally constructed, highlighting the limits of reason and the emergent character of potential.

Sartre (1905–1980) — Existential Freedom and Projective Possibility

Alongside phenomenology and Nietzsche, Sartre situates possibility in human freedom. Construal is existentially grounded: potential is realised through projects, choices, and engagement with the world. The individual actively shapes both self and world, extending perspectival construal into ethical and ontological dimensions.

Camus (1913–1960) — Absurdity, Limits, and Constrained Potential

Camus complements Sartre by emphasising the tension between human desire for meaning and worldly contingency. Possibility is constrained by the absurd, yet becomes meaningful through action and revolt. Construal is both projective and situational, highlighting relational and existential limits.

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Summary:

These modulatory voices refine the genealogy of construal:

• Early modern empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) explore mind-world relations and contingency.

• 20th-century existentialists (Sartre, Camus) deepen the perspectival, embodied, and ethical dimensions of potential.

Together, they demonstrate that the becoming of possibility is neither monolithic nor predetermined. Each thinker opens an interpretive window — a relational and reflexive modulation — that enriches the historical and philosophical architecture traced in the main series.

Western Philosophy and the Becoming of Possibility: 12 Reflexive Ontology: The 21st Century and the Becoming of Possibility

As we enter the 21st century, the trajectory traced from mythos to logos, from transcendence to immanence, from historical dialectic to posthuman relationality converges in what can be called a reflexive ontology. Possibility is no longer external to thought, subjectivity, or practice; it is enacted, co-constituted, and historically situated. Construal itself is an ontological act: to interpret, to act, and to relate is simultaneously to shape what is possible in the world.

In this framework, the boundaries between subject and object, human and non-human, structure and event dissolve into relational processes. Possibility is understood as a historical horizon — emerging, contingent, and temporally extended. Every act of construal participates in the actualisation of potentialities while simultaneously reconfiguring the space of what can be thought, done, or known in the future. Knowledge, ethics, and meaning are inseparable from this ongoing enactment of possibility.

Reflexive ontology foregrounds the co-dependence of perception, conception, and materiality. Worlds are constituted through interaction, and the horizon of possibility is constantly re-cut by technological innovation, ecological change, social transformation, and the evolving capacities of human and non-human agents. Construal is therefore dynamic: it acknowledges the multiplicity of perspectives, the interdependence of actors, and the contingency of historical unfolding.

The 21st century presents both unprecedented potential and profound complexity. Reflexive ontology equips us to navigate this terrain by recognising that the becoming of possibility is inseparable from the acts through which we engage with the world. Philosophy, in this sense, is not merely reflective but performative: it maps and participates in the very processes it seeks to understand.

Thus, the contemporary horizon of thought is a field in which construal, possibility, and history intersect. We inherit the cuts of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and the posthuman theorists, yet each act of interpretation and engagement reopens the field, demonstrating that the becoming of possibility is not a static inheritance but an ongoing, relational, and reflexive project. In this way, possibility is neither predetermined nor exhausted; it is the living horizon of our collective, co-constituted becoming.

Western Philosophy and the Becoming of Possibility: 11 Postmodern and Posthuman: Beyond the Human Horizon of Construal

Following structuralism and its deconstruction, late 20th- and early 21st-century thought has increasingly reconceived possibility beyond the human-centric frameworks of prior philosophy. Postmodern and posthuman perspectives open new horizons in which construal is ecological, technological, and relational, dissolving the traditional boundaries that had previously limited the field of potential.

Postmodernism, in its interrogation of grand narratives and foundational certainties, emphasised the multiplicity and contingency of meaning. Possibility is no longer bound to universal reason, historical teleology, or semiotic structure alone; it emerges in local, context-sensitive, and heterogeneous configurations. Knowledge, identity, and agency are distributed and provisional, revealing that construal is always situated within networks of power, discourse, and relationality.

Posthumanism extends this insight further by decentring the human as the primary locus of possibility. Thought and action are understood as entangled with technological, ecological, and non-human agents. Artificial intelligence, networks, and cybernetic systems co-constitute what can be known, done, and experienced. Simultaneously, the environment, ecosystems, and planetary processes participate in shaping potentialities, highlighting the distributed and relational nature of becoming.

In this landscape, construal is no longer the product of singular human subjects but a collaborative enactment across heterogeneous agents and systems. Possibility becomes dynamic, emergent, and relational: an effect of interaction, adaptation, and co-constitution. The human horizon is decentered, and the very notion of subjectivity is reconceived as interdependent, embedded, and evolving.

These shifts open new philosophical and practical terrains. Ethics, epistemology, and ontology alike must account for the interrelation of humans, technologies, and ecological systems. The act of construal is inseparable from the networks through which it flows, and possibility itself is understood as co-emergent, contingent, and multiply instantiated.

In embracing these postmodern and posthuman perspectives, contemporary thought extends the genealogy of construal into a horizon in which possibility is not merely realised through human reasoning or historical process but continually emerges within complex, interdependent, and relational systems. The world is at once open, contingent, and alive with potential — a terrain of becoming that transcends prior limits and inaugurates new modes of understanding, acting, and relating.

Western Philosophy and the Becoming of Possibility: 10 Language, Difference, Relation: Structuralism and its Undoing

Following the perspectival turn, the 20th century foregrounded language, difference, and relationality as the primary axes of construal. Structuralism, beginning with Saussure, treated possibility as organised within semiotic systems: networks of signs whose relations, not intrinsic qualities, determined meaning. Reality, in this framework, was construed as a field of relational differences, and potential was structured by the rules and limits of the symbolic order.

Saussure’s langue and parole distinguished the systemic from the performative, revealing that meaning emerges from differences within structured systems rather than from correspondence to external reality. Possibility became relational: to be thinkable was to occupy a position within a semiotic system, to be intelligible was to participate in a network of oppositions, contrasts, and conventions. Construal itself was formalised, codified, and constrained by the architecture of language.

Structuralism reached its apogee in Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, and others who extended relational thinking to culture, myth, and social organisation. Possibility was no longer simply a matter of metaphysics, cognition, or historical process; it was distributed across systems of signs, codes, and practices. Knowledge, meaning, and identity were understood as effects of these relational matrices, revealing the deep structuring of potential in symbolic form.

Derrida, in turn, deconstructed these systems, exposing the instability, deferral, and undecidability inherent in every structure of signification. Difference (différance) undermined the idea of fixed reference, revealing that possibility is never fully secured within a system but continually displaced across relational networks. Construal became reflexive: to interpret is simultaneously to produce and to destabilise potential, and to navigate the semiotic field is to negotiate the indeterminacy built into its relational fabric.

The structuralist and post-structuralist turn thus reframed possibility as inseparable from semiotic systems and their deconstruction. Construal is no longer grounded solely in mind, world, or history, but in the differential relations that constitute meaning, alongside the reflexive awareness that these relations are inherently unstable. In this horizon, to think, to speak, and to act is always to engage with the contingent and relational architecture of potential itself.

Western Philosophy and the Becoming of Possibility: 9 Perspectival Turns: Nietzsche, Phenomenology, and the Pluralisation of Construal

Following the historical and material re-cuts of Hegel and Marx, the late 19th and early 20th centuries introduced a decisive pluralisation of possibility. Nietzsche and the phenomenologists shifted construal from universal or systemic frameworks toward perspectival, embodied, and existential modes of engagement. Possibility was no longer only historical, structural, or rational; it became intensely personal, situated, and relational.

Nietzsche reframed the terrain of potential through the concept of perspectivism. Truth, value, and being are not absolute, nor given in structures beyond life; they are interpretations, contingent on standpoint, drive, and creative force. The horizon of possibility is thus plural: multiple, overlapping, and often conflicting. The individual is no longer a passive recogniser of universal order but an active creator, navigating constraints and opportunities, affirming or transfiguring potential through choice and will.

Phenomenology, particularly in the work of Husserl and later Heidegger, grounded construal in embodied experience. Possibility arises in the lived world — Lebenswelt — as the interplay between perception, intentionality, and horizon. The world is disclosed relationally: objects, events, and meanings appear to consciousness in ways inseparable from the embodied, temporal, and practical situation of the subject. Possibility is thus enacted, contingent, and inherently perspectival: it is experienced through the situated lens of being-in-the-world.

Together, these perspectival turns reveal that possibility is inseparable from standpoint and embodiment. Construal is no longer merely a matter of abstract categories, historical structures, or dialectical unfolding. It is contingent, provisional, and existentially grounded. The pluralisation of possibility challenges prior claims to universality, emphasising the diversity of viewpoints, the situatedness of knowledge, and the creative capacities of human beings to navigate, shape, and transfigure their own horizons.

In this context, reality is not a fixed domain to be discovered but a relational space in which beings interpret, act, and bring forth potentialities. Nietzsche and phenomenology thus inaugurate a new register of construal: one in which possibility is plural, contingent, embodied, and existential, opening the way for the linguistic, structural, and posthuman reconceptions of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Western Philosophy and the Becoming of Possibility: 8 Dialectic and History: Hegel, Marx, and the Becoming of Possibility

If Kant bounded possibility within the structures of cognition, Hegel and Marx reanimated it within the movement of history itself. Here, construal was no longer primarily a matter of abstract categories or transcendental conditions, but a dynamic process in which possibility unfolded, conflicted, and was realised through reflexive engagement with material and social conditions.

Hegel’s dialectic reconceived being and thought as relational and historical. Possibility is not static; it emerges in the interplay of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis — a self-developing rational movement in which contradictions are not merely obstacles but productive inflections in the becoming of the world. The individual and the collective are interwoven: consciousness realises itself through participation in historical totality, and reality is construed as the progressive actualisation of Spirit. In this framework, construal itself is historical, reflexive, and integrally tied to the unfolding of possibility.

Marx, in turn, materialised the dialectic. He shifted the focus from abstract Spirit to social and economic relations as the medium through which possibility is cut and structured. History is a terrain of struggle and production, and potentialities are realised or constrained through modes of labour, property, and class relations. Possibility is therefore immanent in material conditions, yet not reducible to them: it is shaped, contested, and reconfigured through human praxis. Construal becomes both interpretive and active — the way humans collectively engage with and transform the conditions of their existence.

Together, Hegel and Marx inaugurate a re-cut of construal in which history, materiality, and reflexivity converge. Possibility is neither purely transcendent, abstract, nor merely mental; it is relational, temporal, and enacted. The dialectical process opens a horizon in which potential is constantly in motion, revealing that reality itself is an outcome of dynamic construal, a becoming that is neither fixed nor predetermined.

In this historical turn, the landscape of possibility is understood as both structured and contingent, as shaped by forces beyond immediate control yet continually reconfigured through conscious action. Philosophy, for the first time, treats the actualisation of potential as inseparable from historical process, laying the groundwork for a conception of construal that is reflexive, material, and ceaselessly evolving.

Western Philosophy and the Becoming of Possibility: 7 Kant and the Limits of Reason: Categories as Construal Conditions

If Descartes restructured possibility around the rational subject, Kant reoriented it around the conditions that make such rationality possible. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he reframed the question of possibility itself: not as what exists independently of thought, but as what can be known, conceived, and construed through the structures of cognition. Possibility became inseparable from the transcendental conditions of experience.

Kant distinguished phenomena — the world as it appears to us — from noumena, the world as it is in itself. The categories of understanding, such as causality, substance, and unity, do not describe things as they exist independently, but rather organise the manifold of experience so that it is intelligible to reason. Possibility is therefore not absolute; it is structured, bounded, and mediated by the very architecture of cognition. To grasp what can happen is to grasp the a priori forms through which experience is shaped.

This construal imposed a systematic order on potentiality. Events are not merely contingent; they are intelligible only insofar as they instantiate relations prescribed by the categories. Space and time, as forms of intuition, condition the very horizon of what can appear. Possibility is therefore co-constituted by the mind: the freedom to conceive, the limits of reason, and the structures that make thought possible are inseparable.

Kant’s innovation was to relativise the Platonic and Aristotelian ideals: universals and essences are no longer simply “out there” or in things themselves. They emerge as conditions of construal, the rules by which rational subjects can discern patterns, causes, and relations. Possibility is bounded not by divine will nor by mechanistic determinism, but by the transcendental framework of cognition.

In this sense, Kant both secures and limits possibility. He safeguards the universality of reason while constraining what can be intelligibly conceived. The result is a profound shift: possibility is no longer merely an external horizon or a faculty of the subject, but a relational structure — the interplay of cognition, categories, and the experienced world.

Kant’s philosophy thus establishes a template for modern epistemology and metaphysics alike: construal itself is conditioned, and the landscape of possibility is defined as much by the structures of understanding as by the objects of thought. The horizon of what can be known and what can be actualised is hence a transcendental architecture, meticulously coded into the very form of reason.

Western Philosophy and the Becoming of Possibility: 6 The Cartesian Divide: Subject, Object, and the Machine of Nature

The Renaissance had reopened the horizon of possibility through human agency and worldly knowledge. Descartes transformed this opening into a decisive reorganisation: the division of subject and object, mind and world, rational certainty and mechanistic nature. In this Cartesian cut, possibility was no longer mediated by divine hierarchy nor by humanist eloquence but restructured around rational subjectivity itself.

Descartes’ methodological doubt inaugurated a new construal of thought. By stripping away all that could be questioned, he located certainty in the cogito: the self-reflexive act of thinking. The subject, secured in its capacity for rational self-awareness, became the ground from which knowledge could be reconstructed. Possibility was thus centred in the clarity and distinctness of rational ideas, guaranteed not by theological order but by the very structure of subjectivity.

In parallel, nature was recast as res extensa, extended substance, a realm of mechanical processes governed by universal laws. The cosmos became a machine: intelligible through measurement, analysis, and causal explanation. This mechanistic construal rendered possibility calculable — the predictable unfolding of natural laws — while confining the freedom of potential to the rational subject who observes, reasons, and commands.

The Cartesian divide therefore instituted a dual architecture of possibility. On one side, the subject: locus of reason, freedom, and certainty. On the other, the object: inert matter, stripped of intrinsic purpose, open to analysis, manipulation, and control. Construal was polarised: inner clarity versus external mechanism, thinking substance versus extended substance.

This reorganisation was decisive for modernity. It opened the way for natural science, grounded in the mechanistic construal of matter. It also framed the modern problem of subjectivity: how a thinking self relates to a world construed as object. The Cartesian solution secured possibility as rational mastery, but it also instituted a fracture that subsequent philosophy would repeatedly attempt to overcome.

In Descartes, then, possibility was restructured around rational subjectivity. The cogito guaranteed certainty; the machine of nature guaranteed order. Between them stretched the divide that has shaped the modern trajectory of thought: a construal in which the freedom of the subject is measured against the determinism of the world.

Western Philosophy and the Becoming of Possibility: 5 Humanism and the Renaissance Re-Opening of Potential

The Renaissance marked a reawakening of possibility after centuries of scholastic constraint. Where medieval philosophy had tethered thought to divine hierarchy, Renaissance humanism reopened the horizon of construal by rediscovering agency, perspective, and worldly knowledge. This was not a simple rejection of theology but a reorientation: from the transcendent authority of God toward the capacities of human beings to know, create, and transform their world.

Classical texts, newly recovered and translated, offered resources for reimagining the conditions of thought. Petrarch, Erasmus, and other humanists looked to antiquity not for scholastic reconciliation but for inspiration in eloquence, ethics, and civic life. The humanist project construed possibility as grounded in human faculties: reason, imagination, and expression. To know was not only to contemplate divine order but to engage actively with worldly affairs.

This shift was epitomised in the rediscovery of perspective. In art, linear perspective transformed representation, situating the viewer at the centre of a calculable space. In philosophy, perspective became a metaphor for the finitude and creativity of human vision. Knowledge was no longer confined to universal hierarchy but construed as perspectival and situated, anchored in the embodied position of the human subject.

At the same time, Renaissance science and exploration expanded the horizons of possibility. Copernican astronomy displaced Earth from the centre of the cosmos; voyages across oceans revealed worlds beyond the medieval imagination. Such discoveries reconfigured construal by demonstrating that knowledge could grow through empirical encounter, measurement, and experiment. The world was no longer a fixed hierarchy but an open field of inquiry.

Humanism thus marked a re-opening of potential: an insistence that meaning, truth, and value could be construed within human capacities and worldly contexts. The dignity of man, as Pico della Mirandola declared, lay in the ability to shape one’s own becoming — to actualise potential through choice, creativity, and reason.

This Renaissance construal did not abolish theology, but it decentered it. Divinity remained, but it was no longer the sole horizon of possibility. Human beings emerged as active participants in the shaping of knowledge and meaning. In this reorientation, the Renaissance laid the groundwork for modern thought: a world where construal would increasingly be understood as the activity of human reason within an ever-expanding field of potential.

Western Philosophy and the Becoming of Possibility: 4 Divinity as Order: Scholastic Mediation of Possibility

With the medieval scholastics, possibility was neither the transcendent ideality of Plato nor the immanent actualisation of Aristotle, but a horizon subordinated to divine order. The synthesis of classical philosophy with Christian theology reorganised construal around a single, unifying principle: God as the ground of being and the guarantor of possibility.

The scholastic project was not merely theological but ontological. By mediating Platonic universals and Aristotelian categories through the framework of Christian doctrine, medieval thinkers established a hierarchy in which all potential was referred back to divine will. Universals were construed as ideas in the mind of God; substances and their actualisations were ordered according to providence. The architecture of possibility was therefore bound to the theological structure of creation, revelation, and salvation.

This mediation was not simply a restriction but a profound re-cut of construal. The scholastic method systematised reason within the authority of faith, binding dialectical argument to scriptural truth. To think possibility was to think within an order that was both rational and hierarchical: angels above humans, humans above animals, God above all. The scala naturae (great chain of being) expressed this construal vividly, situating every creature and substance within a divinely ordained order of ascent.

Yet scholasticism was also a laboratory of precision. The attempt to reconcile Aristotle’s taxonomy with Christian doctrine generated new distinctions: essence and existence, substance and accident, act and potency as oriented by divine causality. These refinements did not free construal but rather disciplined it, shaping thought into the form of theological reasoning. Possibility itself became a category to be managed: what God could will, what God permitted, what God foreclosed.

The result was a constrained but stable architecture of thought. By anchoring possibility in divine order, the scholastics preserved metaphysical coherence at the cost of construal’s autonomy. Theological hierarchy absorbed the openness of becoming into the fixity of providence. The world could still be investigated, but only as the unfolding of a divine plan.

In this way, medieval philosophy positioned divinity not as mythic narrative, nor as abstract form, nor as immanent taxonomy, but as the supreme order through which all construal of possibility was to be mediated. This order provided security and coherence, but it also closed off other horizons — until the Renaissance and early modern thought began to reopen them.

Western Philosophy and the Becoming of Possibility: 3 Aristotle and the Taxonomy of Being: From Potential to Actualisation

If Plato abstracted possibility into transcendent universals, Aristotle returned construal to the immanent world. His philosophy did not abolish the Platonic cut but reoriented it: from the eternal perfection of Forms to the ordered diversity of beings. In Aristotle, possibility was no longer defined by transcendence but by the dynamics of actualisation within the world itself.

Aristotle’s Categories offered a systematic taxonomy of being: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, and passion. Each category functioned as a construal strategy, carving the manifold of experience into analysable kinds. Where Plato privileged the universal as the ground of possibility, Aristotle grounded construal in the classificatory differentiation of particulars. Being was no longer a transcendent realm but a structured field of categories through which entities could be known, distinguished, and related.

At the heart of this system lay the distinction between potentiality (dynamis) and actuality (energeia). Potential was not a transcendent ideal but an immanent orientation toward becoming. A seed has the potential to grow into a tree; actuality is the fulfilment of this directed capacity. Possibility, in this view, is tied to the inner principle of individuation: to what a thing can become by virtue of what it already is.

Aristotle’s construal therefore fused taxonomy with teleology. To classify a being was also to situate it within its natural trajectory of actualisation. The cosmos was ordered as a hierarchy of substances, each individuated by its form and oriented toward its proper end. Knowledge itself became the act of discerning these structures — to know a thing was to know its category, its essence, and its path from potential to actual.

This Aristotelian framework inaugurated a durable mode of construal: systematic, classificatory, and teleological. It preserved the possibility of universality but grounded it in the organisation of particulars rather than in transcendent ideals. In doing so, Aristotle established philosophy as a science of being-in-the-world, providing the architecture within which both medieval scholasticism and modern science would later unfold.

Thus, in contrast to Plato’s abstraction, Aristotle’s legacy was to anchor possibility in the very processes of individuation and actualisation. It is here that Western philosophy first began to construe being not only as what eternally is, but as what can become.

Western Philosophy and the Becoming of Possibility: 2 The Platonic Cut: Ideal Forms and the Partition of Possibility

If the pre-Socratics shifted construal from divine genealogy to elemental principle, Plato enacted a sharper and more enduring cut: the abstraction of potential into the realm of transcendent universals. This Platonic division established a new horizon of thought in which possibility was no longer bound to the flux of becoming but secured in the permanence of ideal form.

Plato’s theory of Forms was not a mere doctrine of metaphysical dualism but a decisive reorganisation of construal. The sensible world, with its change and imperfection, was relegated to the status of appearance, while true being was assigned to the immutable domain of Ideas. In this framework, possibility was severed into two registers: the eternal potential of universals, and the deficient actualisations encountered in material existence.

The Platonic cut thus partitioned possibility itself. On one side, the Form as pure potentiality: the perfect circle, the ideal justice, the true good. On the other, the shadowed copies that participate without ever attaining the full measure of the ideal. Knowledge, accordingly, was redefined as recollection of the transcendent, a turning of the soul away from sensible particularity toward universal truth.

What this introduced was a new construal of potential: as that which is purified of time, change, and perspective. The Platonic Form guaranteed the stability of meaning by abstracting it from the contingencies of the world. In doing so, it established an enduring architecture of construal — one that has shaped Western philosophy ever since.

The cost, however, was the foreclosure of relational becoming. By binding possibility to transcendent universals, Plato set a precedent for construing actuality as derivative, flawed, and dependent. The richness of emergence was subordinated to the fixity of ideality.

Plato’s achievement, then, was to give philosophy its first ontology: a system of being grounded in abstract possibility. Yet his legacy is also the enduring tension between potential as living process and potential as transcendent form — a tension that has defined the trajectory of Western thought from antiquity to the present.

Western Philosophy and the Becoming of Possibility: 1 Possibility Before Ontology: Mythos and Logos in Early Greece

Western philosophy begins not with ontology but with construal. Before the systematic categories of being, before the partitions of actuality and potentiality, there was the movement from mythos to logos — a reorganisation of how possibility could be spoken, narrated, and thought.

Mythic tradition construed the world through narrative alignment: gods, forces, and primordial powers were woven into a symbolic order that explained and oriented human life. Possibility was not abstract but embodied in stories, enacted through ritual, and bound to cycles of fate. The horizon of potential was given in mythic terms — events were explained by divine will, and transformation occurred through the intervention of powers beyond human ordering.

The pre-Socratics mark a decisive shift. Figures such as Thales, Heraclitus, and Anaximander sought not simply to retell myth in new guises but to restructure possibility itself. In place of divine genealogy, they posited elemental principles — water, fire, apeiron — as the grounds of emergence. Heraclitus’ flux and Logos, Anaximander’s boundless, Parmenides’ Being: these were not just theories but construal strategies, cutting the fabric of potential into systematic concepts.

What mattered was not the replacement of gods with elements but the invention of a new order of construal. Myth oriented possibility toward divine narrative; logos oriented it toward principle and relation. With this shift, the world became thinkable as an order susceptible to reasoned inquiry, argument, and conceptual distinction.

The pre-Socratic turn was therefore not yet ontology in the later sense but the preparation for it. It opened a horizon in which possibility could be construed abstractly rather than narratively, through concepts rather than gods, through systematic relation rather than mythic fate. In this movement, possibility itself was reconfigured: no longer only the play of divine powers but a field open to rational construal.

Thus, before ontology proper, we find the first great re-cut of construal — the moment when mythos yielded to logos, and possibility began to be thought as a horizon of reason.

Genealogies of Construal: Western Philosophy and the Becoming of Possibility

To trace the history of Western philosophy is not simply to recount a sequence of doctrines or the intellectual legacy of great thinkers. It is to follow a shifting horizon of possibility: to see how, in different epochs, the very conditions of construal were cut, reframed, and realigned. Each philosophical turn did not merely describe reality; it opened and foreclosed the ways in which reality could be construed at all.

This series approaches philosophy genealogically, not representationally. From the pre-Socratics to the 21st century, we follow the movements by which possibility was structured: how myth was transformed into logos; how ideality and actuality were divided and systematised; how divinity became the ground of order; how modern thought split subject from object; how reason and history reconfigured the space of potential; how language, difference, and relation came to define the very act of construal.

The aim is not to rehearse canonical interpretations but to uncover the successive architectures of construal that philosophy itself instituted. Each stage will be examined as a decisive reorganisation of possibility, an inflection in the becoming of thought. In this way, the series situates Western philosophy not as a cumulative body of knowledge but as a genealogy of construals through which worlds have been cut, inhabited, and surpassed.

By the end, the trajectory comes to our own moment, in which relational and perspectival ontologies emerge not as novel inventions but as the latest configuration of possibility itself: an opening in which construal recognises its reflexive role in the becoming of reality.

This is the terrain of our inquiry: philosophy as construal, construal as the shaping of possibility, and possibility as one of the deep currents in the becoming of worlds.

The Becoming of Human Possibility: A Life-Scale Perspective — 13 Series Conclusion: A Life in the Becoming of Worlds

Each human life is a cosmos in miniature: a field where possibility is cut, negotiated, and actualised. To live is to participate in the weaving of worlds, not as a solitary agent but as a node in a dense web of relations.

A life’s trajectory is neither predetermined nor infinitely open. It unfolds through the interplay of agency and constraint, identity and multiplicity, reflexivity and mediation. In this sense, every biography is a cosmogenic act — a situated enactment of how worlds come to be.

To view a life in this way is to displace the search for essence or finality. What matters is not what a human “is” but how becoming is sustained, interrupted, and reconfigured across time. Each decision, relation, and encounter refracts the wider cosmos, contributing to the collective patterning of possibility.

The study of a life, then, is inseparable from the study of worlds. For the human is neither origin nor endpoint of meaning, but one strand in the becoming of reality itself. To trace a life is to trace the processes by which possibility takes form — a reminder that our most intimate trajectories are also cosmological.

The Becoming of Human Possibility: A Life-Scale Perspective — 12 Toward Relational Flourishing

If possibility is always relational, then flourishing cannot be conceived as an isolated achievement. It is not the maximisation of individual capacity but the co-individuation of lives within networks of mutual actualisation.

Relational flourishing names a mode of becoming in which agency, constraint, and difference are held in generative tension. It is not the erasure of limits but their negotiation; not the pursuit of autonomy detached from others but the cultivation of interdependencies that expand what can be.

Such flourishing requires infrastructures that sustain multiplicity: social, political, and technological arrangements that enable diverse potentials to unfold without collapsing into uniformity or domination. It is a project of designing conditions in which lives do not merely persist but resonate, each contributing to the horizons of possibility for others.

To move toward relational flourishing is to reframe the human good as a collective practice of world-making. It is to see possibility itself as an ethical field, where the measure of becoming lies not in solitary advancement but in the shared expansion of what life may become.

The Becoming of Human Possibility: A Life-Scale Perspective — 11 Political and Ethical Horizons

Human becoming is inseparable from the collective conditions that grant or deny access to possibility. Political structures and ethical formations do not merely regulate life; they shape the very distribution of what can be actualised.

To speak of possibility is to speak of power. Legal frameworks, economic systems, and cultural hierarchies set thresholds for entry: who may learn, who may move, who may speak, who may flourish. These thresholds are not natural limits but politically constructed boundaries that stratify the field of becoming.

Ethical horizons emerge within and against these boundaries. They name the struggles over justice, dignity, and recognition that contest exclusions and open new pathways of actualisation. Ethics here is not abstract moral rule but the lived negotiation of how lives may unfold in relation to one another.

Political and ethical horizons thus reveal the uneven terrain of possibility. They remind us that no life unfolds in isolation, and that becoming is conditioned by collective arrangements of access and exclusion. To study these horizons is to confront the contested ground on which possibility itself is distributed and reconfigured.

The Becoming of Human Possibility: A Life-Scale Perspective — 10 Technological Mediation

Human possibility is never abstract; it is always mediated by the material and symbolic infrastructures through which life unfolds. In the contemporary moment, digital systems, artificial intelligence, and biotechnologies do not merely extend human capacities but reshape the very conditions of becoming.

Technological mediation is not neutral. Each device, platform, or technique imposes a structuring logic, privileging some forms of relation and foreclosing others. To live online is to inhabit algorithmic curation; to engage biotechnology is to reconstrue the body as manipulable material; to work with AI is to negotiate with non-human agents of pattern and prediction.

These mediations alter the scope of actualisation. They accelerate access, open novel possibilities, and generate new identities, but they also delimit: narrowing horizons to what can be computed, stored, or optimised. Human possibility becomes entangled with technical systems whose architectures preconfigure the fields of action and perception.

To study technological mediation is therefore to study how possibility is infrastructured. It reveals that becoming is always scaffolded by artefacts and systems, and that shifts in technology recalibrate the horizons of what can be imagined, enacted, and sustained.

The Becoming of Human Possibility: A Life-Scale Perspective — 9 Reflexive Becoming

Possibility is not only lived but also reflected upon. Reflexivity names the feedback loop in which awareness of one’s own becoming alters its trajectory. To see oneself as a subject of possibility is already to shift the field of actualisation.

This reflexive moment does not provide mastery. Awareness does not secure control; it reconfigures relation. Reflection may expand horizons, opening futures previously unseen, or it may constrain, closing off avenues through doubt, fear, or overdetermination. Reflexivity is ambivalent: it both liberates and burdens.

Through reflexive becoming, the self folds back upon its own multiplicity, narrating, judging, and projecting. This recursive operation produces coherence but also destabilisation, for each act of reflection reshapes the very ground on which the self stands. The self is not merely lived; it is also interpreted, staged, and revised in real time.

The capacity for reflexivity is thus central to human becoming. It is the hinge where perception and actualisation meet, where possibility is not only enacted but also reimagined. To study reflexive becoming is to study the recursive loops through which life transforms its own conditions of unfolding.

The Becoming of Human Possibility: A Life-Scale Perspective — 8 Identity and Multiplicity

To speak of identity is to name the coherence of a life. Yet coherence is never singular. A self is not a fixed essence but a constellation of roles, voices, and perspectives held together in tension.

Multiplicity is not an accident to be resolved; it is the condition of possibility for personhood. Each relation — family, community, institution, symbolic order — inscribes a perspective. Each perspective offers a potential self, a way of being actualised within the field of life. Identity is not the elimination of this plurality but its ongoing orchestration.

At times, multiplicity sharpens into conflict: incompatible expectations, diverging commitments, contradictory desires. At other times, it becomes a resource, enabling one to shift, adapt, and inhabit new alignments. The apparent unity of identity is thus an effect of process: a provisional integration across shifting perspectives rather than a substance that precedes them.

This means that identity is inseparable from time. The self is always in transit, weaving coherence from fragments, retrospectively narrating continuity while prospectively projecting possibility. Multiplicity is not dissolved but held, balanced, sometimes precariously, sometimes fruitfully.

A human life, therefore, is not a single identity unfolding but a multiplicity in motion — a field of selves negotiating coherence through relation. To study identity is to study the multiplicity that sustains it.

The Becoming of Human Possibility: A Life-Scale Perspective — 7 Agency and Constraint

Possibility is never a matter of sheer freedom. To be human is to act within constraints: biological, social, historical, and situational. Yet those very constraints are not merely limits; they are the structures that make agency intelligible.

Agency can be thought of as the capacity to actualise among alternatives. But the alternatives are not given in advance: they emerge from the relational field in which a life is situated. A choice exists only insofar as a constellation of relations brings it into view. Thus, agency is not the exercise of will over a passive world but the navigation of a field of potentials already patterned by forces beyond the individual.

Constraint, then, does not stand opposed to agency; it is the other side of possibility. A world without limits would be one without meaning, without direction, without the tensions that allow choice to matter. Constraints shape the very space in which action can occur, delimiting but also structuring the possibilities available.

In this sense, every act is double: it affirms what is possible and acknowledges what is not. To live is to dwell in the gap between desire and determination, between aspiration and circumstance. Agency emerges not as the pure expression of freedom but as the relational art of working with constraints, bending them, sometimes breaking them, but always moving through the field they define.

The anatomy of a life, therefore, cannot be understood without this dialectic. Agency is never absolute; constraint is never total. What unfolds between them is the ongoing negotiation of possibility — the signature pattern of a life in becoming.

The Becoming of Human Possibility: A Life-Scale Perspective — 6 Secular and Scientific Horizons

Modernity reconfigures possibility by displacing religious cosmoi with secular and scientific frames. Where earlier orders grounded human becoming in divine narrative, science and rational inquiry propose universes without transcendent anchors, shifting the horizon of meaning toward explanation, prediction, and technological intervention.

These horizons open immense new fields of possibility. Medicine, engineering, and information systems enable forms of life unimaginable in earlier epochs. Yet the secular-scientific cosmos is not neutral: it privileges certain ways of construing reality—measurement, abstraction, generalisation—while marginalising or delegitimising others, especially symbolic, ritual, or spiritual construals.

The effect is double-edged. Scientific rationality expands the scope of agency while narrowing the symbolic vocabularies through which becoming can be articulated. Possibility is reconceived as innovation, progress, and control, yet often at the cost of relational or cosmogenic orientations. Thus, the secular-scientific horizon is not simply liberating; it is a restructuring of constraint and potential, reshaping the very terms on which human possibility is lived.