Exposition

One of the complementary legacies of the Aristotelian position that in itself, Body is inert Matter, is that Body is Potential that requires some Purpose to activate it. It might not have been until the 19th century that a serious challenge to this presumption appeared. Two challenges, in fact, from perhaps the most acute of introspectors, Nietzsche and William James. Both, from slightly different perspectives, argued that in at least some cases, what transpires is not that some goal motivates one to physically move, i. e. to secure the goal, but, to the contrary, some goal is chosen, in order to simply move. Even one example of the latter suffices to evince the fundamental independence of motility. So, it must be insisted that the Individual Material Principle here be taken as not entailing some destination. I am calling that Principle 'Exposition', a term which has several common connotations, and a few more obscure ones, none of which, for the most part, fail to approximate this technical one. The most literal meaning of the word is 'putting out', with respect to which 'setting forth' is unproblematically interchangeable. A more obscure usage, 'leaving unprotected' captures an essential dimension, that will become clearer when I elaborate on the relation of Exposition to the Formal Principle, Appropriation. On the other hand, 'exposition', meaning 'displaying', implicitly entails the presence of an experiencer of the displaying. That implication, while inarguably common in practice, is extrinsic to the technical connotation, as can be gleaned from its contrast with mere 'leaving unprotected', in which that which is exposited is, as is, left unclaimed. So, 'putting out' is to be understood as a process that has a definite point of departure, but is thereafter indefinite. Just as Becoming-Diverse is also a becoming-indefinite, so too is its Individual correlate, Exposition, and one of the fundamental experiential examples of the latter, motility.