Material Causality and Excession

The desire to improve, to not rest on one's laurels, to outdo one's previous achievements, etc. is a familiar psychological phenomenon. Any such process of self-surpassing can be called 'Excession'. But, as commonplace as Excession is, it seems difficult to derive it from the principle of Self-Preservation, which seeks to maintain the given. Likewise, any psychological model which posits a limit to development, e. g. 'self-actualization' theories, precludes the possibility of Excession, for that model typically interprets any case of improvement as not a surpassing of what has been achieved, but as a nisus towards its posited ideal. In contrast, a theory of Experience which entails Material Causality appreciates Excession, since two experiential modes of Material Causality are self-externalization and self-variation, both of which are characteristics of Excession. In other words, Excessional processes demonstrate the greater explanatory power of theories of Experience which recognize Material Causality.