Virtuality Beyond Reproduction. Remarks on the History of Metaphysics

Abstract

This essay focuses on the ontology of the virtual, looking especially at its historical connection with today's technology. The work begins by discussing the metaphysical structure of the Aristotelian dynamis, understood as the conceptual root of the Latin virtus. Reading Aristotle, especially through bergsonian concepts, I show how his dynamis allows a proto-deterministic account of spontaneity, strictly related to goal-oriented processes of human serial production and with the possibility of a homogeneous area of manipulation. Thus we stress how the 'reproductive' model works in every ontological account of the virtual and especially in the Renaissance ones, connected with the idea of a full "enginerization" of the real. The core of metaphysical virtuality seems to lie rather in an ontological account of "form" that denies its processual becoming and its process of stabilization through an infrastructure. Finally, I reject any ontological use of the virtual in teleonomy, especially in its metaphysical attempt to identify autopoiesis and mechanism, and I conclude by stressing how current digital technology is fully oriented to the reproductive model, conceptually rooted in a metaphysical account of the virtual.