Plasticity designates at once the capacity to receive and to bestow form.

Evidence

To elaborate (travailler) the concept of ‘plasticity’ will, following Canguilhem’s usage, amount to ‘giving the function of a form’ to a term which itself, in its first sense, describes or designates the act of giving form. The English and French substantives ‘plasticity’ and plasticité and their German equivalent, Plastizität, entered the language in the eighteenth century. They joined two words already in use which had been formed from the same root: the substantive ‘plastics’ (die Plastik), and the adjective ‘plastic’ (plastisch). All three words are derived from the Greek plassein (πλσσειν), which means ‘to model’, ‘to mould’. ‘Plastic’, as an adjective, means two things: on the one hand, to be ‘susceptible to changes of form’ or malleable (clay is a ‘plastic’ material); and on the other hand, ‘having the power to bestow form, the power to mould’, as in the expressions, ‘plastic surgeon’ and ‘plastic arts’. This twofold signification is met again in the German adjective plastisch. Grimm’s dictionary defines it thus: ‘that which takes or gives shape, or figure, to bodies’ (körperlich … gestaltend oder gestaltet). Plasticité, or ‘plasticity’, just like Plaztizität in German, describes the nature of that which is ‘plastic’, being at once capable of receiving and of giving form. … Plasticity’s native land is the field of art. Plasticity characterizes the art of ‘modelling’ and, in the first instance, the art of sculpture. The plastic arts are those whose central aim is the articulation and development of forms; among these are counted architecture, drawing and painting. Hence, by extension, plasticity signifies the general aptitude for development, the power to be moulded by one’s culture, by education. We speak of the plasticity of the newborn, of the child’s plasticity of character. Plasticity is, in another context, characterized by ‘suppleness’ and flexibility, as in the case of the ‘plasticity’ of the brain. Yet it also means the ability to evolve and adapt. It is this sense we invoke when we speak of a ‘plastic virtue’ possessed by animals, plants, and, in general, all living things. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 223

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: The etymology and double meaning (receiving AND giving form) of plasticity are laid out here via plassein and Grimm.
• QUESTION: For enmity: if receptivity and bestowal are one single concept, the puzzle is which mechanisms decouple the two poles so a passive screen becomes an active agent.

Related

• Plasticity means both receiving and giving form, unlike mere malleability (similarity 0.91)
• Plasticity means receiving form while resisting deformation, and extends to tissue regrowth (similarity 0.87)
• Plasticity includes a closed sense of receiving a definitive, irreversible form. (similarity 0.86)
• Plasticity names the double capacity to receive and produce form (similarity 0.86)
• The word plastic denotes a dynamism of receiving and giving form (similarity 0.85)
• Plasticity names the concept’s reflexive power to both give and receive its own figures (similarity 0.85)
• The term plasticity entered French in 1785 and German around Goethe’s era. (similarity 0.84)
• Plasticity names both malleability and the power to give form (similarity 0.84)
• Plasticity defines substance-subject as giver and recipient of own form (similarity 0.83)
• Plasticity names the unity of spontaneity and receptivity in giving and receiving form (similarity 0.83)
• Hegel’s plasticity joins a capacity to receive form with a capacity to produce form (similarity 0.83)
• Plasticity moved from sculpture to education and biology by extension (similarity 0.83)
• Plasticity spans both taking on form and annihilating it (similarity 0.82)
• The intellect’s capacity to receive and give form originates its plasticity (similarity 0.82)
• Plasticity spans both the creation and the explosive annihilation of form. (similarity 0.81)