The active-passive nous split is a commentator invention, not Aristotle’s distinction

Evidence

It may be that such a reading distorts the meaning of the expositions of νς, whether Aristotelian or Hegelian. To such an objection, we can only retort that any account of νς which takes on the delicate issue of πσειν and νεργε!ν must inevitably be an interpretation, and all the more so because the traditional distinction between ‘passive νς’ or ‘intellectual’ and ‘active νς’ is not truly an Aristotelian distinction. A synthetic totality, νς itself was interpreted by the commentators in a twofold manner: one being the power to be acted upon, the other the capacity to produce. Given the manner the commentators have chosen of presenting the text, the possibility of a single totality with two forms of action is forestalled by an intepretation which pre-empts the process by the names it gives to the titles of the sections. To speak of ‘passive νς’ requires that one speak of an ‘active νς’, for the two are irretrievably linked together. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 406

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s MOC question: the received binary of passive screen versus active agent in the enemy concept may itself be a commentator-imposed frame, not a property of the underlying concept — the same operation Anidjar suspects at work in ‘enemy’ discussions.
• QUESTION: If the passivity/agency split is a naming operation that forecloses a single totality with two actions, then which discursive moves converted the plastic enemy into the passive enemy in the political literature? The mechanism Malabou names here (section titles pre-empting the process) could be the template.