Reframe Kierkegaard’s teleological “suspension” of the ethical in light of the greater good view (which I reframed as ordered neutral values) that “doesn’t obligate” us to the lesser, and how only God ultimately correctly orders greater and lesser.
If something would not happen without the want (teleological propulsion … ultimately into works of love… also Kierkegaard)…
…but the want has not yet been brought under (practically applied via) a decision… (in or out of alignment/divergence with “every person is a person”)…
I would call that potential energy and not dead at all. Very much a live possibility.
…especially in light of the whole.
It’s just that the potential has not yet (from the perspective of beings/existants subject to time) been instantiated/existed/acted.
You might think that means essence precedes existence (action)… until you read “green eggs and ham” by Dr. Seuss. You have to have all three. It isn’t a sequential thing, though it does subsume sequential development and divergence (action/existence shapes existants).
The Schrödinger‘s cat thought experiment deals with the physicality of possibility within a necessary being that subsumes it… regardless whether that physicality is configured for life on our level (contingent) or the necessary level (God’s). There is no such thing as a complete lack of configuration.
But… there is a kind of life Schrödinger’s cat cannot possess without choosing it… but in order to do that, s/he must be more than a mere thought experiment.