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Single Idea 12098

[filed under theme 9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 6. Essence as Unifier ]

Full Idea

The what-it-was-to-be-that-thing [to ti en einai] is a unity of a kind straight off, just as it is a being of a kind. And that is why none of these things has some other cause of their being a unity, any more than they do of their being a being of a kind.

Gist of Idea

An essence causes both its own unity and its kind

Source

Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1045b04)

Book Ref

Aristotle: 'Metaphysics', ed/tr. Lawson-Tancred,Hugh [Penguin 1998], p.249

A Reaction

This seems to be the key importance of the notion of essence - it is what both bestows unity on things in the world (which is basic to ontology and epistemology), and what enables us to categorise things (basic to epistemology).

The 24 ideas with the same theme [essence is what unifies the parts of a thing]:

11238 Plato and Aristotle take essence to make a thing what it is [Plato, by Politis]
11291 A thing's essence is its intrinsic nature [Aristotle]
10964 Having an essence is the criterion of being a substance [Aristotle, by Lawson-Tancred]
12098 An essence causes both its own unity and its kind [Aristotle]
11208 A simple substance is its own essence [Aquinas]
9109 If essence and existence were two things, one could exist without the other, which is impossible [William of Ockham]
17187 Essence gives existence and conception to things, and is inseparable from them [Spinoza]
12510 Not all identity is unity of substance [Locke]
11155 Essence is the very being of any thing, whereby it is what it is [Locke]
12706 Bodies need a soul (or something like it) to avoid being mere phenomena [Leibniz]
12753 A substantial bond of powers is needed to unite composites, in addition to monads [Leibniz]
15637 Essence is the essential self-positing unity of immediacy and mediation [Hegel]
15262 In logic the nature of a kind, substance or individual is the essence which is inseparable from what it is [Harré/Madden]
12137 De re essentialism standardly says all possible objects identical with a have a's essential properties [Brody]
12082 If unity is a matter of degree, then essence may also be a matter of degree [Witt]
3350 Could a horse lose the essential property of being a horse, and yet continue to exist? [Benardete,JA]
14222 Essences are what it is to be that (kind of) thing - in fact, they are the thing's identity [Shalkowski]
13804 A property is essential iff the object would not exist if it lacked that property [Forbes,G]
13805 Properties are trivially essential if they are not grounded in a thing's specific nature [Forbes,G]
11161 Essentially having a property is naturally expressed as 'the property it must have to be what it is' [Fine,K]
15065 What it is is fixed prior to existence or the object's worldly features [Fine,K]
12240 Essentialism is the main account of the unity of objects [Oderberg]
13797 The loss of an essential property means the end of an existence [Elder]
14191 Deep essentialists say essences constrain how things could change; modal profiles fix natures [Paul,LA]