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Single Idea 16662

[filed under theme 8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 8. Properties as Modes ]

Full Idea

Among scholastics the primary agreement is that what primarily exist are substances. The primary disagreement concerns the nature of their changeable properties. Are they real accidents, or mere modes of substance?

Gist of Idea

The biggest question for scholastics is whether properties are real, or modes of substances

Source

Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 13.1)

Book Ref

Pasnau,Robert: 'Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671' [OUP 2011], p.244


The 17 ideas with the same theme [properties as simply ways of existing]:

Whiteness can be explained without man, but femaleness cannot be explained without animal [Aristotle]
The features of a thing (whether quality or quantity) are inseparable from their subjects [Aristotle]
The perceived accidental properties of bodies cannot be conceived of as independent natures [Epicurus]
Accidental properties give a body its nature, but are not themselves bodies or parts of bodies [Epicurus]
Accidents are diminished beings, because they are dispositions of substance (unqualified being) [Henry of Ghent]
Accidents always remain suited to a subject [Bonaventura]
Properties have an incomplete essence, with definitions referring to their subject [Aquinas]
Whiteness does not exist, but by it something can exist-as-white [Aquinas]
There are entities, and then positive 'modes', modifying aspects outside the thing's essence [Suárez]
A mode determines the state and character of a quantity, without adding to it [Suárez]
Modes of things exist in some way, without being full-blown substances [Gassendi]
If matter is entirely atoms, anything else we notice in it can only be modes [Gassendi]
Accidents are just modes of thinking about bodies [Hobbes]
A 'mode' is an aspect of a substance, and conceived through that substance [Spinoza]
Everything that exists is either a being, or some mode of a being [Malebranche]
Modes are beings that are related both to substances and to universals [Lowe]
The biggest question for scholastics is whether properties are real, or modes of substances [Pasnau]