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Single Idea 16742

[filed under theme 9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 14. Knowledge of Essences ]

Full Idea

We can almost never set out the essences of things, as they are in things. Instead, we work through their connection to some non-essential feature, and we seem to succeed well enough when we spell it out through the feature closest to the essence.

Gist of Idea

We only know essences through non-essential features, esp. those closest to the essence

Source

Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 40.4.16), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.5

Book Ref

Pasnau,Robert: 'Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671' [OUP 2011], p.539

A Reaction

It is a common view that with geometrical figures we can actually experience the essence itself. So has science broken through, and discerned actual essences of things?

The 18 ideas from Francisco Suárez

16667 Substances are incomplete unless they have modes [Suárez, by Pasnau]
17007 Forms must rule over faculties and accidents, and are the source of action and unity [Suárez]
16780 Partial forms of leaf and fruit are united in the whole form of the tree [Suárez]
16758 The best support for substantial forms is the co-ordinated unity of a natural being [Suárez]
16682 Other things could occupy the same location as an angel [Suárez]
16743 We can get at the essential nature of 'quantity' by knowing bulk and extension [Suárez]
16742 We only know essences through non-essential features, esp. those closest to the essence [Suárez]
16665 There are entities, and then positive 'modes', modifying aspects outside the thing's essence [Suárez]
16666 A mode determines the state and character of a quantity, without adding to it [Suárez]
22143 Identity does not exclude possible or imagined difference [Suárez, by Boulter]
22144 Real Essential distinction: A and B are of different natural kinds [Suárez, by Boulter]
22146 Minor Real distinction: B needs A, but A doesn't need B [Suárez, by Boulter]
22145 Major Real distinction: A and B have independent existences [Suárez, by Boulter]
22147 Conceptual/Mental distinction: one thing can be conceived of in two different ways [Suárez, by Boulter]
22148 Modal distinction: A isn't B or its property, but still needs B [Suárez, by Boulter]
22149 Scholastics assess possibility by what has actually happened in reality [Suárez, by Boulter]
7563 The old 'influx' view of causation says it is a flow of accidental properties from A to B [Suárez, by Jolley]
13074 Only natural kinds and their members have real essences [Suárez, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]