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Full Idea
I call individual things contingent in so far as we discover nothing, whilst we attend to their essence alone, which necessarily posits their existence or which necessarily excludes it.
Gist of Idea
A thing is contingent if nothing in its essence determines whether or not it exists
Source
Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Def 3)
Book Ref
Spinoza,Benedict de: 'Ethics', ed/tr. White,WH/Stirling,AH [Wordsworth 2001], p.164
A Reaction
So something could have an essence which determined that it could not exist, which is presumably a contradiction. That's a very strange sort of essence. Presumably all intrinsically contradictory essences are in some way the same.
Related Idea
Idea 17183 Things are impossible if they imply contradiction, or their production lacks an external cause [Spinoza]
| 17209 | A thing is contingent if nothing in its essence determines whether or not it exists [Spinoza] |
| 5039 | If non-existents are possible, their existence would replace what now exists, which cannot therefore be necessary [Leibniz] |
| 16986 | That there might have been unicorns is false; we don't know the circumstances for unicorns [Kripke] |
| 17590 | A merely possible object clearly isn't there, so that is a defective notion [Inwagen] |
| 17591 | Merely possible objects must be consistent properties, or haecceities [Inwagen] |
| 18925 | If talking donkeys are possible, something exists which could be a talking donkey [Williamson, by Cameron] |
| 15142 | Our ability to count objects across possibilities favours the Barcan formulas [Williamson] |
| 13719 | Barcan Formula problem: there might have been a ghost, despite nothing existing which could be a ghost [Sider] |
| 19037 | Are there possible objects which nothing has ever had the potentiality to produce? [Vetter] |