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Single Idea 17954

[filed under theme 8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 4. Powers as Essence ]

Full Idea

Essence is, as it were, necessity rooted in things, ...but how about possibility rooted in things? ...Having the potential to Φ, unlike being essentially Φ, does not entail being actually Φ.

Gist of Idea

Essence is a thing's necessities, but what about its possibilities (which may not be realised)?

Source

Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], §2)

A Reaction

To me this invites the question 'what is it about the entity which endows it with its rooted possibilities?' A thing has possibilities because it has a certain nature (at a given time).

The 24 ideas with the same theme [powers as giving the essential nature of each thing]:

15658 The hidden harmony is stronger than the visible [Heraclitus]
16752 Sight is the essence of the eye, fitting its definition; the eye itself is just the matter [Aristotle]
16753 Giving the function of a house defines its actuality [Aristotle]
17206 The essence of a thing is its effort to persevere [Spinoza]
15976 What is the texture - the real essence - which makes substances behave in distinct ways? [Locke]
12750 The question is whether force is self-sufficient in bodies, and essential, or dependent on something [Lenfant]
12714 The substantial form is the principle of action or the primitive force of acting [Leibniz]
5056 Material or immaterial substances cannot be conceived without their essential activity [Leibniz]
13168 My formal unifying atoms are substantial forms, which are forces like appetites [Leibniz]
13169 I call Aristotle's entelechies 'primitive forces', which originate activity [Leibniz]
12722 Thought terminates in force, rather than extension [Leibniz]
12778 There is active and passive power in the substantial chain and in the essence of a composite [Leibniz]
12783 Primitive force is what gives a composite its reality [Leibniz]
13095 Essence is primitive force, or a law of change [Leibniz]
12713 Forms have sensation and appetite, the latter being the ability to act on other bodies [Leibniz, by Garber]
13087 The essence of a thing is its real possibilities [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
12050 Substances contain a source of change or principle of activity [Wiggins]
16755 The possible Aristotelian view that forms are real and active principles is clearly wrong [Fine,K, by Pasnau]
21350 If properties are powers, then causal relations are internal relations [Heil]
12256 We need to distinguish the essential from the non-essential powers [Oderberg]
16767 There is no centralised power, but we still need essence for a metaphysical understanding [Pasnau]
17954 Essence is a thing's necessities, but what about its possibilities (which may not be realised)? [Vetter]
23711 A power is a property which consists entirely of dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye]
23712 Powers are qualitative properties which fully ground dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye]