| 13774 | Things don't have every attribute, and essence isn't private, so each thing has an essence [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If Euthydemus is wrong that everything always has every attribute simultaneously, or that being or essence is private for each person, then it is clear that things have some fixed being or essence of their own. | |
| From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 386d) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what 'being or essence' translates. If it translates 'ousia' then I wouldn't make too much of this remark from an essentialist point of view. |
| 11039 | A primary substance reveals a 'this', which is an individual unit [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Every substance seems to signify a certain 'this'. As regards the primary substances, it is indisputably true that each of them signifies a certain 'this'; for the thing revealed is individual and numerically one. | |
| From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 03b10) | |
| A reaction: The notion of 'primary' substance is confined to this earlier metaphysics of Aristotle. |
| 12311 | Particulars are not definable, because they fluctuate [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Particular perceptible substances are excluded from definition. ...An object that admits of being in a variety of states is an object of opinion, and thus incontrovertibly not of definition. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1039b30) | |
| A reaction: This more or less demolishes my original reading of Aristotle, so back to the drawing board. We need to revise Aristotle. He says differentiae home in the individual but never get there. I (now) say cross-referencing of universals gets you there. |
| 17846 | The essence of a single thing is the essence of a particular [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The what-it-was-to-be-that-thing [to ti en einai] for a single thing is what-it-was-to-be-that-thing for a particular. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1054a16) | |
| A reaction: This seems to give clear support for the view I favour, that Aristotle believes in individual essences, and not just generic kinds. |
| 12070 | Individual essences are not universals, since those can't be substances, or cause them [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle the essences of individual substances are individual rather than universal, ...since nothing universal can be a substance, nor can it be a principle or cause of a substance. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle Intro | |
| A reaction: This is the second of Witt's three theses which she offers in opposition to the orthodox interpretation of Aristotle, and again I think she is right. |
| 12069 | Essence is the cause of individual substance, and creates its unity [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle describes form or essence as the cause of there being an actual individual substance, and as the cause of its being a unity rather than a heap. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle Intro | |
| A reaction: Wiggins defends the species-essence view (Idea 12068) by preferring the 'secondary substance' account in 'Categories' to Aristotle's ideas about 'form' which emerge later in 'Metaphysics'. I prefer Witt to Wiggins. |
| 12088 | Aristotelian essence is not universal properties, but individual essence [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: We should replace the traditional interpretation of Aristotelian essences - as clusters of universal properties - with an interpretation according to which an essence is an individual substance, though not a composite or sensible substance. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 5 | |
| A reaction: I get the impression that this is a growing view amongst Aristotle scholars, which really ruins a widespread view which I associate with Wiggins, that essences are to do with categories, sortals and kinds. I associate essences with explanations. |
| 11998 | Aristotle does not accept individual essences; essential properties are always general [Aristotle, by Kung] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle does not label 'essential' what are now called 'individual essences'. The properties which belong essentially to an individual are always general properties, capable of belonging to more than one thing. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Joan Kung - Aristotle on Essence and Explanation IV | |
| A reaction: [She offers four references from 'Metaphysics' in support] I think I want to disagree with Aristotle on this one (gulp). Thus his essential properties are one-over-many - his version of universals. I say individuals explain universals, and are prior. |
| 12083 | Aristotle's essence explains the existence of an individual substance, not its properties [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's notion of form or essence is meant to explain why there is an individual substance there at all, not what features constitute the identity of a given individual substance within a domain of individual substances. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], hylom) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 4.4 | |
| A reaction: I begin to think that the notion of 'essence' is extremely useful in aiding our grasp of reality, but the notion of 'substance' is not. We can just talk of 'identity', without implying some stuff that constitutes that identity. Essence is powers. |
| 11382 | Aristotle takes essence and form as a particular, not (as some claim) as a universal, the species [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: It seems that Aristotle thinks that the essence and the form is a particular, ...though a very different interpretation argues that, for Aristotle, the essence and form of a changing, material thing is a universal, namely the species of the thing. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], partic) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 7.5 | |
| A reaction: I am fairly thoroughly persuaded that Politis's view (the first half of this idea) is the correct interpretation, and it is certainly the one I find more congenial. The second one I associate with the erroneous idea of sortal essentialism, as in Wiggins. |
| 16097 | To be a subject a thing must be specifiable, with some essential properties [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle shows that, for something to be a subject at all, it must be specifiable as something in itself, with essential properties that are mentioned in its defining account, since no subject can be the bearer of accidental properties alone. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], Z.3) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is Aristotle supporting the very modern necessary-properties view of essentialism. Notice that it emerges from being 'specifiable' - that is, from Aristotle's requirement that a logos and definition be available. He rejects bare particulars. |
| 12284 | Everything that is has one single essence [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Everything that is has one single essence [en esti to einai]. | |
| From: Aristotle (Topics [c.331 BCE], 141a36) | |
| A reaction: Does this include vague objects, and abstract 'objects'? Sceptics might ask what grounds this claim. Does Dr Jeckyll have two essences? |
| 12810 | We can conceive an individual without assigning it to a kind [Locke, by Jolley] |
| Full Idea: Locke assumes that one could have the concept of an individual without assigning it to any kind. | |
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz and Locke on Essences p.205 | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure of the evidence for this, and Jolley says that Leibniz disagrees (in the Essaies). I cling to it because I take it to be correct. Identifying a kind seems to me to be a good way for us to get at an individual essence, but that is all. |
| 16786 | You can't distinguish individuals without the species as a standard [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Talk of specific differences without reference to general ideas is unintelligible. What is sufficient to make an essential difference between two particular beings without a standard of the species? Particulars alone will have all qualities essentially. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.05) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The last idea is now called 'superessentialism'. I don't actually understand this. Can you not distinguish between two cats before you have classified them as 'cats', and invoked generalities about cats? Just list their features. |
| 15992 | Many individuals grouped under one name vary more than some things that have different names [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Anyone who observes their different qualities can hardly doubt that many of the individuals, called by the same name, are, in their internal constitution, as different from one another as several of those which are ranked under different specific names. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.10.20) | |
| A reaction: I take this to agree with Aristotle, and disagree with the medieval scholastic view that essences pertain to species. Locke and I think that the so-called essences of natural kinds and sortal classes are just loose inductive generalisations. |
| 15990 | Every individual thing which exists has an essence, which is its internal constitution [Locke] |
| Full Idea: I take essences to be in everything that internal constitution or frame for the modification of substance, which God in his wisdom gives to every particular creature, when he gives it a being; and such essences I grant there are in all things that exist. | |
| From: John Locke (Letters to Edward Stillingfleet [1695], Letter 1), quoted by Simon Blackburn - Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism | |
| A reaction: This is the clearest statement I have found of Locke's commitment to essences, for all his doubts about whether we can know such things. Alexander says (ch.13) Locke was reacting against scholastic essence, as pertaining to species. |
| 12931 | Particular truths are just instances of general truths [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The reasons for particular truths rest wholly on the more general ones of which they are mere instances. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 1.01) | |
| A reaction: Clearly particulars have their own distinctive truth, but the Leibniz case seems to be that a particular is a unique intersection for an array of general truths - and nothing else. Audrey Hepburn's smile has no generalities to it. |
| 12811 | We can't know individuals, or determine their exact individuality [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible for us to have knowledge of individuals and to find the means of determining exactly the individuality of everything. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle was clearly also tempted by this doubt (since universals are involved), though individuals are what he wanted to understand. I think they are wrong. Leibniz gives the bizarre reason that we can't know individuals as they each contain infinity. |
| 19575 | Refinement of senses increasingly distinguishes individuals [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: The more our senses are refined, the more capable they become of distinguishing between individuals. The highest sense would be the highest receptivity to particularity in human nature. | |
| From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 072) | |
| A reaction: I adore this idea!! It goes into the collection of support I am building for individual essences, against the absurd idea of kinds as essences (when they are actually categorisations). It also accompanies particularism in ethics. |
| 20376 | We begin with concepts of kinds, from individuals; but that is not the essence of individuals [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The overlooking of individuals gives us the concept and with this our knowledge begins: in categorising, in the setting up of kinds. But the essence of things does not correspond to this. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], p.51) | |
| A reaction: [dated c1873] Aha! So Nietzsche agrees with me in my defence of individual essences, against kind essences (which seem to me to obviously derive from the nature of individuals). Deep in my heart I knew I would find this quotation one day. |
| 14435 | The essence of individuality is beyond description, and hence irrelevant to science [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The essence of individuality always eludes words and baffles description, and is for that very reason irrelevant to science. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy [1919], VI) | |
| A reaction: [context needed for a full grasp of this idea] Russell seems to refer to essence as much as to individuality. The modern essentialist view is that essences are not beyond description after all. Fundamental physics is clearer now than in 1919. |
| 16520 | We see properties necessary for a kind (in the definition), but not for an individual [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: We can significantly ask what properties it is necessary for something to possess in order to be a thing of such and such a kind, since that asks what properties enter into the definition of the kind. But there is no such definition of the individual. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (The Central Questions of Philosophy [1973], 9.A.5) | |
| A reaction: [Quoted, not surprisingly, by Wiggins] Illuminating. If essence is just about necessary properties, I begin to see why the sortal might be favoured. I take it to concern explanatory mechanisms, and hence the individual. |
| 15808 | A traditional individual essence includes all of a thing's necessary characteristics [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: According to the traditional account of individual essence, each thing has only one individual essence and it includes all the characteristics that the thing has necessarily. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: Chisholm is steeped in medieval theology, but I don't think this is quite what Aristotle meant. Everyone nowadays has to exclude the 'trivial' necessary properties, for a start. But why? I'm contemplating things which survive the loss of their essence. |
| 16979 | It makes no sense to ask of some individual thing what it is that makes it that individual [Strawson,P] |
| Full Idea: For no object is there a unique character or relation by which it must be identified if it is to be identified at all. This is why it makes no sense to ask, impersonally and in general, of some individual object what makes it the individual object it is. | |
| From: Peter F. Strawson (Entity and Identity [1978], I) | |
| A reaction: He links this remark with the claim that there is no individual essence, but he seems to view an individual essence as indispensable to recognition or individuation of the object, which I don't see. Recognise it first, work out its essence later. |
| 13571 | Scientific essentialism doesn't really need Kripkean individual essences [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: My current view is that individual essences (about which Kripke's essentialism has a lot to say) do not matter much from the point of view of a scientific essentialist. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: [Kripke parenthesis on p.54] Presumably this is because science is only committed to dealing in generalities, and so natural kinds are needed for such things. I'm inclined to regard individual essences as prior in the pure ontology of the thing. |
| 11861 | We can forget about individual or particularized essences [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Let us be realistic, and forget about individual or particularized essences. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: This is the rather weird position you reach if you follow Wiggins's 'modest' essentialism, deriving from a thing merely falling under a sortal, or into a category. What is a natural kind, if its members don't each have a shared essence? |
| 14637 | Only individuals have essences, so numbers (as a higher type based on classes) lack them [McMichael] |
| Full Idea: Essentialism is not verified by the observation that numbers have interesting essential properties, since they are properties of classes and so are entities of a higher logical type than individuals. | |
| From: Alan McMichael (The Epistemology of Essentialist Claims [1986], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This relies on a particular view of number (which might be challenged), but is interesting when it comes to abstract entities having essences. Only ur-elements in set theory could have essences, it seems. Why? Rising in type destroys essence? |
| 11885 | Only individual essences will ground identities across worlds in other properties [Forbes,G, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Forbes argues that, unless we posit individual essences, we cannot guarantee that identities across possible worlds will be appropriately grounded in other properties. | |
| From: report of Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 2.4 | |
| A reaction: There is a confrontation between Wiggins, who says identity is primitive, and Forbes, who says identity must be grounded in other properties. I think I side with Forbes. |
| 12014 | An individual essence is a set of essential properties which only that object can have [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: An individual essence of an object x is a set of properties I which satisfies the following conditions: i. every property P in I is an essential property of x; ii. it is not possible that some object y distinct from x has every member of I. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: I am coming to the view that stable natural kinds (like electrons or gold) do not have individual essences, but complex kinds (like tigers or tables) do. The view is based on the idea that explanatory power is what individuates an essence. |
| 12015 | Non-trivial individual essence is properties other than de dicto, or universal, or relational [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: A non-trivial individual essence is properties other than a) those following from a de dicto truth, b) properties of existence and self-identity (or their cognates), c) properties derived from necessities in some other category. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: [I have compressed Forbes] Rather than adding all these qualificational clauses to our concept, we could just tighten up on the notion of a property, saying it is something which is causally efficacious, and hence explanatory. |
| 11173 | Being a man is a consequence of his essence, not constitutive of it [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: If we distinguish 'constitutive' from 'consequential' essence, ..then the essence of Socrates will, in part, be constituted by his being a man. But being a man (or a mountain) will merely be consequential upon, and not constitutive of, his essence. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Senses of Essence [1995], §3) | |
| A reaction: Yes yes yes. I think it is absurd to say that the class to which something belongs is part of its essential nature, given that it presumably can only belong to the class if it already has a certain essential nature. What did Frankenstein construct? |
| 12244 | Nominalism is consistent with individual but not with universal essences [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Nominalism is consistent with belief in individual essences, but real essentialism postulates essences as universals (quiddities). Nominalists are nearly always empiricists, though the converse may not be the case. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is where I part company with Oderberg. I want to argue that the nominalist/individualist view is more in tune with what Aristotle believed (though he spotted a dilemma here). Only individual essences explain individual behaviour. |
| 15121 | An individual essence is a necessary and sufficient profile for a thing [Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: An individual essence is a profile that is necessary and sufficient for some particular thing. | |
| From: John Hawthorne (Causal Structuralism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: By 'for' he presumably means for the thing to have an existence and a distinct identity. If it retained its identity, but didn't function any more, would that be loss of essence? |
| 11877 | An individual essence is the properties the object could not exist without [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: By essentialism about individuals I simply mean the view that individual things have essential properties, where an essential property of an object is a property that the object could not have existed without. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This presumably means I could exist without a large part of my reason and consciousness, but could not exist without one of my heart valves. This seems to miss the real point of essence. I couldn't exist without oxygen - not one of my properties. |
| 11882 | No other object can possibly have the same individual essence as some object [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Individual essences are essential properties that are unique to them alone. ...If a set of properties is an individual essence of A, then A has the properties essentially, and no other actual or possible object actually or possibly has them. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 2.1/2) | |
| A reaction: I'm unconvinced about this. Tigers have an essence, but individual tigers have individual essences over and above their tigerish qualities, yet the perfect identity of two tigers still seems to be possible. |
| 11886 | There are problems both with individual essences and without them [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: If all objects had individual essences, there would be no numerical difference without an essential difference. But if there aren't individual essences, there could be two things sharing all essential properties, differing only in accidental properties. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: Depends how you define individual essence. Why can't two electrons have the same individual essence. To postulate a 'kind essence' which bestows the properties on each electron is to get things the wrong way round. |
| 13230 | Particular essence is often captured by generality [Steiner,M] |
| Full Idea: Generality is often necessary for capturing the essence of a particular. | |
| From: Mark Steiner (Mathematical Explanation [1978], p.36) | |
| A reaction: The most powerful features of an entity are probably those which are universal, like intelligence or physical strength in a human. Those characteristics are powerful because they compete with the same characteristic in others (perhaps?). |
| 15113 | Individuals are perceived, but demonstration and definition require universals [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Individual instances of a kind of phenomenon, in Aristotle's view, can only be perceived through sense-perception; but they are not the proper subject-matter of scientific demonstration and definition. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (Essence, Necessity and Explanation [2012], 13.3.1) | |
| A reaction: A footnote (11) explains that this is because they involve syllogisms, which require universals. I take Aristotle, and anyone sensible, to rest on individual essences, but inevitably turn to generic essences when language becomes involved. |
| 24067 | Hylomorphic compounds need an individual form for transworld identity [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: It is difficult to see how forms could serve as cross-world identity principles for hylomorphic compounds, unless these forms are particular or individual entities. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (Form, Matter and Substance [2018], 3.4.3) | |
| A reaction: This is a key part of her objection to treating the form as universal or generic. I agree with her view. |
| 10940 | An 'individual essence' is possessed uniquely by a particular object [Rami] |
| Full Idea: An 'individual essence' is a property that in addition to being essential is also unique to the object, in the sense that it is not possible that something distinct from that object possesses that property. | |
| From: Adolph Rami (Essential vs Accidental Properties [2008], §5) | |
| A reaction: She cites a 'haecceity' (or mere bare identity) as a trivial example of an individual essence. |