| 11199 | Aristotelian essence underlies behaviour, or underlies definition, or is the source of existence [Aristotle, by Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle calls a substance a nature. This expresses essence as what underlies a thing's characteristic behaviour, whereas whatness expresses it as underlying the definition, and essence refers to it as that through which and in which it has existence. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE]) by Thomas Aquinas - De Ente et Essentia (Being and Essence) p.92 | |
| A reaction: I don't really understand the third one, unless it is what gives something its identity, which probably then reduces to the second one. The big choice is between essence explaining behaviour and essence explaining definition. Interesting. |
| 12304 | Aristotelian essence is retained with identity through change, and bases our scientific knowledge [Aristotle, by Copi] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle, the essential properties of an object are those which are retained by it during any change through which the object remains identifiable; and they are the properties which are most important in our scientific knowledge of it. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE]) by Irving M. Copi - Essence and Accident p.712 | |
| A reaction: This pioneering thought of Copi's (at least, he was a pioneer in that he read Aristotle properly) strikes me as the key to understanding the concept of essence. |
| 11294 | Aristotle says changing, material things (and not just universals) have an essence [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle wanted to argue (against Plato) that changing, material things, and not only universals that are true of them, have an essence. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 7.5 | |
| A reaction: This is the huge idea which Aristotle contributes to our understanding of the world, and which I take to be one of the most important ideas in philosophy (though I accept that defending essences is a little precarious). |
| 11298 | Are essences actually universals? [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Some critics say that Aristotle conceives of essences as universals. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 7.5 | |
| A reaction: [He cites M.Woods for this view] Politis opposes this view of Aristotle, and I think I do (with limited scholarship!). It seems to be an unorthodox view when discussing Aristotelian essences, but a very common view when discussing properties. |
| 11202 | It is by having essence that things exist [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: It is by having essence that things exist. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (De Ente et Essentia (Being and Essence) [1267], p.94) | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 11199, which gives a fuller picture. This idea seems to suggest essence as the cause of existence, which sounds wrong. Perhaps essence is a necessary condition of existence, but it is necessary that nothing indeterminate can exist? |
| 4828 | The essence of a thing is what is required for it to exist or be conceived [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Many assert that that without which a thing cannot be nor be conceived, belongs to the essence of that thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: This is one Aristotelian idea that won't go away, despite the seventeenth century onslaught. It seems obvious that natural kinds, natural objects and human artefacts have properties that can be divided into essential and non-essential. |
| 12498 | Particular substances are coexisting ideas that seem to flow from a hidden essence [Locke] |
| Full Idea: We come to the ideas of particular sorts of substances, by collecting combinations of simple ideas that exist together, and are therefore supposed to flow from the particular internal constitution, or unknown essence of that substance. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.23.03) | |
| A reaction: This is Locke's concept of essence, as the source which gives rise to the other properties of a thing. Locke waxes sarcastic about this 'I know not what' in things, but he never actually denies it. He just thinks it is beyond our grasp. |
| 12520 | The best I can make of real essence is figure, size and connection of solid parts [Locke] |
| Full Idea: When I enquire into the real essence, from which all the properties flow, I cannot discover it: the farthest I can go, is only to presume that it being nothing but body, its essence must be the figure, size and connection of its solid parts. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.31.06) | |
| A reaction: I say we have now discovered the essence of gold (for example), and that 'figure, size and connection' of parts is quite a good account of what we have discovered, namely the 79 protons, the neutrons, and the electron shell, with forces. |
| 13771 | Real essence is the constitution of the unknown parts of a body which produce its qualities [Locke] |
| Full Idea: The real essence is the constitution of the insensible parts of that body, on which those qualities, and all the other properties of gold depend. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.02) | |
| A reaction: This is an unequivocal commitment to the possibility of a real traditional Aristotelian essence. All of Locke's reservations, and even his scorn, are reserved for the apparently insurmountable epistemological problems. Locke needed a time machine. |
| 12743 | A true being must (unlike a chain) have united parts, with a substantial form as its subject [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: In a Being one per se a real union is required consisting not in the situation or motion of parts, as in a chain or a house, but in a unique individual principle and subject of attributes and operations, in us a soul and in a body a substantial form. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (De Mundo Praesenti [1686], A6.4.1506), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 7 | |
| A reaction: Leibniz is said not to be an essentialist, by making all properties essential, but he is certainly committed to substance, and it sounds like essence here (or one view of essence), when it makes identity possible. This idea is pure Aristotle. |
| 13088 | Subjects include predicates, so full understanding of subjects reveals all the predicates [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The subject-term must always include the predicate-term, in such a way that the man who understood the notion of the subject perfectly would also judge that the predicate belongs to it. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §8) | |
| A reaction: Sounds as if every sentence is analytic, but he doesn't mean that. He does, oddly, mean that if we fully understand the name 'Alexander', we understand his complete history, which is a bit silly, I'm afraid. Even God doesn't learn things just from names. |
| 13077 | Basic predicates give the complete concept, which then predicts all of the actions [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Apart from those that depend on others, one must only consider together all the basic predicates in order to form the complete concept of Adam adequate to deduce from it everything that is ever to happen to him, as much as is necessary to account for it. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Antoine Arnauld [1686], 1686.06) | |
| A reaction: This (implausibly) goes beyond mere prediction of properties. Eve's essence seems to be relevant to Adam's life. Note that the complete concept is not every predicate, but only those 'necessary' to predict the events. Cf Idea 13082. |
| 12908 | Essences exist in the divine understanding [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Essences exist in the divine understanding before one considers will. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Antoine Arnauld [1686], 1686.07.4/14 X) | |
| A reaction: This is a sort of religious neo-platonism. The great dream seems to be that of mind-reading God, and the result is either Pythagoras (it's numbers!), or Plato (it's pure ideas!), or this (it's essences!). See D.H.Lawrence's poem on geranium and mignottes. |
| 13432 | The essence of a circle is the equality of its radii [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The essence of a circle consists in the equality of all lines drawn from its centre to its circumference. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Thomasius [1669], 1669) | |
| A reaction: Compare Locke in Idea 13431 and Spinoza in Idea 13073 on the essence of geometrical figures. A key question is whether the essence is in the simplest definition, or in a complex and wide-ranging account, e.g. including conic sections for circles. |
| 24089 | Essences are fictions needed for beings who represent things [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The true essence of things is a fiction of representing being, without which being is unable to represent. 11[330] Thinking must assert substance and identity because a knowing of complete flux is impossible. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[329]) | |
| A reaction: I have defended (in my PhD) the thesis that the concept of essence is required for explanation. Do animals need the concept of essence in order to represent? I think people and animals ascribe essential natures to most things. |
| 15576 | Heidegger seeks a non-traditional concept of essence as 'essential unfolding' [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger tries to develop a non-traditional concept of essence as 'essential unfolding' ('wesen' as a verb). | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.4.27) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§25-7 |
| 5443 | Kripke and others have made essentialism once again respectable [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The revival of essentialism owes much to the work of Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam, who made belief in essences once again respectable, with Harré and Madden arguing that there were real causal powers in nature. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me important to separate two stages of this: 1) causation results from essences, and 2) essences can never change. The first seems persuasive to me. For the second, see METAPHYSICS/IDENTITY/COUNTERPARTS. |
| 14666 | Socrates is a contingent being, but his essence is not; without Socrates, his essence is unexemplified [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: Socrates is a contingent being; his essence, however, is not. Properties, like propositions and possible worlds, are necessary beings. If Socrates had not existed, his essence would have been unexemplified, but not non-existent. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Actualism and Possible Worlds [1976], 4) | |
| A reaction: This is a distinctive Plantinga view, of which I can make little sense. I take it that Socrates used to have an essence. Being dead, the essence no longer exists, but when we talk about Socrates it is largely this essence to which we refer. OK? |
| 11976 | Aristotelian essentialism says essences are not relative to specification [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: So-called 'Aristotelian essentialism' is the doctrine of essences not relative to specifications. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], III) | |
| A reaction: In other words, they are so-called 'real essences', understood as de re. Quine says essences are all de dicto, and relative to some specification. I vote for Aristotle. |
| 14221 | Serious essentialism says everything has essences, they're not things, and they ground necessities [Shalkowski] |
| Full Idea: Serious essentialism is the position that a) everything has an essence, b) essences are not themselves things, and c) essences are the ground for metaphysical necessity and possibility. | |
| From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: If a house is being built, it might acquire an identity first, and only get an essence later. Essences can be physical, but if you extract them you destroy thing thing of which they were the essence. Does all of this apply to abstract 'things'. |
| 11177 | Can the essence of an object circularly involve itself, or involve another object? [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Can the essence of an object (ineliminably) involve that object itself (perhaps through self-identity, giving a direct circularity), or have an indirect circularity involving two or more objects (such as admiration between Watson and Holmes). | |
| From: Kit Fine (Senses of Essence [1995], §7) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This looks like one of the basic questions which any theory of essentialism must address. |
| 12241 | Essences are real, about being, knowable, definable and classifiable [Oderberg, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Real essences are objectively real, they concern being, they are knowable, they are definable, and they are classifiable. | |
| From: report of David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.4) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This is a lovely summary (spread over two pages) of what essentialism is all about. It might be added that they are about unity and identity. The fact that they are intrinsically classifiable seems to mislead some people into a confused view. |
| 15685 | Essentialism is either natural to us, or an accident of our culture, or a necessary result of language [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: The two views contrasting with essentialism naturally emerging in childhood are the claim that essentialism is a historical accident emerging from Western philosophy, and that essentialism is an inherent consequence of naming things. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Background') | |
| A reaction: Helpful. I take Idea 15682 to rule out the idea that it is just a feature of western culture. I can't conceive of early man surviving without essentialism. I don't think it rules out the naming view. Animals may do what emerges in us as full 'naming'. |
| 15684 | Children's concepts include nonobvious features, like internal parts, functions and causes [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Children incorporate a variety of nonobvious features into their concepts, including internal parts, functions, causes, and ontological distinctions. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Prelims') | |
| A reaction: This remark sums up the general thesis of her book, which she supports with a wealth of first-hand evidence. It supports my view, that the desire and need for explanation is at the root of essentialist concepts. It's hard wired in us. |
| 15700 | In India, upper-castes essentialize caste more than lower-castes do [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: The notion of caste in India is more essentialized among upper-caste than lower-caste individuals. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 08 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: In a book defending fairly innate essentialism in the human race, Gelman offers this point as a warning that large cultural ingredients can be involved. Racism is the classic difficulty with essentialism. |
| 11889 | Essentialism must avoid both reduplication of essences, and multiple occupancy by essences [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: The argument for unshareable properties (the Reduplication Argument) suggests the danger of reduplication of Berkeley; the argument for incompatible properties (Multiple Occupancy) says Berkeley and Hume could be in the same possible object. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 2.8) | |
| A reaction: These are her arguments in favour of essential properties being necessarily incompatible between objects. Whatever the answer, it must allow essences for indistinguishables like electrons. 'Incompatible' points towards a haecceity. |
| 15110 | An essence and what merely follow from it are distinct [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: We can distinguish (as Aristotle and Fine do) between what belongs to the essence of an object, and what merely follows from the essence of an object. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (Essence, Necessity and Explanation [2012], 13.1) | |
| A reaction: This can help to clarify the confusions that result from treating necessary properties as if they were essential. |