Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Confessions of a Philosopher', 'Commentary on Sentences' and 'works'

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3 ideas

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 2. Types of Essence
Only universals have essence [Plato, by Politis]
     Full Idea: Plato argues that only universals have essence.
     From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.4
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 6. Essence as Unifier
Plato and Aristotle take essence to make a thing what it is [Plato, by Politis]
     Full Idea: Plato and Aristotle have a shared general conception of essence: the essence of a thing is what that thing is simply in virtue of itself and in virtue of being the very thing it is. It answers the question 'What is this very thing?'
     From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.4
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 13. Nominal Essence
If you remove the accidents from a horse and a lion, the intellect can't tell them apart [Francis of Marchia]
     Full Idea: Let all accidents be removed from a lion and a horse. Nothing remains in the intellect to distinguish them. We distinguish a lion and a horse only by analogy to the accidents proper to each. The intellect does not have an essential concept of either one.
     From: Francis of Marchia (Commentary on Sentences [1330], I.3.1), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 07.3
     A reaction: What a very nice thought experiment, and very convincing about how the mind perceives such things. But we don't believe horse and lion just consists of the surface properties of them which we experience.