For quite a long time now I have argued against the view, widely held, and forcefully expounded by John Burnet, that at Phaedo 102b2-d2 Plato is formulating the notion of essential attribute and contrasting essence with accident. I have claimed that the essence-accident contrast is absent from that passage. This is a view that others have also held. But I have since 1950 found in that passage a formidable theory of relations. Recently, Professor David Gallop has (...) taken me to task for my heterodoxy. His reaction is overwhelming:I confess that I do not see how such a theory, [A] even if the text were to embody it, [B] could be held to provide an adequate account of relational statements in general. Gallop's paper is very tantalizing. Although he establishes neither A nor B, he does offer a series of very extraordinary arguments, whose examination reveals the depth of Plato's thinking on relations. (shrink)

We say that things happen accidentally when they do indeed happen, but only by chance. In the opposite situation, an essential happening is inescapable, its inevitability being the sine qua non for its very occurrence. This paper will investigate modal logics on a language tailored to talk about essential and accidental statements. Completeness of some among the weakest and the strongest such systems is attained. The weak expressibility of the classical propositional language enriched with the non-normal modal operators of (...) class='Hi'>essence and accident is highlighted and illustrated, both with respect to the definability of the more usual modal operators as well as with respect to the characterizability of classes of frames. Several interesting problems and directions are left open for exploration. (shrink)

Two seventeeth-century Scottish Catholic philosophers, Robert Balfour and William Chalmers, are introduced and their accounts of the metaphysics of the Eucharist are discussed. Their ideas are largely in terms of the Aristotelian concepts of substance, accident and inherence, with special attention paid to the idea that the essence of an accident is not its actual inherence (that is, its act of inhering) in a substance but its aptness for inherence in a substance. Balfour appears to accept this (...) (Thomist) doctrine. But Chalmers has a different story to tell. He holds that the essence of an accident is not its actual inherence or its power to inhere (which includes its aptness for inherence), but instead belongs to what he terms the ‘root and basis’ of that power. I speculate briefly about a possible Scotistic interpretation of his words. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the logics of essence and accident and attempt to ascertain the extent to which those logics are genuinely formalizing the concepts in which we are interested. We suggest that they are not completely successful as they stand. We diagnose some of the problems and make a suggestion for improvement. We also discuss some issues concerning definability in the formal language.

We show the Boxdot Conjecture holds for a limited but familiar range of Lemmon-Scott axioms. We re-introduce the language of essence and accident, first introduced by J. Marcos, and show how it aids our strategy.

The essence of an accident consists in its relationship to a substance. For we should not imagine that an accident is a thing in its own right to which gets attached a relationship or a link to a substance in which that accident exists. For if so, an accident would be something in its own right, dependent on substance only as extrinsic, and on this view, an accident could be cognized apart from the substance. (...) These outcomes are impossible, however. Hence, what an accident is to something of the substance: either a measure, or a state, and so on. Thus, the Philosopher says that an accident has being only because it belongs to something that has being. (shrink)

The subject of this essay is propria and their relation to essence. Propria, roughly characterized, are those real properties of a thing which are natural but nonessential to it, and which are said to “flow from” the thing’s essence, where this “flows from” relation is understood to designate a kind of explanatory relation. For example, it is said that Socrates’s risibility flows from his essential humanity; and it is said that salt’s solubility in water flows from the essential (...) natures of both salt and water. The question I raise and attempt to answer in this essay is: In what sense do propria “flow from” essences? What kind of explanatory relation is this exactly? Some suggest that it is a relation of logical consequence ; others, of grounding ; and still others, of formal causation. In this essay, I reintroduce and defend a view suggested by the late scholastic Spanish philosopher and theologian Francisco Suárez, who in 1597 wrote that effluence is best understood as a very special kind of efficient causation, which we can call the relation of emanation. The thesis of this essay, then, is that propria emanate from essences. Along the way, this paper offers a new taxonomy of types of propria; it explains the significance of propria for the metaphysics and epistemology of essences; it discusses at length varieties of efficient causation ; and then it offers an extensive abductive argument in favor of Suárez’s account, whereby the former accounts of effluence are critiqued, each in turn, and Suárez’s view is motivated and ultimately shown to be superior to its competitors. (shrink)

Scholars paid scant attention to Giles of Rome’s Quaestiones methaphisicales. This is due to many reasons. The Quaestiones are likely the first of the Aristotelian commentaries written by Giles and all XVI-century printed editions conserve but a reportatio of the course on Metaphysics that Giles probably gave in Paris between 1268/1269 and 1271. Since Giles never edited the text of his lectures, we cannot be sure that Giles approved the list and the contents of the questions we may read today. (...) Moreover, the current list is also incomplete because a study of cross-references in Giles’ Aristotelian commentaries showed that Giles wrote other questions, not included in the list we have today. Despite of these features, Giles’ Quaestiones are import both historically and philosophically. They contribute to fixing the chronology of Giles’ first works and to illustrating the metaphysics of the early Giles. In particular, a close examination of the questions on Books VII and VIII of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, devoted to substance and accidents, shows various things. For example, the influence exerted by Averroes’s Commentary on Giles’s teaching and, accordingly, the pivotal role played by the notion of definition in the explanation of the essence of substance and accidents. More generally, such an examination permits us bringing to light the exegetical devices Giles used in order to reconcile Thomas Aquinas’s view of the primacy and unicity of substantial form with his idiomatic position that indeterminate dimensions must precede in some way substantial form. If this were not the case, Giles argues, we could not explain the process of particularization and multiplication of a form that is in itself ‘unparticular’. (shrink)

Scholars paid scant attention to Giles of Rome’s Quaestiones methaphisicales. This is due to many reasons. The Quaestiones are likely the first of the Aristotelian commentaries written by Giles and all XVI-century printed editions conserve but a reportatio of the course on Metaphysics that Giles probably gave in Paris between 1268/1269 and 1271. Since Giles never edited the text of his lectures, we cannot be sure that Giles approved the list and the contents of the questions we may read today. (...) Moreover, the current list is also incomplete because a study of cross-references in Giles’ Aristotelian commentaries showed that Giles wrote other questions, not included in the list we have today. Despite of these features, Giles’ Quaestiones are import both historically and philosophically. They contribute to fixing the chronology of Giles’ first works and to illustrating the metaphysics of the early Giles. In particular, a close examination of the questions on Books VII and VIII of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, devoted to substance and accidents, shows various things. For example, the influence exerted by Averroes’s Commentary on Giles’s teaching and, accordingly, the pivotal role played by the notion of definition in the explanation of the essence of substance and accidents. More generally, such an examination permits us bringing to light the exegetical devices Giles used in order to reconcile Thomas Aquinas’s view of the primacy and unicity of substantial form with his idiomatic position that indeterminate dimensions must precede in some way substantial form. If this were not the case, Giles argues, we could not explain the process of particularization and multiplication of a form that is in itself ‘unparticular’. (shrink)

An accidental glance at a newspaper notice causes Rousseau to collapse under the force of a vision. A car accidentally hits Giacometti, and he experiences an epiphany. Darwin introduces accident to the basic process of life, and Freud looks to accident as the expression of unconscious desire. Accident, Ross Hamilton claims, is the force that makes us modern. Tracing the story of accident from Aristotle to Buster Keaton and beyond, Hamilton’s daring book revives the tradition of (...) the grand history of ideas. _Accident _tells an original history of Western thought from the perspective of Aristotle’s remarkably durable categories of accident and substance. Throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages, Aristotle’s distinction underwrote an insistence on order and subordination of the inessential. In a groundbreaking innovation, Hamilton argues that after the Reformation, the concept of accident began to change places with that of substance: accident became a life-transforming event and effectively a person’s essence. For moderns, it is the accidental, seemingly trivial moments of consciousness that, like Wordsworth’s “spots of time,” create constellations of meaning in our lives. Touching on a broad array of images and texts—Augustine, Dante, the frescoes of Raphael, Descartes, Jane Austen, the work of the surrealists, and twentieth-century cinema—Hamilton provides a new way to map the mutations of personal identity and subjectivity. (shrink)

Essential properties are usually thought as properties that things must always possess, whereas accidental properties are considered as changeable. In this paper, we challenge this traditional view. We argue that in some important cases, such as social or biological development, we face not only the change of accidents, but also the change of essences. To analyze this kind of change we propose an alternative view on the relations between the modalities and time. Some properties might be necessary or possible for (...) a thing in a classical sense throughout its existence, whereas others might be necessary or possible only for some restricted periods. We distinguish therefore absolute, prospective, retrospective, and relative modalities. As we argue, these non-classical concepts of modality are useful in analysis of some puzzling case of seemingly changing essences. (shrink)

Dans la réflexion métaphysico‑théologique de Boece, fondée sur la condition préalable de l’unicité de la vérité, les termes «essentia» et «substantia» jouent un role fondamental. Avec le premier, le sénateur romain indique généralement «ce qui fait d’une chose ce qu’elle est» ; avec le second, il désigne dans la plupart des cas le sujet porteur d’accidents. Les contradictions apparentes et les échanges terminologiques ne remettent pas en cause la valeur de Boèce en tant que philosophe, ni celle de son système (...) spéculatif. (shrink)

The terminology of ‘essence’ and ‘accident’, which it is customary to trace back to Aristotle, has been given a new lease of life by recent writing on logic and metaphysics. Aristotle's notion of ‘essence’ is notoriously difficult and obscure, but the works of Putnam 1 on natural kinds, Kripke 2 on naming and Wiggins 3 on identity may be seen as providing a new rationale, with a distinctive scientific twist, for talk of essences. This revival in the (...) fortunes of essentialism merits closer examination, for whilst it may be that modern versions of essentialism have avoided some of the difficulties of Aristotle's account, they have imported others which may prove no less intractable. (shrink)

Something … happened … in the first half of this century, and the second half, hovering between nightmare and parody, is only its shadow. Even so we must take its measure. Not on a small scale, based on the last three or four centuries…. But since philosophy, even in its possibility, is at stake, the true assessment, incalculable as it is, of the entire history of the West is needed. And that is another matter altogether.We know that this other matter (...) was, at the time, the Heidegger affair…. Since Nietzsche no thinker has delved so deeply and so far into the question of the essence of philosophy , nor has there been anyone who has opened a dialogue of such breadth and rigor with the tradition of the West. Nonetheless, a detail concerning this subject requires our attention: to subscribe, as I do, to Heidegger’s theses , or even to grant a primary place to his thought, does not amount to any kind of declaration or profession of “Heideggerianism,” as it is called…. Strictly speaking, the idea of a “Heideggerianism” is meaningless. It is not out of coyness or inconsistency that Heidegger constantly reminded us that “there is no philosophy of Heidegger.” This clearly was an expression of his own question in condensed form: the question of Being could not in any way produce a new thesis on Being or, even less, give rise to any sort of “concept of the world.” … Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe teaches philosophy at the University of Strasbourg. His books include The Literary Absolute , Le Sujet de la philosophie, L’imitation des moderns, and, most recently, La Fiction du politique, forthcoming in an English translation from Basil Blackwell Press. Paula Wissing is a free-lance translator and editor. She has recently translated Paul Veyne’s Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? (shrink)

We offer tableaux systems for logics of essence and accident and logics of non-contingency, showing their soundness and completeness for Kripke semantics. We also show an interesting parallel between these logics based on the semantic insensitivity of the two non-normal operators by which these logics are expressed.

The following article by Semen Liudvigovich Frank was published in the German monthly literary periodical Gral, which came out between 1906 and 1937 in Ravensberg. The editor of the periodical was Franz Eichert. For the most part, it presents the contents of one of the lectures Frank gave to a West European audience, familiarizing them with the philosophical legacy of "enigmatic" Russia, which had been through an unprecedented historical cataclysm. Interest in Russian philosophy was no accident either for the (...) audience or for the lecturer, an eyewitness and even participant—as essayist and ideologist of the liberal bourgeoisie—of the violent political events in Russia. More and more new historical, cultural, and philosophical materials were being drawn, as into a whirlpool, into the process of interpreting the Russian Revolution. (shrink)

Avicenna's analysis of the definition of substance and accident repeatedly emphasizes two points: one and the same essence cannot be substance in one instance and accident in another; whetherxis extrinsic or intrinsic for an underlying subject,ydoes not tell us anything as to whetherxis substance or not. Both points are development in an argument against certain unnamed people who claimed the opposite. In this article I will show that Avicenna's opponents are to be identified with the mainstream Baghdad (...) Peripatetic School which based itself on the Late Antique rule that “parts of substances are substances”. As for Avicenna's own position, it was developed on the basis of the heterodox position of Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī, who anticipated Avicenna's first point. This is a further piece of evidence for something that has only recently begun to be appreciated: the influence of Ibn ʿAdī on Avicenna.RésuméL’analyse d’Avicenne portant sur les définitions de la substance et de l’accident met en exergue les deux propositions suivantes: 1) la même essence ne peut être à la fois une substance dans un cas et un accident dans un autre; 2) le fait quexsoit extrinsèque ou intrinsèque à unysous-jacent ne nous permet pas de conclure quexest une substance. Ces deux propositions sont articulées dans un débat avec d’autres personnes ayant un point de vue opposé dont on ne connaît pas l’identité. Dans cet article, nous verrons que ces adversaires font partie de l’école péripatétique de Bagdad, qui elle-même s’appuie sur une proposition datant de l’Antiquité tardive et selon laquelle les parties de substances sont elles-mêmes des substances. La position d’Avicenne fut développée à partir de celle de Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī. Cet article apporte ainsi un argument nouveau qui met en évidence l’influence, remarquée seulement depuis peu, d’Ibn ʿAdī sur Avicenne. (shrink)

In this article I consider whether Aquinas’ arguments for the claim that God is His essence are conclusive, and what was his purpose of upholding this thesis. I show his proofs from Summa Theologiae and Summa Contra Gentiles to be problematic and argue that the defense of Aquinas’ views on that matter suggested by certain remarks of P. T. Geach is flawed.

I argue that Thomas Aquinas maintains the view that powers are accidental to their bearers not because powers pertain to bearers with limited essences, but because their bearers have limited actual being. Power tracks not only the essence of something but also its actual existence. Things have powers that are causally relevant when these things exist, that is, the nature of a power is determined by a thing’s essence, but the actual being of the thing of that (...) class='Hi'>essence accounts for the limitations of this power and for the extent to which a power can have causal effects.J’interroge dans ce travail le sens dans lequel Thomas d’Aquin estime que les choses dotées de pouvoirs possèdent ceux-ci de manière accidentelle. Cette prise de position s’explique parce que le pouvoir retrace l’existence réelle d’une chose en plus de son essence. Les choses ont des pouvoirs pertinents à l’ordre de la causalité lorsque ces choses-là existent : la nature d’un pouvoir est déterminée par l’essence d’une chose, tandis que l’existence même de la chose ayant cette essence explique les limites de ce pouvoir et la mesure dans laquelle une puissance peut être cause d’effets. (shrink)

The separation of Avicenna between Essence and Existence influenced logic and Arab and Muslim logicians in the Middle Ages among them Ibn al-Nafīs (1208-1288). Under this influence he contributed to the development of logic and especially the theory of the universal term. By means of the consequences of this analysis:-It has become possible to make a distinction between abstract concepts and formal concepts independent of any sensible reality, and hence the questioning of Aristotelian categories, that is to say the (...) ability to conceive for Ibn al-Nafīs like Avicenna, subjects and predicates which are not necessarily words expressing or belonging to one of the Aristotelian categories.-The analysis of the universal proposition as a conditional proposition, which made easier the distinction between absolute proposition which has no existential implication, and the other which differ from the first by an affirmation of explicit existence. (shrink)

This chapter shows even tighter textual and conceptual connections between these philosophers, delineating how Spinoza drew from Avicenna on the definition of essence and the essence/existence distinction. Spinoza departs from Avicenna, potentially regarding the tendency of essences for existence and especially regarding their universality and particularity. Multiple doses of Avicennianism likely made their way into Spinoza's bloodstream. Avicenna's Najāt and the IP are the most likely sources for Maimonides's own knowledge of Avicenna. In medieval philosophy, including Avicenna accidents (...) are real beings and are isomorphic to Spinoza's modes. As may already be clear and is well‐attested, Avicenna and Spinoza agree that the essence/existence distinction only holds for things other than God. Spinoza's apparent insistence on essence as particular in itself seems to a more fundamental contrast with Avicenna and a more obviously modern/late medieval innovation than Spinoza's utilization of God's nominal essence in an ontological proof. (shrink)

This paper attempts to provide a general reconstruction of Francis of Marchia's doctrine of accidental being. The paper is divided into two parts. (1) In the first part, I begin by reconstructing the debate on the nature of accidents held before Marchia, showing that such a debate is characterised by a progressive shift concerning the way to understand accidents. While the first Aristotelian interpreters regard accidents especially as inhering modes of being of substances, the majority of theologians and philosophers in (...) the second half of the thirteenth century regard accidents as absolute beings. For them, the problem is no longer to explain if and, if so, how accidents can be distinct from substances, but how accidents and substances can make some one thing. Metaphysically, their primary focus is on explaining what the ontological status of inherence is. Although it is especially the consideration of the Eucharistic case that induces this change, I point out that many philosophers and theologians find in Aristotle's texts the philosophical support for taking this step. (2) In the second part, I focus more closely on Marchia's doctrine, arguing that Marchia's position is a slightly revised version of Scotus's. Unlike Aquinas and Bonaventure, Marchia explains Aristotle's metaphysics of accidents by way of the metaphysics of the Eucharist and not vice versa. So, in order to explain the philosophical consistency of this miraculous case, Marchia maintains that one does not need to modify the notion of inherence by distinguishing actual from potential inherence and including the latter in the accident's essence; rather it is necessary to take the case of the Eucharist seriously and, on this basis, to remove inherence totally from an accident's essence. In conclusion, the Eucharist shows that accidents are absolute beings to which actual inherence pertains contingently, potential inherence necessarily. But like Scotus's, Marchia's doctrine faces some difficulties that remain unresolved. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the basic meaning of ousia in Plato’s philosophical use of the term. “Basic” is not intended as “the strongest”, let alone “exclusive”, insofar as the semantics of ousia encompasses a variety of philosophical meanings. On the contrary, the basic meaning is proposed to be the elementary semantic component of ousia, which is present in the background of Plato’s quasi‑technical use of the term and marks the difference from its ordinary meaning. In view (...) of this, a “genetic” aspect is firstly considered, that is, the connection with the Socratic question “What is X?”. Thereafter, a brief mention to Plato’s conception of language and its relation to reality is made, focusing on the notion of eponymy. This because Plato’s coinage of the philosophical semantics of ousia gives this term the role of an eponym, in the sense that its prominent value is the reference to the Forms, but this does not exclude that it may refer to other types of entities. In the last two sections of the paper, a number of passages from Plato’s works are examined to show that the basic meaning of ousia ultimately is “determined existence”, inasmuch as it designates any thing existing with its own peculiar feature. For ousiai can be empirical things as well as Forms, which implies that the meaning of Plato’s ousia should not be understood in the light of an substance/accident relation. (shrink)

Anglo-American approaches to Aristotelian metaphysics have been deeply influenced by the reconstructions of the “Oxford analysts,” most notably of the late G. E. L. Owen. In Owen’s seminal articles, Aristotle emerges—like the later Plato of G. Ryle and J. L.Ackrill—as a primitive exponent of analytical methodologies. The principles of Aristotelian metaphysics—being, unity, identity, essence, accident—are reconstructed by Owen as foundational concepts implicit in ordinary linguistic practices. Metaphysics is, in effect, reduced to a form of logic, focused on the (...) clarification of the conceptual apparatus of ordinary language. (shrink)

In his investigation of the concept of "Being", Aristotle relates the question of "existence" to the question "essence" and considers essence as "whatness" and quiddity. Although in his logical discussions he treats the concepts of "existence" and "whatness" separately and makes a distinction between them, but does not extend this distinction to the area of philosophical topics. But in the prepatetic Islamic system of Philosophy, explanation and distinction between "Being" and "quidity" is without doubt one of the most (...) fundamental philosophical doctrines and beliefs. In the history of Islamic philosophy, the theory of metaphysical distinction between being and essence has been attributed to Ibn Sina, but it is Farabi who for the first time has propounded clearly and decisively a two – part division between "being" and "quiddity" and has prepared the way for Avecinian philosophy. In addition to his logical distinction between "existence" and "whatness" of things he has stressed on a metaphysical distinction between them and has made this distinction the foundation of his metaphysical system. From Farabi's view, being is an inherent accident of quiddity. In this article we try to explain the concepts of "existence" and "whatness" of things and their relation as one of the most fundamental topics in prepatetic philosophy in the philosophical thought of these two great prepatetic philosophers, ie Aristotle and Farabi, with specific stress on comparing their views. (shrink)

It was widely believed among post-classical thinkers that the classical Mutakallimūn held that the cause of dependence of an effect on a cause was its origination, or a combination of origination and contingency, or its contingency on condition of its origination. Some post-classical thinkers, led by al-Sayyid al-Sharif al-Jurjānī, went further by interpreting Abu’l-Hasan al-Ashʿarī’s denial of the persistence of accidents was a consequence of his view that origination was the cause of dependence. This is because the origination view entailed (...) that the world was no longer in need of the Creator after its origination, and thus, him and his followers sought to deflect this consequence by holding that accidents do not persist, and since the persistence of substances was dependent on those accidents, and accidents do not persist more than one moment, those substances remained in need of the Creator for those accidents after their origination. This article seeks to investigate this analysis of the Shaykh al-Ashʿarī’s view, alongside the leading scholars of his school. After examining the original sources of classical Ashʿarī thinkers, along with the Baṣran Mu’tazila, and the texts of Ibn Sina, it becomes clear that the Ashꜥarīs did not hold that accidents did not persist in order to deflect that purported consequence. Indeed, it becomes clear that they did not hold that origination was the cause of dependence, but rather, that it was contingency. As for the Mu’tazila, they are explicit that the cause of dependence is origination, and that is based on their view on the reality of the nonexistent. Since essences are real in their state of nonexistence, they are not in need of a cause; and everything that obtains for those essences after they come into exist are entailments of that essence; thus, they only stand in need of a cause in their origination, that is, going from nonexistence into existence. Indeed, they are also explicit that effects do not need the Creator after their origination, and they clarified this through a comparison with a builder and a building. Indeed, the classical Ashꜥarīs criticized them for this, just as Ibn Sina did in the Ishārāt wa’l-tanbīhāt, al-Najāt, and al-Shifā. Thus, those post-classical scholars generalized the statement that origination is the cause of dependence to all classical mutakallimūn, and then they interpreted Ashʿarī’s motivation behind the denial of the persistence of accidents in accordance with that. The truth, however, is that his view on accidents is based on contingency, and that is because a substance is possible of persistence and possible of non-persistence, and therefore, it stands in need of cause to determine its state in the subsequent moment. That determination must entail something additional to the substance itself, otherwise, the effect is redundant. That additional property must be an accident, and since it is impossible for an accident to subsist in an accident, it is not possible for an accident to persist, because it is not receptive to the property which entails persistence; meanwhile, it is possible for substances, because they can sustain accidents. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On Substance Being the Same As Its Essence in Metaphysics Z 6: The Pale Man ArgumentNorman O. Dahlin general Aristotle’s account of substance in the Categories is clear. Primary substances, the basic constitutents of the world, are independently existing individuals, paradigm examples of which are particular living organisms. However, the later use to which Aristotle puts matter and form provides him with two new candidates for primary substance.1 (...) A reconsideration of substance is in order, and Aristotle begins it in Metaphysics Z. The status of matter soon becomes clear. It can’t be substance because it isn’t a “this” and separate (Z 3, 1029a26–28). The status of form, however, is another story. Aristotle argues in Z 6 that substances are the same as their essences. While the evidence isn’t unequivocal, Z 4, 10, 11, and 15 take essence to be form, where form is universal. Z 13, however, argues that no universal is substance. Aristotle thus appears caught in an inconsistency. Substance is universal form because it is the same as universal form; however, no universal is substance. This and other problems have led to as wide a variety of interpretations of Metaphysics Z as one will find of any philosophical text. Virtually all of them end up attributing to Aristotle one of [End Page 1] three views about substance—substances are universal forms, particular forms, or composites of matter and form.2This paper takes a first step in a project that promises to remove the above inconsistency while allowing but not requiring Aristotle to take concrete particular substances (composite substances involving both matter and form) to be substances. The project looks at the first of the three claims that lead to the above apparent inconsistency and asks whether the sameness relation in it should be understood as identity or a weaker relation that could hold between concrete particular substances and their universal essences. It is the latter possibility that promises to avoid the above contradiction. If concrete particular substances can be the same as their universal essences, then the essences of substances can be universals without necessarily turning substances into universals. Nevertheless, granting this possibility wouldn’t require Aristotle to take concrete particular substances to be substances. Forms of concrete particular substances will also be the same as their essences in this weaker sameness relation, and considerations other than those at work in Z 6 could still lead Aristotle to rule out concrete individuals as substances.1Although Aristotle has standardly been interpreted as arguing in Z 6 that substances are identical with their essences,3 two considerations allow the question of this paper to be raised. [End Page 2]The first is the variety of uses to which Aristotle puts such notions as the same (tauto) or one (hen). Aristotle’s concern in Z 6 is with whether certain things are or are not the same (tauto), one (hen), or one and the same (hen kai auto and to auto kai hen) as their essences.4 He argues that kata sumbebēkos legomena (things said to be what they are with respect to an accident) are not the same as their essences, but that kath’ hauta legomena (things said to be what they are with respect to themselves), a class of things that includes substances,5 are the same as their essences. However, when Aristotle says that one thing and another are the same or one, there is more than one kind of claim he can be making. Some of them apply to things that are identical; others do not.For example, things can be the same in number, species, and genus. A doublet and a cloak are the same in number, a man and another man are the same in species, and a man and a horse are the same in genus.6 Although a doublet and a cloak are identical, a man and another man, and a man and a horse, are not.Things can also be accidentally the same, or the same in definition, substance, or essence,7 where these two ways of being the same cut across the previous ways of being the same. For example... (shrink)

A distinction attributed to Gregory Palamas involves claiming that God’s essence and energies/activities are distinct, yet equally ‘uncreated.’ Traditionally, this Palamite distinction was attacked by some Latin theologians as compromising divine simplicity. A classical view holds that no properties really inhere in God, because God enters into no composition of any kind, including composition of substance and accident. God’s energies/activities seem like properties inhering in God or otherwise composing some kind of part of God. I will argue that, (...) contrary to appearances, the Palamite distinction is a consequence of commitment to a classical view of divine simplicity. (shrink)

A number of recent books and articles have defended the concept of de re modality. Although Slote makes some contributions toward its defense, he is mainly concerned with using de re modality to provide analyses of key concepts in metaphysics, including "process", "event", "change", "physical body", "self", "future", "past", "fact", and "state of affairs". Each concept is defined by essence and accident, that is, by specifying what is either accidental or essential to the entities covered by the concept. (...) Such definitions focus on the ontological relationships of exact similarity, necessary coexistence, and logical dependence. They provide the necessary existence conditions for processes, events, selves, etc. These existence conditions are a major concern in metaphysical questions about the relationship between psychic and physical existence, selves and their experiences, and things and their alterations. Thus Slote provides an important analytical procedure for this type of metaphysical problem. (shrink)

I demonstrate here that St. Anselm’s account of free will fits neatly into an Aristotelian conceptual framework. Aristotle’s four causes are first aligned with Anselm’s four senses of ‘will’. The volitional hierarchy Anselm’s definition of free will entails is then detailed, culminating in its reconciliation with Eudemonism. The Beatific Vision, as summum bonum, is shown to be the apex of that series of perfections. I conclude by explicating Anselm’s teleological understanding of sin by reference to his semantic recapitulation of Aristotle’s (...) essence-accident distinction. (shrink)

En el siguiente artículo intentaremos mostrar cómo la definición de Contingencia individual, dentro del discurso de Richard Rorty, genera ciertos problemas. Este autor menciona que debemos deslastrarnos de las siguientes dicotomías conceptuales: objetivo-subjetivo, moralidad-prudencia, apariencia-realidad, esencia-accidente, absoluto-relativo, entre otras. A todo esto Rorty propone un nuevo concepto: Contingencia, el cual sería una definición útil que lograría justificar la desaparición de las concepciones como algo que petrifica el conocimiento y lo hace inútil para entender la realidad, es decir, el conocimiento no (...) sería útil en el momento en que intenta “representar” la realidad porque la vacía. Luego de un recorrido por algunos autores representativos en lo concerniente a la conceptualización de “esencia”, nuestra conclusión es que la definición de Contingencia rortyana es una nueva petrificación de la realidad, es decir, Contingencia también termina “representado” lo que es “real”. Is Contingency an essence? A review of the theory of Contingency in Richard RortyIn the following article, it is shown how the definition of individual Contingency, within the discourse of Richard Rorty, produces certain problems. This author mentions we should put an end of the following conceptual dichotomies: objective-subjective, morality-prudence, appearance-reality, essence-accident, and absolute-relative, among others. To all this Rorty proposes a new concept: Contingency, which could be a useful definition which would achieve the justification of the loss of conceptions as something that petrifies knowledge, and renders it useless for understand reality, i.e., knowledge is not useful in the moment you try to "represent" reality because simply empties it. After a tour of some representative authors with regard to the conceptualization of "essence", our conclusion is that the definition of Rorty's Contingency is a new petrifaction of reality, i.e., Contingency also ends "representing" what is "real.". (shrink)

It is a relatively rare, and very welcome, event when an original, brilliantly imaginative analytic philosopher takes a fresh look at earlier figures in the history of philosophy and proceeds to tell a story that ties in their work with his own. Analytic philosophy’s greatest disability remains its lack of historical resonance, and Hilary Putnam is one of the few who have worked hard to help it overcome this handicap. His discussion of the great American pragmatists has made it possible (...) for students to see past the dismissive attitudes that Russell and Ayer, for example, adopted toward James and Dewey. Advancing along lines sketched out some decades ago in Morton White’s prescient Toward Reunion in Philosophy, Putnam has helped us see in detail how Quinean skepticism about the language-fact and essence-accident dualisms ties in with James’s and Dewey’s skepticism about many other traditional dualisms. (shrink)

: Accidents will survive the outbreak of driverless cars, but their moral implications will suffer substantial changes. The decision made today by a human in a fraction of a second will eventually be replaced by an algorithm subject to moral scrutiny. This not only raises the question of how the algorithm should work, or whether alternatives solutions are indeed comparable, but also changes the essence of the problem: from ascertaining liability to defining desired outcomes. In this paper, I first (...) contest two possible approaches to resolving the driverless car dilemma – which I call statistical and nominal – to conclude that neither is morally sound. I then propose an alternative solution based on “time-relative equality”, or always sparing younger people. This follows from seeking an egalitarian solution, that is the least intrusive – a position I defend from a possible ageist critique. Keywords: Driverless Cars; Accident; Algorithm; Age-relative Equality Condotti verso un incidente morale Riassunto: Vi saranno incidenti anche dopo la diffusione delle auto a guida autonoma, ma le loro implicazioni morali subiranno mutamenti sostanziali. Le decisioni prese oggi in una frazione di secondo dagli esseri umani saranno alla fine sostituite da un algoritmo soggetto a controllo morale. Sorge non solo il problema di come dovrebbe funzionare questo algoritmo – o se vi siano soluzioni alternative comparabili –, ma cambia anche la sostanza del problema: dall’accertamento dell’imputabilità alla definizione dell’esito auspicato. In questo lavoro discuterò due possibili approcci per risolvere il dilemma – che chiamerò “statistico” e “nominale” –, per concluderne che non sono moralmente corretti. Proporrò quindi una soluzione alternativa, basata sulla “eguaglianza tempo-relativa”, il principio per cui bisogna sempre salvare il più giovane. Questo segue dal cercare una soluzione egalitarista, che sia la meno intrusiva – una posizione che difenderò da una possibile critica che la vede come discriminatoria verso gli anziani. Parole chiave: Automobili a guida automatica; Incidenti; Algoritmo; Eguaglianza relativa all’età. (shrink)

I demonstrate here that St. Anselm’s account of free will fits neatly into an Aristotelian conceptual framework. Aristotle’s four causes are first aligned with Anselm’s four senses of ‘will’. The volitional hierarchy Anselm’s definition of free will entails is then detailed, culminating in its reconciliation with Eudemonism. The Beatific Vision, as summum bonum, is shown to be the apex of that series of perfections. I conclude by explicating Anselm’s teleological understanding of sin by reference to his semantic recapitulation of Aristotle’s (...) essence-accident distinction. (shrink)

I demonstrate here that St. Anselm’s account of free will fits neatly into an Aristotelian conceptual framework. Aristotle’s four causes are first aligned with Anselm’s four senses of ‘will’. The volitional hierarchy Anselm’s definition of free will entails is then detailed, culminating in its reconciliation with Eudemonism. The Beatific Vision, as summum bonum, is shown to be the apex of that series of perfections. I conclude by explicating Anselm’s teleological understanding of sin by reference to his semantic recapitulation of Aristotle’s (...) essence-accident distinction. (shrink)

I demonstrate here that St. Anselm”s understanding of free will fits neatly into an Aristotelian conceptual framework. Aristotle”s four causes are first aligned with Anselm”s four senses of “will”. The volitional hierarchy Anselm”s definition of free will entails is then detailed, culminating in its reconciliation with Eudaimonism. The summum bonum turns out to be the apex of that series of actualizations or perfections. I conclude by explicating Anselm’s teleological understanding of sin by reference to his analog of Aristotle’s essence- (...) class='Hi'>accident distinction. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on four areas Aristotle considered when determining what something really was, namely, essence, predicates, judgments, and potentials. Understanding and employing these concepts in our own concept of monster will help us avoid our currently tainted love of Supernatural. According to Aristotle, there are essential and accidental aspects of being. In the simplest terms, the essential aspects are the things that could not change about something, while the accidental aspects are things that could change. Aristotle's third taxonomy (...) of being is found in judgments of truth and falsity about a thing. These judgments can apply to questions of essence, accident, or any of the categories. Any question about the essential nature of monsters requires an answer that applies to all monsters. (shrink)