In his Metaphysics, Aristotle defines essence as “what the thing is said to be in its own right” without qualification (1029b14). Essence includes the fundamental or necessary properties of a substance, the properties that if taken away would cause the substance to cease existing as that substance. Essence also ignores accidents whose existence is contingent upon a primary substance. Essence is found in a species (secondary substance) and is not indicative of particular referents of that species (primary substance). In order for a thing to qualify as being part of a certain species, its qualities must meet the definition or criteria of this species; these qualities are its essence. Essence is the most fundamental quality of a substance that …show more content…
Essence is not all of what a particular thing is in its own right. A thing has many additional features and characteristics that are not the thing’s essence. The essence is a substance stripped of its accidental features, those characteristics that distinguish a particular from another particular. An essence corresponds to a species, not to the particular substances within the species. For example, a brown table is not a brown table essentially. A brown table is a table essentially, because if you took away the quality of brown it would still be a table. You cannot take away the quality of table and still have a table. We look to the species for essence because individual primary substances tend to contain accidents that tell us nothing about what the substances actually are. A pale man would not cease to be human if he were stripped of his paleness, yet the man would cease to be human if he were stripped of his rationality. The rationality of man is what categorizes him into the species of human, not the color of his skin. Being pale adds nothing and takes away nothing to the man’s existence essentially. His existence as a man does not rest on his paleness. Basically, all particular substances contain both essential and non-essential qualities, while a species as a whole contains only the essential …show more content…
Basically, the essence can’t be contingent upon the existence of something external to the essence. Nothing else has to exist in order for the essence to exist. This is unlike accidents, whose existence is dependent on something else. All that is essence exists independently from any accidents or qualities besides the most fundamental distinctive feature. In addition, essence is inherent in the object, and essence exists on its own apart from anything else. For example, an essence cannot be “having a beard” because beards do not exist in themselves, but only on a man’s face. The beard cannot exist without the primary substance – the person – that the beard
...Spinoza insists, it is nonetheless possible that two substances can be distinguished in virtue of them sharing an attribute and yet be distinct in nature by possessing an attribute not shared by the other. So, whereas substance A shares an attribute with substance B - namely, both share attribute C - the former differs in nature from the latter in terms of each one possessing an attribute not contained by the other. If the nature of Substance A is attribute C and attribute D, and if the nature of substance B is C and E, then it appears that the nature of each one, though each shares an attribute in common, is fundamentally distinct. So, it appears that Spinoza’s commitment to the thesis that no two substances share the same nature or attribute stands in error, and thus I conclude under the possibility two substances sharing an attribute while differing in nature.
Melissa is more likely to be attracted to Aristotle’s basic orientation and his view on the soul. Melissa’s mind set leans more towards the scientific thought process when it comes to life and death. Like Aristotle her beliefs are more of the here and now. Making due with the reality put in front of them. Even though Melissa’s thoughts and beliefs mostly come with facts she still has some belief that there is something beyond the body that makes Matthew who he is, Matthew. But with that belief she also thinks without brain function there is no Matthew to save. It is a body with no ability to think and live. So like Aristotle she does think that there is a soul that is a part of our bodies. But without the ability to think then you are not living.
Locke gives another good illustration with his flame example. A flame can have a definite temperature - a primary quality of something that exists. It can also have warmth - a secondary quality that we see in the object that is closely related to the primary quality, but is a value judgment. And there can be the perception of pain - an idea which exists only in the mind, independent of the flame, even though associated with it.
In Proposition 7 and 8, Spinoza solidifies that this abstract idea of primary substance must exist. If the One Substance cannot be created by anything external, and we know things exist, then this One Substance must exist. If we assume that substances can be finite and infinite, then the One Substance must be infinite for nothing else can limit it. This One Substance refers to "God", which is made clear in Proposition 11. God 's ultimate essence must contain all other attributes and can influence modes in the material world. This Original Substance is infinite and everything that exists is in God 's
Aristotle's ethics consist of a form of virtue ethics, in which the ethical action is that which properly complies with virtue(s) by finding the mean within each particular one. Aristotle outlines two types of virtues: moral/character virtues and intellectual virtues. Though similar to, and inspired by, Plato and Socrates’ ethics, Aristotle's ethical account differs in some areas.
The key belief of existentialists is that existence precedes essence. In order to understand that claim we must first understand what Jean- Paul Sartre means by the term “essence.” He gives an example of a person forging a paper-cutter. When an individual sets out to make any object, he/she has a purpose for it in mind and an idea of what the object will look like before beginning the actual production of it, so this object has an essence, or purpose, before it ever has an existence. The individual, as its creator, has given the paper-cutter its essence. Using the paper cutter example, Sartre argues that human beings cannot have an essence (or purpose) before their “production,” becaus...
At the core of Jean-Paul Sartre’s views was that existence precedes essence. This contrasted with the Aristotelian and Scholastic views that individual existence is an expression of essence or being (Brennan, 2003). Instead, Sartre believed that existence defines the essence of an individual such ...
Like with most of Aristotle’s passages the terms he uses to define abstract ideas require a definition of their own. To better understand his thesis of the soul, we must first look at what he means by “first actuality” and how that relates to “second actuality.” According to Aristotle, there are three states of a rational being. The first is to have potentiality, which is the cornerstone to being rational. Each rational being has the potential to be things in
Aristotle's Theory of the Soul in the De Anima centres on the kinds of souls possessed by different kinds of living things, distinguished by their different operations. He holds that the soul is the form, or essence of any living thing; that it is not a distinct substance from the body that it is in; that it is the possession of soul (of a specific kind) that makes an organism an organism at all, and thus that the notion of a body without a soul, or of a soul in the wrong kind of body, is simply unintelligible. Aristotle uses his familiar matter/form distinction to answer the question “What is soul?” he says that there are three sorts of substance which are matter, form and the compound of the matter and form. Aristotle is interested in compounds that are alive. These - plants and animals - are the things that have souls. Their souls are what make them living things. Aristotle also argues that the mind is immaterial, able to exist without the body, and immortal by “Saying that something has a soul just means that it is alive”
He makes the contrast between "essentials" and “accidentals." When an individual discusses an object 's essence, he is alluding to that which makes up its center. Accidentals, then again, are those things that are just accidental and don 't essentially characterize the object.
He elaborated this to mean that a substance does not require a sense of anything else to exist, which also seem to coincide with Aristotle's interpretations of how a substance exists, that it is independent of all other things. (1). The fundamental feature of substance, as expressed by Spinoza, is its independence. Spinoza defines God as a substance that is completely unbounded, or a substance "comprising of infinity of attributes", of which every one of them illustrates an in... ...
Aristotle’s taxonomy of the soul classifies things by state of being, potentiality and actuality, and level of the soul. His classifications distinguish matter and substance, matter with form. It also splits up souls into two separate types of potentiality and two separate types of actuality in order to determine what a substance does merely existing, what it is able to know, or what it does with the knowledge it is able to learn. Aristotle also split up the souls in a hierarchy by the level of function that each could perform. The hierarchy is split up into three rankings the nutritive, sensitive, and the rational, all of which are living organisms.
...ence of the cognitive feature of the animal. For Aristotle the body and soul are not two separate elements, but they are of one thing. A body and a soul make a person. If a person has no soul, then that person is dead and it would only be a person by name. A thing that has a soul and is complete must be able to move and change. The soul dies with the body, and without the soul, the person is no more a person, but another inanimate object. One cannot exist without the other. With this concept of one not existing without the other, Aristotle leaves no room for there to be a possibility of immortality. Aristotle’s ideas of the soul and the body really formulate and combine both psychology and biology together, even though today many of his ideas have been proven wrong, for his time, they were very advanced with the research and materials that he was able to come by.
Jean Paul Sartre's Existential philosophy posits that is in man, and in man alone, that existence precedes essence. Simply put, Sartre means that man is first, and only subsequently to his “isness” does he become this or that. The implication in Sartre's philosophy is that man must create his own essence: it is in being thrown into the world through consciounsess intent, loving, struggling, experiencing and being in the world that man is alllowed to define itself. Yet, the definition always remains open ended: we cannot say that a human is definitively this or that before its death and indeed, it is the ultimate nothingness of death that being is defined. The concepts that Sartre examines in Being and Nothingness