What is Essence?

What is essence?

The essence of each thing is what is to be propter se. For being you is not being musical, since you are not by your very nature musical. What, then, you are by your very nature is your essence.

“Nor yet is the whole of this the essence of a thing; not that which is propter se as white is to a surface, because being a surface is not identical with being white. But again the combination of both-‘being a white surface’-is not the essence of surface, because ‘surface’ itself is added.

The formula, therefore, in which the term itself is not present but its meaning is expressed, this is the formula of the essence of each thing. Therefore if to be a white surface is to be a smooth surface, to be white and to be smooth are one and the same.

“But since there are also compounds answering to the other categories (for there is a substratum for each category, e.g. for quality, quantity, time, place, and motion), we must inquire whether there is a formula of the essence of each of them, i.e. whether to these compounds also there belongs an essence, e.g. ‘white man’. Let the compound be denoted by ‘cloak’. What is the essence of cloak?

But this also is not a propter se expression.

We reply that there are just two ways in which a predicate may fail to be true of a subject propter se, and one of these results from the addition, and the other from the omission, of a determinant.

One kind of predicate is not propter se because the term that is being defined is combined with another determinant, e.g. if in defining the essence of white one were to state the formula of white man; the other because in the subject another determinant is combined with that which is expressed in the formula, e.g. if ‘cloak’ meant ‘white man’, and one were to define cloak as white; white man is white indeed, but its essence is not to be white.

“But is being-a-cloak an essence at all? Probably not. For the essence is precisely what something is; but when an attribute is asserted of a subject other than itself, the complex is not precisely what some ’this’ is, e.g. white man is not precisely what some ’this’ is, since thisness belongs only to substances. Therefore there is an essence only of those things whose formula is a definition.

But we have a definition not where we have a word and a formula identical in meaning (for in that case all formulae or sets of words would be definitions; for there will be some name for any set of words whatever, so that even the Iliad will be a definition), but where there is a formula of something primary; and primary things are those which do not imply the predication of one element in them of another element.

Nothing which is not a species of a genus will have an essence-only species will have it, for these are thought to imply not merely that the subject participates in the attribute and has it as an affection, or has it by accident; but for ever thing else as well, if it has a name, there be a formula of its meaning-viz. that this attribute belongs to this subject; or instead of a simple formula we shall be able to give a more accurate one; but there will be no definition nor essence.

“Or has ‘definition’, like ‘what a thing is’, several meanings? ‘What a thing is’ in one sense means substance and the ’this’, in another one or other of the predicates, quantity, quality, and the like.

For as ‘is’ belongs to all things, not however in the same sense, but to one sort of thing primarily and to others in a secondary way, so too ‘what a thing is’ belongs in the simple sense to substance, but in a limited sense to the other categories. For even of a quality we might ask what it is, so that quality also is a ‘what a thing is’,-not in the simple sense, however, but just as, in the case of that which is not, some say, emphasizing the linguistic form, that that is which is not is-not is simply, but is non-existent; so too with quality.

“We must no doubt inquire how we should express ourselves on each point, but certainly not more than how the facts actually stand. And so now also, since it is evident what language we use, essence will belong, just as ‘what a thing is’ does, primarily and in the simple sense to substance, and in a secondary way to the other categories also,-not essence in the simple sense, but the essence of a quality or of a quantity.

For it must be either by an equivocation that we say these are, or by adding to and taking from the meaning of ‘are’ (in the way in which that which is not known may be said to be known),-the truth being that we use the word neither ambiguously nor in the same sense, but just as we apply the word ‘medical’ by virtue of a reference to one and the same thing, not meaning one and the same thing, nor yet speaking ambiguously; for a patient and an operation and an instrument are called medical neither by an ambiguity nor with a single meaning, but with reference to a common end. But it does not matter at all in which of the two ways one likes to describe the facts;

Definition and essence in the primary and simple sense belong to substances. Still they belong to other things as well, only not in the primary sense. For if we suppose this it does not follow that there is a definition of every word which means the same as any formula;

it must mean the same as a particular kind of formula; and this condition is satisfied if it is a formula of something which is one, not by continuity like the Iliad or the things that are one by being bound together, but in one of the main senses of ‘one’, which answer to the senses of ‘is’; now ’that which is’ in one sense denotes a ’this’, in another a quantity, in another a quality. And so there can be a formula or definition even of white man, but not in the sense in which there is a definition either of white or of a substance.

Part 5

“It is a difficult question, if one denies that a formula with an added determinant is a definition, whether any of the terms that are not simple but coupled will be definable.

We must explain them by adding a determinant.

E.g. there is the nose, and concavity, and snubness, which is compounded out of the two by the presence of the one in the other, and it is not by accident that the nose has the attribute either of concavity or of snubness, but in virtue of its nature; nor do they attach to it as whiteness does to Callias, or to man (because Callias, who happens to be a man, is white), but as ‘male’ attaches to animal and ’equal’ to quantity, and as all so-called ‘attributes propter se’ attach to their subjects.

Such attributes are those in which is involved either the formula or the name of the subject of the particular attribute, and which cannot be explained without this; e.g. white can be explained apart from man, but not female apart from animal. Therefore there is either no essence and definition of any of these things, or if there is, it is in another sense, as we have said.

But there is also a second difficulty about them. For if snub nose and concave nose are the same thing, snub and concave will be the thing; but if snub and concave are not the same (because it is impossible to speak of snubness apart from the thing of which it is an attribute propter se, for snubness is concavity-in-a-nose), either it is impossible to say ‘snub nose’ or the same thing will have been said twice, concave-nose nose; for snub nose will be concave-nose nose. And so it is absurd that such things should have an essence; if they have, there will be an infinite regress; for in snub-nose nose yet another ’nose’ will be involved.

Only substance is definable. For if the other categories also are definable, it must be by addition of a determinant, e.g. the qualitative is defined thus, and so is the odd, for it cannot be defined apart from number; nor can female be defined apart from animal. (When I say ‘by addition’ I mean the expressions in which it turns out that we are saying the same thing twice, as in these instances.) And if this is true, coupled terms also, like ‘odd number’, will not be definable (but this escapes our notice because our formulae are not accurate.).

But if these also are definable, either it is in some other way or, as we definition and essence must be said to have more than one sense. Therefore in one sense nothing will have a definition and nothing will have an essence, except substances, but in another sense other things will have them. Clearly, then, definition is the formula of the essence, and essence belongs to substances either alone or chiefly and primarily and in the unqualified sense.