ESSENCE, EXISTENCE, SUBSTANCE AND FORM
ESSENCE
According
to the oxford dictionary of philosophy by Simon Blackburn, Essence is the basic
or primary element in the being of a thing; the thing’s nature, or that without
which it could not be what it is. A thing cannot lose its essence without
ceasing to exist, and the essential nature of a natural kind, such as water or
gold, is that property without which there is no instance of the kind, locke
contrasted real essences, in something like this sense, with the nominal
definition provided by a description of
the common properties of a thing. Throughout greek, scholastic, and some modern
philosophy there have been many proposals of ways for finding the essences of
things, and views about science would be like if we did know them. The
distinction between essentials and accidental properties is rejected by
holistic approaches to science, such as that advocate by quine.
EXISTENCE
According to the
oxford dictionary of philosophy by Simon Blackburn,
For the
question of why there is something and not nothing, see being. The modern
treatment of existence in the theory of qualification is sometimes put by
saying that existence is not a predicate.
The idea is that the existential quantifier
is itself an operator on a predicate, indicating that the property it expresses
has instances. Existence is therefore treated as a second order property, or property
of properties. In this it is like number, for when we say that there are three
things of a kind, we do not describe the things, but instead attribute a
property to a kind itself.
The parallel with numbers is exploited by
frege in the dictum that affirmation of existence is merely denial of the number
ought. A problem for the account is created by sentences like ‘this exists’, is
therefore unlike ‘tame tigers exist’, where a property is said to have an
instance, for the word ‘this’ does not locate a property, but only an
individual. Possible words seem able to differ from each other purely in the
presence or absence of individuals, and not merely in the distribution of
exemplifications of properties.
SUBSTANCE
According
to the oxford dictionary of philosophy by Simon Blackburn;
Many concerns and disputes cluster around the ideas associated with this
term. The substance of a thing may be (1) its essence , or that which makes it
what it is. This will ensure that the substance of a thing is that which
remains through change in its properties.
In
Aristotle (metaphysics z, vii) this essence becomes more than just the matter,
but a unity of matter and form. (II) That which can exist by itself, or does
not need a subject for existence, in the way that properties need objects,
hence (iii) that which bears properties. A substance is then the subject of prediction,
that about which things are said as opposed to the things said about it.
Substance in the last two senses stands opposed to modification such as
quantity, quality, relations, etc. it is hard to keep this set of ideas
distinct from the doubtful notion of a substratum, something distinct from any
of its properties, and hence incapable of characterization.
The notion of substance tends so
disappear in empiricist thought in favour of the sensible qualities of things,
with the notion of that in which they inhere giving way to an empirical notion
of their regular coherence. But this in turn is problematic, since it only
makes sense to talk of the occurrence of instances of qualities, not of what it
is for a quality to be instanced remains.
Metaphysics inspired by modern science tends
to reject the concept of substance in favour of concepts such as that of a
field or a process, each of which may seem to provide a better example of a
fundamental physical category.
FORM
[1]Form is the external shape, appearance, or configuration of an
object, in contradistinction to the matter of which it is composed; in Aristotelian metaphysics, the active, determining principle of a thing as
distinguished from matter, the potential principle.
Philosophical
concepts
The word form
has been used in a number of ways throughout the history of philosophy and aesthetics. It was early applied to Plato’s term eidos,
by which he identified the permanent reality that makes a thing what it is, in contrast to the
particulars that are finite and subject to change. The Platonic concept of form
was itself derived from the Pythagorean theory that intelligible structures (which Pythagoras called numbers), and not material elements, gave objects their
distinctive characters. Plato developed this theory into the concept of
“eternal form,” by which he meant the immutable essence that can only be “participated in” by material, or sensible,
things. Plato held that eternal forms, though they were not tangible, were of a
higher reality than material objects.
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