Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

properties are essential properties — properties that allow them to be what they are. This is a kind of stripped-down variant of the way the word ‘essence’ is used — to mean something that is uniquely itself. But this seems to just raise the question of whether any substance actually has any necessary qualities. Given the scepticism that exists over there being any necessary truths at all, we are driven to conclude from this that essence remains fundamentally elusive, if not actually non-existent.

Let’s move on to consider two further meanings of essence provided by ancient philosophy: What’s left of a substance when all its qualities are removed. And:

The thing about a substance that makes it unique from other substances.

(I’ve used the word substance in these definitions, but its probably not crucial to the argument if we were to substitute ‘thing’ or ‘something’.)

Taking the first of these definitions, clearly this was the dilemma posed earlier. There seem to be only qualities (and if we took ‘relation’ to be a quality, we are even worse off), so for now we seem forced to conclude, on this basis, that essence does not exist. But the more mysterian definition of form offered a solution to the ancients, as well as some later philosophers.

But it’s the second definition of essence that perhaps offers us greater scope. What is it that is unique to a thing? What makes a thing into a something? It is relationship. Every object has

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