Metaphysics and Ancient Philosophy - A

Essentialism, as standardly defined in philosophy today, is the stance that things have essences or sets of essential properties. How to best characterize essential properties is controversial; by and large, they are assumed to be properties an object could not lack, because they are the properties that ‘make’ the object be what it is. Notwithstanding a significant variety of positions concerning essentialism today, it is fair to consider it a shared assumption that a thing is somehow related to its essence by having it (in all possible worlds). It is also a commonplace in today’s discussions of essentialism to identify Aristotle as the first to have introduced this position in the history of metaphysics. In this seminar we will probe these mainstream views. I will put forward the thesis, to be discussed in class (on the basis of primary and secondary resources), that essentialism as the ancients conceived it, is an altogether different theory from how essentialism is conceived today. The key difference is that for the ancients the essence is not something other than the thing itself, which ‘makes’ it be what it is, as modern essentialism has it. Rather, for the ancients, a thing is, in itself, its essence. I call the metaphysical position held by the ancients Parmenidean Essentialism (PE for brevity), because its roots lie in Parmenides’ thought. We will work with (selected) textual evidence in Parmenides’, Plato’s and Aristotle’s works to ascertain whether and why PE is a sound interpretation of their thought, to flesh out PE, and to bring out the difference between PE and contemporary essentialism (with special reference to Kit Fine’s work).

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In presence

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Evaluation method: essay.