Existence and Essence

Existence and Essence

Essence is usually defined in terms of existence: an essential property is one without which the object could not exist. For example, water couldn’t exist without being H2O and Aristotle couldn’t exist without being human. A contingent or accidental property is one that is not required for the object’s existence—for example, water being bottled and Aristotle being married. Can we find a proof in these definitions that all objects must have at least one essential property? Certainly, an object could not exist and have no properties, essential or accidental; but could it have only accidental properties? Are objects without essences possible? Suppose we have a putative object with a bunch of contingent properties but only these: can we think these away to nothing and still have an existing object? No, because that would remove all its properties and there can’t be property-less objects. If all the properties are contingent, can’t they all be removed, by definition? But that would be to remove the object. It might be said we can’t remove all of the object’s properties and keep it in existence but we can remove any of them. There is no single property that can’t be removed, so long as other properties are not removed. All are contingent but it is not contingent that some are instantiated—just not any property in particular, since that would be essential by definition. There is no property such that it cannot be removed (is essential) but it cannot be that all contingent properties are removed. In effect, we have a scope distinction with respect to “necessarily” and “all”. But this response misses the spirit of the point: why should the totality not be removable given that any member of it is removable? It seems like an arbitrary stipulation to insist that some contingent property has to remain in order for the object to exist. The natural position is that some properties are essential while some are not. That is, every object must have an essence on pain of not existing: essence is required for existence. Nothing can exist and have only accidental properties, because all of these are in principle removable consistently with existence. When we reach the final contingent property, the next step is the property-less object, but there cannot be such a thing. We would have to suppose that the last property was essential, because necessary to the existence of the object. The natural position is that an object’s properties partition into the essential and the accidental, and the former are bound up with its existence. Thus, the concept of existence presupposes that objects have essences—no essence, no existence. The essence forms the kernel of the object, so to speak, while the accidents form its shell; the essence is the nucleus, the accidents are the surrounding particles. If we call the collection of accidents the object’s “accidence”, we can say that no existing object can have only an accidence. Accidence presupposes essence. A world without essences, but only accidences, is a non-existent world. To be sure, there are fictional object with only accidences, if only by stipulation, but existing objects need the blessing of essences. Everything real has an essence. Necessity is part of nature. Without metaphysical necessity the world cannot exist. Even God can’t build a world consisting of only contingent facts.[1]

[1] The intuitive point in the rather convoluted argument here presented is that it is not an accident that objects have essences as well as accidents. Existing objects must have intrinsic natures as well as extrinsic careers. An object cannot have only properties inessential to its existence, because then it would have no distinguishing nature; it could float free of any of its properties from possible world to possible world. It would have no identity. Aristotle cannot be married without being of some natural kind, but natural kinds are essential. In fact, all objects do have essences, as inspection reveals; the present argument attempts to explain why this is not an accident, metaphysically speaking. Objects necessarily have essences; it isn’t just a contingent feature of the actual world. It would be amazing if it were.