Existence, Essence, and Time

Existence, Essence, and Time

The traditional view was that essence precedes existence: things have essences before they come to exist. This makes sense if the thing in question is designed: the designer has its essence in mind before he makes it, e.g., a carpenter making a table. It also makes sense if there is no human designer but a divine one: God had all the essences in his mind before he set about bringing the corresponding things into existence. But it is hard to make sense of if there is no designer, since there will be no mind in which the essence is, so to speak, warehoused. Where then is it? If the essence of water is H2O, did H2O precede water? That sounds decidedly peculiar, and H2O is water, so it can’t exist unless water does. Did the origin-essence of Queen Elizabeth II exist before she did: was she born of these particular parents before she was born? Granted the piece of wood that composes the table existed before the table did, but was the table composed of this piece of wood before it existed? Hardly. The whole doctrine looks radically misconceived for objects with essences that are not intelligently designed. Essence does not precede existence—though ideas of objects can precede their actual existence. Is it to be supposed that the essence of numbers preceded numbers? Does the essence of pain precede pain?

So, does existence precede essence, as Sartre famously claimed for human beings? Do things come into existence and only later acquire an essence? That is an even worse doctrine: how can a table exist and not be made of anything and have no nature? How could water acquire a chemical composition sometime after coming to exist? Things can acquire properties (“accidents”) after they come to exist, but not natures. Even human beings according to existentialism have an essence when they come to exist–their essence is unlimited freedom, absolute nothingness, pure potential. Things have to have some essence at the moment of their creation, even if they change over time; if they acquire a new essence, they also acquire a new identity. There is no such thing as having zero nature. If things have essences at all, they have them coevally with their coming to exist.

The indicated doctrine, then, is that existence and essence are simultaneous. A thing comes to have its essence at the precise moment it begins to exist, neither earlier nor later. If the coming into existence is gradual, spread out in time, so is the acquisition of essence. The table comes to exist over a few days, as the carpenter works on it, and so does its essence; it slowly gathers the essence that will define it. When the carpenter finishes making the table, he finishes giving it its essence; only then can we say that the table is essentially made of this piece of wood. If water took a while to come into existence, it also took a while to become H2O. But this sounds distinctly odd: the table comes to exist at a certain time, perhaps gradually, but it doesn’t come to have its essence at a certain time. We can’t sensibly say that things come to have an essence. We can say that they come to exist, slowly or quickly, and provide dates; but we can’t say that they come to have an essence this way. Tables exist in time, but essences don’t. It is a kind of category mistake to locate essences in time, so we can’t say that they precede or postdate or are simultaneous with existence. This is not the “logical grammar” of essence. It is not true that essence precedes existence, nor that existence precedes essence, nor that the two are simultaneous—because these are all nonsensical statements. It is perfectly true that ideas of things can precede the existence of those things, and also true that things can come to exist without yet being fully formed (e.g., human beings); but it is not true (because nonsensical) that existence and essence can precede each other or occur simultaneously. It is a conceptual blunder.[1]

[1] Some might see here a reason to deny essence altogether, since if there were such a thing it ought to make sense. I wish Kripke had written Timing and Necessity.