Construct · 1 fields · 3 citations

haecceity: a standalone construct

One name. One construct. A landmark on the map.

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haecceity1 CONSTRUCTHaecceitySCOTUS · THISNESS

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Philosophy (metaphysics)

The non-qualitative 'thisness' that makes a thing the very individual it is

The term haecceity renders the Latin haecceitas, literally 'thisness', coined by the medieval philosopher John Duns Scotus (ca. 1300) to name the individuating principle: the non-qualitative property that makes a thing the very individual it is, rather than merely a member of a kind. Scotus set it against quidditas or quiddity ('whatness'), the shared nature that many things can have in common, holding that two things could agree in every general feature and still differ in their haecceity, the ultimate ground of their being distinct individuals. The idea was revived in twentieth-century analytic metaphysics by Robert Merrihew Adams (1979), who defended a 'primitive thisness' that does not reduce to any collection of qualities, and it was given book-length treatment by Gary S. Rosenkrantz (1993). As a landmark in the philosophy of individuation, haecceity marks the position that the individuality of a thing is a primitive, non-qualitative fact, and it serves as the reference point against which qualitative and bundle theories of the individual are stated and contested.[1][2][3]

Unit
A primitive, non-qualitative property attributed to an individual as the ground of its being that very individual
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Identified through philosophical argument and thought experiments (for example, cases of qualitatively indiscernible individuals), not by empirical measurement

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Nearby constructs

identity6 fields · 14 citationsjingle · one name, six constructsessence2 fields · 2 citationsjingle · one word, two constructsuniversal4 fields · 4 citationsjingle · one word, four constructs

References

  1. Duns Scotus, J. (ca. 1300/1973). Ordinatio II, d. 3, p. 1 (C. Balić et al., Eds.). Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis.
  2. Adams, R. M. (1979). Primitive thisness and primitive identity. The Journal of Philosophy, 76(1), 5–26. https://doi.org/10.2307/2025812
  3. Rosenkrantz, G. S. (1993). Haecceity: An ontological essay. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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