White, Origins of Aristotelian Essentialism

Origins of Aristotle's Essentialism
Author(s): Nicholas P. White

Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Sep., 1972), pp. 57-85
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ORIGINS OF ARISTOTLE'S ESSENTIALISM

NICHOLAS P. WHITE
It is a commonplace that Aristotle subscribed to a doctrine which

can be fairly labelled "essentialism" ; and if this commonplace is
true, then no doubt he subscribed to a doctrine which can be fairly
labelled "Aristotelian essentialism." But what is this doctrine?
Usually, it is thought to lie somewhere in Aristotle's distinction be

tween substance and non-substance, or in a distinction?not expressed
in this way by him?between substance and non-substance attributes,
or between what "belongs" (hy par chez) to a thing per se (kath} hauto)
and what belongs to it per accidens or accidentally (kata symbebekos).
To be told this much, however, is not to be told much, and obviously
in order to understand and assess the attribution of such a doctrine
to Aristotle, we need to see what, for Aristotle, these distinctions

come to. I hope to make plausible the claim that in his contrast
between substance and non-substance attributes, Aristotle is not
committed to essentialism of the sort described by Quine, and that
his account of substance and of substantial change can be interpreted
in another way. Most of the argument for this claim comes in

sections 3 and 4. Before that, I shall argue (in section 1) that
Aristotle's use of modal words like "necessarily" and "possibly" is
such that he is not in a position to formulate at all clearly the Quinian
variety of essentialism; and (in section 2) that he does not have a

notion of a "proper name" to employ in such a formulation. In
section 5, however, I shall give reasons for thinking that something
rather akin to essentialism infiltrates his docrtine from an unexpected
direction. Section 6 explores some ramifications of my account, ex

plaining further Aristotle's contrast between substance and non
substance attributes. Section 7 turns to the origins of his views, and
propounds an argument for taking his earliest attempt to draw this
contrast in a somewhat unorthodox way. The result, I hope, is a
coherent picture?though with many gaps, some of which are men
tioned in section 8?of the concerns which shaped this part of
Aristotle's doctrine of substance.
My account is subject to two important limitations. First, I

shall be discussing whether or not Aristotle holds to an essentialistic
NICHOLAS P. WHITE
58
doctrine with regard to sensible particulars, and shall neglect entirely
his views about such things as species, genera, universals, and the
like. Secondly, I shall be leaving out of account such chronologically
late productions as Metaphysics VI-X and (except for brief mention)
IV. Thus I shall be concentrating on the Categories, the Topics, the

Physics, and the De Generatione et Corruptions I am not convinced
that later works show substantial change over the works which I shall
be discussing, but the later works do present severe exegetical diffi
culties which could not be adequately met within the scope of this
essay.
It would be a historical mistake, Aristotle aside, to take "

sentialism" as described by Quine to be the only doctrine with
claim to that title. As we shall see, there is at least one other doctr
for which we might reasonably appropriate it. But since Quine

characterization is relatively clear, and since it is currently in t
air, we have an excuse for taking our start from it.
The following is one of Quine's accounts of what he means

"Aristotelian essentialism" :
. . . Aristotelian essentialism. This is the doctrine that some of t

attributes of a thing (quite independently of the language in whi
the thing is referred to, if at all) may be essential to the thing a
others accidental. E.g., a man, or talking animal, or featherless biped

(for they are all the same things), is essentially rational and accidenta
two-legged and talkative, not merely qua man but qua itself. Mo
formally, what Aristotelian essentialism says is that you can hav
open sentences?which I shall represent here as {Fx' and 'Gx'?suc
that
(54) (3x) (nee Fx. Gx. -nee Gx).

An example of (54) . . . might be
(3x) (nee (x > 5). there are just x planets,
-nee (there are just x planets)),
such an object x being the number (by whatever name) which is
variously known as 9 and the number of the planets.1
1 W. V. Quine, "Three Grades of Modal Involvement," The Ways of

Paradox (New York, 1966), pp. 173-74 (with Quine's emphasis). See also
his "Reply to Professor Marcus/' ibid., pp. 175-82; "Reference and Mo
dality," From A Logical Point of View, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1961), pp.
139-59; and Word and Object (New York, 1960), pp. 195-200.
ORIGINS OF ARISTOTLE'S ESSENTIALISM 59

Elsewhere, Quine speaks of "adopting an invidious attitude toward
certain ways of specifying [an object] . . . and favoring other

ways ... as somehow better revealing the 'essence' of the object."
And he continues,
. . . An object, of itself and by whatever name or none, must be seen
as having some of its traits necessarily and others contingently, de
spite the fact that the latter traits follow just as analytically from
some ways of specifying the object as the former traits do from other
ways of specifying it. . . .2
An important feature of essentialism, so characterized, appears in

the following3 :
Essentialism is abruptly at variance with the idea, favored by
Carnap, Lewis, and others, of explaining necessity by analyticity. . . .

For the appeal to analyticity can pretend to distinguish essential and
accidental traits of an object only relative to how the object is specified,
not absolutely. . . .
We shall hear a bit more of this theme later.4
Let us turn to Aristotle without further ado. It has been

thought that his distinction between substance and non-substance
attributes of a sensible particular amounts to a distinction between
such a thing's essential and non-essential attributes, in something like
Quine's sense.5 While this possibility must be left open for examina
2 "Reference and Modality," p. 155.

3 Again from "Reference and Modality," p. 155. I believe that Quine
is correct in this matter, in spite of various recent attempts to reduce
11 de re" to "de dictoJf necessity.
4 Here and elsewhere (e.g., at Word and Object, p. 199), Quine seems
to suggest that the distinction between essential and non-essential attributes
is on a worse footing than the distinction between the analytic and the
synthetic. Now however true it is that an explanation of the latter dis
tinction would not provide us with an explanation of the former, the reverse
is also true. Of course if one supposes that the only account of necessity
that could be intelligible would be one grounded in analyticity, then one
could rate essentialism as beyond all hope of intelligibility. But I see no
reason to make this supposition. I find it unclear how to distinguish be
tween the essential and the accidental, and I find it unclear how to dis
tinguish between the analytic and the synthetic, but the distinctions seem
to me on a par, and I see no reason to judge a priori which of the two
distinctions, if either, might ultimately be more susceptible of satisfactory
explanation.
5 For another recent attribution of roughly this distinction, see G. E.
M. Anscombe, "Aristotle," in Anscombe and Geach, Three Philosophers

(Oxford, 1963), p. 44.
60
NICHOLAS P. WHITE
tion in later sections, I want to claim here that Aristotle's grasp of

modal notions, and of the use of modal operators, is such that he
could not clearly express the Quinian distinction between essential
and non-essential attributes of a sensible particular.
A clear-cut adoption of essentialism requires that one be able

to distinguish between, e.g., a statement of the form "Necessarily
(x) (if x is F, then x is G)" and a statement of the form "(x) (if x is
F, then necessarily x is G)." What this ability requires in turn is
that one be able to grapple successfully with the subtle problems of
the placement of modal operators. It is clear, however, that

Aristotle's use of modal expressions does not exhibit meticulous care
in their placement. For example as Anscombe points out,6 Meta
physics IV seems to confuse statements of the form "Necessarily (if
p, then not-not-p)" and statements of the form "If p, then necessarily
not-not-p."7 A similar confusion between n?cessitas consequentiae
and n?cessitas consequentis arises in Aristotle's account of syllogisms
in the Prior Analytics. For Patzig has observed that Aristotle mis
takenly believes that "relative" necessity (the necessity of a conclu
sion "relative to" its premises) attaches to the conclusion of a

syllogism rather than to the conditional of which the conjunction of
premises is the antecedent and the conclusion is the consequent.8

Moreover, the confusion of placement of modal words seems to plague
Aristotle's modal syllogistic in a thoroughgoing way. For as McCall

argues,9 there seems to be no way in which we can make a coherent
6 Anscombe, p. 44.
7 Notice that this confusion apparently occurs in one of the passages
which Anscombe uses as evidence for fastening her version of essentialism
on him, Met 1007a20ff. Cf. also, perhaps, De Interpretatione 9.
8 See G?nther Patzig, Die Aristotelische Syllogistik, 2nd ed.,
(G?ttingen, 1963), or the translation by Jonathan Barnes (Dordrecht, 1968),
ch. 2. This is not to say that I accept all of Patzig's account of "relative"
and "absolute" necessity in Aristotle's syllogistic. For some objections,
see Ackrill's review of Patzig's first edition, Mind, LXXI (1962), 109-11.
It is nothing against my contention here that in spite of his fairly wide
spread confusion about the placing of the modal operator, Aristotle does
manage to keep the two kinds of necessity distinct from each other in the
passage discussed by Patzig. (Ackrill expresses doubts that Aristotle is as

confused as Patzig says, but he does not attempt to back his doubts up
with evidence.)
9 Storrs McCall, Aristotle's Modal Syllogisms (Amsterdam, 1963), pp.
5-22. See also Rescher, "Aristotle's Theory of Modal Syllogisms and its
Interpretation," Mario Bunge, ed., The Critical Approach to Science and
Philosophy (New York, 1964), pp. 152-77.

system of what Aristotle says about modal syllogisms if we demand
from him a regular system of placing modal operators.10 Given all
of these facts, it seems safe to say that Aristotle would not be likely,
at least using words like "necessarily," to present us with a clear

statement of essentialism.
Other evidence points in the same direction. In passages which
have to do with the distinction between substance and non-substance
predictions, explicitly modal words like "necessarily" are not at all
prominent. The expressions which he makes carry most of the

weight are terms like uper se," "h> tQ> t? Icftl" and uper accidens"
The second of these should be noted : it and related expressions are
often translated by "essential" and its cognates, and the impression
is thus given to readers of English translations that Aristotelian
essentialism is staring us in the face. This is not so : the literal mean
ing of the phrase is the odd "in the what is it." The Greek phrase
is as odd as the English, but it suffices for now to note that (like
other such similar phrases as "r? r?v thai" often translated by

"essence") it carries no immediate and direct allusion to the notion
of necessity. It is true that "accident" ("vvii?e?riKbs") and its kin
are sometimes explained explicitly in terms of the notion of possi
bility (as in Met. V. 30 and Top. 1.5), and that "accident" and
uper se" are frequently linked in such a way that the latter could
likewise be explained in terms of necessity or possibility (e.g., at
An. Post. 83a25-28). On the other hand, this is not Aristotle's

standard line of explanation. An. Post. 83a25-28 is in fact a case
in point, as is 73a34fl\, where uper se" is explained without reference
to necessity or possibility; and only afterwards (73bl6ff.) are con

clusions introduced which do explicitly involve these notions.11 (We
shall have occasion to refer later to these passages in another
connection.)
10 McCall and Rescher both offer systems which yield just those apo
deictic syllogisms which Aristotle claims, one by one, to be valid, but I do
not see that these systems can be regarded as reflections, in any very in
teresting way, of anything which Aristotle had in mind. What we need is
at least the beginning of an explanation of why Aristotle divided up syl

logisms into the valid and the invalid in the way that he did, not simply
any old mirroring of his intuitions. If the latter is all that we have, then
his intuitions continue to seem arbitrary and puzzling.
111 mean to ignore the curious sense given to uper se" in 73a37-b3.
61
62
NICHOLAS P. WHITE
Aristotle is sometimes willing to talk as though to say that
something attaches per se to something is to say something different,
perhaps even stronger than, that it attaches "necessarily" (e?

?vayurjs).12 Now of course if to say that A is per se F is to say some
thing stronger than that A is necessarily F, then to say the former is
to be committed to be saying the latter. It is not clear, however,

that Aristotle did think that a statement of the form "A is per se F"
is always stronger than a statement of the form "A is necessarily F."
Rather, he may have thought of these two sorts of statement as being
quite independent of each other. For in the first place, he never,

to my knowledge, says that per se predictions about sensible particulars
imply statements involving necessity, or uses statements involving

necessity or possibility which are explicitly about such particulars.13
Secondly, there is fairly strong evidence for the thesis advanced by
Hintikka, that according to Aristotle, a statement is necessary if and
only if it is true at all times.14 If this thesis is correct, then Aristotle
might be unwilling to accept as true any statement of the form

"Necessarily (A is F)" where "A" designates a sensible particular
which is perishable. For he suggests at one place at least that, e.g.,
when Socrates is not in existence, no "affirmative" statement about
Socrates is true.15 He might therefore be unwilling on this score to
say that Socrates is necessarily a man.16
The modal notions of necessity and possibility, therefore, play no
explicit role in Aristotle's cogitations concerning sensible particulars ;
12 Compare Topics 131b21-33 (esp. 32) with 131b38-132al ; see also
Met. IX.10, 1051b9-17 vs. 17ff. (esp. 25-26).
13 The one possible exception of which I am aware occurs at Met. IV,
1007a20ff., discussed by Anscombe, p. 44 (cf. n. 7 and section 8).
14 See his "Necessity, Universality, and Time in Aristotle," Ajatus,

XX (1957), 65-90; "The Once and Future Sea Fight," Philosophical Review,
LXXIII, 4 (Oct., 1964), 461-92; and "Time, Truth, and Knowledge in
Ancient Greek Philosophy," American Philosophical Quarterly, 4, 1 (Jan.,

1967), 1-14. This is not to put the point with full precision, but the im
precision does not matter here.
15 Categories 13bl2-19, 27-35; the same point may be in view at Met.
1040a2-5 and 1036a2-8. These passages might, however, conflict with

De Int. 21a24-28 and Sophistici Elenchi 167al-2. (Cf. also, perhaps, such
places as An. Post. 92b4-8, though other considerations are in play here as
well.) Unfortunately, this matter is too involved to be unravelled here;
fortunately, it does not have to be for my purposes.
16 There is in Aristotle no explicit recognition of a distinction between,
e.g., "Socrates is necessarily a man" and " 'Socrates is a man' is necessary

(i.e., necessarily true)."
63
and even if he had wished to give these notions a more prominent

place, his attention to the placement of modal words is not careful
enough to allow him to propound statements which are clearly es
sentialistic in the Quinian sense.
II
The notion of a "proper name," and allied notions, have f

quently figured in modern discussions of quantified modal logic
of essentialism, and these discussions make it clear that the connecti
between such notions and essentialism in Quine's sense is not a
straightforward as might be supposed. At first sight, it might app

that ordinary proper names are an effective tool for constructing
essentialistic position. By "ordinary proper name" I mean, e.

"Socrates," "Plato," "Harry Truman," as opposed to "singular
scriptions" like "the man who taught Plato," "the man who wa
taught by Socrates," and "the thirty-third president of the Uni

States." Singular descriptions encapsulate what would ordinarily
taken to be general terms; proper names do not. These exampl
and the characterization just given raise many problems, but th
will do for present purposes. The statement "The man who taug
Plato is necessarily a man" might be thought to be not clea
essentialistic, on the ground that it might plausibly be taken to

pointing merely to the idea that necessarily whatever is a man
man, or in other words, "Necessarily (x) (if x is a man, then x i
man)," which plainly does not involve any essentialistic clai
"Socrates is necessarily a man," on the other hand, might be though
to be at least a fairly clear way of making an essentialistic claim

there being no statement obviously standing to it as "Necessar
(x) (if x is a man, then x is a man)" stands to "The man who tau
Plato is necessarily a man." But matters are not so simple.
To see that they are not, let us start with a sense of "prop
name" which does in fact involve essentialism. This sense has f
quently figured in recent discussions of quantified modal logic.

example, it appears in David Kaplan's notion of a "standard name." 1
17 Kaplan, "Quantifying In," D. Davidson and J. Hintikka, edd.,

Words and Objections (Dordrecht, 1969), pp. 222-25. See also, e.g.,
Follesdal, Referential Opacity and Modal Logic (Harvard University Ph
dissertation, 1961), ch. V, and the remarks of Quine, Follesdal, and Kripk
64
NICHOLAS P. WHITE
On Kaplan's account, standard names are "names which are so inti

mately connected with what they name that they could not but name
it," names which "necessarily denote their objects." Kaplan also

says that the relation between a standard name and its object is one
which "holds between the standard name and the [object] itself,
independent of any particular way of specifying the [object]." This
is clearly essentialism, of a sort, since to adopt the notion of a standard
name is, as Kaplan notes, to adopt the kind of "frankly inequalitarian
attitude toward various ways of specifying the object" to which

Quine calls attention.
Now notice, by contrast, that there is no clear essentialistic claim
in the position that what we think of as ordinary proper names have?
as it is sometimes put?connotation. For even if, say, the name

"Socrates" is thought to "connote" the attribute of being a man in
the way that the term "bachelor" is thought to do, this is no guarantee
that the thing named "Socrates" (even if we suppose that there is

only one such thing) is necessarily a man, independently of the
manner in which he is specified.18 For a person who says that

Socrates is necessarily a man, on the ground that "Socrates" connotes
the attribute of being a man, may believe that the necessity of

Socrates' being a man is simply the necessity attaching to the claim
that whatever is named "Socrates" is a man. In that case, he might
believe that Socrates could have been something other than a man,
but that if he were he could not be named "Socrates" without a
change in the connotation or meaning of that name. But he can
perfectly well believe that Socrates might not have been named by
"Socrates" under what he takes to be its actual connotation. A
person who believes this would be like a person who believes that
manhood attaches necessarily to Jones in virtue of his being a

bachelor, but that Jones could perfectly well have been neither a
in M. W. Wartofsky, ed., Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science

(Dordrecht, 1963), pp. 105-16 (esp. pp. 112-16).
181 am here being, and shall henceforth be, a little loose and informal
in saying that certain claims are or are not essentialistic in Quine's sense.
By Quine's account, quoted at the start of section 1, to claim that Socrates
is necessarily a man, independently of the way in which he is specified, is
not by itself essentialistic. Rather, we need enough apparatus along with
that claim to generate something of the form of Quine's (54). I do not
think that the informality of my exposition will affect my argument.
65
bachelor nor a man.19 If he wishes to adopt an essentialistic view in

addition, he may of course go on to say that not only does a certain
proper name have connotation, it also is a standard name in Kaplan's
sense. But he may believe that proper names have connotation
without this additional step.
Turning again to Aristotle, we can see that an essentialistic

position again requires considerable care in the placing of modal
words, more than Aristotle appears to show. Not only that, how
ever ; in addition, his treatment, and even his use, of what are ordi
narily thought of as proper names is just about nil.20 He deals ex

plicitly neither with the distinction between genuine proper names
and other singular terms, nor with the question whether proper
names, ordinary or genuine, connote. Moreover, his examples rarely
employ what could be called ordinary proper names. Far more fre
quent are such expressions as "a man," "the man," "the particular
man," "the musical (thing)," and so forth, in which general terms
are encapsulated.21 He therefore makes no use even of the sketchy
19 We must be careful here. If we represent the idea that "Socrates"

connotes the attribute of being a man by
(X) Nec(x) (if "Socrates" denotes x, then x is a man),

then although there is no essentialism here with regard to Socrates himself,
there could be essentialism with regard to the name "Socrates." For if

" l Socrates' " in (X) is construed as a singular term occupying a position
accessible to quantification and substitutivity of identity, then (X) says
that it is true of "Socrates," by whatever specification, that whatever it
denotes is a man. One who believes with Kaplan (p. 222) that quote-names
are standard names would not object to this result. But if one believes that
"Socrates" has connotation, but does not wish to adopt essentialism with
regard to it, one might use Quine's way of eliminating singular terms, in
cluding proper names ("On What There is," From a Logical Point of View,
pp. 7-8; Methods of Logic [New York, 1950], pp. 218-24), and adopt the
predicate "socratizes," stipulated to be true only of Socrates, with the
additional stipulation (not, of course, made by Quine) that "socratizes"
have whatever connotations are possessed by "Socrates," if any. He could
then replace (X) by
(Y) Nec(x) (if x socratizes, then x is a man),
and credit the truth of (Y) to the connotation or meaning of "socratizes."
20 His term "onoma" plainly cannot be equated to "proper name," or
even to "singular term." In S. E. 175bl5-27, he appears to be worried by
the fact that "Coriscus" may have more than one bearer, but the passage
does not make clear what his response to that fact is.
21 That is, "avdp iros," "? avdp wos" u? ris avdp iros," *V? ?ovaucov," and
the like. Note, e.g., Cat. Ib4, 12-13, 2al3, 22, 24-25. Aristotle's neglect
NICHOLAS P. WHITE
66
way of expressing essentialism which was set forth in the second

paragraph of this section. This means that when he says, e.g., that
a particular man is per se a man (or, in the language of the Categories,
2a21-22, that man is "said of" the particular man), there is no cer
tainty that he means something of the form "Nee (A is a man)"
rather than merely registering the view that, e.g.?to use Quine's
way of putting it?Socrates is per se a man relative to a background
grouping of him as a man. The suspicion that this latter view is
what is on his mind is enhanced by a number of other passages.
At Cat. 7a31-bl he allows himself to say in passing that being a

man is an accident of a master. Similarly we find at S. E. 166b28-36
the claim that being a man is an accident of something referred to by
the word "other." Similar cases appear in the Metaphysics, at

981al8-20 and 1077b22-27, and at 1013b35-1014al, in which a
sculptor "happens" to be {(TVii?e?rjKevai) Polycleitus. Met. 1015b28-34
tends in the same direction, by saying that man is an accident of

Coriscus, but then pulls back and remarks that man belongs to him
in a way different from that in which white does. The least that
these passages show is that Aristotle was having trouble expressing
an essentialistic view. When he says, e.g., that being a man is an
accident of a master, he presumably means that it is not necessarily
the case that every master is a man. With an essentialistic view
firmly in hand, he would have distinguished this claim from the claim
that the thing which is a master is, itself, accidentally a man, and
labeled the latter false. We should at least suspect, then, that his
view that a man is per se a man is not straightforwardly essentialis
tic,22 that he does not firmly grasp the idea that an attribute may
be accidental to a thing independently of the way in which it is
specified.
We should not, however, let our suspicions grow too strong yet.
Even if Aristotle slips in his use of "accident," we still have to contend
with the fact that, for him, certain predicates are substance predicates,
of any notion of a "proper name" makes it risky to put much weight on

that notion in interpreting him, as Anscombe does in Three Philosophers,
pp. 8, 44.
22 Cf. by contrast W. D. Ross, Aristotle's Metaphysics, corr. ed.
(Oxford, 1953) ad Met. VII. 1, 1028a26-27 (with which I have some dis
agreement). On Met. VII and other later writings, cf. secs. 1 and 8.
67
which tell us "what a thing is," 23 and with the possibility that
essentialism is latent in this view. It should not be thought that
this way of characterizing the contrast between substance predicates
and others straightforwardly implies essentialism in Quine's sense.
It looks as if it might, because Aristotle sometimes seems to think
that if you point in some direction and ask, "What is it?" then there
is a correct way to answer, independently of the way in which the
thing pointed toward is specified. (See, e.g., Top. 103b22-24 with
J. L. Ackrill, Aristotle's Categories and De Interpretatione (Oxford,
1963), pp. 78-80.) The view would be, for example, that if you point
in the direction of Socrates and ask that question, then even though
he is both a man and musical, the predicate "man" is privileged over
"musical" as an answer. (A few lines below, however, Aristotle

seems to change his tune and suggest that the proper sort of answer
to a "What is it?" question varies with the subject-matter of the

question, in a way which might require that if the question is to be
unambiguous, the thing asked about must be specified by more than
a mere "it;" cf. Ackrill, ibid.) But however suggestive this view
may be of essentialistic leanings, we shall see in the next section that
essentialism is not required to mark Aristotle's distinction between
predicates which are, and predicates which are not, properly given
in reply to "What is it?" questions.
Ill
It is often thought that there is a certain class of attributes set

off from others by the following feature: a spatio-temporal obje
may not, properly speaking, gain or lose one of them. That is, f
example, the loss by an object of one of these attributes someho
requires that that object cease to exist. Thus, it is thought, any case
which looks like a case of something's first being, e.g., a man and th
not being a man, though continuing to exist, is actually a case of th
original object's ceasing to exist, and being in some sense "replace
by something else. Likewise for apparent cases of something's fir
not being a man and then being a man : this case allegedly counts as
a case in which the original object ceases to exist and is someho
23 Substance predicates tell us "what a thing is" : see, e.g., Cat. 2b8~10,
29-37; Met. 1028al3-18, 1030al8-27, and H. Bonitz, Index Aristotelicus

(Berlin, 1870), 545a59ff.
68
NICHOLAS P. WHITE
replaced by a newly-sprung object, a man. Such attributes as these
are supposed to be are often called "substantial" or "substance"

attributes. Rightly so, in view of the Aristotelian association of
these terms. For it is clear from numerous passages in Aristotle
that he thought that his substance attributes were precisely of this
character. In his view, in particular, the loss by an object of a
substance attribute is the perishing of that object.24

The view that there are substantial attributes in the above sense
is often thought to amount to essentialism. After all, aren't these

attributes which a thing cannot lose? If, as I have claimed, Aristotle
believed that there are substantial attributes, is it not then plain
that he subscribed to essentialism? 25
It is not, and the reason is that the above division of attributes
into the substantial and the non-substantial does not entail essen
tialism. To see that this is so, let us begin with the view that certain
attributes are such that nothing in fact ever does, properly speaking,
gain or lose one of them. The attributes of this sort would be those
which satisfy the following :
(1) (x) (t) (if x is F at t, then it is not the case that (3u) (x exists at u,
and it is not the case that x is F at u)),
where "t" and "u" range over times. This simply says that if x is
F at any given time, then there is no time at which it exists but is
not F. Plainly there is no essentialism here, since there is no neces
sity. Necessity, however, can be added without essentialism. If we
want to say that (1) is necessarily true for certain substitutions on
"F," we may say just that; or (if we think that the necessarily true
statements are the analytic ones) we may say that certain substitu
tions on "F" make (1) analytic; or we may employ the statement
operator "nee," to get
(2) Nee (x) (t) (if x is F at t, then it is not the case that (3 u) (x exists at
u, and it is not the case that x is F at u)).
If (2) is claimed true with some predicate replacing "F," then there
is necessity in the picture, but no essentialism in Quine's sense.
There is no essentialism of this sort because there is no claim that
24 See, just for example, De Gener alione et Corruptione, 1.3-4.
25 The essentialism would be the sort which Parsons "Essentialism

and Qualified Modal Logic," Phil. Rev., LXXVII, 1 (Jan., 1969), 35-36,
calls "the doctrine of general essences."
69
something is necessarily true of an object regardless of how the object
is specified (cf. n. 18).

One might argue that the view just outlined, while it accommo
dates some of the views of those who subscribe to essentialism, does
not satisfy them all. For this view tells us that, e.g., Socrates is
necessarily a man only in the sense that necessarily, if a thing is a
man at a given time, then it does not fail to be a man at some other
time. But nothing which we can get out of (2) tells us that Socrates
could not have been a non-man all along, throughout his existence.
The claim that (2) is true when "man" is substituted for "F" is
perfectly compatible with the claim that Socrates could have been,
for the whole of his career, an armadillo?or indeed anything else,
just so long as there is no time at which he is a man. When this
fact is seen, (2) may appear to provide less than a satisfying accom
modation of the "intuitions" which lead some to adopt essentialism.
Some, on the other hand, may feel that (2) accommodates their
views, and there is no need for them to repair to essentialism of the
Quinian variety. Indeed, there seems considerable justification for
maintaining that (2) captures at least one traditional notion of

"essence" better than Quine's account does. At any rate, my con
tention here is that it captures much of Aristotle's doctrine (but cf.
sec. 5). For I find in Aristotle no explicit concern to say, e.g., that
Socrates must have been a man all along.
In (2), then, we come close to the view which Aristotle holds,
but we are not there yet. As I have explained it, (2) might use the
notion of "logical necessity," the sort of necessity which some philoso
phers have tried to explain in terms of analyticity. Aristotle, how
ever, does not use anything quite like this notion of necessity. In
fact, he does not draw a contrast between logical necessity and what
might be called merely "natural" or "physical" necessity.26 If (2)
is going to be true for Aristotle for some substitutions on "F," then
the necessity in question is going to be of a different sort.
It is not easy to describe the sort of necessity in question without
a full-blown account of Aristotle's notion of necessity; in fact, it is

not easy even with such an account. Let me simply give the follow
26 See the effective arguments of Richard Sorabji, "Aristotle and

Oxford Philosophy," American Philosophical Quarterly, 6, 2 (April, 1969),
127-35.
70
NICHOLAS P. WHITE
ing sketch, which may hopefully be filled in on another occasion.

Let us label the sort of necessity "natural necessity," and say first
that it is the notion which Aristotle is trying to get at in Physics
II.8-9.27 Something is necessary if?very roughly?it is in accordance
with the way in which "nature" works. Thus, I think Aristotle be
lieves that if you suppose that there could be a thing which is first
a man and then, say, a turkey, you are thinking something which
somehow goes counter to the normal workings of nature.28
It can conceivably be maintained that any particular way of

cutting up space time is arbitrary, and that it is thus arbitrary to
mark the temporal end of an object at the point of time at which
the object ceases to be a man. If we are willing to allow discon

tinuities, we might even say arbitrarily that the Eiffel Tower used
to be a star which exploded millions of years ago and millions of
light years away. Even if we rule out such discontinuities, we might
arbitrarily count the clothes worn by a man at his death as part of
the same four-dimensional spatio-temporal object of which he was a
part when he was alive (suppose that they came into contact with
him at the moment of his death). One might try to counter these
claims in a strong way by alleging that they involve "logical" im
possibility or a change of sense of some words. One might also try
to counter them in a weaker way, by saying that such ways of cutting
up space-time, while "logically" acceptable, would bring needless

complexity to an account of the physical world. Aristotle's view is
similar to the latter, with two important differences. First, he shows
no sign of thinking that there are alternative consistent accounts of
the physical world. Second, he in any case would not, as many

philosophers and perhaps most scientists now do, think of the com
plexity of alternative accounts as somehow a complexity of laws.
His idea of what an account of nature should be like is notoriously
not Humean. With these reservations, however, it is accurate

enough for present purposes to attribute to him a view under which,
because of the way in which nature works, certain predicates satisfy
27 Note that at 200al5-30, Aristotle assimilates the necessity of a
triangle's having interior angles equal to 180 degrees with the necessity of
having building materials if you are to have a house.
28 Aristotle does allow exceptions to nature's workings : freaks. See,
e.g., Phys. 199a33-b7, Met. 1033b33.
71
(1) ; or in other words that certain predicates satisfy (2) if "nee" is

there taken to be expressive of this vaguely described "natural
necessity."
IV
In the previous section I have claimed that although his view of
the way in which substance attributes attach to sensible particulars
is not essentialistic in Quine's sense, Aristotle does think that certain
attributes cannot (in a certain sense) be, properly speaking, lost (or
gained) by such an object. Now, however, we must examine some

little-noted evidence against ascribing to him even this much.
It has been suggested thus far that it is only substance attributes
whose loss, so to speak, entails the perishing of the sensible particular
which had them. There are, however, a number of passages which

seem to indicate that according to Aristotle, even the loss of a non
substance attribute takes something out of existence. For example,
if Socrates ceases to be musical, Aristotle is sometimes willing to say
that something called "the musical (thing)" (to ixovclkov) perishes or
ceases to exist. Similarly too, he sometimes talks as if, when Socrates
comes to be musical, we can say that "the musical" comes into exist
ence (yiyvtTai). Examples of this way of talking can be found, e.g.,
at Phys. 188b4-8, 190al-3, 16-21. He also sometimes allows such

talk in connection with an expression like "the musical man": the
perishing of the musical man takes place when the man ceases to be
musical (An. Pr. 47b33-36; Phys. 189b34-190al3, 20-21, 195bl8-21,
225a3-5, 12-20, 63-65).29 "Musical" is of course a non-substance
expression for Aristotle, so one would expect him to say that nothing
perishes, properly speaking, when a substance ceases to be musical.
Of course in saying that "the musical" perishes, he does not mean to
say that "the man" perishes. One might think he would have to
say this, on the ground that "the musical" and "the man" are the
same thing. He has, however, a notion of "accidental sameness"
which is in part designed to take care of this difficulty : on his view,
"the man" and "the musical" can be at best accidentally the same
29 Compare An. Pr. 47b28-29 and S. E. 178b39-179a2 with the first

mentioned passage, which is very odd, and seems to allow us to say that
when Mikkalus ceases to be musical, one musical Mikkalus perishes while
another does not.
72
NICHOLAS P. WHITE
(or accidentally one), and this relation is thought by him to be such

that the latter can cease to be while the former remains.30
Let me digress briefly to ask?though not to answer?the ques

tion, What are the things thought by Aristotle to be designated by
such expressions as "the musical?" This matter is too involved to
be treated here, but let me simply present two answers which I think
would be wrong. The first is that such things are attributes, such as
musicality, which are shared by a plurality of objects; the second is
that they are "abstract particulars," such as "Socrates' particular
musicality." 31 Rather, I think that "the musical" designates (in our
contexts here, though certainly not in all) "musical things," or

"musicals," of which there are many, and which are only accidentally
the same as substances. This claim will be assumed in what is to
follow. Fortunately, however, my argument will not depend upon

it, since as we shall see in the next section, our exegetical needs can
be satisfied without delving very deeply into these problematical
expressions.
What we saw two paragraphs back yields a notable consequence.
It looks as if Aristotle is licensing us to say that just about any change
amounts to a case of perishing.32 This license, in turn, seems to be a

license to us to carve up space-time in pretty much any way at all,33
so that change of color, say, seems to mark the end of the career of
something just as substantial change does. We might accordingly

think that any predicate, substance-predicate or not, will satisfy (1),
provided that the variable "x" is allowed to range not only over sub
stances, but also over such things as are designated by non-substance
expressions like "the musical." But this result ensues only if, e.g.,
nothing but "musicals" can be said to be musical ; otherwise, there will
30 See Met. V.6, 9. To say that "the man" and "the musical" are
"accidentally the same" seems to be to treat them as in some way distinct

things which are somehow linked together. See my "Aristotle on Sameness
and Oneness," Philosophical Review, LXXX, 2 (April, 1971), 186ff.
31 The second answer introduces the kind of thing which is often
thought to figure in Cat. 2 and 5; but see G. E. L. Owen, "Inherence,"
Phronesis, X (1965), 97-105. Problems surrounding such expressions as
"the musical" in Aristotle are discussed at length in my "Aristotle on Non
Substance," Harvard University Ph.D. dissertation, 1970.
32 De C?elo 311b32-33 seems to allow us to say this about even loco
motion; cf. also Phys. 219bl9-23.
33 Though Aristotle does not put the matter in this way ; cf. my
"Aristotle on Sameness and Oneness," pp. 189, 195-96.
ORIGINS OF ARISTOTLE'S ESSENTIALISM 73

be things (e.g., men) which can be musical at one time but not at
another. Since it is pretty clearly Aristotle's view that men, as well
as "musicals," can be said to be musical,34 it appears that nonsub
stance predicates will not, substituted for "F," turn (1) into a truth.
On the other hand it is now no longer clear that substance predi
cates will satisfy (1) either. One ordinarily thinks of Aristotle as

believing that if you have a white man who perishes, but whose re
mains continue to be white, then not only does "the man" perish,
but "the white thing" perishes too. We shall shortly see a way of
vindicating this interpretation, but we must note an obstacle to it.
De Generatione 319b 15-25 reads as follows:
. . . But when the thing as a whole changes, nothing perceptible per
sisting as identical substratum (for example when the seed as a whole
is converted into blood, or water into air, or air as a whole into water),
such a process is a coming-to-be?and a passing-away of the other

substance. . . . But if, in these circumstances, any property belong
ing to a pair of contraries persists in being the same in the thing
which has come-to-be as it was in the thing which has passed away?
if, for instance, when water comes-to-be out of air, both are trans
parent or cold?that into which it changes cannot be a property of
this thing [sc, what has persisted]; otherwise the change will be
alteration (aXXotWis)35
It appears from this passage that something designated by a non

substance expression like "the transparent" or "the cold" can persist
after the substance which is accidentally the same as it.36 All that
Aristotle is insisting upon is that substance must not be considered
a property (irados) of what persists. By analogy, then, if "the white
thing" mentioned above is a man, then its ceasing to be a man will
not entail its going out of existence. Can "the white thing" properly
341 am glossing over some difficulties here; cf. "Aristotle on
Non-Substance. ' '

36 Translation by E. S. Forster (Cambridge, Mass., 1955), but I have
corrected the translation in the penultimate clause. Forster plainly mis
translates "ou 5et," and fails to realize that "Bkrepov" is the subject of "elvai"
and "7ra0os" is predicative. Joachim's translation conveys the right idea.
361 ignore here the complications arising from the fact that the change
from air to water is regarded as a substantial change; cf. 318b 1-32 and,
e.g., Met 1028b9-ll. I also ignore difficulties engendered by the notion of
"prime matter" (if he in fact has such a notion; cf. Ross ad Met. 1015a8
and 1049a24-27), which might conceivably figure a bit later, in 320a2ff.
[cf. 329a24ff], but is not there introduced in such a way as to affect my
remarks about the quoted passage).
74
NICHOLAS P. WHITE
be said to be a man? Aristotle is not as forthright on this question

as one might wish. In a discussion of this sort of statement at An.
Post 83al-23, he maintains that while "That white thing is a log" is
only "accidentally" a "prediction" and would not appear in demon
strative science (8-9, 14-21), and while "the white thing" is not a
"substratum" (viroKtiixevov?the same word which appears in the pass
age just quoted), the statement is nevertheless true (1-4). An. Pr.
43a25ff. contains remarks to the same effect (see esp. 34-36). But if
this is so then it appears that substance predicates will not, after all,
satisfy (1), since things (e.g., some "white things") which are men
will continue to exist even after they have ceased to be men.
Although Aristotle uses "perish" and "come-to-be" with non

substance expressions in the way which I have described, it is in
viting to think that he views it merely as a manner of speech which
he thinks can properly be paraphrased away. Thus, he might say

that "The musical perishes" is a bad way of putting what might be
better expressed by "The man ceases to be musical." This expedient,
as far as I can discover, is neglected in the Physics.37 In the De
Generatione et Corruptione, however, Aristotle seems to be in a some
what different and tougher mood. He does allow such talk at

319b29-30 and 25-26, but he generally avoids it; and at 317b21-23
he introduces a discussion probably designed to circumvent it. His
way of circumventing it, however, is not to paraphrase it away, and
he nowhere makes an across-the-board attempt to do so. One reason
is plain, though it does not seem to have been noticed. Although he
is allowed by his linguistic resources to replace "The musical comes
to-be" by "The man comes to be musical," there is no convenient
way for him to replace "The musical perishes," since Greek does not
have a locution ready to hand corresponding to our "The man ceases
to be musical." 38 His expedient is different. He draws a distinction
between "qualified" and "unqualified" coming-to-be and perishing
(y?veais ris and aifkri y?veats), e.g., and says that substantial change is
37 For more details on this matter, and in general on the coming-to-be
and perishing of non-substances, see my "Aristotle on Non-Substance,"

esp. pp. 111-19.
38 He thus cannot say anything like, say, "The man perishes musical" ;
that is, there is no use of "cfrde?peaoW corresponding to the use of "yLyveada"
in "? avdp iros yiyveTca, juou<7?k?s," and Aristotle, as often, does not here see
fit to coin an artificial phrase to do the job.
75
unqualified coming-to-be and perishing.39 It is tempting to view this

maneuver as a way of taking back the claim that non-substances like
"the musical," etc., can genuinely come into being and pass away.
The same temptation arises when we consider his use of "substratum"
in the passages quoted two paragraphs back. "The transparent"

continues to exist after it changes from air to water, but it is not a
continuing substratum or "subject"; we may use the statement

"That white thing is a log," but the substratum or subject mentioned
is "the log" and not "the white thing." If "the white thing" were
carved into a statue of W. C. Fields, it would persist, but it would
not be a persisting substratum. While we might well wonder how the
distinction between substrata and non-substrata is to be drawn, we
can suppose that Aristotle is trying to discount non-substance perish
ings and comings-to-be, and the persisting of non-substances like

"the transparent" through substantial change.
Rather than viewing Aristotle as thus straightforwardly claiming
that substance predicates alone satisfy (1), it is attractive to claim
that he is accomplishing the same end in a slightly different way. In
his talk of substratum, one might see a desire to, in effect, restrict
the range of the variable "x" in (1) solely to those things designated
by such substance expressions as "the man," "the log," and the like.
(Satisfaction of (1) cannot now be a satisfactory criterion for picking
out substance predicates, since to apply this criterion we must already
be able to recognize the substance predicates; but I am not here
trying to find a criterion in Aristotle.) Given this restriction, it
turns out that only substance predicates satisfy (1). This construal
of Aristotle's line of thought might be welcomed, since it reflects a
view with which Aristotle has sympathy (though I am slurring over
many complications here), that of particulars it is only particular
substances which "really" exist. It would be no surprise if he thought
that the things which "really" exist are the things which "really"
perish and come-to-be, and "really" persist through change. On the
other hand, just as he is unwilling to say flatly that members of other
categories do not exist, he is also unwilling to say flatly that things
39 Phys. 190a31-bl, 225al4^15, blO-11; De Gen. et Con. 317al7-19,
b7ff., 319a8ff., 319b27-31; Met. XII.2, 1069b9-ll. De Gen. et Con.
318a28-36, b4-5, 10-13, show us a different application of these phrases,
which will not be treated here.
76
NICHOLAS P. WHITE
like "the musical" do not come-to-be and perish. Thus, although he

is close to saying that only substance predicates satisfy (1), he is not
in a position to say so flatly.
In suggesting that for Aristotle substances may not pro
designated by non-substance expressions like "the music
are we not after all attributing to him a form of Quinian es
For if he believes that a man who is accidentally the
"musical thing" may be designated only by "the man" a

"the musical" or "the musical man" (which designates
pound" of "the man" and "the musical" ; cf. An. Pr. 47b33
189b34-190al3, 20-21, b20-22, De Gen. et Corr. 319b25-30
adopting something like Kaplan's "frankly inequalitaria
toward various ways of specifying" the object, alluded to in
Perhaps, in a peculiar way. He is not employing Kaplan's

between standard and non-standard names, nor the dist
tween genuine proper names and singular descriptions, but

similar. Using the latter distinction, someone might conc
that "that man" is a proper name of a thing but "that musi
while denoting the same thing, is not a proper name of it b
singular description denoting it. For Aristotle, it is as if th
pressions denote distinct objects.40
To ask whether Aristotle's expressions are just like
standard names is to ask whether, e.g., "the man" necessari

the man in question, or whether "the musical" necessarily d
musical thing in question. A straightforward answer is

coming, since as we have seen, Aristotle shows no inter
question of whether something which is in fact a man could,
have been, say, a turkey and never have been a man at
question had been made clear to him, the best guess is no d
he would have replied in the negative. But notice that h

poor position to consider the question clearly. For the q
whether, for example, "the man" necessarily denotes the
pendently of the way in which the man is specified. But to m
40 It begins to look a little as if the objects which Aristotle h
are like what Carnap called "individual concepts," but I shall

this suggestion here.
77
of the question, and to answer it unambiguously, one must be better

versed in the placing of modal operators than we have seen Aristotle
to have been, and more overtly concerned with the notions of denota
tion, naming, and the like.
Consideration of the following question might offer some hope
of clarification of Aristotle's position: can the object labelled "the

man" instead be labelled by the substance expression "the animal"?
If so, then Aristotle might be willing to admit that even if "man"
satisfies (1) so that nothing which is once a man can cease being a
man and still remain in existence, nevertheless something which is in
fact a man for the whole of its existence might have been a turkey
for the whole of its existence. If, on the other hand, he had denied
that "the animal" can be used in the way in which he uses "the man"
(cf. "the skilled thing" vis-a-vis "the musical thing"), we would have
good ground for taking him to believe that such a possibility is ruled
out. Although the evidence is slim, it is tempting to opt for the

latter alternative.41 So far as I can discover, Aristotle does not use
expressions of this sort, in which genus-terms like "animal" appear,
and this fact may indicate that he would not have sanctioned their
use.
With due reservation, the conclusion to draw would seem
that in his use of expressions of the form "the . . . ," he does a
something very like essentialism of the Quinian variety. It
portant, however, to see that the essentialism enters in at a dif
point from the one at which it is usually found. It does not

with the contrast between substance and non-substance pred
"The musical" is used to designate musical things just as fir
"the man" is used to designate men, so long as both kinds of
are thought to exist. The distinction between substance an
substance predicates is of a different sort. In the previous sect

saw that, with the range of the variable "x" suitably restricted
former might be said to satisfy (1) and the latter not; but t
no essentialism in Quine's sense there. In the following sect

shall see a way of claiming that only substance predicates
(2)?or something like it?but again there is no Quinian essen
between these predicates and the non-substance variety.
41 There is some chance that Met. VII. 13 is going in this directio
78
NICHOLAS P. WHITE
VI
In another place I have briefly argued that Aristotle tries
draw a distinction between careers of things which are in some sen

unitary and careers which are not,42 and that in his view it is the th
with unitary careers which are unitary and the things with n
unitary careers which are not (see esp. Met. 1016a5-6, 1052al9-
The unitariness of career is tied to the notion of "form" (1052a22f
the form of a thing (as opposed to its "matter") is not merely

static shape but also its (so to speak) temporal shape, its caree
Socrates, for example, is in the relevant sense unitary or "one,"
this is so because he has a single form ; this in turn is so becaus
has an in some sense intelligibly unitary spatial shape and also
cause he goes on through time in a somehow intelligibly uniform w
Although Aristotle's use of this idea needs a great deal of caref
examination, it is sufficiently clear as it stands to be useful to

Of sensible particulars it is particular substances which in his v
have unitary careers, and which are in this way "one." The life
a man, for example, is in its normal course somehow more uni
than his musical career or his bald-headed phase.43 This sort of cla
could of course be pressed, as could the whole distinction betw
unitary and non-unitary careers in general. But if we grant Aristo

this sort of claim and the distinction upon which it is based, we h
a kind of rationale for his view that it is only substances which, in
most important way, come-to-be and perish. The beginning of

man's life is the beginning of something unitary in a way in w
the beginning of a musical career, or the career of being of a cert

color, is not. So too, the end of a man's life is the end of somet
unitary; not so for the end of a musical career or the darkenin
lightening of a complexion.44 For this reason, he can view "the m
but not "the musical," as capable of designating something unit
42 "Aristotle on Sameness and Oneness," pp. 193-95.

43 Not all human lives are so : some are cut short, and this fact is o
some importance to Aristotle's ethical theory and his account of happine
(see Nicomachean Ethics 1098al8-20, HOOalOff.).

44 There is room for degrees here. For example see perhaps Ca
8b26-9al0. Increasing attention to this sort of reflection is no doubt
of Aristotle's reason for moving in later works toward the idea that
"naturally" constituted things are genuine particular substances. See M
VII.17, 1041b28-31 and VIII.3, 1043bl8-23 vs. the no doubt earlier XI
1070a5-6, and Cat. 8a23-24 and An. Post. 83alff.
79
in an important way. It is not, then, surprising (though one might

well dispute his line of reasoning) that he should regard the comings
to-be and perishings of men as more genuine comings-to-be and
perishings than the corresponding occurrences for the designations
of "musical" and the like.
We can take the matter a step further. Recall that although

the notion of necessity is not prominent in Aristotle's account of sub
stance, we saw that we might regard him as believing that only sub
stance predicates satisfy (2), with "nee" taken as expressive of

"natural necessity." The notion of a unitary career can be tied in
here. It is Aristotle's tendency to use the notion of "formal cause"
only in connection with substance terms. For although there are
passages in which non-substance attributes seem to be "forms," and
also places where non-substances seem to appear as formal causes,45
such passages are relatively rare ; and there certainly are contexts in
which he uses the notion of form only in connection with substance
attributes.46 We might take it, then, that it is by the operation of
some formal cause, in this restricted sense, that entities have unitary
careers and are substances. We can then explain "nee" in (2) further
as, instead of "because of the way in which nature works," "by the
operation of a formal cause," and say that for Aristotle only substance
predicates satisfy (2) thus interpreted.
At the end of section 4, I argued that even if the evidence was
ambiguous, Aristotle could be claiming that only substance predicates
satisfy (1). There is no conflict between that claim and what has
just been said. What has just been said shows us that even if he
does not think that only substance predicates satisfy (1), he could
be taken to mean that only these predicates satisfy (2). (Note once
again that we do not have a criterion for picking out substance
predicates, unless we think we already know how to distinguish be
tween formal causes and non-formal causes.) We can even see the
uses of (1) and (2) as complementing each other. When we salvaged
45 As to the former : white is a form and black is a privation at Met.
1053b31; see also the references at Bonitz, Index 219al9-24. As to the
latter : health is a final cause at Phys. 194b33-35, and if this is one of the
cases in which formal and final causes coincide (198a24-25), then it can be
a formal cause too ; apparently it is so at Met. 1032a32ff. and perhaps 1070b28,
and heat seems to be a formal cause at 1070bll-12.
46 Throughout Physics II; see also Bonitz, 219a41ff.
80
NICHOLAS P. WHITE
the view that only substance predicates satisfy (1), it was by counting
substances as the things which "really" exist, and which can properly
serve as the values of "x" in (1). Insofar as Aristotle holds this
view, it is no doubt bolstered by his view that among particulars

substances alone have genuinely unitary careers, and that they result
from formal causation.
VII
I hope that the reader has by now reflected that if Aristotle

wants to draw the distinction between substance and non-substance
attributes along the lines represented by (1) and (2) or the like, he
has?even in view of his lack of technical tools?been notably in

explicit. Why does he not make it more emphatically clear that a
prime contrast between substance attributes and others is that the
former may not, properly speaking, be lost or acquired whereas the
latter may? Is it simply that the point seems so obvious to him

that he thinks he need not emphasize it? Why does he then not
reject more decisively and forthrightly the idea that, in a certain
light, non-substance attributes as well may be looked on as neither
lost nor acquired?
I think that there is an answer to these questions, which takes
us back to one of Aristotle's original motivations for adopting the
distinction between substance and non-substance in the first place.
I have suggested elsewhere that in Plato, we find at least a flirtation
with the view that, where sensible particulars are concerned, there is
no saying "absolutely" that one of them come into or passes out of

existence at any particular point ; that is (to put the point in a way
which Plato would not), there is no solid justification for cutting up
the world along the temporal axis in one way rather than another.47
One consequence of this view is that no solid justification is at hand
for saying that there are any of the ordinary sensible objects with
careers through time which we think that there are.48 I think that
47 "Aristotle on Sameness and Oneness," pp. 189-91. As in that

paper (p. 190, n. 27), I refrain from pursuing this claim about Plato in
detail. I should add that a good deal of what I said in that paper dovetails
neatly with some remarks of B. A. Brody, "Natural Kinds and Real Es
sences," Journal of Philosophy, LXIV, 14 (July 20, 1967), 431-46; and of
John Perry, "The Same F," Philosophical Review, LXXIX, 2 (April, 1970),
181-200.
481 take it that this view goes back to Heraclitus and Cratylus (cf.
Met. 987a32-34, 1010a7-15), but that is another story.

it was this view, and this consequence of it, which Aristotle was
particularly concerned to rebut. His reply, put roughly, was that
as long as a sensible object retains an attribute of a certain special
sort, i.e., a substance attribute, then that object has a special claim
to be said to continue to exist. E.g., as long as that man over there
remains a man, then whatever other changes he is undergoing, con
tinuous or not, he remains with us, and it would be somehow incorrect
to slice his career up temporally. We have seen this view already

in this paper. What is important here, however, is to see where the
emphasis falls. It falls on the idea that, so to speak, remaining a

man keeps him in existence, not on the idea that if he ceases to be a
man, then he ceases to exist. As it is usually described, Aristotle's
doctrine emphasises the latter idea ; but I think that it is plain that
it is the former idea which starts out uppermost in his mind.
Let me now defend this contention. In the first place, it seems
clear that fairly early in his career, Aristotle seized on the notion of
"matter," and used it to allow him to say that when a man perishes,
there is something which, in some sense or other, used to be a man but
now is not. This something is very peculiar, and I do not propose

to explore its peculiarities here, but it is what Aristotle calls the man's
matter. Now notice that in the Categories, which in the view of most
scholars is the place where Aristotle first makes the distinction be
tween substance and non-substance attributes, the notion of matter
is absent, as it is in the rest of the Organon. If a substance attribute
had been supposed in the Categories to be one which nothing can lose
without ceasing to exist, then when matter was introduced (in, say,
early parts of the Physics and Metaphysics), one would have expected
Aristotle to do a good deal of backing and filling, explaining how his
contrast between substance and non-substance could be adapted to
his use of this new notion. But the fact is that he takes up the
notion of matter with complete aplomb. (He does plenty of backing
and filling, to be sure, in such later writings as Metaphysics VII, but
of a different sort.) In order to understand how he could do so, it is
much better to suppose that in very early works such as the Cate
gories, the weight is on the idea that retaining a substance attribute
keeps a thing in existence, not on the idea that losing such an attribute
drives it out of existence.49
49 We should not say that every substance attribute is, if retained,

sufficient to keep a thing in existence, since a thing might change from a
81
82 NICHOLAS P. WHITE
The same claim is supported by an important passage on sub
stance in the Categories, generally agreed to be a very early work.
At 4al0-22 we read (in J. L. AckrilPs translation) :
It seems most distinctive of substance that what is numerically one
and the same is able to receive contraries. In no other case could
one bring forward anything, numerically one, which is able to receive
contraries. For example, a color which is numerically one and the

same will not be black and white, nor will numerically one and the
same action be bad and good ; and similarly with everything else that
is not substance. A substance, however, numerically one and the

same, is able to receive contraries. For example, an individual man?
one and the same?becomes pale at one time and dark at another,
and hot and cold, and bad and good. Nothing like this is seen in
any other case.
This passage is not uncommonly taken to suggest that substance

attributes cannot be lost by a thing which then continues in existence.
But however one assesses the quality of Aristotle's argument here,50

clearly the point of the passage is not that substance attributes cannot
properly speaking be lost by a thing, but rather that a thing with a
substance attribute cannot, so to speak, be put out of existence by a
change of non-substance attributes. If this is indeed one of Aristotle's
earliest pronouncements on this topic, then it supports the hypothesis
put forth two paragraphs back, and goes against the usual view.
The contrast implicit in this passage is between (to continue
with our manner of speaking) attributes whose retention is sufficient
to keep a thing in existence, and attributes whose loss is not sufficient
to put a thing out of existence. This is not the most natural con
trast. Against the attributes whose loss is not sufficient to put a
thing out of existence, it would be more natural to place the attributes
whose loss is sufficient to put a thing out of existence, i.e., those whose
retention is necessary to keep a thing in existence. These last are,

of course, substance attributes ordinarily construed, attributes which
a thing cannot lose without ceasing to exist. As we have seen,

Aristotle does accept this characterization of substance attributes,
with certain qualifications. Thus, he ends up equating the two
man to a turkey without ceasing to be an animal. Aristotle does not con

sider such metamorphoses, as I have said, but we should pretty clearly
consider him here to have in mind just substance species-attributes.
50 For some critical remarks, see J. L. Ackrill, Aristotleys Categories
and De Interpretatione, pp. 89-90.
83
classes of attributes, those whose retention is sufficient and those
whose retention is necessary, to keep a thing in existence. This

equation easily finds opposition from some (e.g., on the ground that
while a thing must go out of existence if it ceases to be a man, it may
also go out of existence without so ceasing, for example, in the case
of total amnesia), but it is plainly in Aristotle.
The other contrast suggested by the passage just quoted is more
problematic. Against those attributes whose retention is sufficient
to keep a thing in existence, it is natural to place "the attributes whose
retention is not sufficient to keep a thing in existence." The material
here in scare-quotes is objectionable, because it suggests that a thing
might retain an attribute while nevertheless going out of existence.
What we want to say, of course, is that whenever we appear to have
a case in which, say, a white object first is a man and then is not,
we actually have a case in which one white thing is in some sense
"replaced" by another. Begging some philosophical questions, we
can say that given a spatially defined space-time worm, we must
regard any temporal point at which a substance attribute is lost (or
gained) as a genuine temporal boundary between genuinely distinct
spatio-temporal objects, even if other attributes remain constant
across that boundary51; and that we must not regard the whole worm
as a genuinely "unitary" object. Given this gloss, we can have our

contrast, and retain the material in scare-quotes as a manner of
speaking. We can now ask whether Aristotle makes an equation
between the attributes whose retention is not sufficient to keep a
thing in existence, and the attributes whose loss is not sufficient to
put a thing out of existence. Looking back at De Generatione et

Corruptione 319bl5-25, quoted in section 4, we find our answer. As
we saw, although Aristotle refrains from flatly denying that "the
transparent" persists through substantial change; he suggests that
this is somehow not a genuine case of persistence, because he supposes
it determined on some prior ground that "the transparent" is not a
51 Some would protest that this statement of the case makes it appear
that spatio-temporal objects can be marked out in advance of a determina
tion of which are the substance attributes. But if we suppose (as I have
been doing) that we already know which those attributes are, and do not
take this as a way of determining which they are, then the protest is mis
placed. I shelve the many other possible objections to this way of stating
the case, as not germane to my expository purposes.
84
NICHOLAS P. WHITE
genuine object, i.e., not a substance. Given this much, we can see
that if "thing" includes non-substances like "the transparent," then
he does not make the equation. But if "thing" includes only sub
stances, then he does. As we remarked earlier when examining the
same passage, the drift of his remarks should incline us to the second
alternative.52
Aristotle, then, seems to make both of the equations. When

does he make them, and by what argument? Though further in
vestigation might yield answers to these questions, I am at present
unable to locate any point at which he adopts them, or any arguments
of his by which they are supported. I suspect, rather, that he slipped
into them without any explicit reflection on their merits. Perhaps
they are natural enough for it not to be surprising that he should

have done so. Whatever the case may be, however, I think it clear
that his initial notion of a substance attribute is of an attribute whose
retention keeps a thing in existence, not of one whose loss destroys

it, and that this latter notion is then merged by him with the former.
VIII
This essay, long as it is, has neglected a host of difficulties and
questions arising from Aristotle's texts. It would be a hopeless task
to try to canvass them all here, but let me quickly survey the ones
which seem to me most notable.
In the first place, the reader may have noticed few references so
far to the notoriously difficult middle books of the Metaphysics, such
as books VII-VIII, which are in all probability chronologically late

52 We might have expected this result from his claim in the passage
from the Categories just quoted, since he there says that non-substances
may not receive contraries. But it would have been too hasty to rely on
this passage alone. Here Aristotle is not talking of non-substances like
"the transparent" or "white things," but of colors (cf. Owen, "Inherence").
This distinction, as I have said (cf. n. 31) is difficult, and cannot be pursued
here. Notice, however, that even if Aristotle were here talking of the kind
of non-substances with which we dealt in section 4, he would still not be
propounding the view that, e.g., a "white thing" cannot persist while ceasing
to be a man. For he is talking here of contraries, and substances, according
to the Categories, have no contraries (3b24-27). He apparently later had

second thoughts about this last claim, and at least became willing to speak
of the "privation" of substance attributes (e.g., Phys. 201a4-5; Met.

1033al3-15, 1069b32-34; cf. 1055M1-17). Even so, we have seen that
that did not make him quite unequivocally rule out the persisting of non
substances like "the transparent" through substantial change.
85
(book IV, also late, has been only briefly treated; cf. notes 13 and 7).
The reason for their omission is that they introduce problems too
intricate to be treated in so short a compass. I have argued that
even if something like Quinian essentialism creeps into Aristotle's
use of some expressions of the form "the . . . ," his contrast between
substance and non-substance attributes can be expressed without re
course to it. I suspect, however, that something closer to explicit

essentialism of this kind does begin to insinuate itself into his later
thought, though the merits of this contention are far from clear.
Discussion of this issue, however, must be deferred.
Another restriction which I have laid down has ruled out dis
cussion of universals, species, genera, and the like. Aristotle's uni

verse teems with other things as well, and I now think it extremely
probable that with regard to some of them he does adopt a more

strictly essentialistic stance.
I have barely touched on the entities which I have claimed to be
designated by expressions like "the musical." These entities raise

myriad difficulties, which I have left untreated here. What, for ex
ample, is the difference between such things and things like musi
cality? This question, too, must go unanswered here (cf. nn. 31, 52).
Another notorious locus of difficulty is Aristotle's notion of

"matter." This notion too engenders many problems, some of them
intimately associated with essentialism. I do not think that the dis
cussion of Aristotle's notion of matter would alter the picture which
I have presented, but such discussion would be needed to make it

complete.
Finally, it should be noticed that Aristotle has more than one
way of drawing the distinction between substance and non-substance,
and that I have neglected a number of these. Beginning in Categories
5, he tries to mark the contrast in a variety of ways, and their inter
play is of vital importance to his doctrine. Once again, however, I

do not believe that there is evidence here to overturn the conclusions
of the foregoing pages.53
University of Michigan.
631 owe thanks to the following for helpful comments on an earlier
draft of this paper: Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert Merrihew Adams,
John Bennett, John Cooper, Jaegwon Kim, and Andrew Lugg.

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Origins of Aristotle's Essentialism

Author(s): Nicholas P. White

ORIGINS OF ARISTOTLE'S ESSENTIALISM

It is a commonplace that Aristotle subscribed to a doctrine which

labelled "Aristotelian essentialism." But what is this doctrine?

Usually, it is thought to lie somewhere in Aristotle's distinction be

to Aristotle, we need to see what, for Aristotle, these distinctions

in another way. Most of the argument for this claim comes in

variety of essentialism; and (in section 2) that he does not have a

direction. Section 6 explores some ramifications of my account, ex

tioned in section 8?of the concerns which shaped this part of

Aristotle's doctrine of substance.

My account is subject to two important limitations. First, I

doctrine with regard to sensible particulars, and shall neglect entirely

IV. Thus I shall be concentrating on the Categories, the Topics, the

It would be a historical mistake, Aristotle aside, to take "

for which we might reasonably appropriate it. But since Quine

The following is one of Quine's accounts of what he means

. . . Aristotelian essentialism. This is the doctrine that some of t

others accidental. E.g., a man, or talking animal, or featherless biped

(54) (3x) (nee Fx. Gx. -nee Gx).

variously known as 9 and the number of the planets.1

1 W. V. Quine, "Three Grades of Modal Involvement," The Ways of

ORIGINS OF ARISTOTLE'S ESSENTIALISM 59

certain ways of specifying [an object] . . . and favoring other

ways of specifying it. . . .2

An important feature of essentialism, so characterized, appears in

Essentialism is abruptly at variance with the idea, favored by

Carnap, Lewis, and others, of explaining necessity by analyticity. . . .

We shall hear a bit more of this theme later.4

Let us turn to Aristotle without further ado. It has been

2 "Reference and Modality," p. 155.

to suggest that the distinction between essential and non-essential attributes

to me on a par, and I see no reason to judge a priori which of the two

distinctions, if either, might ultimately be more susceptible of satisfactory

5 For another recent attribution of roughly this distinction, see G. E.

M. Anscombe, "Aristotle," in Anscombe and Geach, Three Philosophers

tion in later sections, I want to claim here that Aristotle's grasp of

A clear-cut adoption of essentialism requires that one be able

the placement of modal operators. It is clear, however, that

sion "relative to" its premises) attaches to the conclusion of a

premises is the antecedent and the conclusion is the consequent.8

Aristotle's modal syllogistic in a thoroughgoing way. For as McCall

8 See G?nther Patzig, Die Aristotelische Syllogistik, 2nd ed.,

(G?ttingen, 1963), or the translation by Jonathan Barnes (Dordrecht, 1968),

passage discussed by Patzig. (Ackrill expresses doubts that Aristotle is as

ORIGINS OF ARISTOTLE'S ESSENTIALISM

at least using words like "necessarily," to present us with a clear

Other evidence points in the same direction. In passages which

have to do with the distinction between substance and non-substance

predictions, explicitly modal words like "necessarily" are not at all

prominent. The expressions which he makes carry most of the

other such similar phrases as "r? r?v thai" often translated by

An. Post. 83a25-28). On the other hand, this is not Aristotle's

in point, as is 73a34fl\, where uper se" is explained without reference

to necessity or possibility; and only afterwards (73bl6ff.) are con

shall have occasion to refer later to these passages in another

at least the beginning of an explanation of why Aristotle divided up syl

something attaches per se to something is to say something different,

perhaps even stronger than, that it attaches "necessarily" (e?

to be committed to be saying the latter. It is not clear, however,

quite independent of each other. For in the first place, he never,

imply statements involving necessity, or uses statements involving

might be unwilling to accept as true any statement of the form