Pale By Aristotle

Aristotle is interested in the discussions of primary beings and essences as an objection to Plato’s philosophy, which I will discuss various interpretations of it in this paper along with Aristotle’s account of essence and at the end, its plausibility. Aristotle begins book VII of the metaphysics by discussing substance. He believes that substance is the primary form of “being” without qualification. By “being” he means; what “something” is and its quality, quantity or anything else predicated in this way (3). When Aristotle indicates that substance is primary without qualification he means that none of the things predicated of substance is separable from it, but only substance. Aristotle explains that substance is given in four main cases; …show more content…
Would “pale” be the essence of this man? Aristotle would say no. “pale” is not essential to this man’s existence and this man can also not be pale. Aristotle would say that “pale” is accidental to this man’s existence and not essential. Therefore, Aristotle would say that the essence of a “pale man” would be the same as the essence of “Man”, which is “rational mortal animal”. If you take away any of the characteristics mentioned, the man would not be identified as a “Man” anymore, but if you take away “pale” the man is still “Man”. Therefore, we can conclude that essences are general or …show more content…
The essence of a thing is the same as its species, which makes essences general (6). For example, Socrates and Plato share the sane essence, as they’re both “Man”. As mentioned in this paper, definitions and essences are spoken of in many ways. We discussed that only primary substances have definitions, but also there are conditions that substances and non-substances can have definition in a secondary way. And at the end as I put Aristotle’s theory of individual essences to test, I concluded that Aristotle’s account on essence is plausible since essence could not be applied towards anything that is non-general as it creates more