[lit-ideas] Re: Ousia, Essentia

  • From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2014 20:47:23 +0200

I would once again invoke the analogy of doctors and the medical language.
While medical terms such 'arthritis' may be used by non-doctors, such uses
are derived by hear-say from medical uses. We don't tell doctors to
investigate how 'ordinary people' use the word arthritis to find out what
it means, but instead we refer the 'ordinary people' to professionals to
obtain a better understanding of what it means from them, when needed. (For
example, if they suspect that they have arthritis.) Some such might well be
the case with philosophical terms.

Another thing is, medical terms change their meaning within 'the language
game' as new discoveries are made, and so other words in the language may
change their meanings as new ideas are introduced. The word 'rights'
scarcely had the same meaning in the Middle Ages that it has now. There are
possibilities besides relying entirely on established usage and 'talking
nonsense'.

O.K.


On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 8:22 PM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>
> >It's  when you engage in some higher order discourse that you can
> meaningful use terms  in Greek or Latin like 'ousia' and 'essentia' --
> they don't
> correspond to a  first-oder proposition with variables for individual, and
> predicates which are  'observational' in nature. But one could play a bit
> with
> this.>
>
> What is the authority for all these claims? What theory of language
> validates them? And how?
>
> The first claim is surely obviously mistaken: in ordinary language the
> term "essence" may be used without "some higher order discourse" e.g. "Time
> is of the essence" or "His pen portrait captured the essence of the man."
>
> Philosophers need to stop telling us what language means, according to
> them and their stipulations, and actually look at what it means - that is
> one essential element of the later Wittgenstein's approach.
>
> Dnl
> Ldn
> Btw, just a reminder that no one came close (except in their own
> imagination) to providing an explanation of the naming-relation that
> provides us with an account where we can determine in a stateable way
> that a word is being used as a name (and not otherwise).
>
>
>   On Monday, 16 June 2014, 16:24, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <
> dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> There is something circular about McEvoy's comments -- it's best to there
> being something square about them.
>
> The idea is, as O. K. pointed out, that there are philosophical dictions,
> and non-philosoophical ones.
>
> "Essentia" seems to be a philosophical one. Cfr. English 'essence' as in
> 'essence of vanilla'.
>
> The circularity may amount to this, since McEvoy was talking about fly in
> fly bottles. A few dictions are recognisably philosophical in origin --
> 'essence' may be one of them -- as opposed to 'being', that O. K. also
> quotes
> --.
>
> If someone feels the need (as Aristotle did) to use 'essence' or
> 'category', then (even when I don't favour the use of 'then' in
> 'conditionals')  he
> or she IS a philosopher.
>
> "Essentia" (and "Essence") and "Ousia" are feminine nouns, originally,
> and
> seem to have been conceived to express some philosophical generalisations
> -- and  yes, Witters thought that one bad thing about philosophers
> (implicating, he  wasn't one?) was that they craved for them!
>
> In a message dated 6/16/2014 3:15:03 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> 'essence' are scarcely meaningful in  every-day modern English.>
> 2. The essence of any good relationship is  trust.
> 4. To complete the recipe add some essence of vanilla.
> 8. In  essence, the idea that philosophers have access to privileged
> meanings, denied  to ordinary users of language, is based on a mistake or
> set of
> mistakes about  the character of language.
>
> I think O. K's point was that 'ousia' and  'essentia' were Greco-Roman
> terms -- and I would add feminine nouns of some  abstract nature. Since we
> were
> discussing first- and second-order statements  (re: 'meta-legal'), I would
> think that the GREEK and ROMAN uses of 'ousia' and  'essentia' made a
> (however tacit) reference to some higher order.
>
> It's  when you engage in some higher order discourse that you can
> meaningful use terms  in Greek or Latin like 'ousia' and 'essentia' --
> they don't
> correspond to a  first-oder proposition with variables for individual, and
> predicates which are  'observational' in nature. But one could play a bit
> with
> this.
>
> "The  essence of a any good relationship is trust".
>
> If 'essentia' was the  strict translation of 'ousia', the above may be
> re-stated as a proposition to  the effect that, for any "John" (or Smith),
> or,
> 'Smith and Jones', if Smith does  not trust Jones and Jones does not trust
> Smith, they are NOT related.
>
> "To  complete the recipe add some essence of vanilla".
>
> Of course I would not  say that this is a different 'sense' (Do not
> multiply senses beyond necessity).  But this may be retranslated in
> chemical terms.
> Of course 'essence of vanilla'  may be totally artificial, and no vanilla
> involved, but at the chemical level,  there must be some equation between
> what you add to the recipe and the chemical  composition of 'real' vanilla.
>
> "In essence, the idea that philosophers  own meanings is mistaken."
>
> This seems to have the form,
>
> "In  essence, p."
>
> It seems to be merely emphatic towards the truth of _p_,  without which
> _p_
> would cease to exist (and then the ultimate allusion to Greek  'ousia' and
> Latin 'essentia'.
>
> The Greeks thought the elements were four,  and the Romans, mistranslating
> this and thinking they had come across a further  element, spoke of
> 'quintessence', the fifth element. While this has a very  literal meaning,
> it can be
> used metaphorically, and I submit that 'In essence'  may thus relate to
> "quintessence". Then we may consider the adverbial quality of  'in
> essence':
> 'essentially', or 'Philosophers are quintessentially mistaken in  thinking
> they own meaning" -- but Davidson made a few mistakes there -- oddly
> thinking
> he owned the meaning of adverbs!
>
> Oddly, Humpty Dumpty did own  the meaning of them all -- even _verbs_
> (*).
>
> Cheers,
>
> Speranza
>
>
> "'They've a temper, some of them —  particularly verbs: they're the
> proudest — adjectives you can do anything with,  but not verbs — however,
> I can
> manage the whole lot of them!"
>
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