Haecceity

Haecceity (from the Latin haecceitas, which translates as "thisness") is a term from medieval philosophy first coined by Duns Scotus which denotes the discrete qualities, properties or characteristics of a thing which make it a particular thing. Haecceity is a person or object's "thisness".

Charles Sanders Peirce later used the term as a non-descriptive reference to an individual.

Haecceity and Quiddity

Haecceity may be defined in some dictionaries as simply the "essence" of a thing, or as a simple synonym for quiddity or hypokeimenon. However, such a definition deprives the term of its subtle distinctiveness and utility. Whereas haecceity refers to aspects of a thing which make it a particular thing, quiddity refers to the universal qualities of a thing, its "whatness", or the aspects of a thing which it may share with other things and by which it may form part of a genus of things. Duns Scotus makes the following distinction:

Because there is among beings something indivisible into subjective parts -- that is, such that it is formally incompatible for it to be divided into several parts each of which is it -- the question is not what it is by which such a division is formally incompatible with it (because it is formally incompatible by incompatibility), but rather what it is by which, as by a proximate and intrinsic foundation, this incompatibility is in it. Therefore, the sense of the questions on this topic [viz. of individuation] is: What is it in [e.g.] this stone, by which as by a proximate foundation it is absolutely incompatible with the stone for it to be divided into several parts each of which is this stone, the kind of division that is proper to a universal whole as divided into its subjective parts?

– Scotus, Ordinatio II, d. 3, p. 1. q. 2, n. 48 [Scotus, (1950-), 7:412-413; Spade (1994), 69]

It is important to note that while terms such as haecceity, quiddity, noumenon and hypokeimenon all evoke the essence of a thing, they each have subtle differences and refer to different aspects of the thing's essence.

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari repopularized the term in the late 20th century, as in the following quotation: "There is no general prescription. We have done with all globalizing concepts. Even concepts are haecceities, events."

Sources

• Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1980. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 2 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 2 vols. 1972-1980. Trans. of Mille Plateaux. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. ISBN 0826476945.

See also

• Ontology
• Duns Scotus
• Principle of individuation
• Quiddity

External links

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article — "Medieval Theories of Haecceity"