Tag: Accident

What Is Essential?

Distinguishing the essential from the nonessential is one of the most fundamental kinds of interpretive judgment. It has to do with what we treat as important, which provides the justifying frame for all our more particular values.

Just what is essential is often regarded as necessary and as somehow pre-given. I think rather that judgments of essentiality are relative to the complete context in which they occur, and are always provisional based on our current understanding. They guide our interpretation of what is right and what is true. But on all concrete matters, the last word is never said.

Determinations of what is essential are neither crudely objective nor crudely subjective. They are not simply given to us, and neither are they subordinate to our arbitrary will (if indeed there were such a thing). They have to do with how things are interrelated.

I identify the essential with “meaning” or ethical substance, as contrasted with mere logistics. Logistics have to do with the arrangement of accidents.

We cannot live on essence alone. Some involvement with worldly logistical details is unavoidable, and whatever we do ought to be done well in a comprehensive sense. There is even a deep lesson from Hegel that from what begins as accidental, something essential may emerge.

Ethical Meanings of Substance

I think the ethical meanings of “substance” are more than just homonymous. Particularly, I have in mind the contrast of substance and accident. Traditionally, this is supposed to be an ontological distinction that builds on the logical one. I want to question that, not least because I don’t really believe that ontology as conventionally understood serves well for first philosophy, which ought to be more hermeneutic. That is something I’ve written about several times already.

Recently, we saw that a sharp distinction of substance and accident was important for Averroes, and for thinkers working in the broad tradition of Albert the Great. The ethical meanings of substance are related to that contrast.

Averroes probably thought the distinction between substance and accident was absolute. Following Hegel, I would instead relativize it. What is substance and what is accident can vary depending on context.

However, what I am inclined to call the fact that the distinction is only relative in no way detracts from its importance. In any context, we ought to focus on what is more essential. The contrast retains its value, even when we recognize that a strong enough accumulation of “accidents” can in some circumstances cease to seem accidental.

As an older person with short-term memory issues, I also take some solace in the circumstance that the things I am prone to forget are not matters of substance or essence or meaning, but only superficial “accidents” from the realm of events and utility. Individual events are ephemeral and strictly accidental in the Aristotelian sense. But what matters most is substance. (See also Essence and Explanation.)