2.11 What Makes Things What They Are
🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: 2.11 Was die Dinge zu dem macht, was sie sind
When one looks carefully, then, one comes to know the essence of things. But what exactly is meant by that?
Every thing has certain properties that make it what it is. A triangle has three sides — not by chance, but by essential necessity. A triangle with four sides is not a triangle. Three-sidedness belongs to the essence of the triangle. It cannot be taken away without doing away with the triangle itself.
This “what-being” of a thing — that which makes a thing what it is — is what philosophy calls its so-being (Sosein). The so-being of the triangle is its three-sidedness (and everything connected with it). The so-being of the human being is what makes the human being a human being.
Now there are different kinds of so-being — and the difference between them is of great importance for our whole subject:
2.11.1 a) Necessary So-Being
Some properties belong to the essence of a thing in such a way that they cannot be otherwise. A triangle must have three sides. A color must be extended. Responsibility must presuppose a free being. These properties are necessary. They are as they are and cannot be otherwise. They hold at all times, in all places, in every conceivable world.
Reinach put it this way: these necessary essential properties hold “of the essences as such, by virtue of their essence — in them we have no contingent so-being, but a necessary having-to-be-so and, by essence, an inability-to-be-otherwise.”1
The so-called essential laws rest on such necessary essential properties: necessary connections that are grounded in the nature of things themselves. For example: “Color cannot exist without extension.” Or: “Responsibility presupposes freedom.” Or again: “Motion is not possible without time.” These are not conventions, nor are they the results of experiments. They are laws that follow from the essence of the things in question. Reinach stresses: “States of affairs obtain regardless of which consciousness grasps them and whether any consciousness grasps them at all.”2
2.11.2 b) Meaningful So-Being
Other properties do belong to a thing, but they are grounded not in the essence of that thing alone, but in its essence in conjunction with certain circumstances. An example: the human body normally has a certain shape. This shape is meaningful — it fits the essence of the human being; it follows from his nature. But it is not necessary in the strict sense that it could not be otherwise. A human being who loses an arm in an accident does not cease to be a human being. The shape of the body belongs to the meaningful so-being of the human being, not to his necessary so-being.
2.11.3 c) Contingent So-Being
Still other properties are purely contingent. That a particular stone lies in a particular place has nothing to do with the essence of the stone. It is a fact, but not a necessary truth. It is grounded not in the essence of the stone, but in external circumstances. Contingent properties have their cause not in the essence of the thing, but outside it.
These three kinds of so-being can be clearly distinguished from one another. Necessary and meaningful so-being are grounded in the essence of a thing — the one with strict necessity, the other in conjunction with circumstances. Contingent so-being, by contrast, has no cause in the essence of the thing.
For the question “What is the human being?” it is above all the necessary essential properties that are decisive. For only they tell us what the human being is by his essence — not merely how he happens to be constituted.
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Fußnoten
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Reinach, Sämtliche Werke, Munich: Philosophia, 1989, pp. 542f. German original: „von den Wesenheiten als solchen, kraft ihres Wesens — in ihnen haben wir kein zufälliges So-Sein, sondern ein notwendiges So-Sein-Müssen und dem Wesen nach Nicht-anders-sein-Können.” ↩
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Reinach, Sämtliche Werke, Munich: Philosophia, 1989, pp. 544f. German original: „Sachverhalte bestehen, gleichgültig, welches Bewußtsein sie erfaßt und ob überhaupt ein Bewußtsein sie erfaßt.“ ↩