Essential laws are necessary states of affairs that are grounded in the essence of things themselves. They are not mere regularities of experience, but express what necessarily belongs to a thing (Bexten 2017, pp. 27 ff.).
Essential Law and Essential Necessity
An essential law holds not because it is empirically confirmed again and again, but because it is grounded in the archphenomenon of a thing. Example: it is essentially necessary that a person is someone and not merely something. This insight cannot be refuted by counterexamples, because it lies in the essence of the person itself.
Adolf Reinach and Necessary States of Affairs
Adolf Reinach elaborated the doctrine of essential laws philosophically. He shows that there are states of affairs which hold independently of all experience, because they are grounded in the nature of the things themselves. This a priori cognition is not a construction of the mind, but a grasping of what is.
Essential Law and Metaphysics
Metaphysics as the science of being qua being inquires into such essential laws. Josef Seifert builds on Reinach and grounds the dignity of the person in terms of essential law: it belongs to the essence of the person to have dignity.
Essential Law and the Concept of Person
The adequate concept of person must take essential-legal insights into account. The substance-ontological concept of person grasps what the person essentially-necessarily is; the empirical-functionalist concept of person misses this, because it considers only contingent properties.
Phenomenological Method
Edmund Husserl developed the phenomenological method, which makes it possible to grasp essential laws. Hedwig Conrad-Martius connects it with real-ontology: the essential laws hold not only in consciousness, but in actuality itself.
Necessary Essential Unity
It is grounded in the essence of the entity; it can admit of no exceptions. Having-to-be-thus-and-not-being-able-to-be-otherwise. The Necessary Essential Unity expresses an essential law: what necessarily belongs to the so-being of an entity cannot be lacking without the entity ceasing to be what it is.
For personal ontology, necessary essential unities are of central importance: that the person is a spiritual substance, that it possesses dignity, that it has the capacity for truth — these are necessary essential unities that admit of no exceptions. They are to be distinguished from the Contingent Essential Unities (no cause in the essence) and the Meaningful Essential Unities (grounded in the nature, but with exceptions) (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 42–50).
Ontological classification:
- Superordinate concept: Essential Unity
Ontological relations:
- distinct from: Contingent Essential Unity, Meaningful Essential Unity
Chapter assignment: Chapter 2: Method
See also: Essential Unity, Contingent Essential Unity, Meaningful Essential Unity, Essential Law, Entity, Cognition
Meaningful Essential Unity
It is grounded in the nature of the entity; it holds in most cases, but admits of exceptions. The Meaningful Essential Unity occupies a middle position between the Necessary Essential Unity (no exceptions possible) and the Contingent Essential Unity (no cause in the essence).
An example of a meaningful essential unity: that the human being has two hands is grounded in its nature — it is not an accident, but follows from the structural design of the human body. Nevertheless, a human being can be born without a hand without ceasing to be human. For personal ontology this distinction is important, because it shows: not everything that belongs to the nature belongs to the essence in the strict sense (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 42–50).
Ontological classification:
- Superordinate concept: Essential Unity
Ontological relations:
- distinct from: Necessary Essential Unity, Contingent Essential Unity
Chapter assignment: Chapter 2: Method
See also: Essential Unity, Necessary Essential Unity, Contingent Essential Unity, Nature, Essential Law, Entity
Essential Unity
Essential unities (also: essences, quiddities) are that which makes a thing what it is — its so-being, independently of whether it exists or not. They are the object of phenomenological intuition of essences and form the foundation for essential laws, which hold necessarily and universally. The cognition of essential unities goes beyond mere empirical generalization: it grasps what essentially belongs to a thing and what cannot be otherwise.
Ontological classification: Subordinate concepts: Necessary Essential Unity, Meaningful Essential Unity, Contingent Essential Unity
Contingent Essential Unity
It has no cause in the essence of the entity; it is grounded in circumstances lying outside the essence. The Contingent Essential Unity designates a determination that belongs to an entity but does not follow from its essence — it could also be lacking without the entity ceasing to be what it is.
Examples of contingent essential unities in the human person: hair color, place of birth, the concrete bodily height. These determinations are real, but not essentially necessary. They are to be distinguished from the Necessary Essential Unities (which are grounded in the essence and admit of no exceptions) and the Meaningful Essential Unities (which are grounded in the nature, but allow exceptions) (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 42–50).
Ontological classification:
- Superordinate concept: Essential Unity
Ontological relations:
- distinct from: Necessary Essential Unity, Meaningful Essential Unity
Chapter assignment: Chapter 2: Method
See also: Essential Unity, Necessary Essential Unity, Meaningful Essential Unity, Entity, Accident
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Reinach, Adolf (1913): Die apriorischen Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechtes. (German) (Doctrine of necessary states of affairs and essential laws)
- Husserl, Edmund: Logical Investigations. Transl. J. N. Findlay. London/New York: Routledge, 2001. (Phenomenological method for grasping essential laws)
- Seifert, Josef: Back to ‘Things in Themselves’. A Phenomenological Foundation for Classical Realism. London/New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987. (Essential-legal grounding of dignity)
- Conrad-Martius, Hedwig (1957): Das Sein. München: Kösel. (German) (Essential laws as laws of actuality itself)