Haecceity

Haecceity
Field	Belief & Doctrine
Technical focus	Scotist principle of individual thisness
Status	Scholastic philosophical opinion

Haecceity is the Scotist term for the positive intrinsic principle by which a concrete nature is contracted to this individual rather than another.

Theological status: Theological synthesis

Overview

Haecceity (/hɛkˈsiːɪti, hiːk-/; from the Latin haecceitas, 'thisness') is a term from medieval scholastic philosophy, coined by followers of Duns Scotus to denote a concept that he seems to have originated: the irreducible determination of a thing that makes it this particular thing. Haecceity is a person's or object's thisness, the individualising difference between the concept "a person" and the concept "Socrates" (i.e., a specific person).^[1] In modern philosophy of physics, it is sometimes referred to as primitive thisness.^[2]

Nature and individuation

A common nature such as humanity is intelligible without being numerically one substance shared as a part by all humans. In John Duns Scotus's account, the individual is not made this individual merely by an accidental collection of size, place, or relations. Haecceity names the final intrinsic actuality contracting the common nature to Socrates, this angel, or another irreducibly singular being.^[3]

The term is often translated thisness, but it is not a separately existing object glued onto an essence. It is a metaphysical principle within the concrete individual. Nor is it personality in the modern psychological sense. A person's memories and traits can change while the person remains this person; haecceity addresses the deeper principle of numerical individuality.^[4]

Formal distinction and common nature

Scotus links haecceity to his account of the common nature and formal distinction. Humanity has a real intelligible content that is neither universal in the thing as such nor merely a word, while the individuating formality contracts it. The distinction is subtler than separating two things and stronger than inventing two descriptions without any foundation in reality.

Thomist accounts typically explain material individuation through designated matter and treat separated substances differently. Other medieval schools offer still other analyses. The Church has not defined one universal metaphysics of individuation. Catholic philosophers can dispute the explanatory economy and coherence of haecceity while respecting Scotus's orthodoxy and stature.^[5]

Not a hidden essence of personality

Popular uses sometimes turn haecceity into a poetic label for uniqueness. That can gesture toward the term but should not be confused with the technical claim. Haecceity does not explain moral character, vocation, or divine love by itself; it concerns why an entity possessing a common nature is numerically this one.

Theological uses and limits

The concept can illuminate angelic individuality, Christological questions, the identity of the resurrected body, and God's knowledge of singulars. It reinforces that salvation concerns concrete persons rather than interchangeable instances of a species. These applications require additional doctrine and argument; haecceity alone does not prove resurrection or personal immortality.

Scotist vocabulary should be read within its own system rather than translated prematurely into Thomist terms. Theological authority belongs to the truths the metaphysics seeks to serve, while the model remains open to criticism and development. Its value lies in a disciplined account of created singularity, not in becoming an esoteric badge of school allegiance.

Etymology

The term haecceity derives from the Latin word haecceitas, which was used by the medieval scholastics as a literal translation of the equivalent term in Aristotle's Greek to ti esti (τὸ τί ἐστι)^[6]

Haecceity vs. 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, in proper philosophical usage these terms have not only distinct but opposite meanings. Whereas haecceity refers to aspects of a thing that make it a particular thing, quiddity refers to the universal qualities of a thing, its "whatness", or the aspects of a thing it may share with other things and by which it may form part of a genus of things.^[7]

Haecceity in scholasticism

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?

— Duns Scotus, Ordinatio II, d. 3, p. 1. q. 2, n. 48

In Scotism and the scholastic usage in general, therefore, "haecceity" properly means the irreducible individuating differentia that together with the specific essence (i.e. quiddity) constitute the individual (or the individual essence), much as specific differentia combined with the genus (or generic essence) constitute the species (or specific essence). But haecceity differs from the specific differentia by not having any conceptually specifiable content: it adds no further specification to the whatness of a thing but merely determines it to be a particular unrepeatable instance of the kind specified by the quiddity. This is connected with Aristotle's notion that an individual cannot be defined.

According to Scotism, individuals are more perfect than the specific essence and thus have not only a higher degree of unity, but also a greater degree of truth and goodness. God multiplied individuals to communicate to them His goodness and beatitude.^[8]

Haecceity in anglophone philosophy

In analytical philosophy, the meaning of "haecceity" shifted somewhat. Charles Sanders Peirce used the term as a non-descriptive reference to an individual.^[9] Alvin Plantinga and other analytical philosophers used "haecceity" in the sense of "individual essence". The "haecceity" of analytical philosophers thus comprises not only the individuating differentia (the scholastic haecceity) but the entire essential determination of an individual (i.e., including what the scholastics would call its quiddity).

Haecceity in sociology and continental philosophy

Harold Garfinkel, the founder of ethnomethodology, used the term "haecceity", to emphasize the unavoidable and irremediable indexical character of any expression, behavior, or situation. For Garfinkel, indexicality was not a problem. He treated the haecceities and contingencies of social practices as a resource for making sense together. In contrast to theoretical generalizations, Garfinkel introduced "haecceities" in "Parson's Plenum" (1988) to indicate the importance of the infinite contingencies in both situations and practices for the local accomplishment of social order.^[10] According to Garfinkel, members display and produce the social order they refer to within the setting they contribute to. The study of practical action and situations in their "haecceities"—aimed at disclosing the ordinary, ongoing social order constructed by the members' practices^[11]—is the work of ethnomethodology. Garfinkel called ethnomethodological studies investigations of "haecceities", i.e.,

just thisness: just here, just now, with just what is at hand, with just who is here, in just the time that just this local gang of us have, in and with just what the local gang of us can make of just the time we need, and therein, in, about, as, and over the course of the in vivo work, achieving and exhibiting everything that those great achievements of comparability, universality, transcendentality of results, indifference of methods to local parties who are using them, for what they consisted of, looked like, the "missing what" of formal analytic studies of practical action.

— Harold Garfinkel, Lawrence D. Wieder, Two Incommensurable, Asymmetrically Alternate Technologies of Social Analysis, 1992, p. 203

Gilles Deleuze uses the term in a different way to denote entities that exist on the plane of immanence. The usage was likely chosen in line with his esoteric concept of difference and individuation and his critique of object-centered metaphysics.

Michael Lynch (1991) described the ontological production of objects in the natural sciences as "assemblages of haecceities", thereby offering an alternate reading of Deleuze and Guattari's (1980) discussion of "memories of haecceity" in the light of Garfinkel's treatment of "haecceity".^[12]

Other uses

Gerard Manley Hopkins drew on Scotus, whom he called "of reality the rarest-veined unraveller",^[13] to construct his poetic theory of inscape.

James Joyce made similar use of the concept of haecceitas to develop his idea of the secular epiphany.^[14]

James Wood refers extensively to haecceitas (as "thisness") in developing an argument about conspicuous detail in aesthetic literary criticism.^[15]

References

Back to citation Gardner, W. H., Gerard Manley Hopkins (1975), p. xxiii
Back to citation French, Steven (2019), "Identity and Individuality in Quantum Theory", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2022-04-21
Back to citation Benedict XVI, Letter for the seventh centenary of Duns Scotus — Papal appreciation of Blessed John Duns Scotus, his theological method, ecclesial fidelity, account of freedom and charity, and service to Catholic doctrine.
Back to citation Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, questions 3 and 29 — Classical metaphysical treatment of essence, existence, substance, subsistence, individuation, and the language required to distinguish creatures from the divine simplicity.
Back to citation Catholic Encyclopedia (1913): Scotism — Historical dictionary account of Scotist metaphysics, common nature, formal distinction, and the principle of individuation.
Back to citation Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1030a
Back to citation Hicks, P., The Journey So Far (2003), p. 218
Back to citation Bettoni-Bonansea. Duns Scotus- The Basic Principles of His Philosophy (PDF). pp. 63–64.
Back to citation Bertman, M. A., Humanities Insights (2007), p. 39
Back to citation Rawls, Anne W. (2003), "Harold Garfinkel", in Ritzer, George (ed.), The Blackwell companion to major contemporary social theorists, Malden, Massachusetts Oxford: Blackwell, ISBN 9781405105958. Also available as: Rawls, Anne W. (2003). "Harold Garfinkel". Chapter 5. Harold Garfinkel. Wiley. pp. 122–153. doi:10.1002/9780470999912.ch6. ISBN 9780470999912. Extract.
Back to citation Button, G., ed., Ethnomethodology and the Human Sciences (1991), p. 10
Back to citation Lynch, Mike (1991), "Method: measurement – ordinary and scientific measurement as ethnomethodological phenomena", in Button, Graham (ed.), Ethnomethodology and the Human Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 77–108, doi:10.1017/cbo9780511611827.006, ISBN 978-0-521-38952-5, retrieved 2022-02-20
Back to citation Duns Scotus's Oxford quoted in Gardner, p. xxiv
Back to citation Kearney, R., Navigations (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006), pp. 133–134.
Back to citation Bartosch, R., EnvironMentality: Ecocriticism and the Event of Postcolonial Fiction (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2013), p. 270.

External links

The dictionary definition of haecceity at Wiktionary
Singularity
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article — "Medieval Theories of Haecceity"