Haecceity (; from the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

, 'thisness') is a term from

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

scholastic philosophy, first coined by followers of

Duns Scotus John Duns Scotus ( ; , "Duns the Scot"; – 8 November 1308) was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher and theologian. He is considered one of the four most important Christian philosopher-t ...

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). In modern

philosophy of physics In philosophy, the philosophy of physics deals with conceptual and interpretational issues in physics, many of which overlap with research done by certain kinds of theoretical physicists. Historically, philosophers of physics have engaged with ...

, it is sometimes referred to as primitive thisness.

Etymology

Haecceity is a Latin

neologism In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...

formed as an abstract

noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...

derived from the demonstrative

pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (Interlinear gloss, glossed ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the part of speech, parts of speech, but so ...

, meaning 'this (very)' (feminine singular) or 'these (very)' (feminine or neuter plural). It is apparently formed on the model of another (much older) neologism ('whatness'), which is a

calque In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language ...

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

's Greek () or 'the what (it) is'.

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 ''Hypokeimenon'' ( Greek: ὑποκείμενον), later often material substratum, is a term in metaphysics which literally means the "underlying thing" (Latin: ''subiectum''). To search for the ''hypokeimenon'' is to search for that substan ...

. 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 Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

of things.

Haecceity in scholasticism

Duns Scotus makes the following distinction: 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.

Haecceity in anglophone philosophy

In analytical philosophy, the meaning of "haecceity" shifted somewhat.

Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". According to philosopher Paul Weiss (philosopher), Paul ...

used the term as a non-descriptive reference to an individual.

Alvin Plantinga Alvin Carl Plantinga (born November 15, 1932) is an American analytic philosophy, analytic philosopher who works primarily in the fields of philosophy of religion, epistemology (particularly on issues involving theory of justification, epistemic ...

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 In semiotics, linguistics, anthropology, and philosophy of language, indexicality is the phenomenon of a ''Sign (semiotics), sign'' pointing to (or ''indexing'') some element in the context (language use), context in which it occurs. A sign that si ...

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. 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—is the work of ethnomethodology. Garfinkel called ethnomethodological studies investigations of "haecceities", i.e.,

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze (18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes o ...

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 Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of ...

. 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".

Other uses

Gerard Manley Hopkins Gerard Manley Hopkins (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Society of Jesus, Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame places him among the leading English poets. His Prosody (linguistics), prosody – notably his concept of sprung ...

drew on Scotus, whom he called "of reality the rarest-veined unraveller", to construct his poetic theory of inscape.

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...

made similar use of the concept of haecceitas to develop his idea of the secular epiphany. James Wood refers extensively to haecceitas (as "thisness") in developing an argument about conspicuous detail in aesthetic

literary criticism A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature's ...

.Bartosch, R., ''EnvironMentality: Ecocriticism and the Event of Postcolonial Fiction'' (

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

& New York: Rodopi, 2013)
p. 270

References

External links

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'' article &mdash
"Medieval Theories of Haecceity"
{{Deleuze-Guattari Essentialism Ontology Scotism Substance theory