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particular

quinta-feira 25 de janeiro de 2024

  

As regards particulars, there was discussion of what differentiates individuals from each other and of what makes them the same over time. Are they differentiated from each other by having a unique characteristic? Or by spatial separation? Or by matter? The Stoics had canvassed all three answers. Porphyry  , writing for beginners, agrees with the Stoics insofar as he gives the individual unique characteristics and makes it a kind of species differentiated by those characteristics. But he is probably drawing on Platonism  , we have seen, when he goes further and represents the individual as simply being a unique bundle of characteristics. However, since these ideas appeared in Porphyry’s Introduction (Isagoge) to Aristotle  , 7,16-24, later Neoplatonists, as we have seen, took them to be Aristotelian.

As for what makes individuals the same over time, the preferred answer was Aristotelian form, although this was analogous to the Stoics’ unique characteristics. But what about the next life, if the universe recurs, or if there is chance reassembly, or if the Christian belief in resurrection is correct? Can the same form be recovered after an interruption? Most Christians preferred to insist on the same matter, but Origen   opted for the same form and the Christian discussion had an uncanny parallel with the pagan ones. Moreover, both discussions are paralleled by modern treatments [26] of personal survival, for example those of Derek Parfit (Reasons and Persons, corrected edition, Oxford 1987), which consider survival in the context not of theology, but of science and science fiction. [SorabjiPC3  :26-27]


Εκάς means “far”; ἑκάστου means “what is particular” insofar as I linger with it, insofar as I see it at a certain distance. What is particular is precisely not what is seen initially and directly, but is accessible only when I take a certain distance from it, and it presents itself to me in this way at this distance. Τὰ καθ᾿ ἕκαστα are the aspects that constitute the particularity of a being. They become present only insofar as I occupy a distance from it. In natural dealings, familiar objects are not really there for me; I overlook them in seeing beyond them. They do not have the character of presence; they are altogether too everyday. They, so to speak, disappear from my everyday being-there. Only with some event of an unusual sort can something with which I deal on a daily basis become suddenly objectified for me in its presence. Particularity is not initially and directly given. Taking a distance is required to see everydayness in its being-there, to have it present; and the being-characters that explicitly show the being that is there in its being-there, that constitute the there-character of being, are determined in the τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι of Aristotle. [Heidegger  , GA18:32-33]
Τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι: this combination already points to the fact that here we are dealing with an entire complex of being-determinations, which we will sort out later. Being in the character of τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι is the genuine topic of that λóγος that we are now discussing as ὁρισμóς. This being-character is that of ἕκαστον. Every being that is there in its particularity is determined through the τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι. [Heidegger, GA18:35]
LÉXICO: particular