9. Being and Essence
9.1 Introduction
The point of this chapter is to explore what sort of interesting connections there
might be between being and essence. Let me emphasize that rather than presenting a
linear chain of argumentation, this chapter will be speculative and open-ended. The
notions of a mode and degree of being, essence, and ground all have an intertwined
historical lineage. I will continue the tradition of exploring possible connections.
I will explore two different notions of essence, one of which is understood in terms
of modality: themodal essenceof an entity just is the collection of properties (broadly
construed) such that, necessarily, if that object exists in some way or other, then each
of these properties is instantiated by that entity. It’s a consequence of understanding
modal essence in this way that every entity’s modal essence overlaps with every other
entity’s modal essence, since the property of being such that 2 + 2 = 4 is among the
modal essence of every object. For this reason, one might search for a less encom-
passing notion of essence. This is what the second notion of essence is supposed to be.
The second notion of essence is one that has been recently articulated and
defended by Kit Fine (1994a), E. J. Lowe (2013: 201), David Oderberg (2007), and
many others. In section 8.3, we called itstrict essence. The strict essence of an entity is
supposed to be that which captures the real definition of that entity. In slogan form,
the strict essence of an entity tells us“what it is to be that entity.”The strict essence of
an entity can also be construed as a collection of properties, and it is common to
assume that the strict essence of an entity is a sub-collection of the modal essence of
that entity.^1 For reasons that will become clearer later, I don’t want to build into the
notion of strict essence that the strict essences of entities are always sub-collections of
the corresponding modal essences—and I don’t want to build into the definition of
strict essence that an entity has its strict essence modally essentially. (The latter is not
strictly a consequence of the former—it might be that, in every possible world, an
object’s strict essence is a sub-collection of its modal essence, butwhichsubclass it is
changes from world to world.) Admittedly, it is plausible that objects have their strict
(^1) Here is an example: Spinoza (2002: 244), in hisEthicspart II, definition 2, says that, necessarily, when
what pertains to the essence of a thing is annulled, the thing itself is annulled. Galluzzo (2013: 6) says that
strictly essential properties arede reessential properties that explain the other de re essential properties.