Essence

The present article aims to explore the notion of Existentialist essence in the major and minor characters of Albert Camus’s short story “The Guest.” It also takes it upon itself to investigate the different implications of the setting of the story. The central questions of this survey, therefore, are: which of the characters of the short story can be said to have developed a sort of personality we associate with Existentialism? What can be inferred from Camus’s choice of the setting? To answer the questions, this moral/philosophical study first reviews the basic tenets of Existentialism in a nutshell and then probes them as well as their functions in the characters and the setting of the narrative. The present research argues that the only person who fits into Camus’s conception of an Existentialist hero is Daru, even though The Arab, too, develops certain traits which are attuned with the Existentialist mindset. It is also revealed that in “The Guest,” there are significant allusions toThe Myth of Sisyphus, Inferno, Hell, Notes from Underground, “The Waste Land,” and Psalm 23, which create a gloomy setting and represent Daru as a modern Sisyphus. A possible implication is that Camus is effectively comparing the plateau/Algeria/the world to Hades/inferno/Hell and that he is identifying himself with Daru and the people living in the mid-twentieth century with the residents of Tartarus.

Pluralists believe in the occurrence of numerically distinct spatiotemporally coincident objects. They argue that there are coincident objects that share all physical and spatiotemporal properties and relations; nevertheless, they differ in terms of modal and some other profiles. Appealing to the grounding problem according to which nothing can ground the modal differences between coincident objects, monists reject the occurrence of coincident objects. In the first part of this paper, I attempt to show that the dispute between monists and pluralists cannot be settled based upon the grounding problem tout court. I argue that the grounding problem or a very similar problem is a challenge for all monists and pluralists alike if they are ontologically committed to the existence of composite objects as independent entities. In the final part, adopting the Aristotelian account of essence, I propose a solution that enables pluralists to plausibly ground modal differences between coincident objects.  

With a rational reflection on possible beings, Farabi presents an analysis of the relationship between existence and essence, which requires a new philosophical system distinct from Greek philosophy. In his view, all possible beings are composed of two metaphysical aspects, i.e. existence and essence. By distinguishing constituents (muqawwamāt) from accidental things (‘araḍiyyāt) and using terms such as ‘āriḍ and lāzim, Farabi explores the structure of possible beings. In possible beings, existence is not the same or a part of essence; rather, it is an accident of essence, and since any accidental thing is subject to causality (mu‘allal), thus the possible things require something out of themselves for their existence. The main point is that the container of this distinction is not merely the world of the mind or the objective world; rather, it is the product of rational analysis. In other words, the distinction of existence and essence is neither a mental distinction nor a physical one; rather, it is a rational distinction which is called, in today’s metaphysics, metaphysical distinction. In metaphysical distinction, the existence and essence of the possible beings are two ontological principles and two metaphysical modes of the being that compose its identity. The metaphysical distinction designs the foundation of the non-Greek philosophical system based on which one can explain, from the theological viewpoint, proving the existence of the Necessary Being, the evolution of the ultimate causality, natural agency with the agentive causality and divine agency; from the cosmological viewpoint, proving the essential contingency of the universe and the philosophical explanation of the creation; from the ontological viewpoint, dividing beings into necessary and possible, and explaining the structure of possible beings; and from the epistemological viewpoint, evolution in dividing knowledge. This article is an applied study that attempts, by relying on the descriptive-analytical method with an exploration of the metaphysical distinction between existence and essence, to deal with applying that distinction in Farabi’s philosophical system and its products and results.

Continuing the path of Neo-Platonic philosophers and Farabi, while accepting the framework of the Greek thought in reaching the truth of the beings in the universe through the rational knowledge in the framework of Aristotelian logics, Avicenna has attempted to present a certain interpretation of some fundamental concepts of the Greek thought and offer a metaphysics with quite rational and argumentative results as well as a rational interpretation for some of the principal concepts of the Quranic thought in the Islamic world, a metaphysics that can be called the essential Greek-Islamic rational system. The present article attempts to use an analytical-explanatory method to prove that, firstly, Avicenna accepts the Greek rational thinking method in reaching the truth of the beings, calling it the certitude wisdom and knowledge. And – in line with Aristotle – he introduces the man’s sensory faculty as the starting point for the path of acquiring certitude knowledge, through which he reaches the rational knowledge of the beings. Secondly, it states the most important axes of Avicenna’s philosophy in his legal reasoning reading of principles of Aristotelian thought.