ONT Re: De In Esse Predication
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DEIP. Note 17
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| A few of the most frequently recurring scholastic phrases follow. ...
|
|'Essential Predication': in which the predicate is wholly contained in the
| essence of the subject. It is, therefore, in Kant's sense, an analytical
| judgment. But neither Kant nor the scholastics provide for the fact that
| an indefinitely complicated proposition, very far from obvious, may often
| be deduced by mathematical reasoning, or necessary deduction, by the logic
| of relatives, from a definition of the utmost simplicity, without assuming
| any hypothesis whatever (indeed, such assumption could only render the
| proposition deduced simpler); and this may contain many notions not
| explicit in the definition.
|
| This may be illustrated by the following:
|
| Man is a rational animal; hence, whatever is not a man is either,
| on the one hand, not rational, while either at the same time being
| and animal or else benefiting nothing except such objects as love
| nothing but fairies, or, on the other hand, is not an animal, while
| either being rational or standing to whatever fairy may exist in the
| relation of benefiting something that loves it.
|
| Now, if it be said that that is an analytical judgment, or essential predication,
| neither the definition of the scholastics nor that of Kant is adequate. But if it
| be said that it is not an essential predication, or analytical judgement, then the
| accidental predication and the synthetical judgment may be a necessary consequence,
| and a very recondite one, of a mere definition, quite contrary to what either Kant
| or the scholastics supposed and built upon. Cf. Scotus ('In Univ. Porph.', 9.12),
| who makes essential predication the predication of genus, species, or difference.
|
| C.S. Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 2.361, in dictionary entry for "Predication",
| J.M. Baldwin (ed.), 'Dictionary of Philosophy & Psychology', vol. 2, pp. 326-329.
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