Quote:
Originally posted by H Roland Angus R:
If closeness to the esse of the apple was the main criterion for value, I wouldn't read a poem at all. I'd eat an apple.
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Dear Harry,
A wise and sharp point. One starts using medieval philosophical terms like "esse" for precision and ends up using them for pretension.
But there is a distinction here that needs some vocabulary or another to maintain. The early medieval neoplatonists used "esse" to suggest simply what the word in Latin obviously means: the "to be" of something, its most real being. This is the sense, as I understand it, of the word in Boethius, for example.
But the later medieval Aristotelians would use the word in a more specialized sense to mean "existence," as opposed to "essence" (as in the title of St. Thomas's breakthrough book, "De Esse et Essentia").
Having been speaking of Platonism, I intended "esse" in its looser sense as "really real" being, however one wants to take that. But if we have to draw the finer distinction, then I imagine it would look like this:
If you want to grasp the existence of an apple, go to an apple tree.
If you want to grasp the essence of an apple, go to a poet.
--or so, at least, those who believe that poetry offers deeper and higher insights into reality would say.
JB
[This message has been edited by Joseph Bottum (edited August 14, 2003).]