[Joseph Bottum]

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.

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).]