ABSTRACT

There is relatively little comprehensive treatment of Heidegger’s theory of essences despite his ubiquitous use of essences. It is commonplace in contemporary analytic philosophy to view essences as the ground for true de re modal claims. I argue that Heidegger offers an account of essences that can best be understood as a type of relative essentialism. Relative essentialism is the view that more than one being can occupy the same space at the same time and those beings have distinct sets of de re modal truths about them. Heidegger’s account of essences allows for true de re modal claims about a wide variety of things including scientific and cultural entities. At the same time, Heidegger rejects absolute essentialism: the view that there is one privilege collection of beings whose natures determine the truth values of de re modal claims about them. Relative essentialism is distinguished from contextual essentialism.

摘要

尽管海德格尔对本质的使用无处不在，但对他的本质理论的综合论述相对较少。在当代分析哲学中，将本质视为真正的模态主张的基础是司空见惯的。我认为海德格尔提供了一种对本质的解释，最好将其理解为一种相对本质主义。相对本质主义是这样一种观点，即多个存在可以同时占据同一空间，并且这些存在具有关于它们的不同的模式真理集。海德格尔对本质的解释允许真正的de re关于包括科学和文化实体在内的各种事物的模态主张。同时，海德格尔拒绝绝对本质主义：认为存在一种特权集合的观点，其本质决定了关于它们的模态主张的真值。相对本质主义与语境本质主义不同。