An accident (

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

), in

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

and philosophy, is a property that the entity or substance has contingently, without which the substance can still retain its identity. An accident does not affect its

essence Essence ( la, essentia) is a polysemic term, used in philosophy and theology as a designation for the property or set of properties that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it ...

. It does not mean an "

accident An accident is an unintended, normally unwanted event that was not directly caused by humans. The term ''accident'' implies that nobody should be blamed, but the event may have been caused by unrecognized or unaddressed risks. Most researche ...

" as used in common speech, a chance incident, normally harmful. Examples of accidents are color, taste, movement, and stagnation. Accident is contrasted with essence: a designation for the property or set of properties that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by

necessity Necessary or necessity may refer to: * Need ** An action somebody may feel they must do ** An important task or essential thing to do at a particular time or by a particular moment * Necessary and sufficient condition, in logic, something that i ...

, and without which it loses its

identity Identity may refer to: * Identity document * Identity (philosophy) * Identity (social science) * Identity (mathematics) Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film * ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ph ...

made a distinction between the essential and accidental

properties Property is the ownership of land, resources, improvements or other tangible objects, or intellectual property. Property may also refer to: Mathematics * Property (mathematics) Philosophy and science * Property (philosophy), in philosophy an ...

of a thing. Thomas Aquinas and other Catholic theologians have employed the Aristotelian concepts of substance and accident in articulating the theology of the Eucharist, particularly the transubstantiation of bread and wine into body and blood. In this example, the bread and wine are considered accidents, since at transubstantiation, they become incidental to the essential substance of body and blood. In modern philosophy, an accident (or accidental property) is the union of two concepts: property and contingency (philosophy), contingency. Non-essentialism argues that every property is an accident. Modal necessitarianism argues that all properties are essential and no property is an accident.

Aristotle

made a distinction between the essential and accidental Property (philosophy), properties of a thing. For example, a chair can be made of wood or metal, but this is accidental to its being a chair: that is, it is still a chair regardless of the material from which it is made. To put this in technical terms, an accident is a property which has no necessary connection to the

of the thing being described. To take another example, all bachelors are unmarried: this is the necessary or essential property of what it means to be a bachelor. A particular bachelor may have brown hair, but this would be a property particular to that individual, and with respect to his bachelorhood it would be an accidental property. And this distinction is independent of experimental verification: even if for some reason all the unmarried men with non-brown hair were killed, and every single existent bachelor had brown hair, the property of having brown hair would still be accidental since it would still be logically possible for a bachelor to have hair of another color. The nine kinds of accidents according to Aristotle are quantity, quality, relation, habitus, time, location, situation (or position), action, and passion ("being acted on"). Together with "substance", these nine kinds of accidents constitute the ten fundamental Categories (Aristotle), categories of Aristotle's ontology.Marc Cohen, Roman Catholic church, Catholic theologians such as Thomas Aquinas have employed the Aristotelian concepts of substance and accident in articulating the theology of the Eucharist#Catholic Church, Eucharist, particularly the transubstantiation of bread and wine into body and blood. According to this tradition, the accidents (or ''species'') of the appearance of bread and wine do not change, but the substance changes from bread and wine to the Eucharist, Body and Blood of Christ.

Modern philosophy

In modern philosophy, an accident (or accidental property) is the union of two concepts: Property (philosophy), property and Contingency (philosophy), contingency. In relation to the first, an accidental property (Greek ''symbebekos'') is at its most basic level a ''property''. The color "yellow", "high value", "Atomic Number 79" are all properties, and are therefore candidates for being accidental. On the other hand, "gold", "platinum", and "electrum" are not properties, and are therefore not classified as accidents. There are two opposed philosophical positions that also impact the meaning of this term: *Non-essentialism, Anti-essentialism (associated with Willard Van Orman Quine) argues that there are no essential properties at all, and therefore every property is an accident. *Modal necessitarianism (associated with Saul Kripke), argues for the veracity of the modal system "Triv" (If P is true, then P must be true). The consequence of this theory is that all properties are essential (and no property is an accident).

References

{{Authority control Modal logic Metaphysics Philosophy of Aristotle

Aristotle

Modern philosophy

See also

References