Medieval Philosophy

by Peter S. Adamson

separate way to individuate immaterial beings. Another difficulty is that accidents are usually possessed only temporarily. Indeed, we said that accidental features are precisely the features that a thing can lose while surviving as the thing it is. How can Groucho be the individual that he is because of his place, given that he can move around? How can he be individuated by a whole set of features that includes cigar-smoking and wisecracking, when he can give up cigars and imitate Harpo’s vow of silence? If you think about this, you begin to suspect that the accidentalist strategy gets things backward. Substances like humans, giraffes, trees, and rocks do not depend on their accidents in order to be the substances that they are. To the contrary: Groucho’s accident of cigar-smoking can only exist thanks to Groucho, because this accident is, as Aristotelians would say, “predicated” of him. This is just as true of place as it is true of any other accident. For Aristotle and his followers, something’s “place” is, strictly speaking, the boundary of whatever is containing it, for instance the limit of the air surrounding Groucho. If Groucho were to vanish, this boundary would vanish too, and in this sense, it is dependent on him. So how can it do the job of individuating Groucho?