Concept

Accident (philosophy)

Overview

An accident (Greek συμβεβηκός), in metaphysics 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, according to many philosophers. It does not mean an "accident" 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, and without which it loses its identity.

Aristotle made a distinction between the essential and accidental properties 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 modern philosophy, an accident (or accidental property) is the union of two concepts: property and contingency. Non-essentialism argues that every property is an accident. Modal necessitarianism argues that all properties are essential and no property is an accident.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Accident (philosophy) is discussed.

Some of them, however, and they belong to the sect of the Muʻtazilah, say that there are accidents which endure for a certain period, and other accidents which do not endure for two atoms of time; they do not follow a fixed principle in deciding what class of accidents has and what class has not a certain duration. The object of this proposition is to oppose the theory that there exists a natural force from which…
Moses Maimonides, The guide for the perplexed
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_On the contrary,_ Every accident is in a subject. But God cannot be a subject, for "no simple form can be a subject", as Boethius says (De Trin.). Therefore in God there cannot be any accident.
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
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The determinations of a substance, which are only particular modes of its existence, are called accidents. They are always real, because they concern the existence of substance (negations are only determinations, which express the non-existence of something in the substance).
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
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But the Greeks called individual substances [Greek: hupostaseis] because they underlie the rest and offer support and substrate to what are called accidents; and we in our term call them substances as being substrate--[Greek: hupostaseis], and since they also term the same substances [Greek: prosopa], we too may call them persons. So [Greek: ousia] is identical with essence, [Greek: ousiosis] with subsistence…
Boethius, The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy
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It is also very evident, that the accidents of each subject take place of each other, as the subjects themselves, of which we allow they are accidents, differ from each other in value; so that if the soul is more noble than any outward possession, as the body, both in itself and with respect to us, it must be admitted of course that the best accidents of each must follow the same analogy. Besides, it is for the sake…
Aristotle, Politics
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Accident (philosophy)

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