Posts by Maciej

You can use world occurence. But then you will blur the meaning of symtomata as not-necessary quality. You can invent the new word but then you will not meet your general public requirement. Every choice have its good and bad. Now u have at least a word that enables philosophical discussion and can be explained to general public in one sentence with examples.

Slavery in not accidental in the sense that it has causes itself. But in relation to human nature it is accidental because human nature can be imagined without it. Human may or may not be a slave. That is all to it. Word may be at first glance misguiding but it is used to denominate in english aristotle distinction between essential and accidental properties. And epicurus one is very similar to it. I am prettysure that they both use symptomata to denominate temporaty/not essential properties.

Interesting discussion but I think offtopic. Issue of wheather quality is permanent property or accident is related to nature of a thing. For example. Life is property that permanently belongs to nature of human beeing since loss of it is also destruction of that nature. Human that is dead is not human strictly speaking. On the other hand slavery is something accidental to human nature since we can conceive a human that is not a slave.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accident_(philosophy)

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l…0:chapter=1&i=4

Symptomata

Later in the letter:

"Moreover, shapes and colors, magnitudes and weights, and in short all those qualities which are predicated of body, in so far as they are perpetual properties either of all bodies or of visible bodies, are knowable by sensation of these very properties: these, I say, must not be supposed to exist independently by themselves (for that is inconceivable), nor yet to be non-existent, nor to be some other and incorporeal entities cleaving to body, nor again to be parts of body. We must consider the whole body in a general way to derive its permanent nature from all of them, though it is not, as it were, formed by grouping them together in the same way as when from the particles themselves a larger aggregate is made up, whether these particles be primary or any magnitudes whatsoever less than the particular whole. All these qualities, I repeat, merely give the body its own permanent nature. They all have their own characteristic modes of being perceived and distinguished, but always along with the whole body in which they inhere and never in separation from it; and it is in virtue of this complete conception of the body as a whole that it is so designated.

Again, qualities often attach to bodies without being permanent concomitants. They are not to be classed among invisible entities nor are they incorporeal. Hence, using the term “accidents” in the commonest sense, we say plainly that “accidents” have not the nature of the whole thing to which they belong, and to which, conceiving it as a whole, we give the name of body, nor that of the permanent properties without which body cannot be thought of. And in virtue of certain peculiar modes of apprehension into which the complete body always enters, each of them can be called an accident. But only as often as they are seen actually to belong to it, since such accidents are not perpetual concomitants. There is no need to banish from reality this clear evidence that the accident has not the nature of that whole—by us called body—to which it belongs, nor of the permanent properties which accompany the whole. Nor, on the other hand, must we suppose the accident to have independent existence (for this is just as inconceivable in the case of accidents as in that of the permanent properties); but, as is manifest, they should all be regarded as accidents, not as permanent concomitants, of bodies, nor yet as having the rank of independent existence. Rather they are seen to be exactly as and what sensation itself makes them individually claim to be."

Epicurus talks about enduring qualities (properties) and temporary qualities (accidents) in letter to H. in DL X,069-071

Hello Cassius. Nice to be in touch again