| dc.description.abstract | In this paper, I will discuss the need for a theory of essences within Object-Oriented Ontology
(OOO) and then formulate one. I will do so by drawing on Graham Harman’s work on OOO and Martin
Heidegger’s thought on the essence of being, presented in his Introduction to Metaphysics. Harman touches
on essences, describing them as the tension between a withdrawn object and its withdrawn qualities, but
fails to distinguish between essential and inessential qualities within this framework. To fill in the gaps, I
will turn to Heidegger’s explication of phusis in order to show that an essential aspect of being is how one
enters into causal relations and continually reveals oneself to other beings. In bringing OOO and Heidegger
together, I will find that each object has a unique way of exerting itself in the world and that the domestic
relations that make up this unique profile are essential to it, while other domestic relations, those that do
not influence its particular way of exerting itself, are inessential. Thus, the essence will be found to be the
set of domestic relations that make up the determinate form, or unique causal profile, of the object. | en_US |
