“Essence”
τὸ καθόλου
τὸ γένος
τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι (a priori)
τὸ ὑποκείμενον (subjectum)
τὸ κοινόν
τὸ τί ἔστιν (quidditas)
τὸ εἶδος
ἰδέα
οὐσία (essentia)
RECAPITULATION
We are abiding with the question: how does Aristotle–i.e., Greek philosophy in general–found the essence of truth and the definition of the essence of truth as the correctness of an assertion? To gain the answer we must ask immediately and before all else: how do the Greeks conceive what we call essence? In what consists for them the essentiality of the essence?
First of all with reference to Aristotle, Metaphysics Ζ, we tried to elucidate, in a few broad strokes, that and how there can still be decided something about the essentiality of the essence. The result was the following: Aristotle mentions primarily four characterizations of the essentiality of the essence; these stand in a material connection and can be synthesized in one of them.
1. The essence is what something is in general, what applies over the entire extent of the particular instances: τὸ καθόλου.
2. The essence is that from which anything, in what it is as such, has its origin, whence it stems: τὸ γένος. An individual house is of the genus: house in general.
3. The essence can therefore also be designated as what something already was, before it became what it is as an individual. An individual house is not first a house as an individual thing, but what it is as this individual thing, namely “house,” was already.