Between ‘thisness’ and quiddity: The place of the GP

Abstract

The role of the GP is to apply their knowledge of medicine, science, the arts, to an individual patient in front of them. Two philosophical concepts from the 13th century can help us here. ‘Thisness,’ ‘haecceity’ is the characteristics of the being that make it that particular being. The thisness of my dog lies in the way she wags her tail, prefers ball games even to food, twitches her nose; all the things that make her just herself and not another dog. All things have thisness, not just people and dogs. A rock will have an individual essence which makes it just this rock and not another one. The 13th century philosopher Duns Scotus1 popularised the notion of haecceity, adapting it from Aristotle, and he has had many admirers down the centuries, including the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (who in 1915 wrote his habilitation thesis on the philosophy of Duns Scotus.) But it was the Victorian poet and Jesuit, Gerard Manley Hopkins, who coined ‘thisness’ as an English word meaning haecceity. He memorably uses the concept in his …