ABSTRACT
Kit Fine’s ‘neo-Aristotelian’ essentialism includes an account of ontological dependence: what an entity is depends on what the entities that figure in its definition are. This chapter discusses some applications of this account to accidental attributes, first conceived as Aristotelian universals, then as tropes of a sort. It is argued that some of the results are prima facie implausible, since they seem not to contribute to an understanding of what the attribute at issue is, as they should on Fine’s account. It is shown that, in contrast, these implausible results do not follow in Aristotle’s essentialism. The chapter concludes by suggesting an explanation for why these accounts entail different results here, namely, that Fine’s essentialism and Aristotle’s essentialism have different explanatory aims.
