Quidditas
Quidditas , also quiditas ("Washeit", Germanized Quiddität or Quidität) is a Latin term that comes from the technical language of medieval philosophy. It is used as an abstract noun of the interrogative pronoun quid? ("What?") Derived.
The term probably originated in connection with the translation of philosophical works from Arabic into Latin, which began in the 12th century. The quiddity, “whatness” or essence of a thing is what answers the question What is this thing? can be answered ( quod quid est, "that which something is"). It refers to the entity (Latin essentia, essence) or the nature of a thing as far as it is one kind ( species belongs), or genus and has the characteristic for this species or genus-specific properties. Quiddity does not include those qualities that distinguish a single individual or thing from everything else and determine its individual peculiarity; the particular peculiarity of the individual things was called haecceitas ("thisness").
The term quidditas plays an important role in the thinking of the philosopher Johannes Duns Scotus . From quidditas the adjective was quidditativus ( "the entity concerning") derived.
