What is quintessence? Definition of the concept, where it is used and where the word came from. Quintessence meaning of the word.
Most of the words we use in everyday life have certain meanings. But there are also terms whose meaning cannot be clearly explained. Let's try to explain what quintessence is. This word often appears in all sorts of scientific or philosophical articles, and confuses the reader. Agree, it is better to understand what is being said than to express your thoughts with errors.
What does quintessence mean?
The meaning of the word “quintessence” goes back to ancient times. Translated from Latin, this is the essence of something - a certain fifth essence. In ancient Greece, it was generally accepted that all animate and inanimate entities consist of four elements:
- Water (Hydrosphere).
- Fire (Magnetosphere).
- Air (Atmosphere).
- Earth (Lithosphere).
The differences between them are fifth element . This term was first used by Aristotle. He said the following: “ the difference between the animal and plant worlds is explained by the presence in their composition of the fifth element - ether (quintessence)».
In modern interpretation, the meaning of the word quintessence has changed slightly, and means the most important thing in any living or inanimate object:
- The essence story.
- Nature men.
- Main(meaning product) in the test.
- Secret focus.
- Force lion
- Essence women.
As you can see, although in a slightly modified form, every day, without noticing it, we hear and use the term “quintessence.”
The quintessence of a woman: what is it?
The Lord worked for a long time when he created Eve - the first representative of the beautiful half of humanity. Her soul is multifaceted, so everyone understands the quintessence of any woman in their own way:
- Continuation of the family line. This theory is supported by misogynists. In their opinion, the main purpose of any woman is to give birth to children, and thus support the continuation of the human race.
- Taking care of the family. Others believe that a woman should devote her life to caring for her family: husband, children and elderly parents. This is why married couples want to have at least one daughter - this is an almost one hundred percent guarantee that in old age there will be someone to look after them.
- Home. Condescendingly speaking of “the weaker sex,” many do not see the obvious facts: in addition to work, the beautiful half of humanity goes shopping, cooks, washes, irons, etc.
If we summarize everything, it turns out that The quintessence of a woman is caring, charity and kindness. She will happily feed the hungry, warm the cold and calm the person in need of support.
The quintessence of a man: what is it?
For all its shortcomings, the list of advantages for men is noticeably longer. Steel structure, support, core - this is not a complete list that can characterize the quintessence of any man:
- Breadwinner. Since the times of the primitive communal system, men have been characterized as food providers. Centuries have passed, and practically nothing has changed - a man often has a higher paid job than a woman.
- Support. He is smart, strong, patient and brave. The wife and children should not worry about their well-being - a man is always there and is able to solve the most difficult everyday problems.
- Responsibility. It is believed that a man in his life should:
- Build a house - it is he who always monitors the strength of the housing, and his golden hands eliminate all kinds of breakdowns;
- Raise a son to continue the family line;
- Planting a tree is mentioned in a figurative sense, but in fact it is a source of cash flow, and this is: food, clothing and other important aspects that contribute to an excellent microclimate in the family.
To summarize: the quintessence of a man is expressed by his courage, strong character and support of the family’s financial condition. But what would the stronger sex do without the intervention of women in their lives? It was she who made him an attentive father and a faithful husband who would never leave his home.
A look at quintessence from alchemy
The first alchemists appeared in ancient Egypt. It was believed that these people could cause a storm in the ocean, a storm in the desert, and cure any ailment. Particularly important was the fact that the alchemist, with the help of a special recipe and a “secret ingredient,” would be able to obtain:
- Gold from mercury and lead.
- Creature(homunculus) from animal hair or mandrake root.
The secret ingredient should be understood as a certain ether, which is added to one of the four elements of the Earth. It is the natural elements that form the basis of everything that exists on earth. The fifth component is precisely the famous philosopher's stone that is necessary to accomplish a miraculous transformation. Alchemists designated it as quintessence.
Quintessence of human life
Time is perhaps the most fundamental characteristic of human life: no one and nothing on Earth can resist it. Life goes on like a carbon copy - birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age and death. The quintessence of human life is to live consciously and walk your path with dignity:
- Development and creation. The knowledge inherited from our ancestors must be developed and multiplied.
- Self-improvement and love. Learn to help people (morally or psychologically) for free. For starters - at least to your acquaintances and friends.
The entire essence of the universe is aimed at creating life. Just as a seed planted in the soil turns into a plant, so a person, during his life’s journey, must be spiritually and physically developed, have the means to subsist, and start a family. Perhaps, all of the above can be considered the quintessence of human life.
Quintessence as the dark energy of the universe
At the end of the second decade, the dark energy and hidden mass hypothesis emerged. In 1997, scientists noticed that some stars they observed in the middle of the century had lower brightness. It has been established that in space there is energy with negative pressure, which corresponds to the expansion of the universe. It is not clear why, but this energy density was called quintessence. So, one might say by chance, the term acquired another meaning.
Today, you have significantly expanded your horizons and learned what quintessence is - this term means the basis and essence of something: phenomena, events, human essence, systemic views. Knowledge, or vice versa, the absence of a concept of the meaning of a certain word, speaks of the individual evolutionary development of each person. Now, when conducting a discussion of a philosophical direction, you can identify the main thing in your thought, nothing less than the quintessence.
Quintessence video
In this video, Oleg Lama will tell you what the word “quintessence” means and conduct spiritual practice:
The word quintessence literally means "fifth essence." In relation to what it was “fifth”, one can understand if we recall the idea of the world that existed in ancient times.
Quintessence in ancient philosophy
The ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles became the founder of the idea of four elements that form everything that exists in the world. These elements are water, earth, air and fire. All differences between plants, animals and other objects are explained by the ratio of elements. This idea became generally accepted in ancient philosophy. Aristotle also adhered to it, but he decided to supplement the teachings of Empedocles.
According to Aristotle, along with the four main elements, there is a fifth one, which is fundamentally different from them. It is the most subtle and perfect, it is eternal, i.e. does not arise and cannot be destroyed; the stars and the sky beyond the lunar orbit are made of it. Aristotle called this element ether or the “fifth essence,” and this is how the term “quintessence” appeared.
Already among ancient philosophers the idea of quintessence met with criticism. Some of them believed that it was not necessary to admit the existence of any additional element to explain, for example, the nature of stars if they were considered to consist of fire. The treatise of the philosopher Xenarchus is “Against Quintessence.” And yet the idea took root.
Quintessence in Renaissance and Modern Philosophy
The ideas of ancient philosophy were inherited by the Middle Ages, and especially by the Renaissance. Agrippa of Nettesheim, J. Bruno, F. Bacon and some other philosophers of the Renaissance and early modern times consider quintessence to be the connecting link between the mortal, material body and the immortal soul. It consists of the astral body, which has both a material and immaterial nature.
The idea of quintessence was so popular in those days that F. Rabelais, in his novel “Gargantua and Pantagruel,” even ironizes about this, mentioning a certain “extractor of quintessence.”
The idea of quintessence in . It was represented as the basic element of all things, which God himself extracted. Some thinkers - for example, Theophrastus Paracelsus - identified the mysterious “fifth essence” with... man! This approach is fully consistent with the philosophy of humanism, which proclaimed man “the measure of all things.”
Surprisingly, the concept of quintessence also exists in modern physics. This is the name given to one of the concepts of dark energy - a mysterious entity that could explain the expansion of the Universe.
Sources:
- New Philosophical Encyclopedia
By quintessence we mean the most important thing, the essence of an object or phenomenon; the main meaning, all that is most essential and important; hidden, mysterious, which represents a subtle and pure base. In this regard: what is the quintessence of reason?
The essence of the material and immaterial world
All peoples, at a certain stage of their development, identified four main essences: water, earth, fire and air. But these materialistic substances still could not explain many things and phenomena. The most important question could not be explained: from what did the listed entities arise, from what does everything come from, including the intangible. One more substance was missing - unifying and opposing the four named. This fifth essence - quinta essentia - must be basic. It, unlike the first four, is unchangeable, absolute and eternal.
Quintessence, as an essence, is present in all elements and things created by God. And the final product, the embodiment of everything that exists in the world, is man. This is the basic general idea of the structure of the universe.
The supposed fifth essence, quinta essentia, was called ether. In ancient Greek philosophy, ether was understood as an element, a certain subtle element. In ancient philosophy (Aristotle called it the first) it was understood as the substance of the “firmament”, the entire “supralunar world”, outer space with all the luminaries inhabiting it and the spheres carrying them.
According to the teaching developed at Plato's Academy, the ether had a corpuscular structure in the form. Later, Aristotle began to interpret quintessence as an immaterial substance, increasingly identifying it with the substance of the cosmic God and Soul. Later, the theory of a certain Universal Mind appeared.
Such a beautiful and little understood word for many is “quintessence”... usually we call it the main meaning, the main essence of a phenomenon, the essence of a system of views - for example, Bernard Shaw, writing an article about the main ideas of the work of the Norwegian playwright G. Ibsen, called her "Quintessence of Ibsenism". Meanwhile, this term is very ancient - and its meaning is much deeper and more interesting.
This word appeared in ancient philosophy, and Aristotle was the first to use it. At that time, there was a doctrine of the four elements, created by the philosopher and physician Empedocles: everything in the world (including the human body) consists of four primary elements - water, fire, air and earth, the difference between something (for example, between animals and plants) lies in their ratio, degree of expression, predominance of one or another element. Aristotle added to these four principles a fifth essence - quinta essentia (quintessence), which he called ether. But this ether-quintessence does not complement the four main elements, but is opposed to them: the region between the center of the Earth and the orbit of the Moon (the so-called “sublunar world,” lower) consists of them - and the sky and stars (“supralunar world”) consist from that very fifth element - the subtlest and most perfect. It - unlike the other four elements - is not subject to creation and destruction.
The doctrine of quintessence was inherited by medieval philosophy, and then by alchemy - as the idea of a certain subtle element that represents the essence of things. But they were especially interested in this concept during the Renaissance - at a time of general colossal interest in antiquity, alchemy and... magic. Yes, yes, the surge of interest in magic and the occult sciences was not marked by the “wild” Middle Ages at all - but by the Renaissance, which we are accustomed to imagine as the “golden age” of the awakening of the human mind! In the Middle Ages, this was impossible - the church would not have allowed it, and not with the help of the fires of the Inquisition (the fires began to burn just closer to the Renaissance), but as an ideological “core”, without which a person of the Middle Ages could not imagine life - but the Renaissance, when, through the efforts of numerous heresies, the church was displaced in human consciousness...
How does the quintessence appear to thinkers of the Renaissance and early modern times? First of all, it was the “resurrection” of the ideas of Neoplatonism (a philosophical movement that arose at the end of antiquity based on the ideas of Plato) - in which the quintessence was represented as a kind of “spirit of the world”, animating the bodies of which the astral body is composed - an intermediary between the physical body and the immaterial immortal soul. In this vein, they speak about the quintessence of G. Bruno, F. Bacon, as well as Agrippa of Nettesheim, who believed that the divine spirit is unable to influence inert matter directly - some kind of connecting link is needed, which is the quintessence, which has a mixed nature (both spiritual and physical ). The idea of the “astral body” was firmly adopted by occultism - and continues to develop this topic to this day.
True, the idea of quintessence was criticized back in antiquity - for example, the philosopher and physicist Strato of Lampax believed that the stars consist of fire, and not of ether, and Xenarchus of Seleucia even wrote a treatise called “Against Quintessence” - but this did not prevent the philosophers and alchemists of the Renaissance from developing this idea. They believed that quintessence could be extracted from bodies - coming closer to the idea of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life... This is how the concept of quintessence is interpreted, for example, by Theophrastus Paracelsus - who was not only an outstanding physician, but also an alchemist: quintessence is present in all elements as their essence , extract, God himself extracted in a gigantic alchemical laboratory, which is the entire Universe, the fifth element of everything in the world, and this quintessence is man...
Something familiar, isn't it? It is this idea that is the basis of Luc Besson’s film “The Fifth Element”, created in 1997 - where there is also the image of a perfect human being reigning over the four elements - it was this, and not the creation of gold from mercury, that was the main goal of the alchemists! And it was during the Renaissance, which declared man “the measure of all things,” that such an understanding of quintessence could be born - and the idea of Paracelsus was picked up by a film director at the end of the second millennium... such a connection of times!
Meanwhile, the concept of quintessence also exists in modern science - this is the name of one of the models of dark energy (a phenomenon that explains the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe)... and so far modern science does not know much more about dark matter than the philosophers of antiquity did about the mysterious ether... but after all The horizons of knowledge are limitless!
The word “quintessence” itself comes from the Latin phrase “quinta essentia”, preserving its phonemic sound. Its literal translation is “fifth essence.” Where did this expression come to us, how has its meaning changed over time, and what does it mean today? This will be discussed in this article.
The origin of the word dates back to antiquity and is attributed to Aristotle.
Antique period
In the philosophy of antiquity, the central place was occupied by the theory of four substances - water, air, fire and earth. The world consists of them, everything living and inanimate, including humans, space, stars. Aristotle in his works supplemented the theory, believing that there is a higher element from which distant stars, the superlunar world, are composed. This substance is eternal, it is neither created nor destroyed, does not deteriorate and does not age, it is characterized by movement in a circle.
It gives the world the most important properties: eternity, immutability, indestructibility. Associated with this concept is the idea of the Cosmic God, who was considered a living being. According to the teachings of Aristotle, quintessence is a really existing substance; subsequently, the meaning of the word was associated more and more with divine, magical, surreal meanings.
At the same time, disputes began about its existence. Many philosophers believed that four elements were enough to explain the existence of the world, and the stars consist of the fire element. The main opponents of Aristotle's teachings were Theophlastus and Xenarchus.
The expression has become firmly established in different languages of the world.
Renaissance
During the Renaissance and Renaissance, when the ideas of antiquity regained popularity, the word "quintessence" was revived in new meanings, associated with the divine origin of the world:
- Now it meant a certain entity that connected the physical body and soul, sometimes it was called the astral body. This theory was supported by thinkers and scientists of that time - Giordano Bruno, f. Bacon.
- A special invisible element, ether, which connects all other elements.
- Quintessence in alchemy. The concept of “quintessence” occupied a special place in the works of alchemists, who considered it the highest divine element, an integral part of the world. In addition, the quintessence was called the philosopher's stone, the main substance of the world, which has unique properties and can give immortality. It was the philosopher's stone that was the main goal of the alchemists, along with the dream of creating gold.
- Man, as the main creation of God, was also sometimes called the “quintessence” of all living things.
- Divine ether, the soul was considered part of this substance, a fragment of quintessence.
- The substance from which the resurrected are composed. This meaning is associated with ideas about the Great Judgment, when all the dead will be resurrected and appear before God's court.
Along with such high meanings, the word began to be used with an ironic meaning. For example, in Rabelais’s work “Gargantua and Pantagruel” the author-writer “extractor of quintessence” is mentioned.
Here there is a manifestation in the meaning of modern meanings as something most important, the main thing.
Quintessence in the modern world, in the Russian language of our days
This word in modern Russian is ambiguous. It is used in various areas of life and science. All its meanings have a common semantic element, which is an echo of ancient origin, meaning “the essence, an extract of something.” Basic values:
- The main thing, the main thing, the most important, the concentrate of any concept. For example, you can hear the following expressions: the quintessence of humor, war, kindness.
- The essence of a concept.
- In physics, the word became a scientific concept. It denotes one of the dark energies that lead to the expansion of the universe.
- In chemistry: quintessence is a pure element, a substance without impurities, obtained chemically.
Quintessence in fortune telling and esotericism
The concept of “quintessence” is used in the practice of fortune telling with Tarot cards. This concept means the addition of the numerological meanings of all the cards that participated in the layout. It is believed that this value helps decipher the meaning of fortune telling.
In addition, such a concept is associated with a certain magical energy of the world, which is addressed by a person performing magical rituals.
Fifth Element
The literal translation of the Latin expression “fifth element” also strengthened in the Russian language and became a stable expression denoting the main essence of the concept. Man himself is also called the fifth element. who considers himself the highest creation of the world.
The word “quintessence” has firmly entered the Russian language and is often used in its basic meaning: the essence of something. Found in titles of works of art and in the media. It is not typical for colloquial speech, as it has the connotation of a high style.
Material from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia
Quintessence(from lat. quīnta essence- fifth essence) - ambiguous term:
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__DISAMBIG__Excerpt characterizing Quintessence
“Your... your Excellency,” said Alpatych and began to sob... “Yours, yours... or are we already lost?” Father…- How are you here? – repeated Prince Andrei.
The flame flared up brightly at that moment and illuminated for Alpatych the pale and exhausted face of his young master. Alpatych told how he was sent and how he could forcefully leave.
- What, your Excellency, or are we lost? – he asked again.
Prince Andrei, without answering, took out a notebook and, raising his knee, began to write with a pencil on a torn sheet. He wrote to his sister:
“Smolensk is being surrendered,” he wrote, “Bald Mountains will be occupied by the enemy in a week. Leave now for Moscow. Answer me immediately when you leave, sending a messenger to Usvyazh.”
Having written and given the piece of paper to Alpatych, he verbally told him how to manage the departure of the prince, princess and son with the teacher and how and where to answer him immediately. Before he had time to finish these orders, the chief of staff on horseback, accompanied by his retinue, galloped up to him.
-Are you a colonel? - shouted the chief of staff, with a German accent, in a voice familiar to Prince Andrei. - They light houses in your presence, and you stand? What does this mean? “You will answer,” shouted Berg, who was now the assistant chief of staff of the left flank of the infantry forces of the First Army, “the place is very pleasant and in plain sight, as Berg said.”
Prince Andrei looked at him and, without answering, continued, turning to Alpatych:
“So tell me that I’m waiting for an answer by the tenth, and if I don’t receive news on the tenth that everyone has left, I myself will have to drop everything and go to Bald Mountains.”
“I, Prince, say this only because,” said Berg, recognizing Prince Andrei, “that I must carry out orders, because I always carry out them exactly... Please forgive me,” Berg made some excuses.
Something crackled in the fire. The fire died down for a moment; black clouds of smoke poured out from under the roof. There was also a terrible crackling sound in the fire, and something huge fell down.
