'Thisness' or going beyond metaphor

The term is haecceity which is from the Latin haecceitas which translates to “thisness.” According to Wikipedia, it’s a term from medieval scholastic philosophy, first coined by followers of Duns Scotus to denote a concept that he seems to have originated: the irreducible determination of a thing that makes it this particular thing.Um. What? It’s the difference between a concept “man” and a particular example of that concept such as “Glenn Powell.” Essentially, it’s about separating a concept into its individual parts. For what purpose? Evaluation? Examination? Replacement?Alternatively “thisness” can mean just here, just now, with just what is at hand – a kind of limited existence but also immediacy - not later from now or in the continuing life, just the current circumstance.Literary critic James Wood refers to “thisness” to address excessive or conspicuous detail. As a philosophical concept, thisness recognizes that while two things might be identical in appearance, they nevertheless have fundamental differences that keep them separate. According to Wikipedia, “Haecceitism challenges the idea that an individual can be fully described or defined by its properties or relations. Instead, it suggests that there is an irreducible aspect to each individual that makes them uniquely themselves.According to this link, “for any particular thing, its thisness is the property of being identical with that particular thing and distinct from all other particular thing.”What “thisness” is not – it is not “suchness” which is a universal and can refer to many things with specifying any individual thing (this link). Author and blogger Chuck Lange describes it on this link. He’s quoting the literary critic James Wood, mentioned earlier, “Thisness, Wood explains, is “any detail that draws abstraction toward itself and seems to kill that abstraction with a puff of palpability, any detail that centers our attention with its concretion.” Lang then breaks it down:Abstraction - it’s basically metaphor, not the specific detail, but a relatable one that helps the reader get the gist of the thing without the exact accuracy that seeing with one’s own eyes might provide.Palpability - this is making the detail relatable and specific for the reader, it makes the reality concrete and sensory.Read more on the blog