Emilie Pagano

This paper is an investigation into the metaphysics of social objects such as political borders, states, and organizations. I articulate a metaphysical puzzle concerning such objects and then propose a novel account of social objects that provides a solution to the puzzle. The basic idea behind the puzzle is that under appropriate circumstances, seemingly concrete social objects can apparently be created by acts of agreement, decree, declaration, or the like. Yet there is reason to believe that no concrete object can be created in this way. The central idea of my positive account is that social objects have a normative component to them, and seemingly concrete social objects have both normative and material components. I develop this idea more rigorously using resources from the Aristotelian hylomorphic tradition. The resulting normative hylomorphic account, I argue, solves the puzzle by providing a satisfying explanation of creation-by-agreement and the like, while also avoiding the difficulties facing extant accounts of social objects.

There has been widespread opposition to so-called essentialism in contemporary social theory. At the same time, within contemporary analytic metaphysics, the notion of essence has been revived and put to work by neo-Aristotelians. The ‘new essentialism’ of the neo-Aristotelians opens the prospect for a new social essentialism—one that avoids the problematic commitments of the ‘old essentialism’ while also providing a helpful framework for social theorizing. In this paper, I develop a neo-Aristotelian brand of essentialism about social kinds and show how it avoids the legitimate worries of social theorists. I then argue that neo-Aristotelian social kind essentialism provides a helpful framework for a wide range of projects in social ontology and feminist metaphysics, including debunking projects, descriptive inquiries, and the project of achieving social change. I further argue that an essentialist framework is more useful than a grounding framework when it comes to certain legitimate theoretical and practical purposes in social theory.

An artefact is crafted for a function. Its function, according to many leading theories, is essential to it. If so, what an artefact is for is a ‘static’ aspect of what it is that is sourced in crafters’ authority. On the other hand, it seems an artefact may change what it is for: it may gain or lose a function, or its original function may evolve. If so, what an artefact is for is a ‘dynamic’ aspect of what it is that has its source in what users use an artefact for, even if it is not what it was crafted for. The dynamic aspect allows what the static aspect precludes: change in what an artefact is for. And so the static and dynamic aspects seem in conflict. This paper explores an approach that harmonizes them. It promises to accommodate our inclinations better than approaches favouring only one aspect. A broader implication is that the approach challenges the widespread assumption, shared by many friends and foes of essences alike, that essences are uniform.