What is a thing?

By: Maria Odete Madeira

What is a thing (Latin causa)? What do we think, or can think about, when we state and refer ourselves to the word thing? An event is a thing? A feeling is a thing? A thought is a thing? A process is a thing? A system is a thing? Plans, strategies and convictions are things? The beautiful, the good, the bad and the ugly are things? We, the humans, are things? Is God a thing?What makes a thing a thing?

The Latin word causa also means res. From res formed the terms reality and realism. In general terms, the notion of causa applies to all reality and means everything that exists, or can exist.

In scholastic philosophy, res was an attribute of the being, in Thomas Aquinas it was a synonym of quiddity. In modern and contemporaneous philosophy the being of a thing is being an existent, any existent, that, as such, can be thought on and known.