Res extensa

The JC’s guide to pithy Latin adages →Go uptown Latin Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

A juicy Latinism that hails not from the dusty halls of nineteenth century jurisprudence but the even dustier ones of seventeenth century metaphysics. Res extensa is — per Des Carter, stuff that’s out there in the world, the existence of which depends on your frail perceptual apparatus, and may be contrasted with res cogitans — stuff that is only in your head, such as famously, one’s knowledge of one’s own existence. That one cannot plausibly doubt, because it needs to be true — that is, one needs to exist — for one to doubt it in the first place NOW GET ON WITH YOUR WORK AND STOP TRYING TO DISTRACT ME BLENKINSOP MINOR

See also

• Assignment and assumption
• Dematerialised securities
• Fact
• Uniqueness