三十年前的伊格尔顿更像一位唯名论意义上的反本质主义者,三十年后他更像一位实在论意义上的本质主义者,此时的本质是认识上的本质,并非实存中的本质,伊格尔顿并未从这个主义倒向那个主义。斯坦利·费什等人将认识论上的本质主义放到了存在论语境中,他们把本质主义颠倒了。我们需要从亚里士多德的“四谓词”说以及“十范畴”说的视角来重新审视这些误读。对亚里士多德和托马斯·阿奎那而言,事物的本质就在事物本身,本质并不是事物的先决条件,事物的存在才是本质的前提,定义和本质是用来认识世界的,可后现代主义者们却以为认识世界必须先拥有定义,这种“颠倒”反映了认识上常犯的逻辑错误。 Eagleton thirty years ago was more like an anti-essentialist in the nominating sense, and thirty years later he was more of an essentialist in essence than realist Essence is not an existent essence, and Eagleton did not reverse that doctrine to that doctrine. Stanley Fish et al put epistemological essentialism in an ontological context, and they reversed essentialism. We need to revisit these misreadings from the perspective of Aristotle’s “four predicates” and “ten categories.” For Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, the essence of things lies in the things themselves. The nature is not the precondition of things. The existence of things is the essential premise, the definition and essence are used to understand the world, But postmodernists think that understanding the world must first have a definition. Such “inversion” reflects the logic error often encountered in cognition.