Essence and Ordinary Modality

Fine’s “Essence and Modality” has prompted a revival of Aristotelian approaches to metaphysical modality. But what does it have to say about more ordinary modal facts: that this car can doo 100 mph, while that one can’t; that I must sneeze now; or that a particular vase can break? I consider two strategies, borrowed from Fine’s “Varieties of Necessity”: relativization and restriction. I argue that the most commonly assumed way for the essentialist to deal with ordinary modality, the relativization strategy, is problematic. I then offer a version of the restriction strategy as an interesting avenue to pursue, one which requires some reinterpretation of the essentialist view of metaphysical modality but which is quite close to the spirit of “Essence and Modality”.