Qua Aspects Person Thing Lover Condemned Nouns Poem

"The real occasion for the use of qua occurs when a person or thing spoken of can be regarded from more than one point of view or as the holder of various coexistent functions, and a statement about him (or it) is to be limited to him in one of these aspects":

Example:

"Qua lover he must be condemned for doing what qua citizen he would be condemned for not doing."

Here, "the lover aspect is distinguished from another aspect in which he may be regarded. The two nouns (or pronouns) must be present, one denoting the person or thing in all aspects (he), and the other singling out one of his or its aspects (lover, or citizen)."

It's often used in other ways:

between identical nouns ("X qua X") as an emphatic version of "as":

"The presence of actual words is apt to confuse any estimate of the evocative power of the music qua music."

"I don't think that 'Hard Times' is a particularly good novel qua novel, whatever it may be as a social document."

"James Kirkup's poem about Jesus … is … an indefensibly bad poem qua poem."

And sometimes, merely as "as":

"It cannot, qua film, have the scope of a large book." [i.e., it cannot, as a film,…]

"Qua phonetician, de Saussure has no interest in making precise the notion of species."

"Dressed in an Armani suit and espadrilles, he plays a cop qua existential hero."