Practical Benefits of Philosophy 2. Essentialism

The ancient Greeks – Aristotle in particular – were fascinated by the idea that things could change and yet remain what they are.  We can crumple up a piece of paper and despite its change in shape it remains paper.  But, if we burn it, it stops being paper and becomes something else entirely – ashes.

Aristotle sought to explain this difference by saying that every object had two types of properties:  those that are only accidental to it and those that are essential to the object’s existence.  The essence of an object is a property or set of properties so fundamental to it that we cannot conceive of the object existing without that property.  An accident, however, is not fundamental to the being of the object, and it can continue to be what it is without that property.  Consequently, if an “accident” is changed, the object remains what it is.  But once an object’s essential quality is changed, the thing ceases to be what it is and becomes something else. 

For Aristotle, the ability to reason is an essential property of being human.  While reasoning ability might be addled in a madman, the madman still reasons.  But we cannot conceive – at least Aristotle couldn’t – of a human who entirely lacks the faculty of reason in a way that, for example, a plant does.  At the same time, there are innumerable qualities which any particular human being might possess but which are not essential to being human, such as height or hair or eye color.  These for Aristotle are accidents.

This distinction between accidental properties and essential properties of a thing has led some thinkers to conclude that in Aristotle’s system “essence precedes existence.”  In other words, there must already be some pre-existing blueprint to allow us to figure out which properties are only accidents and which are essential properties.  Properties are essential to a thing only if it was “meant” to have those properties.  Interestingly enough, the Greek phrase that the Romans translated into essentia was to ti ên einai, literally, “the what it was to be.”  The phrase itself suggests that the “what” existed before the thing itself.  For Aristotle, the essence of an object precedes its existence.

 

Here are a few sort of hot-button examples of essentialist thinking at work today.  The anti-same-sex marriage people take an essentialist view of marriage.  For them, an essential characteristic of the thing we call marriage is that it involves a single man and a single woman.  Any other arrangement – while it might be something else, like a civil union – is not marriage.   Similarly, there is a lot of essentialist thinking about men and women – women, the child-bearers, are more thoughtful and caring, while men are the leaders and risk-takers.  The leaders of the Catholic Church take an essentialist understanding of the priesthood, and cannot conceive of a priest as other than a male.  The main point of essentialism is that things are intended to be a certain way.

Similarly, we also give individuals essential characteristics, mostly ourselves.  How many times have we heard something like this:  “That’s just who I am,” “I’m no good at math,” or “I can’t eat Chinese food.”  In other words, according to this sort of essentialist thinking, there are particular characteristics that define you and make you who you are, without which you’d be someone else.  You cannot conceive of yourself as lacking this characteristic.  The presumption behind the advice to “be yourself” is that there is already a pre-existent blueprint of yourself to which you can conform.

Next:  Existentialism