Essence

:Alternate uses: see essence (disambiguation).

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In philosophy, essence is the attribute (or set of attributes) that make an object or substance what it fundamentally is. In grammar, it is a subject's necessary predicate. The notion of essence has acquired many slightly but importantly different shades of meaning throughout the history of philosophy; most of them derive from its use in Aristotle and its evolution within the scholastic tradition.

Related Topics:
Philosophy - Essence - Aristotle - Scholastic

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Essence in this sense is contrasted with accident: essential properties are properties that a substance has necessarily; accidental properties are those that it has contingently, those which the substance could have existed without having. {{Example of accident and essence}}

Related Topics:
Accident - Necessarily - Contingently

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Based on such considerations, essence was a key notion of alchemy (cf. quintessence).

Related Topics:
Alchemy - Quintessence

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In the modern period, some philosophers—such as George Santayana—have kept the vocabulary of essences but have abolished the distinction between essence and accidents. For Santayana, the essence of a being is simply everything about it, independent of the question of existence. Essence is what-ness as distinct from that-ness.

Related Topics:
George Santayana - Essence

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Existentialism is founded on Soren Kierkegaard's statement that "existence precedes essence." Inasmuch as "essence" is a cornerstone of all metaphysical philosophy and the grounding of Rationalism, Kierkegaard's statement was a refutation of the philosophical system that had come before him (and, in particular, that of Hegel, his teacher). Instead of "is-ness" generating "actuality," he argued that existence and actuality come first, and the essence is derived afterward. "Essence," in metaphysics, is often synonymous with the soul, and some existentialists argue that individuals gain their souls and spirits after they exist, that they develop their souls and spirits during their lifetimes. For Kierkegaard, however, the emphasis was upon essence as "nature." For him, there is no such thing as "human nature" that determines how a human will behave or what a human will be. First, he or she exists, and then comes attribute. Jean-Paul Sartre's more materialist and skeptical existentialism furthered this existentialist tenet by flatly refuting any metaphysical essence, any soul, and arguing instead that there is merely existence, with attributes as essence.

Related Topics:
Existentialism - Soren Kierkegaard - Metaphysical - Rationalism - Hegel - Soul - Jean-Paul Sartre

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Thus, in existentialist discourse, essence can refer to physical aspect or attribute, to the ongoing being of a person (the character or internally determined goals), or to the infinite inbound within the human (which can be lost, can atrophy, or can be developed into an equal part with the finite), depending upon the type of existentialist discourse.

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In contrast to Idealism and Aristotle-derived philosophies that argue for an essence before all actuality or existence, materialism rejects essence altogether. Karl Marx was, along with Kierkegaard, a follower of Hegel's, and he, too, developed a philosophy in reaction to his master. In his dialectical materialism, the zeitgeist of Hegel (an overriding essence) is replaced by a purely deterministic set of material clashes. Marxist philosophy and economic analysis, therefore, is wholly anti-essentialist. There is no "trans-historical" anything, in Marxist thought. Historical moments determine utterly the self. There is no universal human nature, no essence, and no universal essence of objects, either.

Related Topics:
Idealism - Aristotle - Materialism - Karl Marx - Hegel - Dialectical materialism - Zeitgeist

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