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Essentialism, in philosophy, is the doctrine that things have essential properties, properties without which they would not be the things that they are. Many philosophers hold that the essence of water is its real essence; the essence of water is H2O. So the stuff in my glass has an essential property, a property without which it would not be the stuff that it is; if the stuff in my glass did not have the property of being H2O, then it would not be water.
Anti-essentialists hold that there are no essential properties (properties without which things would not be the things that they are) independently of our definitions and ways of classifying things. Being a rational animal is an essential property of humans, but this is merely because we have chosen to define ‘human’ as ‘rational animal’, because we have chosen to classifying something as a human just if it is a rational animal. And things do not have essential properties independently of our definitions and ways of classifying things. AJ
See also essence.Further reading S. Kripke, Naming and Necessity. |
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