I’m exploring ‘essentialism’. Some of the blogs I read think essentialism is a false ontological view. Others swear by it. I can’t make heads or tails of it. To tell you the truth, all the explanations I’ve read online are, well, I can’t understand them frankly.

I’ve run into…

-essentialism

-mereological essentialism

-Deluzian essentialism

-dispositional essentialism

-ultra-essentialism and post-essentialism

-social essentalism

-scientific essentialism

…and more. Can somebody put “essentialism” into plain English for me?

Corey?

Tom

Very briefly:

The metaphysical theory that the essential properties of an object can be distinguished from those that are accidental to it.

More specifically:

In ontology, the view that some properties of objects are essential to them. The "essence" of a thing is conceived as the totality of its essential properties. Theories of essentialism differ with respect to their conception of what it means to say that a property is essential to an object. The concept of an essential property is closely related to the concept of necessity, since one way of saying that a property P is essential to an object O is to say that the proposition "O has P" is necessarily true (see necessity). A general but not very informative way of characterizing essential properties is to say that a property is essential to an object if the object cannot lack the property and still be the object that it is. Properties of an object that are not essential in this sense are said to be accidental.

Or again:

In philosophy, essentialism is the view, that, for any specific kind of entity it is at least theoretically possible to specify a finite list of characteristics —all of which any entity must have to belong to the group defined. This view is contrasted with non-essentialism which states that for any given entity there are no specified traits which that entity must have in order to be defined as that entity.

A member of a specific kind of entity may possess other characteristics that are neither needed to establish its membership nor preclude its membership. It should be noted that essences do not simply reflect ways of grouping objects; essences must result in properties of the object.

An essence characterizes a substance or a form, in the sense of the Forms or Ideas in Platonic idealism. It is permanent, unalterable, and eternal; and present in every possible world. Classical humanism has an essentialist conception of the human being, which means that it believes in an eternal and unchangeable human nature. This viewpoint has been criticized by Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre, Stirner and many modern and existential thinkers.

[the hopeless Wikipedia]

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So who would deny that some objects possess some of their attributes essentially in order to be the objects they are? It seems obvious to me that this is true. What's the problem?

Tom

My gut-hunch, though, is that it has a Substantial worldview in it's ancestry; it's probably at odds with a Process worldview.

An essence characterizes a substance or a form, in the sense of the Forms or Ideas in Platonic idealism. It is permanent, unalterable, and eternal; and present in every possible world.

Post Edited (Exousia) : 3/28/2007 11:14:03 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Sahid) : 3/28/2007 12:58:46 PM (GMT-5)

Folks, I can't engage this discussion. But maybe someone wants to use these quotes to 'make hay' with: 

http://jbburnett.com/resources/lossky/lossky_img4-process-filioq.pdf

10. Fr. Th. de Regnon, inquiring why Filioquist considerations were never developed in the rich works of the Greek Fathers, asks: "Is this not proof that [such considerations] never occurred to them in their conception of the Trinity?" And he replies with a significant avowal: "In fact all these [Filioquist considerations] presuppose that, in the order of concepts, nature is anterior to person and that the latter represents a kind of efflorescence of the former" (Etudes de theologie positive sur la Sainte Trinite I (Paris, 1892), p. 309). He also writes: "Latin philosophy envisages first the nature in itself and then procedes to the expression; Greek philosophy envisages first the expression and then penetrates it to find the nature. The Latin considers personality as a mode of nature, the Greek considers nature as the content of the person" (ibid. p. 433).

 

http://jbburnett.com/resources/lossky/lossky_myst1-trinity.pdf

It is in such a spirit as this that St. Gregory Nazianzen speaks in his oration on baptism: ‘No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the One. When I think of any One of the Three, I think of Him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking of escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of that One so as to attribute a greater greatness to the rest. When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light.4 Our thought must be in continuous motion, pursuing now the one, now the three, and returning again to the unity; it must swing ceaselessly between the two poles of the antinomy, in order to attain to the contemplation of the sovereign repose of this threefold monad. How can the antinomy of unity and trinity be contained in an image? How can this mystery be grasped save by the aid of an idea— be it that of movement or of development— which is inadmissible? Nazianzen’s conscious adoption of the language of Plotinus can delude only those unimaginative and pedestrian souls who are incapable of rising above rational concepts: those who ransack the thought of the Fathers for traces of ‘Platonism’ or ‘Aristotelianism’. St. Gregory speaks to the philosophers as a philosopher, that he may win the philosopher to the contemplation of the Trinity. ‘The monad is set in motion in virtue of its richness; the dyad is surpassed (for the deity is above matter and form); the triad contains itself in perfection, for it is the first which surpasses the composition of the dyad. Thus, the Godhead does not dwell within bounds, nor does it spread itself indefinitely. The one would be without honour, the other would be contrary to order. The one would be wholly Judaic, the other Hellenistic and polytheistic.’5 One gains a glimpse of themystery of the number, three; the deity is neither one nor many; its perfection goes beyond the multiplicity of which duality is the root (we recall the interminable dyads of the gnostics, and the dualism of the Platonists), and expresses itself in the Trinity. The term ‘expresses itself’ is improper, for the divinity has no need to manifest its perfection, either to itself or to others. It is the Trinity, and this fact can be deduced from no principle nor explained by any sufficient reason, for there are neither principles nor causes anterior to the Trinity.

And from the same again...

As we have already observed, in expounding the dogma of the Trinity, western thought most frequently took as its starting point the one nature, and thence passed to the consideration of the three persons, while the Greeks followed the opposite course— from the three persons to the one nature. St. Basil preferred this latter way, which in conformity to Holy Scripture and to the baptismal formula which names the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, starts from the concrete. Human thought does not run the risk of going astray if it passes from the consideration of the three persons to that of the common nature. Nevertheless, the two ways were both equally legitimate so long as the first did not attribute to the essence a supremacy over the three persons, nor the second to the three persons a supremacy over the common nature. In fact, as we have seen, the Fathers made use of two synonyms (ousia and hypostasis) to establish the distinction between the nature and the persons, without putting the emphasis upon either. Where one spoke of the persons (or person) one spoke at the same time of the nature, and vice versa. The nature is inconceivable apart from the persons or as anterior to the three persons, even in the logical order. If the balance of this antinomy between nature and persons, absolutely different and absolutely identical at the same time, is upset, there will be in the one case a tendency towards a Sabellian unitarianism (the God-essence of the philosophers), or else towards tritheism. The Greeks saw in the formula of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son a tendency to stress the unity of nature at the expense of the real distinction between the persons. The relationships of origin which do not bring the Son and the Spirit back directly to the unique source, to the Father— the one as begotten, the other as proceeding— become a system of relationships within the one essence: something logically posterior to the essence. Indeed, according to the western conception the Father and the Son cause the Holy Spirit to proceed, inasmuch as they represent the one nature; while the Holy Spirit, who, for western theologians, becomes ‘the bond between the Father and the Son’, stands for a natural unity between the first two persons. The hypostatic characteristics (paternity, generation, procession), find them selves more or less swallowed up in the nature or essence which, differentiated by relationships— to the Son as Father, to the Holy Spirit as Father and Son— becomes the principle of unity within the Trinity. The relationships, instead of being characteristics of the hypostases, are identified with them. As St. Thomas was later to write: ‘Persona est relatio’,26 inner relationship of the essence which it diversifies. It can scarcely be denied that there is a difference between this trinitarian conception and that of Gregory Nazianzen with his ‘Thrice-repeated Holy, meeting in one ascription of the title Lord and God.’27

As Father de R6gnon very justly observes: ‘Latin philosophy first considers the nature in itself and proceeds to the agent; Greek philosophy first considers the agent and afterwards passes through it to find the nature. The Latins think of personality as a mode of nature; the Greeks think of nature as the content of the person.’28 The Greek Fathers always maintained* that the principle of unity in the Trinity is the person of the Father. As Principle of the other two persons, the Father is at the same time the Source of the relations whence the hypostases receive their distinctive characteristics. In causing the persons to proceed, he lays down their relations of origin— generation and procession— in regard to the unique principle of Godhead. This is why the East has always opposed the formula of filioque which seems to impair the monarchy of the Father: either one is forced to destroy the unity by acknowledging two principles of Godhead, or one must ground the unity primarily on the common nature, which thus overshadows the persons and transforms them into relations within the unity of the essence. For the West, the relations diversified the primordial unity. For the East, they signified at one and the same time the diversity and the unity, because they had reference to the Father who is principle, as well as recapitulation (sugkephalaiosis), of the Trinity. It is in this sense that St. Athanasius understands the saying of St. Dionysius of Alexandria: ‘We extend the monad indivisibly into the triad, and conversely we recapitulate the triad without diminution into the monad.’29 Elsewhere he declares: ‘There is a single principle of the Godhead, whence there is strictly a monarchy.’30 ‘A single God because a single Father’, according to the saying of the Greek Fathers. The persons and the nature are ‘ so to say, given at the same time, without the one being logically prior to the other. The Father— pegaia theotes, source of all divinity within the Trinity— brings forth the Son and the Holy Spirit in conferring upon them His nature, which remains one and indivisible, identical in itself in the Three. For the Greek Fathers, to confess the unity of the nature is to recognize the Father as unique Source of the persons who receive from Him this same nature. ‘In my opinion,’ says St. Gregory Nazianzen, ‘one safeguards one only God in referring the Son and the Spirit to a single Principle, neither compounding nor confounding them; and in affirming the identity of substance and what I will call the unique and like motion and will of the Godhead.’31 ‘To us there is one God, for the Godhead is One, and all that proceedeth from Him is referred to One, though we believe in Three Persons.... When, then, we look at the Godhead, or the First Cause, or the Monarchy, that which we conceive is One; but when we look at the Persons in whom the Godhead dwells, and at those who timelessly and with equal glory have their being from the First Cause— there are Three whom we worship.’32 St. Gregory Nazianzen here brings the Godhead and the Person of the Father so closely together that he might be thought to confound them. He clarifies his thought in another passage: ‘The Three have one Nature— God. And the union (henosis) is the Father, from whom and to whom the order of Persons runs its course, not so as to be confounded, but so as to be possessed, without distinction of time, of will, or of power.’33 St. John Damascene expresses the same thought with that doctrinal precision which is peculiar to him. ‘The Father derives from Himself His being, nor does He derive a single quality from another. Rather He is Himself the beginning and cause of the existence of all things both as to their nature and mode of being. All then that the Son d the Spirit have is from the Father, even their very being: and unless the Father is, neither the Son nor the Spirit is. And unless the Father possesses a certain attribute, neither the Son nor the Spirit possesses it: and through the Father, that is, because of the Father’s existence, the Son and the Spirit exist.... When, then, we turn our eyes to the Godhead, and the first cause, and the sovereignty... what is seen by us is unity. But when we look to those things in which the Godhead is, or, to put it more accurately, which are the Godhead, and those things which are in it through the first cause . . . that is to say, the hypostases of the Son and the Spirit, it seems to us a Trinity that we adore.’34 It is the Father who distinguishes the hypostases ‘in an eternal movement of love’ (achronos kai agapetikos), according to an expression of St. Maximus.35 He confers His one nature upon the Son and upon the Holy Spirit alike, in whom it remains one and undivided, not distributed, while being differently conferred; for the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father is not identical with the generation of the Son by the same Father. Manifested by the Son and with the Son, the Holy Spirit has His being as divine person in proceeding from the Father, as is plainly stated by St. Basil: ‘ For of the Father is the Son, by Whom are all things and with whom the Holy Spirit is always thought of together inseparably. For it is impossible to obtain any comprehension of the Son without first being enlightened by the Spirit. Since, then, the Holy Spirit, from whom springs the whole abundance of good things distributed to the creation, is linked on to the Son, and with Him is apprehended without any discontinuity, He has His being attached to the Father, from whom He proceeds. This is the distinguishing note characteristic of His hypostasis— that He is made known after the Son and together with Him, an a takes His subsistence from the Father. As for the Son, who through Himself and with Himself makes known the Spirit who proceeds from the Father, and who shines forth alone only-begottenly from the unbegotten light, He has nothing in common with the Father or the Holy Spirit as to the marks whereby He is distinguished, but alone is distinguished by the notes just mentioned. But God who is above all, alone has one exceptional mark of His hypostasis— that He is Father, and has His subsistence from no cause; and by this note again He is Himself peculiarly recognized.’36