Essentialism
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Essentialism is the view that, for any specific
entity
(such as an animal, a group of people, a physical object, a concept),
there is a set of attributes which are necessary to its identity and
function.
[1] In Western thought the concept is found as early as the work of
Plato and
Aristotle:
Platonic idealism is the earliest known theory of how all known things and concepts have an essential reality behind them (an
"Idea" or "Form"), an essence that makes those things and concepts what they are. Aristotle's
Categories proposes that all objects are the objects they are by virtue of their
substance, that the substance makes the object what it is. The essential qualities of an object, so
George Lakoff
summarizes Aristotle's highly influential view, are "those properties
that make the thing what it is, and without which it would be not
that kind of thing".
[2] This view is contrasted with
non-essentialism, which states that, for any given kind of entity, there are no specific traits which entities of that kind must possess.
Essentialism has been controversial from its beginning. Plato's
Socrates already problematizes the concept of the Idea by positing in
the
Parmenides
that if we accept Ideas of such things as Beauty and Justice (every
beautiful thing or just action would partake of that Idea in some sense
in order to be beautiful or just), we must also accept the "existence of
separate forms for hair, mud, and dirt".
[3] In biology and other natural sciences, essentialism provided the basis for and rationale of
taxonomy at least until the time of
Charles Darwin;
[4] the precise role and importance of essentialism in biology is still a matter of debate.
[5] In
gender studies,
essentialism (summarized as the basic proposition that men and women
are essentially different) continues to be a matter of contention--
French structuralist feminism was often accused of subscribing to an essentialism, which was set in contrast to
gender contructionism.
[6]
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