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Single Idea 7161
[filed under theme 9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
]
Full Idea
The essence of a thing is only an opinion about the 'thing'.
Gist of Idea
The essence of a thing is only an opinion about the 'thing'
Source
Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[150])
Book Ref
Nietzsche,Friedrich: 'Writings from the Late Notebooks', ed/tr. Bittner,Rüdiger [CUP 2003], p.90
A Reaction
Nietzsche seems sympathetic to essentialism about natural laws (based on 'power'), but this is the classic rejection of Aristotelian essences, because they are unknowable or unprovable. Personally I think scientists are revealing essences.
The
34 ideas
with the same theme
[reasons to deny the existence of 'essences']:
13772
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Is the being or essence of each thing private to each person?
[Plato]
|
12251
|
Substantial forms are not understood, and explain nothing
[Descartes]
|
16622
|
Essence is just an artificial word from logic, giving a way of thinking about substances
[Hobbes]
|
12804
|
There are no independent natural kinds - or our classifications have to be subjective
[Locke, by Jolley]
|
12547
|
We know five properties of gold, but cannot use four of them to predict the fifth one
[Locke]
|
11862
|
Leibniz was not an essentialist
[Leibniz, by Wiggins]
|
7161
|
The essence of a thing is only an opinion about the 'thing'
[Nietzsche]
|
14170
|
Change is obscured by substance, a thing's nature, subject-predicate form, and by essences
[Russell]
|
13590
|
Essences can make sense in a particular context or enquiry, as the most basic predicates
[Quine]
|
10930
|
Quantification into modal contexts requires objects to have an essence
[Quine]
|
10929
|
Aristotelian essence of the object has become the modern essence of meaning
[Quine]
|
8482
|
Mathematicians must be rational but not two-legged, cyclists the opposite. So a mathematical cyclist?
[Quine]
|
12136
|
Cyclist are not actually essentially two-legged
[Brody on Quine]
|
5451
|
Popper felt that ancient essentialism was a bar to progress
[Popper, by Mautner]
|
18890
|
Putnam smuggles essentialism about liquids into his proof that water must be H2O
[Salmon,N on Putnam]
|
15753
|
Essences might support Resemblance Nominalism, but they are too coarse and ill-defined
[Armstrong]
|
13578
|
The old idea that identity depends on essence and behaviour is rejected by the empiricists
[Ellis]
|
8555
|
There is no subset of properties which guarantee a thing's identity
[Shoemaker]
|
14632
|
Quine may have conflated de re and de dicto essentialism, but there is a real epistemological problem
[Jackson]
|
15266
|
We say the essence of particles is energy, but only so we can tell a story about the nature of things
[Harré/Madden]
|
13955
|
Essentialism is said to be unintelligible, because relative, if necessary truths are all analytic
[Cartwright,R]
|
12762
|
Bare particular anti-essentialism makes no sense within modal logic semantics
[Stalnaker]
|
14077
|
Essentialism for concreta is false, since they can come apart under two concepts
[Gibbard]
|
14638
|
Essentialism is false, because it implies the existence of necessary singular propositions
[McMichael]
|
14678
|
Any property is attached to anything in some possible world, so I am a radical anti-essentialist
[Salmon,N]
|
14225
|
Critics say that essences are too mysterious to be known
[Shalkowski]
|
12257
|
Could we replace essence with collections of powers?
[Oderberg]
|
15026
|
Essence (even if nonmodal) is not fundamental in metaphysics
[Sider]
|
15173
|
That the essence of water is its microstructure is a convention, not a discovery
[Sidelle]
|
15709
|
Essentialism is useful for predictions, but it is not the actual structure of reality
[Gelman]
|
14192
|
Essentialism must deal with charges of arbitrariness, and failure to reduce de re modality
[Paul,LA]
|
14197
|
An object's modal properties don't determine its possibilities
[Paul,LA]
|
15147
|
Cluster kinds are explained simply by sharing some properties, not by an 'essence'
[Chakravartty]
|
17876
|
Individual essences are just cobbled together classificatory predicates
[Almog]
|