Essence and existence

Against the empiricism that sees in essences only names or habits of mind, Husserl holds that we have an intuition of essences themselves (Wesensschau): starting from an example, even an imagined one, free variation brings out the invariant without which the thing would no longer be what it is, its necessary structure. Red, number, a melody, the act of judging each have an ideal essence I can grasp with evidence, independently of any fact. Phenomenology is thus an eidetic science, of the general and the necessary, not a record of the merely existent; the existence precedes essence of his heirs will remain foreign to him.

Ideas I, §1-4 · Logical Investigations, II

The complete notion of each individual substance contains a priori all its past, present and future predicates: to be Caesar is to possess from all eternity the essence from which everything he will do follows. The individual is thus wholly determined by his intelligible essence, conceived by God before creation, a radical essentialism.

Discourse on Metaphysics, §8-13 (the complete notion, the case of Caesar)

Each substance has a principal attribute that constitutes its essence: thought for the mind, extension for the body. This determination of a fixed nature, prior and defining, amounts to a pronounced essentialism, the self's very existence being known through its essence as a thinking thing.

Principles of Philosophy, I, art. 53 · Meditations on First Philosophy, II and VI

For Spinoza, the actual essence of a thing is nothing but its conatus, the striving by which it perseveres in its being: everything, the human being included, acts and exists by following the necessity of its nature. Far from indeterminate, each being involves an eternal essence deduced from substance; what it can do, what it becomes, follows from what it is.

Ethics, III, props. 6-7 · Ethics, II, def. 2

One's identity is not to be constructed through one's choices: it is a given, eternal essence, the ātman (the Self), which precedes all existence and all action. The spiritual path creates nothing, it unveils what already is: to become oneself is to recognize the timeless essence that avidyā (ignorance) had concealed. This is a radical essentialism.

Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, IV · Śaṅkara, Commentary on the Brahma-Sūtras (Brahma-Sūtra-Bhāṣya)

Operari sequitur esse: acting follows being, each acts only in accordance with what he already is, and existence merely unrolls an essence given in advance. It is the exact opposite of existential freedom: one does not make oneself, one discovers oneself determined, and the only freedom is the metaphysical one of the intelligible character.

On the Freedom of the Will, ch. III

Deduction needs premises: to demonstrate a thing's properties one must start from a definition of its essence, and that essence must be graspable by the understanding alone, without recourse to experience. Hence the school's essentialism: things have intelligible, definable essences that reason reaches a priori. Spinoza thus deduces all the properties of substance from its definition alone, and Descartes grasps the essence of matter as pure extension, through the analysis of the piece of wax rather than through the senses. This is the exact reverse of empiricism, for which no essence precedes the observation of particular cases.

Spinoza, Ethics, I, definitions and first propositions · Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, part I

Each being has its own nature, its way of being so of itself, which wisdom consists in letting unfold rather than thwarting. To live well is not to invent oneself freely but to recover the uncarved block (pu), the unhewn simplicity one had before culture sculpted it. The ideal is not self-creation but a return to a given nature.

Dao De Jing, ch. 28 and 19 · Dao De Jing, ch. 32 and 37

There is in each a determinate, eternal essence, the self (ātman), which does not make itself by its choices but is from all eternity what it is, identical to brahman. Empirical existence, with its history and acts, adds nothing to this nature: it only veils it. This is a strong essentialism, the exact opposite of the idea that existence would precede essence, since the task is not to create oneself but to recognize what one has always been.

Upadeśasāhasrī · Commentary on the Bhagavad Gītā, II

The Socratic procedure lies entirely in the question what is it?: what is courage, piety, justice? To ask for the definition is to presuppose a single, stable essence behind the diversity of particular cases, one that inquiry must bring out. Knowing this common nature matters more than listing examples.

Plato, Euthyphro · Plato, Laches and Meno

For Epictetus, the human being has a determinate nature, reason, a fragment of the divine logos, which sets him apart from the animal and assigns his proper function. To live well is not to invent oneself but to fulfill this nature: to act as a rational being, in accordance with what we are by constitution.

Discourses, I, 6 and II, 9 · Enchiridion

Each thing has its own nature and end: man's is to live according to reason, and all morality consists in fulfilling that received essence. This Stoic essentialism sets a definition of man before his existence, against any idea of a freedom that would create itself without a model.

Meditations, V, 1 · Meditations, VIII, 12 · Meditations, X, 2

Seneca shares the Stoic essentialism: the human being possesses a rational nature, a spark of the logos, and wisdom consists in bringing it to completion. Nature has placed the seeds of virtue in everyone; to develop them, not to create oneself from nothing, is the task of existence.

Letters to Lucilius, 76 and 120

Stoicism assigns the human being a determinate nature, reason, a fragment of the logos that orders the cosmos; the very telos is formulated as living in agreement with nature. The good life is not self-invention but the fulfillment of this rational essence, common to all human beings.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VII · Cicero, On Ends, III

Epicurus reads the human end in nature itself: from the cradle, before any reasoning, the animal seeks pleasure and shuns pain. This given natural constitution defines the sovereign good and the successful life, an essentialism of natural ends set within a materialist frame.

Letter to Menoeceus · Cicero, On Ends, I

Kant grants the human being a rational nature that is not chosen: it is humanity as an end in itself, the source of dignity and the ground of the moral law. This rational essence is given and universal; but moral character is won through freedom, which tempers the essentialism without abolishing it.

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, II · Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View

Each being has a "way of being so of itself," the ziran that is to be let unfold: the sea bird dies if treated like a man, and one cripples the duck by trying to lengthen its legs. To live well is therefore not to create oneself freely but to espouse one's own native cast. Yet this nature is no fixed essence defined once and for all: it is fluid, open to metamorphoses, which holds Zhuangzi back from a clear-cut essentialism and places him more moderately on the side of the given against self-invention.

Zhuangzi, ch. 18 (the sea bird) · Zhuangzi, ch. 8 (the duck's legs)

Cynicism measures life against nature (physis) as opposed to convention (nomos): there is a natural human condition, self-sufficient and shameless like that of the animals, which civilization has covered over and which must be recovered. Nature is the norm, not an identity to be invented.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VI

Epicureanism grounds ethics on a given nature: every living being, from birth, seeks pleasure and shuns pain, and it is this natural constitution that reveals the human end. To live well is to follow nature rightly understood, not to redefine oneself freely.

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus · Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

Taoism holds that each being has its spontaneous nature (ziran), received from the Tao, and flourishes by following it rather than by fashioning itself. The sage returns to the uncarved block (pu), original simplicity, against the distortions of artifice and convention: to preserve a given nature, not to create one.

Laozi, Tao Te Ching, ch. 28 and 19 · Zhuangzi

The whole of Bentham's science rests on a constant human nature: the human being is governed by pleasure and pain, everywhere and always. This given hedonic psychology is the fixed bedrock from which morals and legislation are calculated, rather than a nature to be invented or transformed.

Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, I

Diogenes presupposes a natural human condition, made of simple needs and shameless like that of the animals, which civilization has covered over and which must be recovered: nature is a norm to be uncovered, not an identity to be invented. But this nature remains for him a negative criterion, what subsists once artifice is removed, without the metaphysics of a fixed essence; hence a moderate naturalist position rather than an emphatic essentialism.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VI, 70-71

The project of a science of man presupposes a universal and stable human nature: beneath the diversity of customs, everywhere the same faculties, the same passions, the same reason. It is this underlying identity that makes possible rights valid for all and a morality that is not the mere reflection of local custom. Yet the essentialism remains moderate: human nature is one, but its faculties are latent and develop through education, so that man is less a fixed essence than a capacity to form himself.

Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sect. VIII · Diderot, article "Homme" in the Encyclopédie

Utilitarianism takes as given a hedonic human nature, governed by pleasure and pain, the universal bedrock of the calculus of utilities. This common psychology grounds the moral science, even if Mill grafts onto it the demand for individuality and self-development, which tempers Bentham's essentialism.

Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, I · Mill, Utilitarianism

Confucianism assumes a common human nature, held to be good in its orthodoxy (Mencius' four sprouts), but one that is fulfilled only through long self-cultivation, study and the rites. A moderate essentialism, then: a given essence, whose realization nonetheless depends entirely on formation.

Mencius, II A and VI A · Analects, XVII.2

Confucius says little of human nature, save that by nature men are close, by practice they grow apart. The common ground is thin, and it is self-cultivation, study and the rites that make the gentleman: what is essential plays out in formation more than in a given essence, hence a position near the center, barely inclined toward the given.

Analects (Lunyu), XVII.2 and V.13

Lacking a divine order or a given nature, man is defined by what he makes of the absurd: he has no prior essence and constitutes himself in revolt and action. This nearness to existential thought stays tempered by Camus's refusal of an absolutely founding freedom, unlike the existentialists.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) · The Rebel (1951)

Pragmatism distrusts fixed essences posited before experience: concepts, species and institutions are products of a history and a practice, shaped by their functions rather than given once and for all. Dewey, marked by Darwinism, thinks of forms as provisional stabilizations within a becoming: doing and becoming take priority over finished being. The leaning is existentialist in the broad sense of the primacy of existence over essence.

Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy (1910) · James, Pragmatism (1907), lecture IV

Impermanence (anicca) and not-self (anattā) deny any fixed, substantial essence of beings: nothing has a stable nature of its own, all is conditioned process, arisen from causes and bound to dissolve. There is no substance-soul to be discovered beforehand, only a becoming to be understood, which sets Gautama clearly apart from essentialism without thereby making him a modern existentialist.

Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta, Saṃyutta Nikāya 22.59 (the aggregates are impermanent and not-self) · Dhammapada, XX, 277-279 (all is impermanent, not-self)

Marx rejects the idea of a fixed, ahistorical human essence: what human beings are changes with their mode of production. Human nature is not an abstraction lodged in each individual but the precipitate of historically determined social relations; it is a product of history, not a given prior to be fulfilled.

Theses on Feuerbach, VI · The German Ideology, I

Buddhism denies any permanent essence: there is no self (anatta), only a flux of impermanent, conditioned aggregates, with no substantial core that would persist. The denial of essence is radical, but it issues in no freedom of self-creation: it is the very idea of a fixed self that dissolves.

Samyutta Nikaya, XXII (the aggregates) · Milindapañha (the parable of the chariot)

Marxism historicizes human nature: there is no fixed essence inherent in the individual, man is the product of social relations that change with modes of production. What we are is not a prior given but the transformable result of a material history.

Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, VI · Marx and Engels, The German Ideology

Locke refuses innate essences: the mind is born a blank slate, and what a person becomes owes to experience and education. In metaphysics, we reach only nominal essences, our own classifications, not the real nature of things, which strips essence of its determining role.

Essay concerning Human Understanding, II, 1 and III, 3 · Some Thoughts concerning Education

Man differs from the animal less by understanding than by perfectibility, that faculty of transforming oneself indefinitely which leaves him with no nature fixed in advance. What man is, he becomes through his history; his very nature is to be undetermined, which distantly heralds the idea that existence precedes essence.

Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

Empiricism undoes essences: we know only nominal essences, our classifications, not the real nature of things (Locke), and the self is but a bundle of perceptions (Hume). The newborn mind is a blank page, so that what a person becomes owes to experience, not to an innate nature, though without a free self-fashioning.

Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, III, 3 · Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, I, 4

Hume dissolves fixed essences: we know no real essence of substances, and the self itself is but a bundle of perceptions in flux, with no permanent core. What we become is forged by custom and habit more than by an assigned nature, without amounting for all that to a free self-fashioning, the human being remaining largely shaped.

A Treatise of Human Nature, I, 4, 6 · An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding

Against the idea of a fixed nature to be poured into the molds of custom, Mill holds that human nature is not a machine, but a tree that must grow and unfold from within. Each has to choose his own plan of life: individuality and self-development prevail over any preset model, even if an organic ground remains to be cultivated.

On Liberty, ch. III