Essentialism

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)

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

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 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

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

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

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)

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

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