The idea of Essentialism is as old as philosophy itself. The basic idea of essentialism is that behind the appearances of things, there is a fundamental, unchanging reality. Even before Socrates, there was a group of philosophers known as the pre-Socratics who believed that the world was made of different substances. Heraclitus might have been an exception, as he believed the world was made of fire, which is always changing. He is supposedly the one who came up with the idea that you can never step into the same river twice. Plato came up with the strongest vision of essentialism, when he said that the ultimate reality was made of perfect Forms. These Forms are the ideas of things that actually exist in the world, and they are timeless, unchanging and absolute. There might be different chairs in the world, but somewhere there exists the Perfect chair, which allows us to recognize different versions of that chair. This simple idea has taken many twists and turns. With Christianity, it became the idea of the soul, the idea that there is a part of us which is immortal and never changes, despite all the other changes we go through in life. Today, we recognize essentialism in the idea that each person's DNA defines them. It is also a core concept behind any form of racism, sexism, or prejudice. It is the idea that a person can be identified by one feature that is more fundamental than any other feature about them. Essentialism has contributed to the rise of modern science, much of which has been about discovering the properties of things hidden from view. Think of the Periodic Table in chemistry, which allows us to predict the properties of chemicals by their atomic number. Or think of the categorization of species in biology. Tell me that an animal is a mammal, and I will instantly know that they give birth to their young, even if that animal looks like no other mammal I am familiar with. A whale is a mammal, and even though it may look and behave more like a fish, I know it's young doesn't come from eggs. So essentialism has been the engine, the power house, of much human development. But from the earliest times, there have also been lineages of wisdom that question essentialism. Buddhism has the insight of inter being or co-arising. It says that no entity can exist in isolation from its context. Things come into existence in a complex web of interdependency. It makes no sense to speak of a flower separate from the soil, the air, the insects that give it life. Quantum physics also questions essentialism. It is impossible to make sense of subatomic particles as isolated entities. Quarks, leptons, etc are more like relationships. They don't exist in a single time and place. So this is the landscape of essentialism. It seems to have been practically useful for us to achieve control over the natural world, it is doubtful whether it is in any sense true of the world. The branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of reality is called metaphysics, and we might say that essentialism is a false metaphysical idea. Another interesting thing about essentialism is that it seems to be hardwired into us, because experiments done on children as young as 4 year olds show that they see the world through an essentialist lens. My suggestion is that we should teach about essentialism in schools, so that we are aware of this thing that is built into our brains. This awareness will help us combat racism and other forms of stereotyping. For instance, we would let go of the idea that sex is a fixed thing. Indigenous wisdom is an accessible way of seeing the world in non-essentialist terms. Everyone should read Sand Talk. Essentialism also shows up when we make plans for our future selves, like when we try to give up smoking for health reasons. Or when we punish criminals. These are all dependent on the idea that there is a fixed, unchanging self to which all these things can happen to. What would happen if we gave up on that idea? It would alter our systems of crime and punishment. When we refer to an enduring identity, like Unsu or Singapore, this is just an illusion. Every cell in my body has changed from 7 years ago, and there has been a complete turnover of Singaporeans since the country started calling itself by its name. We use proper names as a shorthand, a tool of convenience. But nouns only betray our need for stability and predictability. It would be more accurate to use verbs. I'm not Unsu. I'm Unsu-ing. Indigenous cultures use more verbs than nouns. Essentialism can also explain divorces. We tend to explain the actions of others using an essentialist theory - they are always like that - but explain our own actions with a more understanding Buddhist approach - my actions co-arose because of my circumstances. This gap in understanding the intentions of the other party and our own gives rise to "irreconcilable differences". The Spiderverse film also reveals another aspect of essentialism. It is the idea that Spider-Man is always Spider-Man in every universe, even if in that universe he is a pig. We would not be able to follow this story without some concept of essentialism. Phenomenology is a philosophy against essentialism. So is existentialism. The point is not that essentialism is bad. This is a trap of labels, of language. The point is to be aware that there are other options of looking at the world. One that does not rely on essentialism. However, to get to these ways of looking at the world requires us to experience some discomfort. We will feel momentarily at sea, lost in a floating world, without any anchor. This is the anxiety of the existentialists. Essentialism is related to set theory in mathematics. The Greeks thought that there was not much difference between men and women. The father of medicine, Hippocrates, from whom we get the Hippocratic Oath, thought that sperm and menstrual blood were made of the same substance. Aristotle thought that the differences between men and women was in their genitalia. He believed that a castrated man became a woman. Even Galen, who revolutionised anatomy, thought that men and women were mostly the same. In fact, it may be surprising to learn this, but our modern ideas of men and women only came about in the 18th century. The problem of essentialism is also the problem of language. Every time we try to pick out something's essence, we have to use language. And very often, we confuse our labels for reality. It's like the Zen teacher who points at the moon, and tells his students not to mistake his finger pointing for the actual moon. But how is it possible for us to use language if there's no essence out there for it to point to? At some point, wouldn't our labels slip from reality, like a poorly made post-it? Zen Buddhism and Indigenous wisdom agree on one thing - there is no such thing as an "I", an individual, separate point of consciousness which remains unchanging and unfixed, and to which life and consciousness happens to. This is an illusion. My rational, conscious, language-using, planning, deliberating, presenting, arguing "I" is just one of the many aspects of my larger self, most of which are unknown to me. The Ship of Theseus. Convergence of Buddhism, Taoism, Heraclitus, Indigenous wisdom. Patterns, like the swirls and eddies of water, are persistent. Like complex systems. Like Hofstadtter's Strange Loop. Principles of Non-Essentialism: - Think in verbs, not nouns - Be ok with uncertainty; let go of your need for anchors - Be wary of labels - Relish the appearance of things Susan Gelman's examples of psychological essentialism: - The president of Harvard recently suggested that the relative scarcity of women in "high-end" science and engineering professions is attributable in large part to male-female differences in intrinsic aptitude (Summers, 2005). - In a nationally representative survey of Black and White Americans, most adults agreed with the statement, "Two people from the same race will always be more genetically similar to each other than two people from different races" (Jayaratne, 2001). - Nearly half the U.S. population reject evolutionary theory, finding it implausible that one species can transform into another (Evans, 2001). - A recent study of heart transplant recipients found that over one third believed that they might take on qualities or personality characteristics of the person who had donated the heart (Inspector, Kutz, & David, 2004). One woman reported that she sensed her donor's "male energy" and "purer essence" (Sylvia & Novak, 1997; pp. 107, 108). - It is estimated that roughly half of all adopted people search for a birth parent at some point in their lives (Müller & Perry, 2001). - People place higher value on authentic objects than exact copies (ranging from an original Picasso painting to Britney Spears's chewed-up gum; Frazier & Gelman, 2005). --- Sources: https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-philosophers-philosopher-saul-kripke-illuminates-identity