|
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. In Western thought the concept is found in 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".〔Janicki 274.〕 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". In biology and other natural sciences, essentialism provided the basis for and rationale of taxonomy at least until the time of Charles Darwin;〔Ereshefsky 8.〕 the precise role and importance of essentialism in biology is still a matter of debate.〔Hull, "Essentialism in Taxonomy" passim.〕 In gender studies, essentialism (summarized as the basic proposition that men and women are essentially different) continues to be a matter of contention. Essentialism was particularly important to the development of the scientific theories that led to racial science and the construction of different categories for different races. It was scientific essentialism that led to the development of modern notions of race due to the persistent desire for a protean theory that could explain all forms of life on earth that would explain the essence of the life force. French structuralist feminism was often accused of subscribing to an essentialism, which was set in contrast to gender constructionism.〔Fuss 2-6.〕 ==In philosophy== An ''essence'' characterizes a substance or a form, in the sense of the Forms or Ideas in Platonic idealism. It is permanent, unalterable, and eternal; and present in every possible world. Classical humanism has an essentialist conception of the human being, which means that it believes in an eternal and unchangeable human nature. The idea of an unchangeable human nature has been criticized by Kierkegaard, Marx, Heidegger, Sartre, and many other existential thinkers. In Plato's philosophy (in particular, the ''Timaeus'' and the ''Philebus''), things were said to come into being in this world by the action of a demiurge who works to form chaos into ordered entities. Many definitions of essence hark back to the ancient Greek hylomorphic understanding of the formation of the things of this world. According to that account, the structure and real existence of any thing can be understood by analogy to an artifact produced by a craftsman. The craftsman requires ''hyle'' (timber or wood) and a model, plan or idea in his own mind according to which the wood is worked to give it the indicated contour or form (''morphe''). Aristotle was the first to use the terms ''hyle'' and ''morphe''. According to his explanation, all entities have two aspects, "matter" and "form". It is the particular form imposed that gives some matter its identity, its quiddity or "whatness" (i.e., its "what it is"). Plato was one of the first essentialists, believing in the concept of ideal forms, an abstract entity of which individual objects are mere facsimiles. To give an example; the ideal form of a circle is a perfect circle, something that is physically impossible to make manifest, yet the circles that we draw and observe clearly have some ''idea'' in common — this idea is the ideal form. Plato believed that these ideas are eternal and vastly superior to their manifestations in the world, and that we understand these manifestations in the material world by comparing and relating them to their respective ideal form. Plato's forms are regarded as patriarchs to essentialist dogma simply because they are a case of what is intrinsic and a-contextual of objects — the abstract properties that makes them what they are. For more on forms, read Plato's parable of the cave. Karl Popper splits the ambiguous term ''realism'' into ''essentialism'' and ''realism''. He uses ''essentialism'' whenever he means the opposite of nominalism, and ''realism'' only as opposed to idealism. Popper himself is a realist as opposed to an idealist, but a methodological nominalist as opposed to an essentialist. For example, statements like "a puppy is a young dog" should be read from right to left, as an answer to "What shall we call a young dog"; never from left to right as an answer to "What is a puppy?"〔''The Open Society and its Enemies'', passim.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「essentialism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|