Real Essentialism

by Oderberg, David S.

• ISBN13: 9780203356753
• ISBN10: 0203356756
• Copyright: 2007-11-22
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Summary

Real Essentialism presents a comprehensive defence of neo-Aristotelian essentialism. Do objects have essences? Must they be the kinds of things they are in spite of the changes they undergo? Can we know what things are really like can we define and classify reality? Many if not most philosophers doubt this, influenced by centuries of empiricism, and by the anti-essentialism of Wittgenstein, Quine, Popper, and other thinkers. Real Essentialism reinvigorates the tradition of realist, essentialist metaphysics, defending the reality and knowability of essence, the possibility of objective, immutable definition, and its relevance to contemporary scientific and metaphysical issues such as whether essence transcends physics and chemistry, the essence of life, the nature of biological species, and the nature of the person.

Table of Contents

Preface Acknowledgements 1. Contemporary Essentialism and Real Essentialism Against modalism Reductionism: the illusory search for inner constitution Why real essentialism? 2. Some Varieties of Anti-Essentialism Empiricist anti-essentialism Quinean animadversions Popper: avoiding "What-is?' questions Wittgenstein: the shadow of grammar 3. The Reality and Knowability of Essence 3.1 Why essences are real 3.2 The "problem' of the universal accidental 3.3 An empirical test for essence? 3.4 Coming to know essence 3.5 "Paradigms', "stereotypes', and classification 4. The Structure of Essence 4.1 Hylemorphism: act and potency 4.2 Substantial Form 4.3 Prime Matter 4.4 Substance 4.5 The immanence of essence 5. Essence and Identity 5.1 Real definition and the true law of identity 5.2 The Porphyrian Tree 5.3 The Analogy of Being 5.4 Individuation 5.5 Identity over time 6. Essence and Existence 6.1 The real distinction in contingent beings 6.2 Everything is contingentalmost 6.3 Powers 6.4 Laws of nature 7. Aspects of Essence 7.1 Kinds of accident 7.2 The nature of properties 7.3 Knowledge of essence via properties 7.4 Artefacts 7.5 Origin and constitution 8. Life 8.1 The essence of life 8.2 Kinds of organism 8.3 Against emergence 9. Species, Biological and Metaphysical 9.1 Is biological essentialism dead? 9.2 Against the cladistic species concept 9.3 Vagueness 9.4 A plea for morphology 10. The Person 10.1 The essence of personhood 10.2 Hylemorphic dualism 10.3 Consciousness, psychology, and the person 10.4 Form, body, and soul 10.5 Soul, intellect, and immateriality 10.6 Soul, identity, and material dependence 10.7 Conclusion