essentialism

Essentialism

• 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 as early as 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.

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