29.6: Essentialism

Let’s wrap up this section by considering a view in metaphysics that often goes hand-in-hand with a belief in purpose – essentialism. Essentialism is the ontological view that objects, beings and concepts have essences – the what-it-is-to-be-a-thing – and anything lacking that essence is not a true instance of the thing. This is often tied up with the concept of purpose – what is the thing for? – which is why this is closely tied to teleology. For instance, horses – and only horses – have the essence of horse-ness, setting them apart from donkeys, zebras, etc.

Although essentialism was the standard view for centuries, it’s a lot harder to make sense of today. We now know that species don’t remain stagnant over time – the horses of Aristotle’s day are not biologically (nor essentially) identical to the horses of today. And once we start talking about the hybridization of species, things get even crazier. Is the essence of a mule 50% horse-ness and 50% donkey-ness? Does a new essence – mule-ness – get created at that magic moment when horse and donkey genetic material comingle? None of these answers look great.

This topic might seem antiquated, low-stakes, or both, but essentialism is actually alive and well in some circles – and doing quite a bit of harm – in the form of gender essentialism. This is the view that there is something essential about man-ness, and woman-ness, such that the two categories are rigid, distinct, and unchanging. Gender essentialists reject the validity of transgender identity and gender nonbinary identity. And, harkening back to the discussion of teleology, tend to have very firm ideas about men and women’s purposes. It should surprise no one to learn that men’s purposes include being powerful and in control, and women’s purposes include being nurturing and submissive.

The problem is, gender essentialism flies in the face of both biological evidence and the lived experience of countless individuals. Biologists have long understood that the idea of just two sexes – male and female – is inaccurate. The vast majority of human beings can be biologically classified as XX or XY, but 1-2% of us are neither, and are instead classified as intersex.

What’s more, about .6% of Americans today identify as transgender or gender nonbinary. A gender essentialist will diagnose such identification as a mental disorder, because they have already accepted a schema that does not allow for the possibility that the testimony of individuals regarding their own experience of being a person of a certain type could be accurate.

Essentialism is pretty hard to reconcile with a modern understanding of biology. So, why does this view stick around? The status quo bias very often lurks in the background when we talk of essentialism. When one’s understanding of the world is comfortable, there’s no reason to question it, and in fact every reason to continue to double down on its acceptance. A good way to do this is to insist that this is “simply the way it is,” at a deep down, essential level. This can be really detrimental to our understanding of the what-is-it-ness of our world, though. There are countless examples of scientific breakthroughs that were significantly delayed due to an insistence that something was a certain way, which prevented researchers from seeing that it plainly was not. We can thank Aristotle for asserting that every living organism is either a plant or an animal. These were essential categories, and everything must fit into one or the other. We can’t fault Aristotle for not realizing, thousands of years before the invention of the microscope, that the world is full of microscopic organisms. But we can blame an unwillingness to think outside of the established frame for the fact that it took us several hundred years after the discovery of these little beings to stop trying to awkwardly shove them into one of the two available categories, and instead to revise our understanding of the kingdom taxonomy.

The problem with essence talk is the essences are usually assigned by people who have already accepted a certain schema. If Wilbur operates within a schema that says Ghostbusters are male, then a female Ghostbuster will automatically be ruled out. Where does it say that maleness is an essential property of ‘busters? Nowhere. But, just as the students “remembered” books in graduate students’ offices that weren’t actually there, because their “office schema” contained books, so Wilber will be confident that a female instantiation of a Ghostbuster must be a fraud.