Monday, May 08, 2006

essence

Quick Definition: intrinsic property; concentrated extract of a substance that retains its fundamental properties; 정; perfume or scent; 향수; 향
essence (ĕs'əns) pronunciation
n.
  1. The intrinsic or indispensable properties that serve to characterize or identify something.
  2. The most important ingredient; the crucial element.
  3. The inherent, unchanging nature of a thing or class of things.
    1. An extract that has the fundamental properties of a substance in concentrated form.
    2. Such an extract in a solution of alcohol.
    3. A perfume or scent.
  4. One that has or shows an abundance of a quality as if highly concentrated: a neighbor who is the essence of hospitality.
  5. Something that exists, especially a spiritual or incorporeal entity.
idioms:

in essence

  1. By nature; essentially: He is in essence a reclusive sort.
of the essence
  1. Of the greatest importance; crucial: Time is of the essence.

[Middle English essencia and French essence, both from Latin essentia, from esse, to be, from the presumed present participle *essēns, *essent- (on the model of differentia, difference, from differēns, different-, present participle of differre, to differ), created to translate Greek ousiā (from ousa, feminine present participle of einai, to be).]







essence

noun

  1. A basic trait or set of traits that define and establish the character of something: being, essentiality, nature, quintessence, substance, texture. See surface/depth.
  2. The most central and material part: core, gist, heart, kernel, marrow, meat, nub, pith, quintessence, root1, soul, spirit, stuff, substance. Law gravamen. See be.





essence
n

Definition: significance
Antonyms: peripherals






essence, in philosophy, the nature of a thing. Aristotle maintained that there is a distinction between the form of a thingits intelligible, verbally formulable characterand the essence of a thing, i.e., what it is in itself, which is not common to anything else. The essence of a thing is what is formulated as a universal in the mind and in language. St. Thomas Aquinas distinguished between the essence of a thing and the fact of its being, or its existence. In modern existentialist thought Jean-Paul Sartre made use of Aquinas's distinction between essence and existence but reversed them by insisting that existence precedes essence. By this he asserted that people do not have predetermined natures; what a person is follows from the choices he or she makes.






Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun essence has 4 meanings:

Meaning #1: the choicest or most essential or most vital part of some idea or experience
Synonyms: kernel, substance, core, center, gist, heart, heart and soul, inwardness, marrow, meat, nub, pith, sum, nitty-gritty

Meaning #2: any substance possessing to a high degree the predominant properties of a plant or drug or other natural product from which it is extracted

Meaning #3: the central meaning or theme of a speech or literary work
Synonyms: effect, burden, core, gist

Meaning #4: a toiletry that emits and diffuses a fragrant odor
Synonym: perfume






essence
Alternate uses: see essence (disambiguation).

In philosophy, essence is the attribute (or set of attributes) that make an object or substance what it fundamentally is, and that it has necessarily, in contrast with accident, properties that the object or substance has contingently and without which the substance could have existed. The notion of essence has acquired many slightly but importantly different shades of meaning throughout the history of philosophy; most of them derive from its use by Aristotle and its evolution within the scholastic tradition.

Based on such considerations, essence was a key notion of alchemy (cf. quintessence).

Modern Philosophy

In the modern period, some philosopherssuch as George Santayanahave kept the vocabulary of essences but have abolished the distinction between essence and accidents. For Santayana, the essence of a being is simply everything about it, independent of the question of existence. Essence is what-ness as distinct from that-ness.

Existentialism

Existentialism is founded on Jean-Paul Sartre's statement that existence precedes essence. In as much as essence is a cornerstone of all metaphysical philosophy and the grounding of Rationalism, Sartre's statement was a refutation of the philosophical system that had come before him (and, in particular, that of Husserl, Hegel, and Heidegger). Instead of is-ness generating actuality, he argued that existence and actuality come first, and the essence is derived afterward.

In metaphysics

Essence, in metaphysics, is often synonymous with the soul, and some existentialists argue that individuals gain their souls and spirits after they exist, that they develop their souls and spirits during their lifetimes. For Kierkegaard, however, the emphasis was upon essence as nature. For him, there is no such thing as human nature that determines how a human will behave or what a human will be. First, he or she exists, and then comes attribute. Jean-Paul Sartre's more materialist and skeptical existentialism furthered this existentialist tenet by flatly refuting any metaphysical essence, any soul, and arguing instead that there is merely existence, with attributes as essence.

Thus, in existentialist discourse, essence can refer to physical aspect or attribute, to the ongoing being of a person (the character or internally determined goals), or to the infinite inbound within the human (which can be lost, can atrophy, or can be developed into an equal part with the finite), depending upon the type of existentialist discourse.

Marxism's anti-essentialism

In contrast to Idealism and Aristotle-derived philosophies that argue for an essence before all actuality or existence, materialism rejects essence altogether. Karl Marx was, along with Kierkegaard, a follower of Hegel's, and he, too, developed a philosophy in reaction to his master. In his dialectical materialism, the zeitgeist of Hegel (an overriding essence) is replaced by a purely deterministic set of material clashes. Marxist philosophy and economic analysis, therefore, is wholly anti-essentialist. There is no trans-historical anything, in Marxist thought. Historical moments determine utterly the self. There is no universal human nature, no essence, and no universal essence of objects, either.

Buddhism

Within the Madhyamika school of Mahayana Buddhism, Candrakirti identifies the self as being:

an essence of things that does not depend on others; it is an intrinsic nature. The non-existence of that is selflessness.
-- Bodhisattvayogacaryācatuḥśatakaṭikā 256.1.7

Indeed the concept of Buddhist Emptiness, is the strong assertion that all phenomena are empty of any essence - demonstrating that anti-essentialism lies at the very root of Buddhist praxis. Therefore, within this school it is the innate belief in essence that is considered to be a cognitive obscuration which serves to cause all suffering. However, the school also rejects the tenets of Idealism and Materialism; instead, the ideas of truth or existence, along with any assertions that depend upon them are limited to their function within the contexts and conventions that assert them, akin to Relativism or Pragmatism. For them, replacement paradoxes such as Ship of Theseus are answered by stating that the Ship of Thesesus remains so (within the conventions that assert it) until it ceases to function as the Ship of Theseus.

Essentiast

Essentiast Thinking, developed by the post-modern philosopher Anastasia, deals with Essence as the pure spirit of action, or emotion, specifically one of great passion. Essentiast thinking believes that one must experience Essence in creative ways, such as through self-expression.

See also





essence

Common misspelling(s) of essence

  • essense





Translations for: Essence

Nederlands (Dutch)
essentie, wezenlijkheid, essence (concentraat), parfum, grond

Franais (French)
essence, parfum, me

Deutsch (German)
n. - Essenz, Wesen

ή (Greek)
n. (ί) ί, (.) έ έ, ά, ά

Italiano (Italian)
essenza, essere

Portugus (Portuguese)
n. - essncia (f), mago (m)

Русский (Russian)
сущность, существо, эссенция

Espaol (Spanish)
n. - esencia, perfume, extracto, fondo

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - vsen, innersta vsen

中国话 (Simplified Chinese)
n. - 基本, 原素, 本质

中國話 (Traditional Chinese)
n. - 基本, 原素, 本質

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 本質, 真髄, エキス, 精

العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) جوهر الشيء

עברית (Hebrew)‬
n. - ‮עיקר, תמצית, המציאות שבבסיסה של תופעה‬





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