Anti-essentialism denotes the philosophical position that disputes unchanging essential forms (essentia, quidditas). On this view there is no abiding nature of things and no abiding nature of the human being — there are only processes, constructions, historical attributions. What the human being is is not discovered but made.
For the question of personhood, anti-essentialism is a fundamental challenge: if there is no essential form of the human being, then there is also no substance of the person that remains the same through all changes. The person then becomes a bundle of properties, a construct, a name for a particular configuration — but not a someone who is.
Roots
Anti-essentialism has two main roots. The first is empiricism (Locke, Hume): if only sense experience yields knowledge, the essential form is not knowable, because it is not an object of the senses. The second is dialectical thinking (Hegel): if contradiction is the truth of being and everything is caught up in becoming, then there is no abiding essence.
Both strands converge in contemporary philosophy: constructivism, historicism, and post-structuralism dispute the possibility of knowing the essence of the human being — and thereby the basis of the substance-ontological concept of person.
Consequences for personal ontology
Without an essential form there is no agere sequitur esse: for if the person has no abiding essence, her acting follows no being. Without an essential form there is no ontological dignity: for dignity presupposes that the person is something that merits respect — not merely that she does something. Without an essential form there is no first dimension of personhood: for the fundamental spiritual existence is precisely the being of the essential form.
Vittorio Possenti has shown that anti-essentialism leads to the dissolution of the principle of personhood: without an essentia there is no principium persona — no principle that constitutes the person as person and distinguishes it from everything non-personal.
Thomistic response
The Thomistic tradition counters: the essential form is not an addition to being, but that by which a being is what it is. It is not constructed, but belongs to being itself. Thomas distinguishes essentia and esse — essence and the act of being — and shows that both together make up concrete reality. The essence of the human being — the rational soul as the form of the body — is not negotiable, because it is not an attribution but the ontological ground that makes the human being human.
Chapter assignment: Chapter 5: Oblivion of the Person (German), Chapter 3: Concept of Person (German)
Ontological classification: Subclass of: Theoretical Oblivion of the Person. Denies: essential form, substance.
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Possenti, Vittorio (2013): Il nuovo principio persona. Rome: Armando.
- Spaemann, Robert (1996): Persons. The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’, transl. Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
- Stockhausen, Alma von (1990): Der Geist im Widerspruch — Von Luther zu Hegel. Weilheim-Bierbronnen: Gustav-Siewerth-Akademie (German).