Essentialism

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The essentialism (of lat. Essentia "essence") is in the philosophy of the view that entities possess the necessary properties.

The expression essence (Greek ousia , Latin essentia, quidditas ) has a double meaning in philosophical usage. In the tradition of Aristotle it first of all denotes the self-sufficient concrete individual . In a second sense, “essence” denotes the general and permanent determinacy of a concrete individual. The “entity” also stands for the essence of an object in the sense of an element necessary for the existence and identity of the object.

philosophy

Aristotle

In philosophy, essentialism is traced back to Plato and Aristotle . The Aristotelian concept formation was significantly incorporated into theology and scholasticism by Thomas Aquinas . In Leibniz's terms, this teaching says that there are necessary and contingent properties of things, regardless of how we conceptualize or describe things.

Duhem

First, the term essentialism was introduced by Pierre Duhem in 1916 ( essentialisme (French)) as a philosophical-historical category and describes medieval conceptions according to which the beings intended for creation have a timeless, essential existence. Étienne Gilson expanded this category and used it for all occidental theories that proceed from the “ontological primacy of essentia over existentia”.

Criticism of Poppers

Important information is still missing in this section. Help Wikipedia by researching and pasting it .

For Karl R. Popper , essentialism or the “essence philosophy” goes back to the view that a definition can be right or wrong by expressing the “ essence ” of a term. According to Popper's own theory of definitions , definitions are in principle arbitrary because they are based on agreement. All really essential concepts of a theory are therefore the undefined basic concepts for Popper.

Quine

Because of "Aristotelian essentialism", Willard Van Orman Quine thought he had to discard the quantified modal logic . However, he did not clarify which position on this question Aristotle can actually be ascribed to. Based on texts by Aristotle, Michael-Thomas Liske discusses the extent to which a kind of essentialism for characterizing individuals can be maintained, and defends this against Quine's demand for an exclusive consideration of extensionality : the difference in meaning between two extensionally equivalent specifications can be scientifically significant because they are different Can have explanatory potential.

Social sciences

feminism

Within the theory of the social sciences, the concept of essentialism plays a decisive role in contemporary feminist discussions. Essentialism means a generalizing reduction to gender-specific stereotypes, from which (in counter-dependency ) feminist recommendations / demands for action are (can) be derived: For example, the woman should not unconditionally submit to the will of her husband, should strive for (professional) "self-realization" (“Career feminism”), should not be allowed to be absorbed in the (socially insufficiently respected) role of mother and wife (cf. Mies ' housewifeisation , cf. criticism by Nancy Fraser ).

While difference feminism is criticized in the current feminist ( gender ) discourse as biological or "maternalistic" determinism and thus as essentialist, in global (system) feminism ( western feminism according to Mohanty 1986) there are cultural essentialist tendencies that are necessary (to Agendas) u. A. be financially supported or promoted by the population lobby (especially since Cairo 1994 ).

Within cultural essentialism , for example, the unreflective attribution of the tendency to (sexual) oppression of the “third world woman” towards (her) “patriarchal-raw” man is a classic example. From a justification of feminist (western) theoretical discussions on (well-intentioned) In favor of the “third world woman” against patriarchal structures, there is no general thanks to legitimize interventions. Sometimes the diversity mainstreaming approach continues to be accused of “being shaped by ethnocentric white feminisms”.

“Meanwhile, the idea that women are an oppressed collective in a patriarchal society still exists among some white feminists. In doing so, they ignore nothing less than the entanglements of social, structural inequality relationships in a racist, capitalist system or overlook them because they want to and make themselves accomplices of it. "

- Sabine Mohamed

Cultural studies

In cultural studies, especially in intercultural studies , essentialism is used to describe the idea that people from the same cultural areas - mostly understood as territories - are homogeneous. Accordingly, there is a common cultural core that all members of a culture "essentially" share. Their behavior is determined by their cultural affiliation. The work of cultural scientists Geert Hofstede and Edward T. Hall is based on this concept and the desire to be able to firmly grasp and grasp cultures. Newer, constructivist understandings of culture, especially multi-collectivity , reject this approach and criticize that cultural essentialism is oversimplified, forms the basis for discrimination and ignores cultural dynamics.

literature

  • Georg Kamp: Essentialism. In: Jürgen Mittelstraß (Hrsg.): Encyclopedia Philosophy and Philosophy of Science. 2nd Edition. 2005, pp. 398-404.
  • Helmut Schneider: Essentialism. In: Joachim Ritter (Hrsg.): Historical dictionary of philosophy [HWPh]. Volume 2. Schwabe, Basel 1972, pp. 751-753.

Web links

Wiktionary: Essentialism  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rudolf-Peter Hägler: Critique of the new essentialism. Paderborn Munich Vienna Zurich 1994, p. 10
  2. ^ Rainbow, Meyer: Dictionary of Philosophical Terms. Meiner, Hamburg 2005. Keyword “essentialism”.
  3. ^ Karl Popper: The two basic problems of epistemology. Edited by Troels Eggers Hansen. 2nd Edition. Tübingen 1994, ISBN 3-16-145774-9 , p. 177
  4. ↑ Michael-Thomas Liske: Aristoteles and the Aristotelian essentialism. Individual, species, genus. Freiburg, Munich 1985. p. 19; see. Ulrich Nortmann: Modal syllogisms, possible worlds, essentialism. An Analysis of Aristotelian Modal Logic. ISBN 978-3-11-014660-8
  5. ↑ “Career feminism, which strives for equality through adaptation and not through criticism of power relations.” (Wichterich 2011: Together and Different ).
  6. ↑ Nancy Fraser (2013): “Neoliberalism truly turns straw into gold when it turns the whole thing into a narrative of women's empowerment [ empowerment , cf. OECD, World Bank etc.] rewrote. He invokes the feminist criticism of the family breadwinner household to justify exploitation, and thus suspends the dream of women's emancipation in front of the car of capital accumulation ”.
  7. ^ "Women's Studies (or Feminist Studies) is increasingly being replaced by Gender Studies which was supposed to increase the number of male students." (Renate Klein [2008]: From Test-Tube Women to Bodies without Women. Shorted Reprint (2015) in: Mutterschaft im Patriarchat [PDF], p. 162, footnote 95).
  8. ^ Ingrid Galster: French Feminism. On the relationship between equality and difference. In: Handbook women and gender studies. Theory, methods, empiricism (Eds. Ruth Becker, Beate Kortendiek). Wiesbaden 2010, p. 46.
  9. ↑ Susanne Schultz (1998): Feminist Population Policy? Regarding the international debate about self-determination : “In view of decades of discussion and organization processes against anti-natalist programs in the third world, the question arises why and how this controversy arises today. One reason for the current interest of feminist activists in working with organizations such as the Ford Foundation, the Population Council and others is certainly the experience that they have increasingly financed feminist projects since the 1980s, including those that campaigned against population politics and at the same time feminist ones Have incorporated vocabulary into their discourses. In order to raise funds and to be able to continue influencing the population policy discussion, many feminists apparently consider it necessary to refer to the topic of population. "
  10. ↑ “[N] un serves the purpose of cultural essentialism to legitimize the transformation of supposedly modernization-inhibiting cultures. It is therefore always to be expected that ethnographic work on other cultures will be misused to transform these cultures. ”(Alois Moosmüller: Interkulturelle Kommunikation. Münster 2007, p. 25 f).
  11. ↑ In the Western feminism discourse, “traditional” was embedded in the already negatively connoted concept of patriarchy or was semantically linked to one another. See Mahnaz Afkhami: Towards Global Feminism. A Muslim Perspective. In: Radically Speaking. Feminism Reclaimed (Eds. Diane Bell, Renate Klein). Melbourne 1996, p. 525: "Since 'traditional' concepts are by definition founded in patriarchal discourse, global feminism must be skeptical of propositions that present them as liberating." Cf. Susanne Schultz: Hegemony - Governmentality - Biopower. Reproductive Risks and the Transformation of International Population Policy. Münster 2006, p. 181. See Rosemary McCabe (2013): The co-option of Human Rights and Feminist Rhetoric to justify the War on Terror (PDF).
  12. ↑ “The feminist dominance of the north over the south continued in the second women's movement from the 1960s. Feminists from the north assumed a globally structurally identical patriarchy and universal forms of male power and violence as well as female experiences of sacrifice. Women from the south rejected the western claim to leadership and the homogenizing construction, hurt by the fact that cultural differences and independent women's movements in the post-colonial states were not noticed. ”(Christa Wichterich [2011]: Together and Different ).
  13. ↑ "'Can the Subaltern Speak?' (1988) criticizes the speechlessness of the marginalized and their tutelage by the Western world. Spivak's demand for subversive listening, which empowers the marginalized to speak for themselves, also turned against feminism committed to the white middle class. ”(TAZ, Jette Gintner [2010]: Die Klasse macht’s ).
  14. ↑ Silke Schwarz: Gender equality as a universal concept? Critical and culturally sensitive analyzes of gender mainstreaming after a disaster. Wiesbaden 2014, p. 52.
  15. ↑ Sabine Mohamed (2012): Reflections on gender-political alliances, their opportunities, their problems and stillbirths
  16. ^ A b Adrian Holliday: Intercultural Communication and Ideology . SAGE, London 2011, pp. 4th ff .
  17. ↑ Veit Michael Bader: Culture and Identity: Essentialism, Constructivism or Critical Realism? In: Claudia Rademacher, Peter Wiechens (ed.): Gender - Ethnicity - Class: On the social construction of hierarchy and difference . Leske & Budrich, Opladen 2001, p. 145-174 .
  18. ↑ Stefanie Rathje: The Definition of Culture - An Application-Oriented Overhaul . In: Interculture Journal . tape 8 , no. 8 , 2009, p. 48 .
  19. ↑ Stefanie Rathje: The Definition of Culture - An Application-Oriented Overhaul . In: Interculture Journal . tape 8 , no. 8 , 2009, p. 38 .
  20. ↑ Jürgen Bolten: Rethinking intercultural training . In: Interculture Journal . tape 15 , no. 26 , 2016, p. 79 .