The Problem of Essence and Being

 

   I have been thinking (again) about the problem of essences today. It is the question of whether my love for my children is a response to their reality, their being, or is just in my head. Whether my response to the beauty of a sunset or the sublimity of a clear night sky is a response to the independent reality of those phenomena or is just in my head, projections onto an indifferent or radically different screen. It's about whether my inner life is real or whether reason compels me to believe the Matrix is a good metaphor for my relation to the world. An essence grounds an idea or concept that is an expression of something intelligible in the world. A denial of essence amounts to the claim that my response is not to the independent reality of my children or the sky but is a construction of my own mind or society. That is the issue.

     The belief that the issue between realists (and thus essences, universals) and nominalists or skeptics (Kantian or otherwise) is a scientific question is mistaken. Science can in theory map out how the brain works, etc. but whether our experience, our inner lives (on which science depends) reveals reality cannot be a possible scientific question. I personally think one could come up with a consistent nominalist redescription of reality and language: not "the sunset is beautiful" but "I am, or my brain is, experiencing a feeling called Beauty occasioned by the sunset." But this is already a philosophical move, not a scientific one. The shift from perceiving beauty as a property of the world to considering it merely a subjective reaction is an interpretation – not something science proves, but a way of framing reality. Science may describe how neurons fire when someone sees a sunset, but it cannot adjudicate whether Beauty is a real property of the world or just an emergent cognitive pattern. Whether there is an essence of anything and if so, how that essence is to be understood, is not a possible scientific question.

. . .

       Before getting into the philosophy, I want to imagine how a child comes to intuit (meaning: it is a mystery how) that a series of different objects and pictures of these objects are all one kind of thing: apples. I am interested in using the idea of patterns and the rules that inform them: e.g. a game I played with my child about car license plates: P: WT 239, P: RG 449, P: HG 785, etc. The rule: P + two letters + three numbers. Then we see one P: TF 2023. That breaks the pattern; there are four numbers. Then we see a couple more with four numbers and change the rule: either ‘P: two letters + three numbers’ or ‘P: two letters + 4 numbers.’ Thus we expand the concept so to speak.

           I wonder whether a child’s concept formation of “apple” unfolds as an intuitive, pattern-based recognition process, much like the license plate game I played with Kilian. The child is exposed to different instances – perhaps a red apple in their hand, a green apple in a picture book, a sliced apple on a plate, an apple emoji on a screen, and even the word-sound “apple” spoken by a parent. These experiences do not initially seem connected, but over time, the child’s mind begins to detect patterns and the implicit rules that inform them.

      At first, the child encounters an apple as a singular thing: a round, graspable object with a sweet taste and a crisp texture. Then they encounter another apple – similar in shape but perhaps greener and sour. Another time, they see a picture of an apple, which lacks taste and texture but shares the roundness and color. Just as in the license plate game, each new instance provides an opportunity for the child’s mind to extract (not construct) a rule:

• Apples are round. (But so are oranges.)
• Apples are red. (But sometimes green or yellow.)
• Apples can be eaten. (But not all round things are edible.)
• Apples are sweet. (But not always.)

Each new exposure refines or expands the working “hypothesis” much like discovering a new license plate format that forces a revision of the original rule.

      Once the child has an internal rule (e.g., “apples are round and red”), they may encounter an exception – perhaps a green apple. This breaks their initial rule, forcing a refinement: “Apples are round and can be red, green, or yellow.” They encounter a sliced apple and must decide: is this also an apple? If so, they start to intuit that an apple is not just its outer shape but something deeper. (Or I remember Kilian’s original concept of “real” as ‘if you can’t see it, it’s not real’ was challenged by the concept of ‘God’, whose reality at the age of 4 he did not doubt and whom he could not see. He had to revise his original understanding.)

   Some experiences will challenge their emerging and still quite hypothetical concept formation in surprising ways. If they see an apple in a painting or a cartoon, is that an apple? If they hear the word “apple” without seeing one, does it still fit? Like the revised license plate rule, their mental framework expands: an apple is not just an object but also something that can be represented symbolically.

      At some point, something remarkable happens: the child no longer needs to test each new apple against a rigid checklist of attributes. They simply see it as an apple. Their concept is no longer a mere collection of features but an intuition of “appleness.” This is the moment when the mind perceives an essence – something that unites all these varied instances beyond any single attribute. This final step remains mysterious, much like how we instantly recognize a face, even if the lighting or angle changes. It is as if the mind, through repeated exposure to patterns and revisions of its implicit rules, suddenly grasps the “rule beneath the rules”—an abstraction that is more than the sum of its parts. This is a Wittgensteinian way of imagining it. (This is all speculative, but based on my experience with my three children.)

     In my part of the world, moreover, apples are not merely objects in a child’s world but part of a rich form of life. They appear in nursery rhymes (“An apple a day keeps the doctor away”), in picture books, in school lunches, in autumn outings to apple orchards, in the sweet wonderfulnesss of freshly made apple juice (glorious!), and in warm apple cobbler with vanilla ice cream after Sunday dinner (oh how I miss those days!). The child does not just learn what an apple is but how apples fit into the rhythms of life, traditions, and shared human practices.

   In other words, from early on, the child does not encounter apples in isolation but always in meaningful contexts:

• Eating and Taste. Their first encounter might be as puréed apple in baby food, then as a fresh slice offered by a parent. It is not just an object but something given, something shared. Later, they learn to bite into a whole apple, feeling the crispness, the tart sweetness – a distinct (and glorious!) experience tied to childhood itself.
• Play and Stories. The apple appears in fairy tales: Snow White’s poisoned apple is dangerous, but Johnny Appleseed is kind. Apples become part of riddles, counting games, and even the first lessons in letters: “A is for Apple.”
• Seasons and Nature. The child notices that apples are abundant in autumn, that people go apple-picking, that certain trees bear fruit. Apples are tied to harvest festivals and traditions like bobbing for apples at Halloween. They begin to associate the fruit with cycles of the year, with cool, crisp air, with change and abundance. How happy I am just recalling all of this!
• School and Culture. Perhaps they give a bright apple to a teacher as a symbol of appreciation, though they do not quite know why. They learn that apples are made into cider, that they were once called “the forbidden fruit,” that Newton’s apple tree is part of their nation’s scientific heritage.

And so on.

       Because of these varied experiences, “apple” is no longer just a kind of thing among other things. It is embedded in a network of human activities, meanings, and associations. It is not only recognized but valued. (This corresponds to something Wittgenstein taught me.) The child’s concept of apple is enriched by its role in human life. It is not just a red, round fruit but something that is picked, eaten, shared, stored, baked, given, used in metaphors. The concept of apple is thick with meaning, not thinly defined by physical traits alone.

Therefore, just as Wittgenstein might say that the meaning of a word is its use in language, the meaning of an apple is found in the ways people use it in life. There is no single essence of appleness apart from the myriad ways it is woven into human activity. Or in other words: what an apple is reveals itself in the ways it can be intelligibly woven into human life. Indeed, as the child grows, the concept continues to deepen. They learn that apples come in many varieties – Gala, Granny Smith, Braeburn, Pinova, Elstar, Augustäpfel, etc. They learn that apples once symbolized temptation in Christian iconography, that they can be pressed into cider, that they were a symbol of wealth in medieval England. The concept of apple, once a simple mental pattern, now carries historical, cultural, and personal layers of meaning. Thus, in growing up, the child does not merely know what an apple is. They live what an apple means.

     And this goes on if the child is lucky enough to live in a functional culture. Once the child has learned what an apple is through sensory experience and social life, the concept of apple continues to be deepened as it is enriched by stories, art, science, and metaphor. These elements do not just add associations to the apple; they deepen its meaning, giving it layers that reach beyond its physical reality.

    Stories take the apple from an ordinary fruit to a symbol charged with meaning.

• Genesis and the Fall. Though the Bible does not name the forbidden fruit, in the Western imagination, it is often an apple. The child, upon hearing the story, learns that an apple can be more than food – it can be a temptation – it’s wonderful sweetness! – a test, something laden with consequence. The concept of apple is no longer neutral; it takes on a moral and theological dimension.
• Snow White and the Poisoned Apple. The apple, a gift from the disguised queen, carries the idea of deception. It looks good but is deadly. Now the child understands that an apple, like people, can have hidden depths.
• The Golden Apples of Greek Myth. The child later encounters the golden apples of the Hesperides or the Apple of Discord that sparked the Trojan War. Apples are not just food; they are things fought over, things sought after. This transforms the apple into a sign of beauty, power, and desire. (cf. the Norse apples of Iduna).
• The Apple of William Tell. The idea of the apple as a test returns in the Swiss legend. The child might sense that an apple can be something dangerous yet triumphant—a stand-in for fate.

Each of these stories shifts the concept of apple away from a simple edible object toward something more layered, charged with meaning beyond its everyday use.

     Art takes the apple and transforms it yet again.

• In a Cezanne painting, t he apple is no longer just a piece of fruit but a study in form, color, and light. The child may see that an apple is not just what it is, but also how it appears, how it is arranged, how it interacts with the world around it.
• In Magritte’s The Son of Man, a floating apple obscures a man’s face. Now the apple represents mystery, concealment, even identity. An apple is no longer only an apple – it is a veil, a question. I am no fan of surrealism as it often breaks the concept, defies the rules of application. Thus I cannot connect most surrealist paintings to life in general. At their best, surrealism may depict the sublime.
• The way apples are depicted in glossy magazines or in supermarket displays adds a modern layer: they become commodities, images, things arranged to attract and persuade. The child learns that an apple is also something sold, something packaged.

      

Science, rather than mythology or art, gives the apple yet another dimension – the realm of laws and principles.

• Isaac Newton and Gravity. Every schoolchild hears the story of Newton and the falling apple. Here, the apple is no longer just a fruit but a key to understanding the natural order of the universe. It represents discovery.
• Botany and Agriculture. The child eventually learns that apples are cultivated, that there are thousands of varieties, that they have a long history stretching back to Central Asia. The apple is no longer just "picked from a tree"—it is part of human civilization, breeding, and agricultural science.
• The Apple in Medicine. “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” The apple, in this light, becomes a symbol of health, of nature’s ability to nourish and sustain.

     

Once the apple enters stories, art, and science, it is no longer just a fruit: it is a carrier of meaning, a tool for thought.

• “The apple of my eye.” The apple becomes a metaphor for something beloved, something precious. Now the concept of apple is linked to love and attention.
• “One bad apple spoils the bunch.”  Here, the apple represents moral character, corruption spreading through a group. The fruit now symbolizes the fragility of virtue.
• Computers and Knowledge (Apple company). The child grows up in a world where "apple" no longer refers only to fruit but to technology, innovation, and creativity. The name "Apple" carries an echo of the forbidden fruit, the acquisition of knowledge. The devil can take over the reality of something as wonderful as an apple; Hell has a linguistics department. Apple (the corporation i.e. the giant pile of money whose only raison d’etre is to get bigger: Wendell Berry’s definition of a corporation) reverses Genesis. It is a though the biblical serpent is speaking to us through the brand name.

   

By the time the child becomes an adult, the word “apple” will no longer simply call to mind a round fruit. It will carry within it:

• A personal dimension (childhood tastes and memories)
• A cultural dimension (fairy tales, religious stories, idioms)
• A scientific dimension (botany, gravity, nutrition)
• An aesthetic dimension (the way apples appear in art and photography)
• A philosophical dimension (the apple as a sign of knowledge, choice, and even mystery)

The child, who once saw only an object, now sees a world in an apple.

. . .

     Aristotle, if I am correct, believed for each substance (in his sense; I assume he would consider apples a substance, a particular kind of being) there are essential features that make it what it is and not something else. That the intellect (nous) can abstract these from particular instances. How does that fit in to the picture I have just sketched of concept formation?

      In Aristotle’s view, knowledge begins with the senses. A child does not start with the universal concept apple but encounters individual apples: this red one, that green one, this small one, that large one. Through repeated experience, the mind (nous) begins to recognize a pattern (and thus a rule): despite differences, these all share something essential.

The process follows something like this:

• The child perceives apples repeatedly through sight, touch, taste.
• The intellect detects a common (strongly analogous) pattern (form, idea, eidos, rule) in them: a roundish fruit, growing on trees, edible, juicy.
• The child abstracts this common pattern and (without being fully conscious of it) forms a rule, distinguishing what is essential (its appleness) from what is accidental (its color, size, sweetness). It as though the mind were setting up an hypothesis to be tested against experience: “If x is a round and red thing that I can hold and eat, and tastes sweet and crunchy, it’s an apple." Then something like a process similar to Wittgenstein’s exploration of games happens but with a core concept based on essential traits crystallizing.  This allows linguistically for a clear definition and a term with clear borders to pears, tomatoes, and such.
• Eventually, the child can recognize an apple even if it looks quite different from the first ones they encountered. The idea has become internalized and codified in language through a sound-symbol.

Thus, the essence of apple is grasped through experience, but it is not identical to any single apple. It is a universal—the what-it-is-to-be an apple.

     Essences for Aristotle are stable yet enriched concepts. Now, how does this essentialist account fit into the broader picture just sketched in the above section? After all, the concept of an apple is not static. It may deepen (i.e. more is its being disclosed) through stories, art, science, and metaphor. Would Aristotle’s philosophy allow for such changes? The key is that essence does not mean fixed mental definition. Aristotle does not say that grasping an essence means knowing everything about a thing. Rather, the essence of an apple (whatever it is that makes an apple an apple) remains stable, but our understanding of it grows through experience, learning, and culture. At least nothing in Aristotle flatly contradicts this possibility.

• The child first understands an apple as something edible.
• Later, through myths and stories, the apple takes on moral and symbolic meanings (temptation, wisdom, deception).
• Through science, the apple is understood in terms of its genetic structure, gravity, and nutrition.
• Through metaphor, the apple comes to signify love, corruption, or knowledge.

Each of these enriches the concept of an apple without changing its essence. In Aristotelian terms, we might say the accidents of the apple (what we associate with it) expand, but the underlying substance remains what it is. An apple is, for example: "a fleshy, seed-bearing fruit (genus) of the deciduous tree Malus domestica (differentia), characterized by a typically round shape, smooth skin, and a crisp, sweet or tart flesh." However much we might learn about apples, it is apples we are learning about, i.e. the being singled out and distinguished from other beings by the features articulated in the definition. (Plato would argue that the concept apple exists independently of all particular apples, in a realm of Forms (eidos). Aristotle, however, grounds universals in particular substances—they exist in the things themselves, not in a separate, immaterial world.)

     While metaphor, art, and science enrich the concept of an apple, there are limits to how far the concept can be stretched. If someone pointed to a rock and called it an "apple," the child (having grasped the essence of an apple) would reject this as incorrect. This is because:

• The essence of an apple is tied to its nature—its biological form, its ability to grow from a tree, its edibility.
• Cultural meanings (apples as symbols of knowledge or sin) are not part of the essence, though they shape how we think about apples.

Thus, Aristotle’s notion of essence ensures that the concept of an apple remains rooted in reality, even as it gains new layers of meaning.

Essences fit into concept formation thus:

• The raw experience of apples allows for pattern recognition.
• The intellect (nous) abstracts the essential features, forming a universal concept.
• This essence provides stability: an apple is always an apple, no matter what other meanings culture assigns to it.
• At the same time, stories, art, and science expand the concept without changing its essence.
• The distinction between essence and accident helps us separate necessary features (what makes an apple an apple) from contingent ones (what myths or metaphors associate with it).

The world is intelligible for Aristotle. Language is a mirror of nature which the intellect may perfect.

 

. . .

 

 Now I can formulate my problem. Wittgenstein seemed to deny the Aristotelian philosophy of essence with his thoughts about family resemblance, meaning as use, language game, and form of life. Indeed, Wittgenstein clearly assumes nominalism in the Tractatus despite his attempt to undermine metaphysics as nonsense. I think he has been read as a nominalist in the Philosophical Investigations. One criticism of his family resemblance analogy as weak: if no core essence (no set of essentially defining traits) holds the concept of game – or apple – (standing for philosophical concepts) together, we cannot distinguish between games and war. Both share similarities without anyone mistaking them. War can be considered a game only metaphorically. Thus in a family resemblance there must be an underlying genetic foundation (essence?). I am not sure I accept this criticism (cf. Maurice Mandelbaum) but the point is: how does "essence" look in Wittgenstein's later philosophy? What justifies, to return to my example, the application of the word apple (a placeholder for the idea) to these kinds of things:

                           

 

but not to this:

 

                                

Wittgenstein’s later philosophy seems to challenge the Aristotelian notion of essence, but the question is: does he deny it outright, or does he redefine it in a different way? Aristotle held that concepts (ideas, patterns, forms) are grounded in real essences – an underlying substantial, intelligible form that makes a thing what it is. We grasp these through abstraction – literally, to draw or pull away that which is common to all particulars of the same kind of being.  And while our understanding may grow, the essence itself remains stable. Wittgenstein rejects this idea of a single, defining essence. Instead, he introduces family resemblance: the idea that many concepts do not have a strict set of necessary and sufficient features but are instead linked by overlapping similarities. His famous example is the word "game":

• Chess, football, and solitaire are all games, but they do not share one essential feature.
• Some involve competition, some do not. Some have rules, some do not.
• What connects them is not an essence but a network of resemblances – like how members of a family might share eye color, facial structure, or mannerisms, but not all in the same way.

Thus, instead of a single essence defining a category (as Aristotle held), Wittgenstein suggests that concepts emerge from patterns of similarity within a language-game. That words – concepts – are a human construction projected on an underdetermined nature? That is the frustrating thing with Wittgenstein: he refused to make any explicitly metaphysical statements, to draw out the metaphysical implications of his analysis of how language works. It’s like he was an amateur linguist, a brilliant one but still.

      So on the surface, this rejection of essence seems nominalist, suggesting that words do not correspond to stable universals but are merely useful labels for groups of similar things. And certainly, in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein was more strictly nominalist, treating meaning as a matter of simple logical reference. However, he does not say in the PI that concepts are arbitrarily assigned or purely conventional (as extreme nominalists might), but rather that their meaning arises from use in context within forms of life. That is, concepts are shaped by the way they are embedded in human activity, rather than by an underlying metaphysical structure. Again, preserving a stubborn metaphysical neutrality that cuts off thinking just when things get interesting. Still, while he does not affirm essence in the Aristotelian sense, he also does not reduce concepts to mere names (as a crude nominalist would).

     The main criticism of Wittgenstein’s family resemblance idea is that it collapses into vagueness without some underlying ground (essence). If concepts are just linked by similarities, what stops any collection of things from being grouped together? Examples:

• A wolf and a dog share family resemblances, but there is an underlying genetic structure (biological essence) that makes a dog a dog.
• War and games share some similarities (strategy, competition), but war is not a game except metaphorically.
• If "family resemblance" were the only principle at work, there would be no way to distinguish real categories from arbitrary ones, essential from accidental ones.

Thus something beyond mere resemblance is needed to stabilize categories whether we call it "essence" or something else. I don’t think Wittgenstein would deny this.

     I think there are a few ways to reconcile Wittgenstein’s view with something like an essence, though not in the Aristotelian sense. He wrote in the PI (§371): “Essence is expressed in grammar.” i.e. not “out there” in the world. That seems as close as he gets to anything metaphysical. For him the rules of language determine what something is. The essence of "apple" is not a metaphysical form but the way we use the word "apple" in our linguistic practices. That implies a radical skepticism to the idea that our minds – and indeed hearts – are connected to reality, the reality we are part of. That seems a clear denial of the idea of an intelligible reality, or seems to. Some scholars argue that Wittgenstein’s later work does not deny essence but reinterprets it in terms of deep grammatical structures. These are the underlying, stable patterns that shape how we talk about things, something like Kant’s categories of thought but applied to language. But that seems like linguistic idealism too.

     Thus by denying essence (i.e. my idea of apple is an idea of reality) he seems in spite of his wish to stay out of metaphysics committed to a revised nominalism such that meaning is grounded in use, language-games, and forms of life – not in reality. "Essence" is not a metaphysical reality but springs out of the structure of our linguistic and practical interactions.

   But my question: want prevents us to assuming the something of reality (of universals) is disclosed in and through our linguistic and social practices? Whatever the metaphysical thrust and intentions of his thought, does Wittgenstein’s rejection of Aristotelian essence necessarily commit us to nominalism, or could it still allow for something real – some disclosure of universals – through language and practice?

     Indeed, it might seem that rejecting metaphysical essence means we must accept a form of nominalism: that categories like “apple” or “game” are just human-imposed names without any real grounding in the world. But that is not necessarily the case. Even if concepts arise from use in language-games, this does not mean they are merely arbitrary social constructs.

Consider:

• Language-games are not invented ex nihilo; they are shaped by our interactions with reality.
• The fact that we have stable and widely shared concepts suggests that reality itself constrains and informs them.
• Even Wittgenstein, despite refusing to speculate about metaphysics, does not argue that language is purely subjective or disconnected from the world.

Thus, while he avoids ontological claims, he does not explicitly deny that something about reality discloses itself through our linguistic and social practices even if he doesn’t want to think of this as Aristotle did.

      Moreover, if we take Wittgenstein seriously about “meaning as use,” then we must ask: what is it that allows words to be used meaningfully in the first place? Can you answer this without collapsing into nominalism?

    Reality places constraints on language. Even if we say that “apple” is a concept shaped by human practices, not just anything can be called an apple. The world itself sets limits on how concepts are formed. The regularities of nature – the way apples grow, their predictable qualities – shape our use of the term. No culture would equate apples with blackberries. This shows that concept formation is not purely linguistic or conventional, but responsive to reality. Language does not just impose structure; it discovers structures already there.

    Thus essences/universals may equally well be thought of as disclosed, not imposed. Both are consistent with Wittgenstein’s thought. Instead of thinking of universals as fixed, eternal Forms (as in Plato) or as purely human conventions (as in radical nominalism), we could say they – the reality of the beings they abstract from – emerge through practice but in a way that reveals something real.

We learn what an apple is through social and linguistic training, yes. But that process itself might be a kind of attunement to the world. Essences/Universals may indeed be manifested through the ways we engage with the world and not necessarily imposed onto reality by language. “The tiger is dangerous” is not just a linguistic construction. (This fits well with the way science refines concepts based on further investigation: e.g., shifting from “whale” as a fish to recognizing it as a mammal, without making “whale” purely arbitrary). Essences may still be real patterns that we uncover in and through experience, filtered through practices and our “form of life.”

    As stated, Wittgenstein himself avoids answering whether language discloses reality in a realist sense. He simply limits his philosophy to description, not speculation. But does this refusal to make metaphysical claims actually close the door to realism? Not necessarily. If anything, Wittgenstein’s work suggests that metaphysical questions arise from within our practices. His critique of essentialism is not a denial of reality but a shift in how we think about reality – perhaps away from timeless Forms but not necessarily away from realism altogether. The idea that our understandings of essence are true and final – and thus that concepts are closed in the way Aristotle implied when he posited a stable essence amid a potential deepening of understanding – seems to have been Wittgenstein’s concern here.

So the options are:

• Strong Nominalism: Universals are merely human constructs.
• Wittgenstein’s Position (as often read): Universals are not fixed essences but arise from use. They are not arbitrary but conditions for practices within forms of life.
• A Realist-Wittgensteinian Hybrid (my preference) : Universals are disclosed through use and conditioned by practices within forms of life, but they respond to real structures in the world. I personally love Wittgenstein’s grammatical analysis but see it as a deepening of the understanding of concepts (which express essences).

If we reject Aristotle’s belief in a fully intelligible nature and his epistemological optimism that our minds and languages are potentially mirrors of nature but still hold that concepts/ideas/languages are shaped by reality (geprägt, bedingt), we might arrive at something like a disclosed realism. Language and social practices do not simply create meaning arbitrarily; they reveal patterns and regularities that exist independently of us, from a finite point of view.

 

. . .

 

And my second problem: Heidegger and Gadamer, coming from a different tradition of philosophy, have no problem using "essence" (das Wesen der Wahrheit, das Wesen der Kunst, etc.). But they clearly do not mean exactly the same things as Aristotle. They think of essence as something revealing itself dynamically, through history, language, and experience. This shift in meaning, I think, goes beyond discussion of Wittgenstein, Aristotle, and the question of whether reality is disclosed through human practices.

     For Aristotle, essence (ousia – Greek participle of to be, i.e. being) is what makes a thing what it is: its fundamental nature, abstracted by the intellect. But Heidegger radically reinterprets essence as unconcealment (Aletheia in Greek, which actually means something like Unforgetting; Unverborgenheit in German, i.e. uncovering or unconcealing). This is generally taken to mean that the "essence" of something is not an intelligible essence abstracted from particulars in a quasi objective, scientific manner but a way of appearing, of being disclosed to us in historical and linguistic contexts. (The influence of phenomenology.) Thus when Heidegger speaks of das Wesen der Wahrheit (the essence of truth), he does not mean a stable definition of truth as in Aristotle’s classic “the saying of what is, that it is.” He means truth happens. It is a happening in which something emerges from hiddenness (Verborgenheit) into openness (Offenheit). This is closer to another meaning, perhaps an older one, as in a true friend or true gold. Which is of course indistinguishable from a real friend or real gold; a genuine (not counterfeit) friend or genuine gold. Aristotle’s definition is oriented to statements, which is oriented to logic. Statements must be true or false, but not both. A true statement “says of what is, that it is”: It is the case that Socrates is a man. It is the case that Socrates is mortal. The truth of the terms – this is presupposed – depends on the meaning of the terms in the sense of a clear reference and meaning. The meaning of the terms – the concepts – you get by abstracting the essence from the particulars in the case of universal terms like men and mortal. Heidegger’s focus on truth as revealing applies purely to the conceptual, where mind and language first make contact with reality. If you want to know what a friend is don’t abstract from different friendships in the first place; look and see how true friendship appears in human life, and how it is distinguished from less real forms.

       What results is not an essential definition but a phenomenological description of experience, how friendship is given to experience. There something related to Aristotelian essence emerges but messier, involving interpretation, open to future deepening or flattening – of the essence! Not just the accidents. Not closed in the way Aristotle’s stable essences are. Similarly, das Wesen der Kunst (the essence of art) is not a definition of what all artworks have in common, but the event of art revealing a world. Think of Van Gogh’s painting of shoes: it doesn’t just represent peasant shoes; it discloses a world of labor, suffering, and life.

      Heidegger agrees with Wittgenstein that meaning is not grasped primarily by abstracting essences from particulars but by engaging with the world; or abstracting is part of this engagement. But unlike Wittgenstein, he does not treat language-games as mere human conventions; instead, they are ways in which Being itself (Sein) reveals itself. Unlike Aristotle, Heidegger’s Wesen (essence) is not a naturally fixed whatness (quidditas), but a dynamic, open event of disclosure. This means that when we talk about the "essence" of apples in Heideggerian terms, we are not trying to define an apple in an abstract sense but to describe how the meaning of apples unfolds within different historical and experiential contexts—how they show themselves in life, art, and thought. He wouldn’t draw a clear logical line between the essential and accidental qualities. Perhaps at one end of the scale hair color would be accident and ‘being-in-the-world’ or reason would be at the other. But determining what are the most fundamental human qualities cannot be abstracted as precisely as determining the defining qualities of geometrical figures (e.g. triangle, square, etc.). It is not simply there for anyone to see, as I think Aristotle thought.

      Gadamer, deeply influenced by Heidegger, takes this idea further in Truth and Method. He sees essence not as a fixed set of characteristics anyone with intellect can abstract from particulars but as something that emerges through historical dialogue. For Gadamer, understanding is never a matter of just identifying essential and accidental qualities (as Aristotle might) but of participating in a tradition in which meanings develop over time. This is why he talks about the Wesen der Kunst (essence of art) in terms of how we encounter and interpret it – not as a definition, but as an uncovering (truth) of meaning. He also describes truth as something disclosed through dialogue, rather than something we grasp in a purely logical manner.

      Apply Gadamer’s approach to the earlier description of how a child learns the concept of “apple.” The child does not learn “apple” by extracting its essence from sensory perception of particulars through the intellect alone (Aristotle), or not only that. Nor is “apple” merely a conventional label arising from language-games (Wittgenstein). Instead, the child’s concept of “apple” is shaped by historical, cultural, and dialogical processes. It is handed down through tradition. This means that even as language shapes our understanding, it is itself shaped by history. The concept of “apple” contains layers of meaning accumulated over generations: as food, as metaphor, as symbol, as scientific object. 

     Thus with Heidegger and Gadamer, essence is no longer something we define but something we encounter and participate in. This resonates with Wittgenstein’s meaning as use but deepens it by showing that meaning is also historical and existential.

    But does this lead to nominalism? Not necessarily. Following Heidegger and Gadamer, essence is not an abstract universal, but neither is it merely a name, or a social construct. Instead, essence is something that reveals itself in and through our engagement with the world.  Universals are real, but not in a Platonic or Aristotelian sense; they are real as disclosures of Being within human existence.

 

. . .

 

I wanted to know whether rejecting Aristotelian essence entails nominalism? With Heidegger and Gadamer, there is a third option: Meaning and essence are not fixed by reality (Aristotle), nor are they arbitrary (nominalism). Rather, they emerge in human practices, history, and interpretation. This implies a kind of existential realism, a view where essence is not something anyone can know once and for all but something that unfolds (or is lost) in human life.

      I think we are dealing with different ontologies that explain the seeming incommensurability. I think Aristotle believed nature (Being, reality) was perfectly intelligible, a book that we could read through understanding essences. For Heidegger at least (and I agree with him) Being transcends our ability to fully grasp it. Part of it is disclosed to us when we think or do art, etc., (within a tradition to follow Gadamer). That implies that concepts are open (like "novel," the concept of which is partly stable but changes over time - family resemblance) and not closed like "Greek tragedy". All natural kinds or universals are open because reality is too big for our capacity to know it, though we can know it. We can have understanding of the shore of the ocean without being able to penetrate its depths.

      For Aristotle, reality is intelligible. Our ideas/concepts map onto the essences of things, which nature fixes. The things themselves are in principle fully knowable. The mind at its clearest holds up a mirror to nature. In contrast, for Heidegger Being (reality, nature, the world) is not fully graspable because it always transcends our conceptualization. We encounter disclosures of Being, which are not social constructs but aspects of reality as seen (more or less clearly) from particular perspectives within human life. We are in touch with reality, part of it in fact. But there is no final, exhaustive understanding. That would be like saying Dickens’ novels express the final Idea of the novel or the perfection of the novel, and all possible novels must be measured by that standard. Thus whereas Aristotle treats concepts as closed Heidegger and Gadamer treat them as open.

    Abstraction alone is perhaps necessary but not sufficient. To get all the way to a robust essence interpretation is necessary. There is something text-like - even poem-like - about reality.

   I have left out a central figure in this story: Thomas Aquinas. But this is already too long and I am tired. But replacing Aristotelian nature with Creation, in my view, should move us in the direction of Heidegger and Gadamer, though within an authoritative tradition based on Revelation.