Essence Today

Abstract

The concept of is thought by many political theorists be a residue of the patriarchal onto-theological tradition of metaphysics that needs be (or has been) overcome by more progressive aims. The purpose of this essay is examine the concept of essentialism in light of the treatment of the concept of in Hegel's Science of Logic, and within the context of recent issues in critical race theory and feminism. I will argue that the role of an underlying appearance is a valuable one within a Hegelian framework, and that it is politically important reassess it. There are reasons that we should want uphold the distinction between and an inessential appearance. We should want uphold the irreducibility of the Hegelian selfdetermining concept, and I argue here that there is a basis for doing so in Hegel's own text. Despite the well established impossibility of claiming that there is a property or set of properties that all women share, dissolve as an illusory side-effect of the show of appearance is both misunderstand essence, and relinquish a tool needed in the struggle for justice. I will begin, after laying out some of the contemporary context regarding essentialism in and critical race theory, by examining the Hegelian idea of what is entailed in the idea of a thing with properties, an as a compilation of properties. I will demonstrate that it transforms itself through the very logic of the concept of a compilation of properties into the idea of a thing as a compilation of relations rather than properties. I will then demonstrate through some concrete examples from critical race theory and that it sometimes works in the interest of those with anti-racist and feminist progressive aims conceive of essence as an identity which can be distinguished from and is irreducible the identity's constitution by these relations when the relations are conceived as social and economic relations. I will conclude by demonstrating that the logic of in Hegel's Science of Logic may ultimately show that that the Hegelian self-determining concept subsumes into a self-producing, self-determining substance, but that it also shows that is expelled by the very same process which seeks incorporate it into complete self-determination. Essence can be used as a tool question the valuation of appearance on the basis of economic and social exchange because it resists incorporation into the concept. Two related arguments against essentialist concepts have arisen from recent discourses on critical race theory and feminism. First, antiessentialists have argued that any representation of a natural pertaining to, for example, womanhood, will necessarily exclude those who do not see themselves in that representation. More generally, no universal definition can do justice the diversity of actual women. For example, in her 1981 feminist classic, Ain't I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism, bell hooks argues that feminism tends reflect only the concerns of white middle class women the exclusion of black women. One example that hooks cites is the view held by white middle class feminists that access work for pay was the key liberation, hooks argues that this view refuses to acknowledge the reality that, for masses of American working class women, working for pay neither liberated them from sexist oppression nor allowed them gain any measure of economic independence.' From the perspective of poor working class women, working for pay was a commonplace feature of the oppressive capitalist and patriarchal world in which they must struggle survive economically, and not at all the key liberation. The second central argument against essentialist concepts has been that universal claims about women identify them as a natural kind in ways that are often not their political advantage. One clear example of this is that sex discrimination in hiring was defended by invoking its consistency with natural difference. …