<
https://theconversation.com/what-is-essentialism-and-how-does-it-shape-attitudes-to-transgender-people-and-sexual-diversity-203577>
"Recent debates around transgender people and sexual diversity have been marked
by essentialism, a profoundly conservative mindset with deep links to religious
and metaphysical dogmatism. It is a stance through which conservative thinkers
seek certainty in a world of change and fluidity.
Essentialism comprises three key ideas.
First, there is the idea that nature is divided into discrete kinds of things,
which are completely and definitively distinct from each other. For example,
there is the view that living things are fundamentally different from
non-living things, or that human beings are fundamentally different from other
animals.
Second, there is the idea that these differences are eternal and necessary.
This sometimes takes the form of the religious doctrine that God created the
world and all the things in it in accordance with an unchanging typology. But
the idea can also be attributed to Plato, the father of Western philosophy, who
postulated eternal and changeless “forms” that worldly things copied and
instantiated. If a particular thing is an instance of an eternal metaphysical
form, according to this theory, it must have clearly delineated properties.
Third, essentialism suggests that each kind of thing has an “essence”, which
requires it to maintain its distinctness by acting in a way that is true to its
nature. If God created things as clearly distinct from one another, then these
distinctions become sacrosanct. Another example is Descartes’ view that the
essential difference between human beings and animals is that only human beings
have rational souls.
Many implications, including ethical ones, have been drawn from such claims. To
say of an organism that it has an “animal nature” implies that it falls outside
the purview of our moral responsibilities, while the existence of “human
nature” implies that a person is subject to various moral norms and
prohibitions."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
