Here’s a good long quote from the “Footnotes to Plato” webpage at: https://platofootnote.wordpress.com/2016/11/28/biological-essentialism-no-thanks/comment-page-1/
I took the liberty of bolding the spots I think are key to our discussion:
Essentialism is the notion that there are some attributes that are necessary to the identity or function of a given entity, and in the Western tradition is usually traced back to Aristotle and, before him, Plato. Plato’s idealism, his notion of a realm of abstract Forms of which the world as we experience it is a pale reflection, is a form of essentialism. But the kind of essentialism that has been most debated throughout the last couple of millennia is Aristotle’s, which American linguist George Lakoff characterized as the idea that some properties make the thing what it is, and without which it would not be that kind of thing. An essential property of a triangle, for instance, is that the sum of its internal angles amounts to 180 degrees; the essence of the element oxygen is that it has an atomic number of 8 (i.e., its nucleus is made of 8 protons).
In philosophy, however, that sort of essentialism has gone the way of the dodo, because it applies to very few things, which do not even include chemical elements (given the existence of isotopes).
Things don’t just have essential qualities. Women who get essentialized get seen in terms of being childmakers, objects. Feminism attacks essentialism. Teachers aren’t “third grade teachers” due to body size. (You laugh, but a former North Country elementary principal in the 1990s made her hires and grade-level selections based on body type. “You’re a thin girl. You are a Kindergarten teacher.”) We can use essentialism as a shortcut to actual observation, so it’s a dangerous thing.
Strangely enough, essential traits give us the biological naming system (Linnean) that we have.Socrates has some essentialist leanings whenever he asks those big questions and uses examples. The essence of a horse is horseness. The telos (Aristotle) of a horse is to be horselike. So much of our learning in the West is based on these two thinkers. How obsessed we are with these end goals, these arrows on nonexistent number lines!
Essentialism influences unconscious bias, microaggressions, attitudes toward gender, ethnicity, and race. That’s easy to point out, but here’s the more difficult query: To what extent do you employ essentialism?
If you believe yourself to be immune to this thinking, check out the Harvard Implicit Association Test. Take one and you’ll see the extent to which your actions may differ from your beliefs–even on matters directly related to yourself.