Carrol Cox wrote:
I'm aware of the difficulties of the concept [of essence] and its idealist tendencies, but I don't really think you can get along without it. In fact, "There is something in the real world that is shared" is just another way of saying "these real-world phenomena have a real essence." "Something" needs to refer to something. :-)
okay, then we should always add the word "real" before "essence." But "shared characteristics" is more specific in its meaning. In some paper I wrote once which likely hasn't been published, I simply _defined_ essence as "shared characteristics." -- Jim Devine / "Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs, though, it's intimate and psychological - resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul." -- Barbara Ehrenreich
