Includes bibliographical references (pages 295-308) and index

Contemporary essentialism and real essentialism -- Against modalism : possible worlds -- Against modalism : Fine's critique -- Reductionism : the illusory search for inner constitution -- Why real essentialism? -- Some varieties of anti-essentialism -- Empiricist anti-essentialism -- Quinean animadversions -- Popper : avoiding 'what-is?' questions -- Wittgenstein : the shadow of grammar -- The reality and knowability of essence -- Why essences are real -- The 'problem of the universal accidental -- An empirical test for essence? -- Coming to know essence -- 'Paradigms', 'stereotypes', and classification -- The structure of essence -- Hylemorphism : act and potency -- Substantial form -- Prime matter -- Substance -- The immanence of essence -- Essence and identity -- Real definition and the true law of identity -- The Porphyrian tree -- The analogy of being -- Individuation -- Identity over time -- Essence and existence -- The real distinction in contingent beings -- Everything is contingent, almost -- Powers -- Laws of nature -- Aspects of essence -- Kinds of accident -- The nature of properties -- Knowledge of essence via properties -- Artefacts -- Origin and constitution -- Life -- The essence of life -- Kinds of organism -- Against emergence -- Species, biological and metaphysical -- Is biological essentialism dead? -- Against the cladistic species concept -- Vagueness -- A plea for morphology -- The person -- The essence of personhood -- Hylemorphic dualism -- Consciousness, psychology, and the person -- Form, body, and soul -- Soul, intellect, and immateriality -- Soul, identity, and material dependence

Current Copyright Fee: GBP17.50 0. Uk