Essentialism

Essence () has various meanings and uses for different thinkers and in different contexts. It is used in philosophy and theology as a designation for the property or set of properties or attributes that make an entity the entity it is or, expressed negatively, without which it would lose its identity. Essence is contrasted with accident, which is a property or attribute the entity has accidentally or contingently, but upon which its identity does not depend.

Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity. In early Western thought, Platonic idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an "idea" or "form". In Categories, Aristotle similarly proposed that all objects have a substance that, as George Lakoff put it, "make the thing what it is, and without which it would be not that kind of thing". The contrary view—non-essentialism—denies the need to posit such an "essence". Essentialism has been controversial from its beginning. In the Parmenides dialogue, Plato depicts Socrates questioning

Haecceity (; from the Latin , 'thisness') is a term from medieval scholastic philosophy, coined by followers of Duns Scotus to denote a concept that he seems to have originated: the irreducible determination of a thing that makes it this particular thing. Haecceity is a person's or object's thisness, the individualising difference between the concept "a person" and the concept "Socrates" (i.e., a specific person). In modern philosophy of physics, it is sometimes referred to as primitive thisness.

Hypokeimenon (Greek: ὑποκείμενον), later often material substratum, is a term in metaphysics which literally means the "underlying thing" (Latin: subiectum).

major concept in postcolonial theory, was introduced in the 1980s by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, refers to a political tactic in which minority groups, or ethnic groups mobilize on the basis of shared identity attributes to represent themselves

concept used to examine the attribution of fixed, intrinsic, innate qualities to women and men

educational philosophy that children should learn the traditional basic subjects thoroughly

form of feminism that emphasizes traditional gender roles, heteronormativity, and the family as solutions to women's socio-economic challenges