The Phenomenology of Essences

This volume explores the phenomenological notion of essence and related concepts. It discusses the role of essences in epistemology, philosophy of language, sociology, philosophical anthropology, transcendental phenomenology, phenomenological realism and idealism, imagination, metaphysics, and mathematics.

Due to widespread nominalist tendencies in philosophical approaches to language, anthropology, and sociology, contemporary philosophy has developed a growing aversion against the thinking of essences. Phenomenology, on the other hand, stresses the importance of essences from a methodological and thematic perspective. This volume identifies the centrality of essences in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and traces their influence from the early phenomenological movement to contemporary debates.