Stop Asking What Things Are

January 4, 2026 | 2,617 words | 13min read

I finally realized what my problem is with many questions in philosophy.

For a long time, whenever we read papers in my philosophy seminar that were of the form “What is X?”, for example: What is morality? What is identity? What is knowledge?. I felt deeply irritated by the answers these papers provided, yet I could never quite put my finger on why.

Part of this dissonance came from the fact that many papers never make their aim sufficiently clear. Are they purely descriptive, i.e. describing how people actually use a term? Or are they prescriptive, i.e. telling us how the term should be used?

The former always felt unsatisfying to me because, as Wittgenstein famously stated, meaning is use. The meaning of our language arises from how we use it, and people never use language rigidly. We use terms slightly differently, or imagine different things under them. One illuminating paper in this regard is “Disagreement and the Semantics of Normative and Evaluative Terms,” which argues that whenever we argue about terms, there is a kind of negotiation happening over what we want the term to do.

Another paper that strengthened this conviction is The Unimportance of Identity. It argues, that the term identity is not important in itself, since many different things can be meant by it. Instead, we should talk about the underlying characteristics: bodily continuity, psychological continuity, personality continuity, and so on. So instead of asking, for example, “Will I still be the same person if I take this medication?” one should ask more precise questions: Will my body remain continuous? (Most likely yes, I have not yet heard of a medicine that will make one loose a limb.) Will my personality remain the same? (Possibly not, if the medication affects it e.g. mood stabilizer drugs) These questions already exhaust everything we reasonably want to know about “identity”, further questions along the lines of “What is identity?” do not provide any additional information or are helpful in any way.

All of these question from the beginning concerns metaphysics, so could it be that the problem I have is with metaphysics itself? But this cannot be. In fact, I love metaphysics, and I find papers like Carnap’s The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language atrocious.

So what is my issue?

I think the papers mentioned above already pushed me in the right direction. My problem with papers like Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? or On Bullshit is that they all heavily rely on a single assumption, one that I wholeheartedly reject, and yet this assumption is never even attempted to be justified.

That assumption is essentialism: the view that objects or concepts have some inner essence, an intrinsic core that makes them what they are. Plato would have called this an Idea or Form. According to essentialism, this inner essence is what a concept really is. Papers like On Bullshit or Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? proceed as if there were a single thing called bullshit or knowledge waiting to be discovered, and that if we only look deeply enough and argue carefully enough, we will uncover its ultimate nature.

I reject this notion completely. One could call me a non-essentialist. This is not surprising, given how central anti-essentialism is in Heidegger’s thought and how much I have written about him, but framing my position explicitly in these terms made it much clearer to me what I actually believe.

I do not want to give an exhaustive argument here for why I think essences do not exist. I have already written about this from a Heideggerian perspective in The Eiffel Tower Is NOT in Paris!. Beyond that, meditation or psychedelic experiences can provide an empirical (rather than purely rational) route to this insight. Similar ideas also appear in other philosophical traditions, most notably in Buddhism, where the concept of Śūnyatā, or emptiness, expresses precisely the idea that objects and concepts lack an inner essence or hidden ultimate reality.

According to the theory of emptiness, any belief in an objective reality grounded in the assumption of intrinsic, independent existence is simply untenable. All things and events, whether ‘material’, mental or even abstract concepts like time, are devoid of objective, independent existence … [T]hings and events are ’empty’ in that they can never possess any immutable essence, intrinsic reality or absolute ‘being’ that affords independence.

~ 14th Dalai Lama

But if objects and concepts cannot be understood in terms of essence, how are we meant to do philosophy at all? Do we need to get rid of all “What is X?” questions? And if so, what remains?

The problem with “What is X?” questions is that they suggest there is some static thing that can be fully described as X. But I do not believe this. Human language is far too dynamic and context-sensitive. Often people do not even know what they themselves mean, as illustrated in a thought experiment of the paper Many, but Almost One.

Consider the example: you have a house with a detached garage. How many houses are there? One could answer one, viewing the garage and house as a single unit; or two, viewing them separately. Is there a correct answer? Not really, it depends on what the questioner meant by “house.” And if we asked them to clarify, they might not even know themselves what they meant. This illustrates that speakers often lack a fully determinate meaning even in their own minds.

Concepts and words, then, do not have a fixed form. Consider morality as another example.

When asked “What is morality?” my immediate reaction is: What do you mean by morality? Depending on what is meant, I could see many different theories as appropriate. If morality is supposed to have objective normative force, error theory might be true. If objective normativity is not required, contractualism becomes plausible. Emotivism also seems compelling, since when we see someone kicking a puppy, we often have an immediate knee-jerk like reaction which is aking to expressing an emotional response. At other times, moral claims feel less emotional and more like appeals to an existing social contract e.g. don’t do this, or there will be consequences. I could even accept fictionalist accounts of morality: morality as a useful story we tell to keep society functioning. And yet, given our evolutionary history, traits like kindness seem deeply suited to us, which tempts us to say morality is in some sense real. But even that can be challenged: why should I care about what evolution has disposed me to value?

What this shows is that the answer to “What is morality?” depends entirely on what the asker means by morality. Much moral philosophy goes wrong by pretending that there is one thing called morality and one correct metaphysics for it. Instead, different theories correctly describe different layers of the phenomenon.

At least two modes of moral judgment can be distinguished:

1. Immediate, affective, world-disclosing responses (“That’s disgusting.” “That’s cruel.” “That’s wrong.”)

2. Reflective, institutional, justificatory discourse (“This violates norms we’ve agreed upon, and here’s why that matters.”)

Emotivism describes the first well. Contractualism describes the second well. Neither is better than the other; they describe different phenomena. Likewise, virtue ethics, error theory, and fictionalism illuminate other aspects of morality.

So how should we answer “What is X?” if we reject essences? One approach is to illuminate the various aspects, relations, and consequences associated with the concept as I have done just now with morality. Another is to ask the questioner what they mean by X. For example with morality again: If they are interested in the emotional dimension of morality, emotivism may be appropriate; if they are interested in its social function, contract theory may be the right tool.

This is closely related to what Heidegger means when he wants to move away from ontology (the study of what things are) toward ontics (how things show up in lived experience). Essence, for Heidegger, is disclosed through Dasein. Sartre famously captures this with the slogan: existence precedes essence.

Pragmatism provides another helpful lens. In What Pragmatism Is, Peirce characterizes truth as what would be arrived at through an indefinitely careful, honest, and rigorous inquiry, given our phenomenological limits. Under this view, asking “What is morality?” becomes: What picture of morality would we converge on if we investigated our moral experience as carefully and honestly as possible, over time?

We would not arrive at some hidden essence of morality, but at a network of observations, relations, and explanations. We cannot step outside experience to validate experience. As Heidegger would say, Dasein limits what we can understand, know, and value. This explains how morality can be objectively true without there being an objective moral substance “out there.” It is objective because this is where honest inquiry within our shared world leads us.

Thus, to understand what something is, we must understand it relationally, as part of a web of beliefs and practices, as argued in Two Dogmas of Empiricism, Rational Animals, and Do Animals Have Beliefs?.

What remains of philosophy if we reject essentialism? Surprisingly, almost everything. Anti-essentialism only denies that things have intrinsic, context-independent natures that determine what they are in all possible worlds. It does not deny that things exist or matter. Instead, things are what they are in virtue of relations, roles, practices, and structures.

We can still talk about qualia or phenomenal consciousness, but not as possessing a fixed “Is-ness.” What something is depends on embodiment, form of life, capacities, contrasts, attention, and framing. Nagel’s claim in What Is It Like to Be a Bat? still holds: there is something it is like to be a bat, but this “something” is not an isolable essence. It is disclosed through being-in-the-world.

The same holds for metaphysics. It does not disappear; it changes its questions:

• Instead of What is X really? → How does X arise?
• Instead of What are X’s necessary and sufficient conditions? → What relations does X sustain?
• Instead of What is X’s underlying substance? → Under what conditions does X appear as X?

Finally, some philosophers, Edward Feser being a notable example, have argued that anti-essentialism is not only logically untenable but also psychologically impossible.

The logical objection is usually framed like this: If you say ‘the universe essentially has no essence,’ you are already ascribing an essence to the universe, namely having no essence. That is self-contradictory and violates the Law of Non-Contradiction.

There are a few points to consider here:

1. Doubt about the Law of Non-Contradiction: Some philosophers, particularly dialetheists, question whether the law of non-contradiction is universally feasible. So even if the argument would go through (which it does not), it is not immediate disqualifying.

2. Category mistake: ontology vs. meta-ontology: The Feser objection assumes that anti-essentialism is making an ontological claim (about the actual world). But anti-essentialism is better understood as a meta-ontological claim, i.e. The concept of ‘essence’ does not apply in the way you think it does.

If anti-essentialism were interpreted this way, it is not self-contradictory, because it is no longer asserting that the universe has or lacks an essence, it is stating that our explanatory framework does not require or license essence-talk. Feser’s error is to conflate the two levels: he treats a meta-ontological claim as if it were ontological. This is akin to saying “is the color red the number five or the number three?” this is nonsensical, just like this setence misapplies the category of numbers to colors, so does freser missaply the category of ontology to meta-ontology.

3. Psychological impossibility objection: Feser also claims that anti-essentialism is psychologically impossible because humans allegedly require grasping essences to think coherently. This is flatly incorrect. Buddhist philosophy has operated with the concept of emptiness (Śūnyatā) for nearly 2,000 years. Heidegger rejects essence entirely. Wittgenstein also denies fixed essences. These are clear counterexamples showing that humans can think coherently without presupposing essentialist structures.

In sum, anti-essentialism is logically coherent and psychologically possible, but only if you reject the assumption of essentialism in the first place. Feser’s arguments succeed only if you accept essentialism, but I reject that assumption entirely.

Anti-essentialism, far from ending philosophy, reframes it. It replaces the hunt for hidden realities with a careful examination of relations, practices, disclosures, and lived meaning.

I want to end with the following dialogue

Plato to Nietzsche: And is that your final word? An atheist and nothing but an atheist, a nihilist and nothing but a nihilist.

Nietzsche: I said earlier that I would be the first nihilist, but I must add: I am one who has already lived nihilism to its end within himself.

Plato: So nihilism is only an intermediate state for you?

Nietzsche: It depends decisively on the resolution of nihilism.

Plato: So in the end, something positive?

Nietzsche: Yes, eventually we need new values.

Plato: And what new values are those supposed to be?

Nietzsche: Everything depends on a revaluation of all values. This revaluation will ultimately completely replace nihilism.

Plato: And who is to bring about this replacement?

Nietzsche: The philosopher.

Plato: But what should the new values look like, and what about the new goal?

Nietzsche: Until now, all values of morality have been hostile to life; therefore, it is decisive that through the new values, life is affirmed.

Plato: Which life, could you be more specific?

Nietzsche: The inner essence of being, the will to power. This is precisely the fundamental principle of my new revaluation of values.

Plato: And the spirit? What do you intend to do with the spirit?

Nietzsche: The spirit must serve life.

Plato: I think life must serve the spirit. There is no reconciliation here.

~ Platon und Nietzsche Un-Zeitgenossen im Gespräch, 3 Sat/Von Wilhelm Weischedel

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