Caveat lector: I have since retracted this (see Retractions and Revisions: My Review of Real Essentialism), but as a matter of policy I leave even work I have retracted publicly available as a matter of record.
Assumed audience: People interested in philosophy and metaphysics.
Real Essentialism claims to be something which would be valuable and good—a defense of Aristotelian essentialism. Alas, that is just what the book is not; it is instead a mix of circular and motivated reasoning and arrogant assertion in place of argument.
I read David Oderberg’s Real Essentialism on the strong recommendation of a friend: he described it glowingly as the best defense he knew of Aristotelian metaphysics, and furthermore asserted that he does not think we can make sense of Nicene Christianity without Aristotelian metaphysics. Those are strong claims! If I regularly disagree with this friend, I also respect him a great deal. Unfortunately, I am not sure we read the same book.
Oderberg is not a particularly clear writer; worse, though, he is in this book rude and arrogant. At every point, he simply asserts essentialism; he never actually defends it. He mistakes mere claims for argument. He belittles and dismisses the views of others, rather than engaging them seriously. I can only recall one or two instances in the whole length of this book where he acknowledged that interlocutors from other traditions might have any points at all! But of course, if essentialism were so obvious as all that, it would not need such a defense. Perhaps essentialism is correct, but its tattered reputation after centuries of critique would suggest that it is not obviously correct: a point he seems not to have understood.
I have no objection to reading robust arguments, even philosophical brawls — they can be very good fun. Tendentiousness is not at all the same thing, though. Make an argument that even your best opponent has to respect, not one that a persuadable neutral party like me will find infuriating!
What is more, I have rarely encountered a book so full of question-begging and non sequiturs; it reeked throughout of motivated reasoning. Over and over again, Oderberg simply defines his opponents’ position out of existence, and then declares victory. Nor does he take the time to define his terms clearly, largely taking them for granted! What exactly does Oderberg understand “form” and “substance” and “essence” to be? A reader would be forgiven for failing to know, even after wading through the chunks of the book where Oderberg notionally articulates his views of them. The best I can say is that he leans rather heavily on the assumption that the reader already knows fully the history of argument in the space (not entirely unfair for a book of this sort, I suppose, but not particularly helpful either!) and thus only distinguishes his position from others. Given that metaphysics is in many ways just down to questions of definitions, though, this rang more than a little bit false.
It was so bad that I joked to a different friend a few months ago that it is hard not to come away from this thinking the whole book is actually one long exercise in attempting to justify a Thomistic metaphysics of the Eucharist. I was not, suffice it to say, persuaded.
I stuck it out to the end because I was interested to see how he pulled the pieces together, particularly in his applications to evolutionary biology and the nature of the human person, but it was an exceedingly unpleasant trek. I cannot, unfortunately, even recommend this as an exemplar of the position it defends. I would like, someday, to read a robust defense of Aristotelian essentialism.1 This book, though, was not it.
Notes
A helpful reply on Bluesky suggested David Wiggins’ Sameness and Substance, so I may pick that up as a good next read. I have it on good authority that Philippa Foot has some interesting bits on Aristotelian ethics specifically, which is also on the docket. ↩︎