Essence and Constancy: Why “Essence” Matters

The classical attitude, then, has a great respect for the past and for tradition, not from sentimental, but on purely rational grounds. It does not expect anything radically new, and does not believe in any real progress. – T.E. Hulme

The English poet and thinker, T.E. Hulme (1883-1917), is correct in his understanding that periods of history when man lacks coherent understanding of the foundational and grounding tenets of human reality promote the spread of nihilism and the growth of mongrel ideas. Consequently, contradictory ideas enable perversion of reality on a moral level, creating nihilism that, in the course of time, devours its adherents and the unsuspecting.

The question of constancy in philosophy can be traced back to the ancient Greek thinkers Pythagoras, Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle, to name a few. In addition, constancy was an essential concern of the stoics, for they were interested in describing universal principles that man can use as moral guidance in deciphering the riddles and quiddities of human existence. Constancy was entertained early in the development of Western thought, thus serving as the foundation to comprehend the nature of human reality.

Not being content with knowing the ‘how’ pole of human reality, ancient philosophers addressed the nature of reality and man’s ability to decipher it in relation to its ‘why’ component. The ‘why’ pole seeks the essence of reality as the inner nature and power of Being. This is one reason why constancy is a fundamental preoccupation of perennial philosophy (philosophia perennis). However, this should not be confused with the manner that Scholastic philosophers thought of essence: as the makeup of actual objects.

The monumental importance of perennial wisdom has made itself manifest since antiquity and in every epoch of Western civilization, leading up to our own time. In the twentieth century, Heidegger picked up this recurrent concern in his quest to return to the question of Being; Jaspers also addressed this essential problem in relation to the limitation of reason, and Ortega y Gasset became weary of rationalism, especially in the form of pure reason, that does not work in the service of vital, concrete life.

Constancy is a term that appears in art, science, statistics and psychology. In art, constancy explains how form remains the same, even when objects are contracting or expanding in size, brightness and color.

In science, constancy addresses how objects remain objective and unchanged regardless of the perception of observers. In biology, cellular constancy, what can be considered a regulative principle of the structure of life at the micro level, dictates the possibilities inherent in human life as lived-experience.

Statistics conceives of constancy as consistency of procedures in tests that retain their stability and coherence, even as the field of observed items expands in number.

In psychology, perceptual constancy relates to a person’s ability to perceive familiar objects regardless of stimuli, variations and changes that affect observers.

Essence in relation to Constancy

I suggest that in philosophical reflection, constancy can be thought of as the manifestation and measurable exposition of essences that inform and make human reality coherent, which different observers throughout time can verify. While the philosophical concept of essence (as substance) may confound many people, constancy is a more accessible and intuitive term that thoughtful people can better relate to.

At this point, it is not necessary to split hairs describing the nature of essence as the structural foundational of human reality and man’s ability to name such a structure. Prior to naming, thoughtful persons are able to make sense of the architectonic, magnitude and intensity of human problems that are manifest in the lived-experience. This is the result of practical intuition of the contingencies that man must ultimately organize into coherent fashion. The process of comprehending the order (logos) of human reality is a form of perception that leads to conception, without necessitating naming and the creation of a catalogue of what understanding uncovers.

The latter process is spontaneous, and as such, may be propped into fruition through necessity and intellectual curiosity. Otherwise, naming would be required to precede any phenomena that human reality and contingency drops on man’s lap, as it were. If naming and an exhaustive understanding of the object of reflection must be known prior to reflection, as a consequence man’s ability to perceive reality would become obsolete.

Knowing some accidental attributes of essence is often enough to navigate through human reality. Through the exercise of free will thoughtful persons who realize the hierarchical structure of values, especially as these are tested by contingencies, attain knowledge of essences as the structural foundation of human reality. This insight is a form of knowledge that forces the question: How much knowledge of the essences that inform human reality does man require before thought can tell us something definitive about reality?

The essential framework of constancy in human reality obeys intelligible universal laws that reason can uncover, making human existence coherent and livable. Constancy provides man with a reference point of how best to measure and respond to extremes. Constancy is manifested as rational stability and a measure of certainty that serve as the ground of morality, the execution of scientific discovery, and the attainment of philosophical wisdom. These foundational tenets of human experience enable man the ability to safeguard productive cultural and social-political policy making, even when individuals choose not to accept universal principles as guidance when accessing human reality.

Constancy is validated through the passage of time. Civilizations are built upon this perennial understanding, whether in architecture, engineering and science. Constancy is a fundamental ingredient of awe and wonder, intellectual curiosity and the practice of disinterested science, for it satisfies man’s quest for knowledge. The zest for understanding and knowledge is ultimately a practical concern, for why seek answers to questions, if from the start, we doubt the role of essence in human reality?

It is time that eventually determines the categories of Being – to use Aristotle’s term – that are essential to human reality; the violation thereof, irrevocably harms man’s perception of reality. As a consequence, the latter sets in motion a domino effect that hampers man’s ability to decipher appearance from reality and truth from mere illusion.

Constancy and Metaphysics

Constancy in human experience brings to fruition timeless answers to metaphysical and moral questions that enable man to ground experience in genuine and sustainable understanding. Because constancy is ultimately validated with the passage of time, there is often a disconnect between finite human experience and a rational grasp of the constants of nature. In other words, there is ofttimes confusion as to why essence – when essence is acknowledged at all in postmodernity – should have anything of value to say about the present (immediacy). Why not discard the idea of essence and argue that man only encounters a steady stream of fleeting contingencies? This problematic is where the role of philosophical reflection can make a lasting mark in civilization, creating a mechanism for the comprehension of the essences that inform human reality.

This problematic begs the question of the role of philosophical reflection in relation to the nature of human reality. If not to uncover fundamental principles of human reality, philosophical reflection and science, two forms of man’s engagement with reality, become moot.

The need to decipher appearance from reality is the most elemental of human problems, given that it informs man’s wellbeing. This concern is aided by man’s ability to interpose the contingencies of human reality with subjective passions – often, with dire consequences. If for no other end than as a practical necessity, the latter concern must be continually addressed with intellectual honesty.

A sincere allotment of reason in human experience corrects the damaging unfounded impression that appearance is a viable substitute for reality – not by taking a temporal glance at essence – but through a long-range view of human experience and the universal patterns that reason and intuition unearth. Thus, constancy necessitates metaphysical and moral grounding in human experience. Why is that?

While constancy can be uncovered through a scientific approach, e.g., the repetition and consistency of observed phenomena through time, that approach is never definitive in explaining the effects of constancy in lived/felt experience. Part of the reason for this is that constancy that is discovered by science often remains aloof and inaccessible to metaphysical/existential reality. Most of the constants of nature that science brings to light are not as clear-cut and accessible to the senses as the idea of gravity.

Granted, while it may not be in the power of observers to change the fundamental structure of constancy in human reality, this does not preclude that some observers can distort, pervert and negatively affect the essential architectonic of human reality through the negation of essence.

The relation of constancy – in the sense of essence – and the forms in which it manifests itself in sensual experience inform philosophical reflection, dating back to the pre-Socratics and their concern with being, becoming and the problem of the one and the many. This is an instructive relationship, given that for ancient Greek philosophers there exists a one-to-one correlation between human perception of reality and what can be known. Ancient Greek thinkers understood that while reality can be uncovered by reason, it remains ill-advised and dangerous to attempt to distort human reality for personal gain. The quest for rational thought to uncover objective reality can be measured in practical terms, for man’s distortion of reality leads to costly confusion. The latter is the redemptive value of Greek tragedy and comedy.

It is critical to realize that a perennial question such as the nature of constancy in philosophy remains a staple of philosophical reflection, Christianity and science, today. Regardless of the many movements that have to no avail – when measured in the long run – attempted to refute essentialism, no thinker has convincingly demonstrated that essence is not the foundation of human reality.

One reason for this is that man’s sensual experience of reality as lived-experience, not theory, seeks cohesion in ordering human behavior and ideas according to patterns that are easily verifiable. That is the litmus test of essence as standardization of human reality. Essence serves as the template, gauge and pattern-setter for human reality. Man gauges the truth of the latter in ways that include, but not limited to, reason, sensual experience, a moral compass and intuition.

In postmodernity, essence is acknowledged, albeit often as the negation thereof by people who profess that novelty, innovation and ever-expanding claims about man’s ever-expanding moral make-up destroy essentialism and constancy in post-modernity. Why is constancy perpetually made the target of de-formation and unsubstantiated attacks that defy common sense realism, if its detractors do not believe that it is a fundamental component of human experience?

Essence, Constancy, and the Lived-Experience

Ironically, essentialism does not call attention to itself; it just serves as the infrastructure that props up human reality.

Yet essentialism is a perpetual victim of malleable fashionable trends in philosophy and morals; the lure of the present is often too tempting for many people to ignore. The two main culprits are always relativism – in itself a form of self-serving opportunism that defies objective reality – and the unsustainable and unrealizable notion of man’s moral perfection.

Postmodern relativism attempts to forge reality through hammer blows, making it the customized projection and weltanschauung of human whim. Relativism acts to destabilize coherence in philosophical reflection. In the process, relativism consistently discredits itself through the inherent tension of its many contradictions.

Constancy and Time in Human Existence

The fleeting and evasive nature of time, at least in the subjective, clock-time manner that man experiences it, is transparent to human beings. Some people argue that time is even mysterious given its surreal and stealth manifestation in human existence. We must be careful not to confuse objective and International Atomic Time (TAI) as a staple of duration for inanimate things, i.e., the seasons, the growth rings of trees, rust in iron and the age of the universe, with time as lived-experience.

Human existence is a form of reality that can only be understood through self-reflection, and which is proactive in its willing – not merely biological. Man appropriates time as the fundamental aspect of constancy as existential longing.

Reflective human beings live time more so than they experience it. While time is unstoppable, human beings can potentially come to experience time in a manner that serves as the staple of lived-experience. When this occurs, time becomes synonymous with life as constancy and no longer as a measure of objective events in the physical world, e.g., the length of a lecture, travel time as ETA, and the duration of a clocked sporting event.

Constancy and Existential Longing

There is a poignant correlation between constancy and man’s capacity to cultivate the sense for life. The sense for life is an existential category that enables thoughtful, reflective persons from becoming objectivized by the mundane.

Equally, the sense for life elevates reflective persons from nature, when the latter term is simply understood as a bio/chemical process. Constancy is experienced as the sense for life, for constancy is felt as lived reality. Yet constancy as lived reality is not arrived at through theoretical and cultural conceptions. The latter merely present man with a shell and silhouette that only skim the surface of human existence.

The realization that life itself is the ultimate form of constancy for man becomes self-evident only as existential longing. While bio/chemical life can be considered a form of constancy, this is not experienced in itself as lived-constancy, but only as its theoretical double, as it were. Constancy as existential longing is the subjective appropriation of the self. This is a process that occurs to reflective persons who embrace the essential structure of human existence.

The sense for life is akin to self-regulating awareness and intuition that takes precedence over bio/chemical categories. The latter are encountered by science as physical reality. The approach that science takes in appropriating physical reality does not take into consideration the object in its totality, that is, as exhibiting a problematic that is brought to light by man’s internal dimension. Man’s internal dimension transcends the psychical, which positivism has relegated to physical phenomena. Beyond the psychical, the human person exhibits an existential dimension that seeks self-understanding; the defining aspect of human life as existence.

A being such as man, who regulates existence through longing, can only do so because the solid foundation encountered in human reality as constancy. The negation of constancy serves as a disorienting force that makes it impossible to cultivate the sense for life. The latter is the case because longing is only possible as a fulfillable and reflective existential project.

Notes:

A.R. Jones, The Life and Opinions of Thomas Ernest Hulme. (Beacon Press: Boston,1960), 160.

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