Essentialism is defined in the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy on this way:

 «essentialism The doctrine that is correct to distinguish between those properties of a thing, or a kind of thing, that are essential to it, and those that are merely accidental. Essential properties are ones that it cannot lose without ceasing to exist. Thus a person wearing a hat may take off the hat or might not have been wearing the hat, but the same person cannot cease to occupy space, and we cannot postulate a possible situation in which the person is not occupying space. If we agree with this (it is not beyond debate, which illustrates the difficulty with essentialism) occupying space is an essential property of persons, but wearing a hat an accidental one. » (Simon Blackburn, Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2005, pag 120; the bold is put by us).

 The problem with this definition is that it is semi tautological, vagrant. In fact, following the optic of Blackburn, accidentalism could be defined by the same words displaced within the proposition: « the doctrine that is correct to distinguish between those properties of a thing, or a kind of thing, that are merely accidental to it and those that are essential.». So, where is the difference? But essentialism is not the same that accidentalism…It is not enough to distinguish essence from accident to produce a clear definition of essentialism.

 The right definition of essentialism is ignored by Simon Blackburn and many other cathedratic. They have the university title but not enough clarity in their ideas.

Thomas of Aquinas did not oppose essence and accident as if they were mutually extrinsic in his book «The being and the essence». He postulated that the accident - the most part of accidents - is incorporated in the essence and Hegel thought the same way. Aquinas opposed the accident to the substance, defined as the immutable part of essence.

Thus, the correct definition of essentialism is: the doctrine or family of doctrines sustaining that the essence or quiddity of a being, a thing or an idea precedes is existence - or stays behind the mutation of external appearance of that thing or idea- and determinates each act of the existence wether on an absolute or on a relative manner. Determinist predestination is a form of essentialism: all the existence is contained in the essence. Many doctrines of free will (libertarianisms) which gives emphasis to the genetic bio physical or psychological characteristics (for example: the Freud´ s Theory of sexuality, etc) are also essentialist doctrines: the existence is not absolutely but partially contained in the essence, that is to say, the existence is free within his limits, freedom or free will exists but is conditioned by a fixed a priori essence.

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