Real essentialism

 Content: Contemporary essentialism and real essentialism --
 Against modalism : possible worlds --
 Against modalism : Fine's critique --
 Reductionism : the illusory search for inner constitution --
 Why real essentialism? --
 Some varieties of anti-essentialism --
 Empiricist anti-essentialism --
 Quinean animadversions --
 Popper : avoiding 'what-is?' questions --
 Wittgenstein : the shadow of grammar --
 The reality and knowability of essence --
 Why essences are real --
 The 'problem of the universal accidental --
 An empirical test for essence? --
 Coming to know essence --
 'Paradigms', 'stereotypes', and classification --
 The structure of essence --
 Hylemorphism : act and potency --
 Substantial form --
 Prime matter --
 Substance --
 The immanence of essence --
 Essence and identity --
 Real definition and the true law of identity --
 The Porphyrian tree --
 The analogy of being --
 Individuation --
 Identity over time --
 Essence and existence --
 The real distinction in contingent beings --
 Everything is contingent, almost --
 Powers --
 Laws of nature --
 Aspects of essence --
 Kinds of accident --
 The nature of properties --
 Knowledge of essence via properties --
 Artefacts --
 Origin and constitution --
 Life --
 The essence of life --
 Kinds of organism --
 Against emergence --
 Species, biological and metaphysical --
 Is biological essentialism dead? --
 Against the cladistic species concept --
 Vagueness --
 A plea for morphology --
 The person --
 The essence of personhood --
 Hylemorphic dualism --
 Consciousness, psychology, and the person --
 Form, body, and soul --
 Soul, intellect, and immateriality --
 Soul, identity, and material dependence.