Abstract

In this essay, I raise three topics with regards to Roderick Chisholm's account of the idea of an individual essence. First, I give an argument for the claim that objects have more than one essence. Second, I defend the view that someone can know a proposition entailing someone else's essence. Third, I argue that existentialism is false. I demonstrate this by pointing out that existentialism's central claim – that the proposition E exists and the object x does not is impossible – is false; this proposition turns out to be possible after all on the existentialist account of possibility.