at theodicy, but in a totally different approach of the Christian dogma through the interpretation of Aristotle’s works. Indeed, Aristotle, even though he was Plato’s student and his intellectual follower, diverged on the construction of his universe. Aristotle believed in a more Existential point of view, in which “he could discover no decisive reason for denying that the world always existed instead of being created at a point in time.” (S. Stumpf, 1994, p. 179). This is very contradictory with Saint Augustine’s Essentialist view, and also contradictory with the church’s dogma. Saint Thomas didn’t contradict the church on many things though, since his interpretation of Aristotle retains the idea of the Unmoved Mover as God, and the fact that everything is therefore caused by God. Still, even though he himself didn’t realize it, Saint Thomas was promoting an Existentialist view that was adhered to in part by the church.So what exactly are Essentialism and Existentialism? “The essence of a thing is what the thing is; existence refers rather to the sheer fact that the thing is. Thus when I say I am a man, the I am denotes the fact that I exist, while the predicate man denotes what kind of existent I am, namely a man.” (W. Barrett, 1958, p. 102). Essentialism is a highly spiritual mode of viewing in which you think that Essence is the urstuff. Essentialism has been a dominating philosophy in western thought through the Christian dogma and also in some Eastern philosophies, in which the soul is usually precursor to the flesh, and reincarnation is possible. But throughout the ages, the people who have supported the Essentialist idea of the world have tried to give their theory a foundation that would make sense, in both the real world (what Plato would call the world of appearance) and the definition in relation to the concept of God/the Good. This justification started with Plato...
