Essence is contrasted with accident, which is a property or attribute the entity has accidentally or contingently, but upon which its identity does not depend.
This phrase presented such difficulties for its Latin translators that they coined the word essentia to represent the whole expression.
[5] Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on De hebdomadibus (Book II) by Boethius, states that in this work the distinction between essence (id quod est, what the thing is) and Being (esse) was introduced for the first time.
[6] In his dialogues Plato suggests that concrete beings acquire their essence through their relations to "forms"—abstract universals logically or ontologically separate from the objects of sense perception.
Sensible bodies are in constant flux and imperfect and hence, by Plato's reckoning, less real than the forms which are eternal, unchanging, and complete.
Typical examples of forms given by Plato are largeness, smallness, equality, unity, goodness, beauty, and justice.
According to nominalists such as William of Ockham, universals are not concrete entities, just names (i.e., labels); there are only individuals.
Therefore, a universal is reduced to a spoken sound (according to Roscelin),[8] or the (mental) concept to which it corresponds (as Ockham had it)—rather than a substantial, actual "thing" that exists outside of these contexts.
[10] Existentialism is often summed up by Jean-Paul Sartre's statement that for human beings "existence precedes essence", which he understood as a repudiation of the philosophical system that had come before him.
Unskilled persons whose eye of intelligence is obscured by the darkness of delusion conceive of an essence of things and then generate attachment and hostility with regard to them".
Svabhava is the nature of a person, which is a result of his or her samskaras (impressions created in the mind due to one's interaction with the external world).