a) The Concept of Essence and Phenomenon

p As noted above, content includes the totality of interactions and changes inherent in a thing, whereas form embraces the totality of stable connections and relations making up its structure. Some of the interactions and changes making up content are necessary, while others are accidental. The same is true of form. Some of the connections and relations making it up are necessary, others are accidental. That which is necessary in a thing’s content and form cgnstitutes rls essence, whereas that which is accidental is a phenomenon.

p We should not, however, think that essence is composed of a mechanical totality of necessary aspects and connections. Essence is the totality of a thing’s necessary aspects and connections, in which they are naturally interdependent and dialectically united.

p Thus, essence is the totality of all the necessary aspects and connections of a thing, taken in their natural interdependence; phenomenon is the manifestation of these aspects and connections on the surface through the entire mass of accidental deviations.

The essence of a society, for example, is the totality of all its necessary aspects and connections, including all the laws governing its functioning and development. The realm of phenomena includes manifestations of all these aspects and connections (laws) through interactions among people in their everyday life, through the activities of public institutions and organisations, and so on. The atoms making up a molecule and the laws governing their interaction constitute the molecule’s essence. The totality of properties through which the laws governing the interaction and interdependence of these atoms appear on the surface, constitutes a phenomenon.

b) A Critique of Idealist and Metaphysical Views
of Essence and Phenomenon

p Idealists either reject the existence of essence or deny its materiality. Berkeley, for instance, did not recognise the existence of essence. This is 233 also true of Mach and Avenarius. Some modern bourgeois philosophers, too, like Russel and Schiller, deny the existence of essence.

p Russel, for instance, reasons as follows about whether or not man has an essence. What is Mr. Smith?-he asks, and answers: When we look at him we see a number of colours, when we listen to him we hear a series of sounds and think that he, just like us, has thoughts and feelings. But what is Mr. Smith besides these phenomena? He is simply an imaginary hook on which supposedly phenomena are hung. Actually, however, the phenomena do not need this hook.

p A similar view is held by Schiller. He tries to prove that phenomena have no essence by arguing that people understand the essence of an object differently. Religion, he reasons, takes man’s soul as his essence, a physician thinks that it is his body, a laundress sees the essence of a man in the fact that he wears underwear, yet others see it in his ability to earn money. What, then, is the real essence of man?-Schiller asks and answers: there is no such thing. It is created by people at will.

p Different people really do see the essence of a thing differently. It does not follow, however, that no such essence exists. This only shows that people proceed in their understanding of a thing’s essence from its various aspects and connections, which are infinite in number. People make an absolute of them and thereby distort reality. Essence, however, being the totality of the necessary aspects and connections of the given thing, exists 234 regardless of whether or not it is understood correctly and whether all or only one of its aspects are reflected.

p Some idealists, such as Plato, Hegel, Santayana, and Whitehead, recognise the objective and real existence of essences, though they consider them as ideal. Plato and Santayana, for instance, held that essences formed a special world, the true reality comprising the supreme being. Hegel thought essence to be the concept of an object, retained irrespective of all changes in the object.

Dialectical materialists hold that essences expressed in an ideal form exist in man’s consciousness, not in the surrounding world. Being in man’s consciousness, they do not constitute a supreme being in relation to the outside world; on the contrary, they are dependent on this world, inasmuch as their content is derived from this world and is its picture, a copy of some of the aspects and connections of objective reality.

c) The Interconnection
Between Essence and Phenomenon

p According to dialectical materialists, the essence of material things is material. It is the totality of the necessary aspects and connections existing independently of man’s consciousness. Essence is intrinsically linked with phenomenon, revealing its content exclusively in and through the phenomenon. Phenomenon, on the other hand, is also inalienably linked with essence, and cannot exist without it. Lenin stressed this 235 interconnection between essence and phenomenon. He wrote: “The essence appears. The appearance is essential.”  [235•1 

p Being a form through which essence manifests itself, a phenomenon differs from it in that it expresses essence in a distorted way. In capitalist society, for example, phenomena indicate that people’s destinies and their material well-being depend on the relations of things, on the play of commodity prices on the market. Actually, however, all this depends on the relations among people, which are formed in the process of producing, distributing, and consuming material goods.

p A phenomenon expresses essence and at the same time adds new features and aspects to it that stem not from the essence, but from the external circumstances surrounding a thing, from its interaction with the environment. For this reason, a phenomenon is always richer than essence. This is easily seen in comparing the value of commodities with their prices. The prices of a particular commodity are always more varied (and in this sense richer) than its value, since, in addition to the dependence on the amount of social labour required to produce a unit of this commodity, they express the dependence on many external factors, such as the supply-and-demand ratio for this commodity on the market.

p Moreover, if a phenomenon’s content is determined not only by the essence (the totality of the internal necessary aspects and connections of a 236 thing), but also by its environment and its interaction with other things (which are continuously changing), the content of this phenomenon must be fluid and changeable, whereas the essence is something stable, surviving all these changes. The prices of a particular commodity, for instance, fluctuate continuously, whereas its value remains stable for a certain time. Similarly, the material well-being of the population, especially of the workers, in a capitalist country changes from one period (or phase) in the development of production to another, particularly from a revival to boom, and then to crisis and depression. But the totality of people’s production relations (their essence), which determines their material wellbeing, remains relatively stable.

p Lenin expressed this pattern in the correlation of essence and phenomenon in the following way: ”. . .The unessential, seeming, superficial, vanishes more often, does not hold so ‘tightly’, does not ’sit so firmly’ as ‘Essence’.”  [236•1 

Being stable in relation to a phenomenon, essence is not absolutely immutable. It changes, but not so fast as a phenomenon. This is because, as a phenomenon develops, certain necessary aspects and connections are enhanced and begin to play a more important role, while others recede or disappear totally. The transition of capitalism from the pre-monopoly stage to that of imperialism is an example. At the pre-monopoly period in the development of capitalism, when free 237 competition and commodity export reigned supreme, monopolies did not play any significant role, whereas at the imperialist stage free competition, though continuing to exist, is drastically reduced by monopoly, which becomes a universal phenomenon and begins to play a dominant role in society. Moreover, the export of commodities is pushed into the background, giving way to the export of capital. This shows that one and the same essence undergoes certain changes within its limits.