How this term appears in the channel In this channel's material, Essentialism is understood as the broad philosophical doctrine sketched in its definition: the idea that things — objects, concepts, people, institutions — have an underlying set of properties or traits that make them what they are. Because the channel's conversation centers on how philosophy meets entrepreneurship and AI, essentialism sits at a familiar crossroads: whether things have a fixed nature is one of the oldest questions behind newer debates about what technology means for what it means to be human.