Wesen
Wesen
(Ger. being, essence, nature) Designates essential being without which a thing has no reality. It has been conceived variously in the history of philosophy, as Ousia or constant being by Aristotle; as essenitia, real or nominal, or species, by the Schoolmen; as principle of all that which belongs to the possibility of a thing, by Kant; generally as that which is unconditionally necessary in the concept of a thing or is not dependent on external, causal, temporal or special circumstances. Its contrast is that which is unwesentlich (defined by Schuppe as that which has relation to or for something else), accidental, contingent. — K.F.L.