I’d rather sidestep the pomp and circumstance of a formal debate, but if you want to make a bold argument in a new thread - I’ll happily counter at will.
fuse wrote
Okay. Keep your eyes peeled. 
My Essence?
Smiling on the premise of reality.
MP,
Why do you keep trying to smell for blood in the water?
I’m like the ocean - ever changing, ebbing, flowing, wild, serene, much deep within and much observable above me. I contain much and much contains me. lol
An ad continuum of Fluidity!
Is that an essence or an attitude?
Don’t our attitudes define our essence?
Gibralter,
An essence is in stone so to speak, but I for one know that it can be tempered, just don’t ask how.
Then it doesn’t exist.
Existence has always existed.
[The] existence [of a thing] precedes [its] essence.
For instance, take yourself, which has surely not always existed.
Which I think it does. I think a thing has to be presented to us first before we can project an essence onto it. We first get to know a person–get a taste for their attitude–and that for us defines who they are. This can be applied to one’s self as well–we watch ourselves as we express or practice a certain attitude and this gets incorporated into our self-image.
Essence is not surface personality traits, its your will exemplified through time, through eternity.
I’ll have to give that some thought, brown eyes. I’m not so sure that they do though but I may be wrong.
Our attitudes do define our perceptions and beliefs.
But I think that essence goes deeper. It’s who we are at our spiritual (not religious) core.
Will, for me, has to do with ego traits.
I’m not sure that our essence wills anything - it just IS in a sense.
Arc wrote
Your “will” or essence can have many characteristics, sides to it. It is the combination of those in effort that solidify in stone or you were made to be that way by your big sky daddy. Either way, in stone.
What is the constant here that we’re calling “essence”? Will? But the will changes over time–it becomes stronger/weaker, it wills different things. If it’s the everlasting presence of a will, then there is nothing in one will to distinguish it from another.
I’m more partial to the “bundle” theory of the self–the theory that says we are, at any given moment, just the hodgepodge of mental content and persuasions and dispositions that make up our minds. There is no constant that underlies the flux.
There are things that repeat, however, things like tastes, preferences, memories, beliefs, values, hearing our name, seeing the same person every time we look in the mirror, and these in the abstract might be considered together to be our “essence”.
You will different things or your will is distracted by different things?
…Not even physics?