Essentialism, an erroneous way of thinking that can be traced to classical philosophy, assumes a thing to hold necessary intrinsic characteristics. Such thinking has been commonly employed for a popular understanding of bounded groups of people, establishing imaginary communities and achieving political aims. This article explores different iterations of essentialist understanding of the Polish nation in naturalist, theogenic and primordialist ways. It then considers the persuasiveness of nationalist essentialism and argues that making the fallacy of such thinking visible is a necessary first step in anti-essentialist politics.

中文翻译：

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波兰民族主义话语中的持久本质主义：维特根斯坦主义的批判

本质主义是一种可以追溯到古典哲学的错误思维方式，它假定事物具有必要的内在特征。人们普遍采用这种思想来对有限的人群进行广泛的了解，建立假想的社区并实现政治目标。本文以自然主义者，有神论者和原始主义者的方式探讨了波兰人对本质主义理解的不同迭代。然后，它考虑了民族主义本质主义的说服力，并认为，使这种思想的谬误可见是反本质主义政治的必要的第一步。