@JoWehler You are right that philosophy is arguments for opinions under a certain light, but two factors still intervene to make it not work as an SE question. First, we're not doing philosophy here but rather answering questions about philosophy. Second, the size of a question impacts the number of necessary things to talk about to answer it. In the case of your question, there are (just counting the ones you mention) 4 different opinions as the usefulness and definition of "essence"