 In this section we will focus on the modal-existential analysis of ontological dependence, which used to be the dominant approach. But even if this approach has fallen out of fashion, it is important to see why that is the case and we cannot do that without understanding the approach. Moreover, there are those who do not wish to commit to the ontologically heavyweight notion of essence, but who nevertheless employ the notion of ontological dependence (e.g., trope bundle theorists, such as Keinänen, Keskinen, &amp; Hakkarainen 2019). We will discuss some of the problems that this account faces in  §2.2  and return to the essentialist analysis in  §4.