The Anti-essentialism in modern and contemporary philosophy is wrong to oppose all essences. We should only oppose essences in the objective world, not in the subjective world. Anti-essentialism pours out the dirty water and the child after bath, while Neo-essentialism advocates pouring out the dirty water and leaving the child behind.

It is difficult to create correct philosophical theories. Although all philosophical theories in history have mistakes, they provide the foundation for creating correct philosophical theories. The creation of a correct philosophical theory requires the foundation of three aspects: dogmatic Metaphysics, Epistemology and Meta-ethics. Only after these three aspects have been fully developed can Metaphysics be rebuilt. The subject of this Metaphysics is Neo-essentialism.

The essence believed by the old and the new Essentialism is completely different, so the truth view of the old and new Essentialism will be completely different. New Essentialism holds that essence is artificial and therefore fallible. In this way, essence is not a supreme principle of action or a standard of truth, but a tool by which we understand and transform the world. Neo-essentialism is pragmatism, the ultimate principle of behavior is value maximization, the ultimate standard of truth is usefulness, which means valuable. Value is embodied in practice, so the standard of truth is practice. The old Essentialism regarded the Dao Li of the objective world as supreme, so it must take these objective Dao Li as essence, and take these essence as the ultimate principle of action and the ultimate standard of truth. If these principles contradict people's interests, then we must preserve objective principles and destroy human desires. All kinds of man-eating legal institutions in history were the inevitable result of the development of old Essentialism. Old Essentialism was also the theoretical source of many religions, such as Christianity from Plato's Essentialism, Daoism from Laozi's Essentialism.

5.3 Existence Precedes Essence

J.P.Sartre said, existence precedes essence. Human existence is passive and preordained. For example, the birth of a man or a woman cannot be decided by oneself. But people can use his ordained existence to create his own essence. Therefore, human is free, and the value of human lies not in his preordained existence, not in his historical background, not in his family, not in the position of his birth, but in the freedom to choose to transform his own nature. How he chooses to be who he wants and what he wants to do is the essence of people.

Sartre's theory was right, but Sartre's belief that the essence of things other than human precedes existence was wrong. Like people the existence of everything precedes its essence. The existence of everything is its concrete properties, and existence preceding essence means that people first know these concrete properties, and then they know its essence according to these properties. The content of essence is determined by the knowledge of these concrete attributes, but the value of essence may be greater than existence. The essence here is that of the subjective world. The question as to whether the essence of the objective world precedes existence is not worth discussing because it is worthless.