Laozi believed that Tao was the essence of all things, and Tao produced all things, that is to say, essence preceded existence. Plato said that the concrete was the imitation of the Idea, which means that essence preceded existence. These theories were old Essentialism.

5.4 Doing Right Thing and Seeking Faults

The major premises of logical reasonings are all the abstract understandings of regularities and commonalities. The biggest major premise is the spire of the theoretical pyramid, which is the Origin. All of the Origin and regularities and commonalities are essences. So essences are of great value. Seeking essences is the main task of philosophy.

The Dao Li in the subjective world is what we can get to know, is the source of knowledge, and can also test truth to a certain extent. The most abstract of them constitutes a Metaphysical Worldview. The Metaphysical Worldview offered by philosophy is a general view of the world. The content of this Worldview will gradually become more complex and orderly. While improving the most abstract part, it will develop a lot of more specific content and form an increasingly large theoretical system.

Objective Idealism has been looking for these essences, sticking to the original goal, so Objective Idealism has been doing the right thing. Although Objective Idealism has serious faults, it cannot be denied that it is doing the right thing, that is, doing something of great value.

Anti-essentialism, Subjective Idealism and Materialism pointed out the faults of Objective Idealism, but failed to see the advantages of Objective Idealism, not seeing the Origin is not general consciousness, but only the most abstract consciousness of regularity. So Descartes and Hume failed to knock down Objective Idealism, but it was later carried forward by Hegel. The Anti-essentialists had just been finding faults with Objective Idealism instead of doing the right thing. Philosophical theories need to be constantly overthrown and renewed, but Anti-essentialism only overthrew without renewing anything. To overthrow and renew is to establish new Essentialism while opposing old Essentialism.

Reference

[1] Duan Y., "The World View of Dialectical Dualist: The Dialectical Relation View of the Subjective World and the Objective World," in International Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 9, No. 2, 2021, pp.78-84.

[2] Zheng H.S., Major Schools of Modern Western Philosophy (In Chinese). Beijing: China Renmin University Press, 1988:344

[3] I.Kant. Critique of Pure Reason (In Chinese). Translated by Deng X.M. Beijing: Renmin Press,2017, 2nd Edition:11.

[4] Duan Y., Taijievolutionism Second Part. Hong Kong: Siji Publishing House, 2017:208.

[5] Hegel. Small Logic (In Chinese). Beijing: The Commercial Press,1980, 2nd edition :246.