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.

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.