The practice of excellence presumes that there are truths that are not arbitrary. It assumes that there is some truth or standard outside the individual person (like the Ten Commandments) that exists, that can be discovered. When we do discover it we use it to judge or ascertain what is the truth according to that standard. If one denies that there are truths that exist outside the individual person then each person defines his/her own “truth” by what he/she chooses to believe.I discovered the word Existentialism in an early 1950′s edition of the Education Encyclopedia, where the entry “Existentialism” appeared for the first time. There is an article by Jean Paul Sartre, an atheistic existentialist philosopher who believed that each person is a “god unto himself. “ I am born, come into existence, colon cleansing system and when I am mature enough I determine my “essence”, who I am as a human, by freely choosing what I believe to be the truth. I am the arbiter for what is “truth” for me, and what the truth is for me is the only truth there is! There is no such thing as “objective” truth apart from what I choose. My freedom to choose is the ultimate truth for me. I cannot, in Sartre’s view, impose my values on others unless they freely choose to believe and accept the values I have chosen as their own. Sartre is the existential modern father of relativism.No one approves of everything so your “better” is as good as my “better” so “we are left with a world full of preferences” but no truth.As I related in paragraph one of this article the practice of excellence presumes that there are truths that are not arbitrary.
