Saturday, October 26, 2019

Stirner Denies Human Nature

Max Stirner denies almost all abstractions as applicable to the human condition, so his denial of the possibility of rational knowledge about anything (Is he a German Taoist whose skepticism is extreme epistemological pessimism, or a fairly pure epistemological Irrationalism? Initially, at least, that is what I am concluding.).

Since we, according to Stirner, cannot make dogmatic statements about human nature, or what it is, he would totally refute my assertion about basic human nature as a fixed, unchanging biological given or existential constant. If his egoistic ethical system--moving target that it is--is nonaristotelian (anti-logical and anti-linear), then by contrast, my egoist ethics is quite aristotelian and logical, albeit with some fuzzy logic tossed into the cooking pot.

If a view of human nature comes from the Bible, then, by Stirner's lights, the concept of unchanging, basic wicked human nature is a rationalized concept, a universal idea, an abstraction attributed wrongly to all people--of course I deny that reading.

If the ultra-conservative belief in a basic human nature governing all people all their lives is an abstraction, then Western thinking stems from two logical sources from Greek thought, and Hebrew metaphysics.


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