
Human Natures: Aristoi in Modernity Week 22
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As Nietzsche grasped, modern culture, covertly bound by Christian and rationalist axiomatics, presumes human nature to have a universal or uniform structure. We refer perfunctorily to all humans equally as “individuals” or “persons,” as if this facile abstraction or undifferentiation were empirically evidential or rationally apodictic, or even had a substantive import (can anyone fail to qualify as individual or person?). Blithely, insipidly, this egalitarianism or universalism posits principles in personality—soul, rational will, conscience, ego cogito, etc.—as homogeneous or uninflected as carbon or hydrogen is in chemistry. Is it so? Or are some richer in conscience, poorer in will, ampler in soul, weaker in ego, etc. than others—just as common sense is wont to say? Does “will” or “rationality” mean the same thing in actual application, in one case as in another?
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