Atomism Sample Clauses

Atomism. Jaggar refers to this as ‘abstract individualism’. This is the basis for the claim that liberals understand individuals as ontologically prior to society and as ‘separate’, at least, that their essence cannot be determined by their social context. Jaggar writes, for liberals: Logically, if not empirically, human individuals could exist outside a social context. Their essential characteristics, their needs and interests, their capacities and desires, are given independently of their social context and are not created or even fundamentally altered by that context. This metaphysical assumption is sometimes called abstract individualism because it conceives of human individuals in abstraction from any social circumstances. 60 Atomism, argues Jaggar, leads to political solipsism, the view that individuals, “Are essentially solitary, with needs and interests that are essentially separate from if not in opposition to those of other individuals.” 61 This also misunderstands humans as ‘self-sufficient’. 62 More problematically, this conception of individuals does not recognize the reality of human interdependence. Jaggar argues that, “Human interdependence is necessitated by human biology, and the assumption of individual self-sufficiency is only plausible if one ignores human biology.”63 Normative dualism, of course, the identification of human essence with mind and reason rather than with the body does exactly this: it ignores human biology, or rather, argues that reason is ‘multiply realizable.’