Primitivism: Ascending vs. Egalitarian vs Atheism: Two Forms & Opposite Moralities
| Sources | Primitivism: Ascending vs. Egalitarian vs Atheism: Two Forms & Opposite Moralities Both claim to return to nature. Egalitarian primitivism claims humans are naturally equal; hierarchy is artificial. Ascending primitivism claims humans are naturally hierarchical; egalitarianism is constraint imposed by the weak. They use the same appeals to nature to justify opposite conclusions. |
| Tension | If both can be grounded in nature, nature does not determine the answer. The choice between them is ethical, not empirical. But the choice is genuinely binary: a society cannot simultaneously implement both. You cannot have hierarchy without egalitarianism or egalitarianism without hierarchy. The collision reveals that appeals to nature, authenticity, or primitivism cannot determine ethical or political choice. We c… |
| Candidate | Both primitivisms are coherent visions of human possibility grounded in different aspects of human nature. The choice between them is political and ethical, not empirical. Any appeal to nature that claims to resolve this choice is rhetorical obfuscation. We must choose based on values, not on discovery of what humans are "really like." |