Will, Egoism, Atomism

Underlying the positive-negative antithesis entailed in 'good vs. bad', 'good vs. evil', etc. axiologies, is a self vs. other antagonism. That antagonism is also the source of apparently 'universalistic' doctrines, which are, upon closer examination, generalizations of it to exclusionary 'we vs. they' systems, e. g. humanity vs. the rest of Nature, for Spinoza, rational beings vs. heteronomous influences, for Kant. So, because the self-other distinction is typically conceived as immutable, these doctrines are all variations of what might be called 'Atomistic Egoism'. In contrast, here, Self-Other is defined in terms of Interior-Exterior, which, in turn, hypostasizes and abstracts from the fundamental personal processes of Interiorization and Exteriorization, i. e. Comprehension and Will, respectively. In other words, a more decisive alternative to Egoism than traditional Universalism avoids Atomism from the outset, by conceiving Self as fundamentally in interaction with Alterity, an interaction the variability of which is appropriately evaluated by a Comparative Axiology.