Sunday, August 28, 2016

Nominalism and the 'I'

Nominalists, for whom the Individual is real, but the species is not, tend to overlook that Hume demonstrates the irreality of the former, as well.  For, if the 'I' is nothing but a bundle of perceptions, then it is a entity in name only.  Now, while Kant rescues the concept from that conclusion, by attributing reality to the 'bundle', and, thus, to the 'I think' that effects the bundling, Schopenhauer denies even that attribution, thereby dissolving the presumed Individual completely.  Thus, his occasional individuation of the Will to Live constitutes a lapse in that skepticism.  Regardless, his anti-Individualism is a reminder of the arbitrariness, if not inconsistency of Nominalism.

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