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Sunday, August 9, 2020

Amoralism and Irrationalism

Being an amoralist is not the sign of irrationalism. An intellectual can be lacking in moral sense, while an uneducated person can be a staunch moralist. The choice of moral principles is pre-rational or pre-reason: people pick up their basic moral ideas between the ages of two and five when they are too young to make use of their faculty of reason. Amoralism, on the other hand, is the conscious choice of a rational adult. To deny the moral ideas that you had picked up as a child, you need to make full use of your reason. This is why nihilism, a social manifestation of amoralism, generally effects the intellectualized sections of society. Those who have no exposure to philosophy and art rarely fall prey to nihilism.

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