Sunday, October 3, 2004
philosophical thinking is an endless beginning
There is no perfect beginning—as if clear-sighted inauguration may echo originative telos. Yet, we may want a horizon of Origin-ality in finding a philosophical inauguration clear-sighted, as apparent relativism in ultimate concern portends insufferable anomie.
A small ascent
Any discourse is, at least, a very deliberate netweave. Yet, post-metaphysicalist cohering—which my evolving Project seeks to exemplify—belongs to the movement, the netweaving of the inquiry, rather than to a structure of presentation. Reconstructive thematization of that advances the inquiry more than determining a general constitutivity of its own advancing. Though the latter can be usefully investigated (even without suggesting metaphysicalism), the resultant discourse of reflective reconstruction doesn’t express the constitutivity of its own investigating. Capability for reflective reconstruction of general constitutivity (apparently immanent constituting), attending to a discursive venture of reflective reconstruction, thereby advances itself—the enactive capability—rather than capturing its own bootstrapping or reconstituting itself determinately relative to the general constitutivity of the discursive venture that may be clarified.
So, what’s clarified, if not the endeavor of clarification? A Concept of discursive learning or constitution that may have hermeneutical efficacy for evaluating particular inquiries into inquiry as such?
The evolutionary comprehension of such a Concept (embodied in its enactive self-understanding and validated in its interpretive/evaluative efficacy) may give such self-understanding non-relativistic (evolutionary) validity relative to other inquiries, even while its nature is indeterminate, as the question of this ultimately may facilitate the evolving evolutionarity of itself (i.e., evolving the inqiry as such beyond available paradigmicity), which of course proximally (here) invests the sense of ultimacy in the evolutionarity of evolving (and, as proximal introduction, probably seems like a Hegelian Darwinism, but it’s not—neither German-Idealist nor Darwinian, in the sense that contemporary evolutionary biology—so-called “evo-devo”—may be understood to be post-Darwinian).
relative descent
So, from overviewing (via circumspective early excursions upcoming), my Project proceeds to difficulties of conceivability—but aims to do so in analytically clear senses, with no reliance on hermetic, mystifying conceptions, though difficulty inevitably looks at first to be mystifying, as if by design, as if in need of obscurely eluding claims against its justifiability. But justification is really a matter of appropriatively working with the specificity of the claim against justifiability (i.e., the claim that basic conceptions are hermetic, etc.), rather than seeking to immunize oneself in advance against all possible objections (which was a key appeal of metaphysicalism).
further descent
All in all, let there proximally be thriving—like an ultimate Openness of purposeful well-being or flourishing.
Am I? Are you?
We parent thriving neonates, being artful gardeners of our own potential. By old age, its complex subtlety (for those who’ve been brightly active throughout life) may be beyond charactization (so, we just go on with what we do). There may thrive some cosmic Inner Child that never ceased wandering and wondering, some agéd waonderchild living where learning never ends, expressing the evolving humanity that launched us into its furthering that forever may launch more thriving into ever more furthering through more kinds of evolving kindness (belonging to kinds and, differently, to ways of caring—caring for kinds in kinds of caring?).
Philosophical thinking is an endless Beginning, at best a nesting for conceptual development (if not evolving) that may make its own originality along the way. Conceptuality develops, then may evolve. Originality emerges, flowers in the waymaking attuned to matters at hand, like the artist in the science emerging via the scientist in the art—as the fruitful intelligence that mere birth never determines may originate a new kind of fruitfulness. Fruitfulness as such may evolve. Horizons show autopoiesis. A tropology tropes topogeny.
So, in a sense that’s It: from thriving to evolutionarity—though not ultimately “It”. Yet, whatever we do implies, via its lifeworld backgrounding, a sense of ultimacy (be it usually nonconscious, if not unconscious) which gives us purposefulness which may be conceptualized, even complexly developed into large-scale programmatic engagements.
But usually not. Usually, we have a vague sense of being in the world, Of a world that makes life worthwhile. All we may know is our world.
At the other extreme are the philosophers who can’t forget the Questioning (of ultimacy—Of ultimacy itself?) and may make a career of figuring out where we are, in so many ways derivative of ultimate questioning.
Ultimately, you know, It is Mystery: the universe and all.
