Pragmatism is Ethicism: Ethics as a Type of Action

Tragic pensiveness does not affirm the tragic course of events as such, or the justice of the fate that overtakes the hero but rather a metaphysical order of being that is true for all.

• Gadamer

Indeed, [Ralph] Ellison’s resistance to being pigeonholed by his peers is evident in his statement to Irving Howe about what he deemed to be a relative vs. an ancestor. He says, to Howe: “…perhaps you will understand when I say that he [Wright] did not influence me if I point out that while one can do nothing about choosing one’s relatives, one can, as an artist, choose one’s ‘ancestors.’ Wright was, in this sense, a ‘relative’; Hemingway an ‘ancestor.’

alt title: The Relative of Philosophy: On Guerilla Reasoning

If we start thinking that everything is force and that the base for our reality started with a strong enough push towards one particular direction, we can imagine this force encountering obstacles as it continues its sprawling.

It can find itself in the same cycle within a perpetual stream. The force feels insofar that it cannot escape. The force, however, can persevere.

In its perseverance, the force encounters an absolute stop. The cycle. It’s a stop insofar as the force loops back from its beginning.

In its cycle, the force encounters an absolute go. The perpetuity. It’s a go insofar as the force never stops.

What happens when the force finds itself at the beginning again? It goes.

What happens when the force is conscience? It stops.

The breakdown of philosophy within a metaphor for math:

1. Epistemology — We start with an objective imprint. All animals have a feedback loop that, in part, determines the animals’ input within any given event. “Input” is understood as, for any given event, the practical trigger effects that result in further action.
2. Reflection — The degree to which humans can “reflect” is what distinguishes them or sets them further apart than other animals. A reflection is a cycle by which the epistemological (knowledge-based) imprint relives in alternative context. In the modulation, constant changing, memories construct an alternative Reality than the one “given.” “Given” I think comes form Hegel. There is not objective “given” Reality. All animals possess some degree of sentience. Even if a species has no sentience, we compare them relative to animals that gradually differ because of physical/biological components. We base this comparison because we understand that the physical components “gradually” came into being. Thus by following the comparison of the spectrum we can draw out a “reflection” that shows us how sentience came to be. This is “ironic” in the sense that this reflection right now is something you were given. How can you escape this reflection? More to the point, if you were “given” this reflection, then this reflection does NOT stand in contrast to an objective reality. This reflection IS objective reality. By objective reality we understand that there is no subject reading this. Just something part of a universal chemical structure reacting to orders given by a predestined preference of “being.” It just is.
3. Metaphysics — We don’t know where to go from our reflection. Here we are and we keep cycling over and over. Each experience seems unique but based on a recursive, reoccurring function where we always find ourselves somewhere closer to where we started. Do we keep going? Metaphysics is where we ask ourselves “what are our comparisons made out of?” Why do we have so many opinions. And again, not only do we have so many opinions. When we’re psychologically calibrated with people, we don’t even need to talk. As a mentally calibrated group, we can conjure up the same reflections. In trying to “guess” as what this is, we practice metaphysics. We allow the entertainment of what seems to be nothing to influence the very and only something that we, at the point of reflection, have.
4. Logic — Breaking down the metaphysical conclusions with the epistemic (knowledge) ones reveal a further metaphysical monster: logic. For see, in reflecting on metaphysics we come to understand that our break down or digestion of metaphysics results in a “logic.” Logic can be understood very very abstractly in this case to the point that it’s a purely biological process we cannot mentally understand save by its own digestion; resulting in a circle you can only escape with faith, courage, recklessness, disregard, disrespect, rebellion, anarchy, coup. Basically anything that will ensure a fed reads this (sorry). We found ourselves in a psychologically critical state where we can burst at anytime. We’re circling the block so fast with logic that everything is true. This could be a maddening rush of genius or just a maddening rush of mania. It’s a biological phenomena where the people able to appreciate their own logic become dogmatic towards it and define the established identities as their own. The birth of an ego from general, universal ego.
5. Ethics — The breaking point of all the anticipation comes disguised as everyday action but, when examined under its tiniest known, most atomic state, it’s shown to be none of other than that rapscallion of philosophy, ethics. Morality. Behavior. Action. Pragmatism. For if are to entertain that Reality is really a stream, we must admit to ourselves that all of this exists as one thing and that our mere particular observations, insofar as we are the political animal, are based on particular appreciation where we have to presume a subject. From “objective reality,” there wouldn’t be a subject per se. In objective reality, subject would just be a particular object that has “awareness” insofar as awareness can “reflectively validate” an occurrence within Reality.
6. Aesthetics — Regardless of what may be true or fact (they hardly should matter), our validation is based on an aesthetic, artful taste. This has been tied by Kant to social mentality when a human is bound/tied/calibrated/correlated with other humans in taste. Taste happens naturally. Which means that ethics happens naturally insofar as ethics stays relevant to its sphere of origin. Autonomy, when a person is self moving, is when a person develops a taste that is particularly egoistical and the person can “move” with two different sphere. The social sphere and the egoistical sphere. How you synthesize these two spheres within the overall universal reality can only be examined insofar you as a potential subject exist in this cycle, from knowledge to taste, aware that “knowledge to taste” is something you yourself can peel off. Thus revealing the subject. But this can only be done with further “knowledge to taste” examination. We call this critical thinking.

Everything thus far does seem to be based on relative autonomy. Everything has relativity but only humans can make its own relatives and this “reason” behind this is sheer power. And power is ego. Yeah I know this doesn’t flow with the Ellison excerpt but my ego thought it was “aesthetically pleasing.” I don’t know why. Either way, creativity is very important to all of this.