Towards a Methodology of Scientific Humanitarianism

It seems that three things are to be produced when consuming information in my personal opinion. These three being insights with respect to:

1. Human emancipation
2. Moral guidance
3. Mere insight

Mere insight

Mere insight is linguistic, conceptual, and philosophical. Linguistic insights are merely quotes, relations between quotes, and novel uses of language. Conceptual insights are those consisting in the framework of the book – characters, settings, and their interactions (ie. as events). Philosophical insights are those concerning those subtle relations evident in conceptual insights, such as those between (1) Man and himself (2) Man and men (3) Man and society (4) Man and objective conditions (5) Man and subjective conditions (6) Man and all conditions (7) Man and Nature microcosmically (8) Man and nature macrocosmically (9) Man and Nature as Such. All such matters are predicated on concrete observations between men in the work, such that “man” in the abstract is really composed of individual men unique to the work at hand. (1-3) are most immediately pertinent to man, (7-9) most pertinent in a distant sense. (4-6) are pertinent in an abstract fashion, standing alternately with (7-9) as the apex of investigation and interpretation. (7-9) are the apex insofar as they distill all former insights as merely objective considerations which are unchangeable and fixed, (4-6) are the apex insofar as they look to man subjectively as the prime agent and first factor of all human investigations. That is, (4-6) anticipate moral guidance and human emancipation most concretely, as they take investigations into Man directly as their first factors. (7-9) do so as secondary factors whose relation to man can only be realized as via (4-6), in which they are synthesized with (1-3).

Moral guidance

Moral guidance derives from the application of linguistic, conceptual, and philosophical parameters to common life. The linguistic and conceptual aspects of such guidance are obvious – linguistic relations serve as aphorisms and concepts serve as archetypes for common moral dilemmas, circumstances, and attitudes. In Contradistinction to philosophical insight, however, moral guidance presumes not merely to investigate Man but to incorporate such investigations into a framework of behavior and attitudinal work. The latter is a constant reformation of self and of the publication hereof for consumption. Where philosophic investigation is merely analytic, moral guidance thus acts as the synthetical and dialectical aspect of investigation, producing novel insights applicable to living in general.

Human emancipation

Moral guidance is to be directed towards the ontologico-metaphysico-epistemological findings of mere insight with respect to human emancipation. That is, where moral guidance aims at moral-psychological finding, this much in and of itself is insufficient for the progress and advancement of human circumstance. In order that man be emancipated from his current objective conditions, he must engage in a criticism hereof which looks back on past subjective conditions and thereby critique current subjective conditions. In doing so, he is consequently left with a state of affairs in which he is totally free to look inward at himself and outward at his world and to say of it that it ought or ought not be a certain way, his normative positions firmly grounded in prior moral-psychological and ontologico-metaphysico-epistemological concerns.

Human emancipatory concerns are thus the height of all investigations into the humanities and, consequently, they represent the total synthesis of all prior humanitarian thinking. Where moral-psychological investigation anticipates the objective limits whereby human subjectivity is free to act, ontologico-epistemic concerns anticipate the objective limits whereby human subjectivity is free to consider itself. With the limits of act and thought thus established, Critique is subjectively free to look at its conditions within the limits of reason thus established, bringing itself to an internalization of its objective conditions in a manner which, via its subjectivity, is thus free to conduct their total manipulation.

The total manipulation of human objective conditions in virtue of the recognition and “turning-around” of human subjective conditions, a la Plato in the Republic, is thus the height of Wisdom, as Horace writes –

To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.

Horace, Epistles

The Science of Humanitarian Investigation is thus a Science of Wisdom – that is, a philosophic investigation and application of principles firmly rooted in prior productions. It is, thus, a right-orienting of human cognition for the sake of its bringing out of itself the conditions of possibility whereby man can become. In doing so, man looks at the follies of the past, takes them up into his mind and says of them “this are things I no longer desire” and, having done this, he attains to that superior state, as described by Aristotle in the Ethics, whereby his rational mentations whip to diligent obedience and subservient love his base passions. In this, man is free to get rid of folly. In simpler terms, the theory and practice thus described are that of man’s liberation from his baser tendencies, his attaining to the “stars above” via his “moral law within,” in the words of Kant.

A meditation on impotence

There is in me an all-consuming thought of inferiority –
it is a beneathness – a being-not-ness –
an inability to find focal fruit whose bite might open mind to possibilities anew –
It is a serpentine thing who dissuades me from temptation –
He tells Adam – don’t you eat this, or that, for the garden couldn’t be meant for you –
He is Despair, that woeful Beast whose mark is not of sixes, but of zeroes –
He says not what that vile tendril wrapped around Eve’s mind said –
To do in spite of command –
No – he says all command be damned – there is nothing to be done
There is nothing

He is like a rancid rat whose guts stink in the walls of my house –
He’s hidden there, his stinking flesh commanding maggots to come and crawl –
They burrow deep into his meat and let fumes of fancy follow into Wall –
It darkens as liquid spills and teeth decay while flies spy every which way
Buzzing and laying eggs, attracting lowly Life in the Death of something still lower –
Desperare de essendi – quo vadis – momento mori –
These are not said, but seen in the emergent darkness

There is only this, but even that seems to be –
If I want I must do to condition existence –
But to condition would be to exist in remission of self, finding things of rotten binding
Buying items for the sake of flying and hoping that maybe I could get by trying
And yet I find no peace of mind – it occurs to me only in my privacy
Yet, this is exactly contrary to inner impulse, my quiet compulsion –

I am a house divided
And I cannot stand.

But it is not good to think of too many things –
let me focus merely on what I want –
Let me think only of this which stands before me –
Let me be by myself and do unto myself only
without care for whatever else might come
Let me say – this, this is what I want! This, this is what I desire!
And let me hold to that as Peter clung to Jesus in the water –
Let me not doubt as Thomas did the freedom of my being –
Let me be secure in being me, and let no one, not even his Wretchedness,
convince me otherwise –
Let fear fall like Jericho’s Wall, and let me focus on myself –
Let me make myself anew –
let life like Man return to Edenic, verdant hue