Reconstructive outline

Forward

1. Truth can be conceived according to different systems of thinking. (¶1)
   1. these one-sidedly conceive of truth as a fixed “reality” (¶2)
   2. but truth must be spoken of, affirmed (¶2)
   3. and individual persons that must do the affirming (¶3)
2. A method of suspiciously articulating and interrogating premises can overcome truth as a fixed “reality” (¶4)
   1. this occurs through the critique of the cultural practice of affirming premises, reiterated in all individuals’ thought (¶5)
   2. by criticizing the fixture of reason (words) itself through its descent into practice (acts) (¶5)
   3. this is not the only possible method of cultural critique (¶7)
3. Premises must assume themselves circularly (¶6)
   1. this fact is unavoidable, and any thinking at all affirms it (¶6-¶7)
4. Premissive Philosophy aims at the critique of the reasoning which justifies activities, especially as in economics (¶9)
   1. this differs from Marxist critique in its ruthless self-criticism (¶9)
   2. this self-criticism is self-reconstructive: it takes nothing as set in stone, and opens everything to alteration (¶10)
   3. The final aim of critique: sublimate reason in action which will avow itself of its freedom (¶10)

Preamble

Problem: The Finitude of Consciousness

1. problems of division and intersubjectivity (¶11)
   1. combined restatement as the problem of universal knowledge (¶12)
   2. reiterated through the unifier of “infinity” (¶12)
2. proof of the insolubility of the problem of division
   1. Assuming an infinite universe, to know “universally” implies knowing infinitely (¶14)
   2. Assuming a temporal knower Q, that knower cannot know any single element of the infinite universe (¶15)
      1. because each attempt to know creates a new element ad infinitum (¶15)
   3. If Q knows universally, it is all that it knows (¶16)
      1. because the fact of self-relation cannot be defined (¶16)
      2. God alone knows all because he is all (¶16)
   4. conclusion: All knowers except God are finite and, thus, non-universal (¶17)
3. reflection on the proof as impurely a priori (¶18)
4. proof of the insolubility of the problem of intersubjectivity (¶19-20)
   1. conclusion: No two knowers have the same knowledge of one fact / object (¶19)

Solution: Epistemological Pragmatism

1. Incompleteness of knowing as a criterion truth-claims under Peirce’s revision of Kant (¶22)
2. This criterion demands experimentation, or searching for the consequences of concepts in action (¶23-¶24)
3. Repudiation of non-experimentalist critics and their idle chatter (¶25)

Problem 2: The Integration of System

1. Two knowers A and B can always disagree about the presuppositions enabling truth-claims (¶26)
2. Agreement is an act of good faith between A and B - each admitting the validity of the other’s experience formally and contentfully (¶27)
3. Systematic thinking demands good faith more than any other thinking (¶28)

Solution 2: Systematic Pragmatism

1. Logical validity and soundness are insufficient for the rejection of pragmatist inferences (¶29)
2. A fortiori, they are insufficient for the rejection of pragmatist systems (or chains of inferences) (¶29)
   1. Only the admission of the pragmatic maxim and the conduct of experimental praxis is sufficient (¶29-30)
3. Good faith towards a pragmatic systems demands (1) examining how premises function in inferences (2) how inferences function in the system (3) how the system functions in life (¶30)
   1. Life is the final criterion of pragmatic systematizing (¶30)

Transition: Preambulatory Purposes

1. My logical-temporal limits as an author (¶31)
2. My point of departure, my understanding of it as an end-in-view, the premissive philosophy as a pragmatic means to that end (¶32)
   1. problems with the form and content of the philosophy in its present state (¶32)
3. The task of progressively reconstructing my system through experimental praxis allows it to grow as a living, critical body (¶33)

Formal Mind

1. my logic as culturally speculative and pragmatic (¶34)
   1. by creating a new mode of critical thinking (¶35)
   2. as used by individuals among individuals, rather than by an academic elite (¶36-37)
   3. for the final end of situating claims into human discursive and practical contexts (¶38)
   4. as an excuse for the system’s current shabbiness (¶39)

      Terms

2. terms as the necessary beginning of logic (¶40)
   1. not derived out of thought’s own substance, but thought’s subjective actions (¶41)
   2. which is not a form of relativism, but quietism about objectivity (¶42)
3. terms’ social genesis in the I-You relation (¶43)
   1. as already-at-work, the proof of its existence (¶44)
   2. an arbitrary derivation of 8 terms from this genesis (¶45)
   3. presupposing premises; the circularity of terms and premises as redundant to the I-You as their mutual, human condition (¶46)
      1. this human condition as ultimately rendering “I” and “You” equipromordially free and equal (¶47)
4. conclusion: I-You equality is inviolable, and any claim otherwise is false (¶48)

Premises

1. as operant explicating three moments of human interaction (¶50)
   1. subjective self-determination (¶51)
   2. noetic copulation (recognition of self-limitation) (¶52)
   3. mutual recognition (¶53)

Inferences

1. as locomotive transitions between the three moments above (¶54)
   1. first transition: nothing → being (¶54)
   2. second transition: same → other (¶55)
   3. third transition: other → determinate nothing (freedom) (¶56)
2. each of the above considered as a work of reason (¶57)
   1. synthetic induction - “I”
   2. analytic deduction - “human being”
   3. dialectical abduction - “you”
3. conclusion: formal self-determination accretes into materialistic reason, or what reason has after its humane self-determination (¶58)

Material Mind

An Attempt at Self-Consciousness

1. Thinking is always about something (¶59)
2. Experience precedes thinking and is therefore about nothing (¶60)
   1. Experiences are thus irreducible to subjects (¶61)
3. logic dissolves experience into laws - it thinks on experience (¶62)
   1. thought is not thereby dissolved, but actualized as experience (¶63)
   2. which must be aesthetic (¶64)
      1. so no thought can be had twice (¶65)
4. no two thinkers can have the same thought (¶66)
   1. no one thinker can ever know another thinker’s thoughts (¶67)
   2. one’s failure to maintain the above is not an object of reproach (¶68)
5. the above as circumscribing the limits of experience, or “ownmost” knowing (¶69-70)
   1. as justifying what I want to do with that knowing (¶71)
   2. the genesis of ownmost criticism (¶72)
6. my ownmost criticism (¶73), which can only complete itself a priori as one-sided self-consciousness (¶74)
   1. self-determined through experience, especially reading (¶75)
   2. which creates a framework for empirical action, begin a priori, concluding empirically (¶76)

An Attempt at Pragmatic Architectonics

1. architectonics as a necessary fact of empirical cognition (¶77)
   1. to which even Deconstruction, though necessary, is subject (¶78-80)
2. architectonics - deconstruction - living: life as the answer to all charges of incoherence (¶80)
   1. all life is necessarily contradictory (¶81)
   2. life becomes, working out its contradictions in time (¶82)
3. criticism as the final watch-word of my system: have at you, knave! (¶83-84)

An Attempt at Conceptual Practices

Of the Self-Same

1. self-reflection as the personal enaction of the self-concept - subjective liberalization (¶85)
2. which must be conducted as both self-same and self-othered (¶86-87)

Of the Self-Othered

1. ethical consciousness follows as the ontological conclusion of subjective liberalization, lest ontological contradiction become ethical contradiction (¶88)
2. all public action must be ethical, or else it is inhuman (¶89)
3. subjective liberalization repeats itself as active liberalization (¶90)

Of Determinable Totalities

1. friendship is the first voluntary act of social self-consciousness, of active liberalization (¶91)
2. clubs are the quantitative consequence of many friendships together (¶92)
   1. formal clubs treat law or ethics as heteronomous (¶93)
   2. material clubs treat law as momentarily heteronomous and momentarily autonomous (¶94)
   3. play clubs as entirely autonomous, playfully (¶95)
      1. excursus on the above with respect to communism (¶96-97)
      2. play as autonomy, demanding self-determination (¶97)
         1. the conditions of play, the work of collective self-determination:
            1. self-criticism and club-criticism - “all is open to criticism” (¶98)
            2. free dialectics - determination of the laws of discourse and self-creation (¶99)
            3. collective subjectivation - the club as a life-creation (¶100)
   4. quantification into associations, qualified codification by surrounding culture (¶101)
3. companionship as the highest social relation, the highest form of play (¶102)
4. the state as the interpenetration of friendships and clubs, laws’ universal determinations (¶103)
   1. whose functions for consciousness are god-like and, thereby, decisively final (¶104-106)

Conclusions

1. formal conclusions
   1. the above stands as vulgar and preliminary; it exists primarily for my own action (¶107)
   2. only ruthless self-criticism will make good on my promise to deliver this system a universal validity for all men (¶108)
   3. exhortation for contact (¶109)
2. material conclusions
   1. complete outline of all the System seeks to establish (¶110)
   2. the above is entirely arbitrary; it will only be made necessary in the future (¶111)
   3. only the reader can help me complete the system (¶112)
   4. this System as a moment of the progress of consciousness in general, its religious forbearers (¶113)
   5. final statement of fallibility and request for public review (¶114)
   6. final exhortation: the System as a ground for a future that is to make freedom a reality (¶115)