index

Philosophical tactics

click on images for full-size:

Connection and mediation

Mediation and kinds of unity

Process that is us ('Dialogue' by Toko Shimada -- the red marks spell out furusato (old home village) in Japanese hiragana).)

Several philosophical tactics show up again and again in this study.

  1. The first is an insistence on mediation. There are no simple identities. Everything attains its identity through mediations, which are not the same as relations. Relations are static connections with other established things; mediations are processes of establishment and mutual definition. [Objection!]
  2. Another tactic is to watch for illicit combinations of transcendental and empirical generalities. [Objection!]
  3. A third, related tactic is to watch for the ways in which the conditions that make a place possible also make impossible a perfectly closed place, or a perfectly open homelessness. [Objection!]
  4. A fourth tactic is to remember the mutual constitution of process and structure, and become aware of the process that is us. [Objection!]
  5. A fifth tactic is to insist on multiple kinds of unity. Critics often pit true or authentic unity against false or apparent unity, but what we are dealing with are different kinds of unity. We do need normative distinctions, but we should not make them between unity and its counterfeit, but among different kinds of unity. I have suggested complexity as a criterion for that distinction. [Objection!]

A summary of general goals and influences (as opposed to specific recommendations) can be found at the gateway, which links to some historical issues and a basic objection at another gateway.