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Variable a priori conditions
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Are we confined to spining around some unified single axis of our age?
Totalizing claims may try to be both necessary and empirical by appealing to some historically variable a priori that is not universal yet is unavoidable during the time that it is in force, and is simply prior to any empirical process of meaning. Such a historically variable but currently unavoidable a priori may be claimed to be unified and dominant, or multiple and diverse. If a historically variable a priori is claimed to be unified and dominant, then the claim depends on the soundness of the argument for such unities. The most influential recent thinker along these lines is Heidegger. But his theory about single unified meanings of being for each epoch is suspect, and to follow him in affirming epochal meanings is to unify the empirical phenomena of the present age too much. Doing so (for instance, by claiming that any attempt to avoid the technological meaning of life merely replays this meaning) simply legislates that certain meanings are unavoidably prior, and begs the question about the global effects of empirical practices in technology or the media. If a historically variable a priori is claimed to be multiple, this returns to the first branch of the argument, since it becomes is an empirical question which of the historical a priori meanings is functioning in which specific situations.