Daniel Lehewych, M.A. | Writer

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Convalescence

Could something as intense, as ostensibly pathological as the pangs of convalescence that one regularly experiences contra everyone (even kin) be given the status of legitimate epistemic perspectives? For their anti-theses are just as one-sided, just as accentuative and excluding as they are.

And so too with any perspective on the continuum of perspectives within and without this particular thesis and anti-thesis.

That is the essence of perspectivalism, a plural, non-relativistic world-interpretation of world-interpretations. Thus, truth and untruth exist in each perspective –including those that arise as pangs of convalescence. Where there is untruth is where one’s whole constitution is taken in by one particular perspectival frame, and there is truth where a perspectival frame connects to every other perspectival frame.

The web of such frames is Being-itself. Hence, the initial question’s answer is ‘yes’ but not an unconditional yes. Whatever thesis be posited in a rapturous state of grief must be met with its anti-thesis to come to a synthesis, for that is where the truth resides in all such cases.

Perspectivalism

‘Is it not true that kin have lied, that they have been audaciously disrespectful?’ It is true, and it feels as if that be the stimulus for such sickening pangs. ‘Yet, haven’t thee lied to kin, have been audaciously disrespectful to them?’ It is true, and thus which be the stimulus for attributing our kin’s disrespect as the stimulus for convalescence.

Though it is unfair in either respect, the unfairness of one side is impossible to recognize unless the unfairness of the other is unconcealed.

One wishes to conceal from themselves and others the cowardice of their will by demonstrating to them their will’s cowardice –for every perspective abides by the fundamental principle of Being-itself, the will to power, and thus violently vies on its own behalf for perspectival dominion.

In the face of this violence –something which, barring an existential catastrophe, can only be experienced upon disciplining the mind to delve into subterranean thoughts or meditative states focally — convalesce arises. In good faith, this cannot be reduced in significance down to any particular will –rather, it can only be simplified unto a person who has quite commonly enacted bad faith.

But even when a synthesis is achieved, it simply generates a new thesis and antithesis. Despite all of our desires and persistent efforts, there is no possible way to step outside of frames in general –only particular frames.

And when new frames are entered, old ones necessarily enter them with us. The past is the residual slime upon the present, slowing down the fate of the future. Temporality dissolves past, present, and future into ‘passing-away.’

For even in living, we are passing away –in thinking of the past, we think of what has passed away; in thinking of the present, we think of what is passing away; and in thinking of the future, we think of what shall be passing away.

Each are modes of ‘passing-away’ and nothing else –they are three ways one metaphysical notion operates.

Hence, one can go through repeated cycles of revaluation of perspectives and come up short each time –and by ‘short,’ what is meant is ‘selfsame,’ for what is expected in each case is something fundamentally different. The fundamental, however, never changes –what changes are the superficial effects of its eternal flexion and extension.

Temporality

The positing of any particular perspective’s legitimacy as an exemplary token of true Being-itself posits their own hubris. Thus, positing one’s own hubris is the standard most people’s thoughts and beliefs set for themselves.

It is this self-sameness that can drive one who focuses too long upon it into a state of convalesce –and it is an uncommon person that falls into such sickness, for the default mode of Being is such as to exhaust all efforts and resources unto ignoring it.

Rare is the person whose uppermost value is a genuine will to truth; under all claims from others regarding their ostensible ‘erraticism’ is a will to reify ostensability, as such — over against that which lays beneath it, where saliency resides, almost always cast asunder by those that proclaim to be its highest heralds.

The rare person whose uppermost value is a genuine will to truth casts themselves asunder. So, they project themselves away from others. In contrast, the same such others project their inability to do the same unto the uncommon with epithets like ‘erratic’ — where ‘eclectic,’ being also quite uncreative as an insult, would at least be more accurate, especially when coupled with Pyrrhonism.

One can traverse the ultimate expanse of perspectival plurality while also –and through — negating each’s dogmatic element. And it is remarkable that while this path is good and true, in virtue of its commonality, it is socially and culturally alienating –a common personal feature one may note being featured in the autobiographical writings of philosophers, artists, and scientists through time immemorial.

Rare are such types no matter where and when we speak –no culture or society has ever attempted (nor could they ever try) to breed such types en masse; almost all such dispositions are cultivated in natural retaliation against what is customary, what is “normal.”

Therein, the first perspective is traversed, and the first principles are laid to inform all subsequent perspectives and principles traversed and laid.

All of this eternally recurs, without beginning or end –for beginning and end dissolve into self-sameness from the purview of eternity. Physical reality is primarily force and secondarily matter.

Matter is acted upon by force, eternally reconfiguring the infinite mass (always the same) into finite forms (always changing, indistinct from force itself).

Unself-critical value judgments melt in the face of this ontology, lest one certify themselves a narcissist of messianic proportions.

Here, we have come upon the essence of common human intuitions and incentives, and thus the righteousness of the uncommon, though not in virtue of their uncommonness itself, but rather because of what summoned them, in virtue of what demanded of them such palpable idiosyncrasy, such peculiarness.