Philosophy Portal

Absolute Knowledge is a notoriously difficult and confusing concept in Hegel’s philosophy (and yet represents the name of the last chapter of his masterwork Phenomenology of Spirit). Here I attempt to frame the discourse by discussing the experiences I had in my maturation as an intellect in relation to evolutionary and religious philosophies about “absolute knowing”.  Evolutionary thinkers tend to view absolute knowing as an anachronistic and unnecessary concept, a relic of pre-modern thinking before the emergence of the Darwinian universe, where everything is conceived as dynamic and changing (and thus a universe with no absolute).  Religious thinkers tend to view absolute knowing as the self’s relation/knowledge of the absolute being (God), and tend to represent this knowing as either an abrupt phase transition or a gradual deepening where the subject feels “one” with a perfect order of being.

We attempt to discuss how AK — as a type of constant that is both beneath and beyond the dialectical process (and thus non-evolutionary), and as a state governed by negativity (and thus not perfect being) — requires a new thinking about the journey of a subject’s process of self-knowing within common life and institutional contexts.  We suggest that the subject necessarily has to leave common life for a journey of self-knowing, or else it will simply remain a raw unmediated subjectivity; but that the subject also has to return to common life, and avoid withdrawal into a domain of static knowledge isolated from others, in order to both complete its own dialectical process, and prevent society at large from dissolving at the unconscious hand of sexual antagonisms and fascist political order.

Philosophy is a discipline classically concerned with "Being", or the presence of Something.  Why is there Something rather than Nothing?  However, after more than a century of psychoanalysis, we may say that the human subject is an entity of Lack, or that Lacks.  Thus, the human subject is a Being constituted by a contradictory identity, constantly attempting to fill in the persistent feeling that there is "Something missing".  In this conversation series, we seek to enquire deeper about the experience and the philosophy of Lack, and ultimately, what such a philosophy might say about our contemporary culture.  Why is there Nothing rather than Something?

The second discourse on masculinity and masculine movements shifts exploration from the red pill community and the connection between masculinity and religion, towards an ethics of action, or general principles, that would possibly help ground real masculine movements in the 21st century. We speculate that a key to these ethics and principles can be found in the coincidence between men who have transcended pathological attachment to feminine identity, asserting themselves with a purpose and mission “beyond” the feminine; and at the same time men who are capable of integrating the feminine other by helping them to achieve their own true potential beyond their traditional constraints, without sacrificing authentic masculine drive.

In the second trialogue on gender trouble/theory we attempt to shift focus from alternatives to binary classification schemes (i.e. triadic, quadratic, or complexified categorization schemes) to the impossibility or the problem at the core of gender itself (i.e. that no categorization scheme "works", as it were, to solve the human relation to sexuality).  Thus, an idea is explored that what we call gender is in fact a historical-navigation tool or construct that we use to ultimately transcend sexuality.

In the second trialogue on the evolutionary versus religious worldview we attempt to build on our original notions that a synthesis between evolutionary and religious worldviews can be found in the fact that religions themselves evolve. In order to build on this notion we explore the possibility that not only do religions evolve, but that religions lead to their own form of transcendental evolution in and through becoming its own emergent location of virtual causation.  

Buy the book: https://sexmasculinitygod.com

The most advanced pre-modern civilizations (historical societies) were built on metaphysical presuppositions that we call “religious”.  Modern secular society questioned these presuppositions on scientific (and often evolutionary) grounds.  The main difference between the religious and scientific presupposition is the belief that a higher power regulates moral behaviour, and that such regulation is necessary for society to function.  The religious subject presupposes that God is a historical necessity for morality; whereas the secular subject presupposes that the individual can determine its own morality.  

This difference has concrete effects on (what Raven and I are calling) “pathological evolution”.  Namely, common wisdom, as well as data, can be made to suggest that religious groups reproduce at a higher rate than do secular, atheist, agnostic or non-religious people in general.  This presents us with a quite funny paradox: religious groups appear to be more evolutionarily “fit” then non-religious groups (or “individualized society”) when it comes to biological reproduction.  In other words, while some evolutionary scientists argue that religion does not make sense in relation to the discovery of evolution, the very social evolution of religion seems to contradict this argument. 

The purpose of this discourse is to dive deeper into this contradiction and attempt to unpack what it means.  Is widespread religious belief in a higher power necessary for the continuation of biological reproduction?  Or alternatively, does the absence of religious belief lead to an individual meaning crisis which ultimately de-couples sexual pleasure from its normative moral mandate (i.e. reproduction, child-rearing, family and community formation)?

In this conversation I host Alexander Bard and Alexander Elung to discuss the philosophy of "transcendental emergentism" and its relation to the future of philosophy, science and community.  Transcendental emergentism is a notion that attempts to escape both simplistic reductions to scientific materialism, and also overly-naive holistic interpretations of supernatural ideality.  This is possible because what is "transcendent" (beyond or above normal human experience) is something that "emerges" from our very historical process.  Thus, we seek to see the way in which this philosophy can have relevance to, among other things, the notion of "tribal singularity" (i.e. the collective process of transcending what we today consider to be the human being).

In this trialogue we attempt to introduce the notion of "Noopolitik" or "politics of the noosphere".  In the 20th century, the birth of our global world was mediated by two mega powers and their economic methods (i.e. United States and capitalism (first world); Soviet Union and communism (second world)).  The rest of the world was merely a battleground for these two major powers (third world).  Today, after the fall of the second world and the establishment of capitalist hegemony (neoliberalism), we are entering a new phase that is difficult to define or comprehend.  This new phase is not structured by one major country (United States), but the realm of international capital as embodied in new mega-informational-creatures that are not easy to classify or categorize as public or private bodies (e.g. Facebook, YouTube, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc.).  Here, paradoxically, the entire human population is something like the "third world", and our own (libidinal) body-minds (qua attention) are the battleground.  How to think this emerging global order and our role in its development?

In this discussion we are going to be diving into the notion of freedom after the introduction of Hegelian philosophy.  We will be probing into the consequence of Hegel's philosophy for contradiction, motion, identity, and religion.  This discourse will be based on and inspired by McGowan's own philosophical text "Emancipation After Hegel" which seeks to revive the relevance of Hegel's philosophy of the 21st century.

In the second trialogue on the Historical Emergence of Traditional Archetypes we shift attention from the historical conditions for the emergence of archetypes, and move more towards attempting to understand the source of the virtual potential that could shape other identities in new historical conditions. From this focus on virtual potential we theorize the possibility for future identities that our contemporary consciousness would relate to as alien otherness.  

Sex, Masculinity, God (the book): https://sexmasculinitygod.com