As a pragmatist, I begin to understand that my commitment to this way of life commits me to ontological homogeneity, rather than ontological pluralism, which is Kant’s peculiar form of idealism. Because if all truths are to be judged by contextual responsiveness (justification vis-à-vis my verbal community), then epistemology can be the only activity. Because there is no truth out there. The world does not break down into truth sized parcels demarcated by words. They neither re-present nor correspond. Words are simply one event in many, which together sum to the indefinite entirety of everything. And whatever we name any contingent process – proton neutron electron spacetime curve song or just plain love – the words are meaningless. They divide nothing and fix nothing. And if, like Bishop Berkeley, if I must have a cause for all this beauty, call it God and say that she is thinking us alive. Or not. Because beauty needs no reason, as far as I can see.
July 16, 2013 by m4u
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