Within the vastly contentious world of normativity—one profuse with countervailing beliefs,

principles, ideals, ideas, opinions, and so on—there is, yet , a common measure of rectitude
within the framework of secular dialectics: the exalted status of rational judgements, those which
most penetratingly capture the evidential and experiential dimensions of perceptual existence in
yielding contextual instructiveness. It is on this fact that philosophy, as the inveterate measure
of rationality itself, carries primacy in political organization, invariably disclosing the epistemic
grounds of any propositional context in order that notions of 'ought' only come to bear following
proper articulation of what is.
In spite of substantial disagreement over what ideas are rational with respect to human nature
and its corresponding political implications—an obdurate political reality suggesting, perhaps, a
topic bedridden with inscrutable, non-secular content--a palpable criterion is conjured when
theory has a grounding in the natural world; only through empirical and experiential information
can a judgment have intransigent justification. Normative discourse, therefore, is not, as many
have imagined, an ideological program--what amounts to an arbitrary and artificial act of
claiming--but instead an objective pursuit qualified as such through its functioning as a direct
extension of naturalistic knowledge, of which human sciences are an integral part. Philosophical
calibration of the political realm then illustrates the intractable, universal interest to actively
shape history with judgments of utmost utility and reason---significantly, those founded upon
common aspects human experience that carry unambiguous unviersality.
A rational normative program is epistemological from the onset, and political in conclusion;
secular ethics are thus derived ultimately from epistemic underpinnings that which qualify the
kinds of humanistic information that are incumbent for a naturalistic schema. Only through what
amounts to an experiential, interdisciplinary approach can knowledge and power become truly
synergistic forces enabling collective rationality and, consequently, civilizational progress. The
harmonization of knowledge and power (wherein epistemic establishment produces political
mandate) has , through modern times, been perhaps man’s greatest hope for overcoming the
systemic delinquencies inherent to a ..
Political philosophy, at its highest form, is the principal purveyor of light in the quest for
normativity and, as such, constitutes the very lifeblood of civilization. To the extent that
philosophy empowers us to overcome human weakness and, indeed, our undeveloped nature
(as caused by unawareness), it can be ascribed the status of an evolutionary activity. Rational
to the core, political philosophy—in the mode of normative dialectics—is painstakingly pragmatic
in its role as an integrator of fragmented knowledge, both ethical and scientific; there is,
effectively, an amplifying of the utility transmitted by such sources through the creation of a
hermeneutic scheme bringing experience and naturalistic data into a cogent doctrine. This
program of synthesized epistemics allows us to access judgments of ethical and, indeed,
humanistic magnitude. The prominent epistemologist Jacques Maritain describes the
indispensability of philosophical valuation of empirical data, “The philosopher proceeds from the
visible to the invisible, I mean to what is of itself outside the order of sensible observation…
From this point of view, we can say there is a certain dependence of the sciences on
philosophy. Inasmuch as they seek the raison d’etre and yet reveal it only imperfectly, the
sciences themselves inspire the mind with a desire for philosophy and look for support to a
higher knowledge.” Such “higher knowledge” Maritain mentions, to the extent that it realized
through cogent reasoning and argument, and founded on fact, finds its home in the political
when it’s practical content is substantial enough to warrant a departure from skepticism.
We presently find ourselves in an unsettling situation in which political theory has started to
vanish from our present political culture (having little to any effect in policy deliberation)--and,
more generally, formal discourse on foundational issues, particularly, ones of justice which arise
from the ontological level of thought , has become a predominately academic affair with minimal
bearing on the real world. There is a sense that the time of theorizing and conceptualizing, of
dialectics on the nature of man and State (and their associative relations) has long passed. After
producing the theoretical ammunition which spurred the growth of liberal-democratic
governance in much of the developed world, there appears to prevail a belief that there is either
little left for the political theorist to posit, or, indeed—in light of the present epistemological
establishment, one which posits normative pluralism as implicated by rational relativity—little
that he can.
Liberal democracies have generally obviated philosophical perspectives from having a
meaningful impact on contemporaneous issues—many of which that undermine the normative
cogency of constitutional proclamations. To be sure, we only need to briefly reflect on the state
of the world today, particularly the United States. We see how the budgeting process, a
rudimentary state function, can become so afflicted by controversy to the point that government
insolvency threatens the very integrity of the federalist system; any observer of American
politics can sense the normative void stifling fiscal policy, one that resonates an alarming
degree of collective disagreement over what sorts of operations the state ought to engage in
after negative liberties are protected. Positive public programs which grew out of the Great
Depression signified a collective appeal for a more activist state, but they must not be confused
for embodiments of a new philosophy or signatures of modified Enlightenment principles—if
they were, we wouldn’t see the ideological antagonism, in the form of a ‘liberal’ vs.
‘conservative’ political atmosphere, that has mostly characterized American politics since shortly
after that time. But the most disturbing part of this is that there is a total lack of formal discourse
over the legitimacy of these two aforementioned doctrines, and instead a recapitulation to
constitutional hallmarks which talk a whole lot about individual sovereignty while generally
leaving matters of public welfare aside.
With the liberal democracy, what we have is a form of polity which protects the individuality of its
members but remains unresponsive to societal issues—affecting the average well-being of its
members. That a philosophy for militarization are absent from foundational theory is
disconcerting, but that such expenditures in this area today are matched only by “rescue
packages” aimed at sustaining a broken economy is barely tolerable. How can such a drainage
on a nation’s resources, at the cost of basic goods like education and healthy living, proceed
without some philosophical justification instead of one of exigency? We’re told that it is all for the
sake of freedom and allowing the American dream to persist—but relentless militarization and
the rescuing of pathogenic market forces all for the ostensible purpose of protecting the system
as a whole, vividly amount to a proliferating security apparatus which pushes America, and
other Western powers who follow suit, toward a fascist polity. To be sure, we already see traces
of domination across the country in the way violence has been enacted upon public
demonstrations against the powerful interests who sit in the nation’s driving seat. If anything,
such behavior makes one wonder if politics have been philosophically exhausted—that the
liberal democracy’s presumable eminence will remain as long as liberty and equality by law are
still realities.
Normativity in the West has been thoroughly stripped of rational elements and instead rife with
pluralist and corporatist ones. Dialectics, perhaps because of a lack of perceived need as a
result of the liberal democracy’s meteoric rise in the past century, are largely negated from
today’s political discourse. But seeing all the palpable ways in which the United States—the
beacon of liberal democratic governance—is floundering, the time is ripe for a return to the
oppositional stance; whether or not we arrive at a valid basis for an adjusted polity, we will, at
the very least, feel secure that a philosophical check to power remains, that rationality is neither
obsolete nor relative. A diminished rational core yields a normativity depleted of collective
intentionality. Hegel describes this loss of intelligent control,
“To hold that every single person should share in deliberating and deciding on political matters
of general concern on the ground that all individuals are members of the state, that its concerns
are their concerns, and that it is their right that what is done should be done with their
knowledge and volition, is tantamount to a proposal to put the democratic element without any
rational form into the organism of the state, although it is only in virtue of the possession of such
a form that the state is an organism at all.”

Yet suppose all this has been for the better: one may claim that the meta-political cornerstones
of modern times, most notably the proliferation of liberal forms of government as the notion of
'freedom' has taken over the consciousness of mankind—have naturally meant a minimized
reliance on philosophical groundings and, conversely, a broader emphasis on the logistical,
practical means by which the liberal tradition's essence can be fully instituted. For, even the civil
rights movements of the 20th century were largely embodiments of Enlightenment metapolitical
thought, wherein calls for equality and social justice were emblematic of liberal ideals formerly
elucidated but just not afforded to all. And since liberal democracies are now mostly in
congruence with respect to the affirmation of human rights (most clearly evinced in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights), there seems now to be little appeal to refurbish the
liberal democracy's normative core; presumably, human nature is seen as having been
maximally described through secular modes of thought. So it may seem as if the prodigious
civilizational progress over the past century has, in effect, minimized the perceived need for an
extended foundational dialogue; ontological issues have been effectively taken off the table, as
it were, as constitutional fidelity thwarts deconstruction with respect to normative rectitude.
So we find ourselves bemused when contemplating how an upward civilizational trajectory can
be sustained—and, indeed, whether transcendent imperatives of this sort are even appropriate
in the present context. If knowledge and civilizational progress have any meaningful correlation,
the present epistemological regime promoted by secular liberalism begets the notion that
empirical content comprises the only valid kind of knowledge for political application , and
‘higher knowledge’, if it exists, is something the political philosopher ought to abdicate. It is thus
hardly a surprise that political ‘scientists’ have come replace theorists in the popular political
dialogue—observers replacing thinkers. It is an unsettling phenomenon that those who
intellectually challenge liberalism tend to be vilified in the West and charged with supporting
tyranny, terrorism, communism, fascism, and even socialism. We hear such kind of rhetoric
used frequently by the mainstream media in describing polities and leaders around the world
(particularly from developing nations) who challenge the West on grounds of hegemony,
economic embattlement, and military aggression, among other things. The vast and growing
disparity between the world’s rich and poor, and the lack of any substantial collective agenda to
tackle this blatant wrong, signals a need to really question if the leading thinkers of the
Enlightenment really got it right—not just in their time, but lastingly. Additionally, the enfeebled
statuses of Western-liberal governments world-wide, measured in the alarming levels of
economic infirmity and political insolvency—and pervasive citizen unrest as a result— are
ultimately symptomatic of deeply –rooted indeterminacy concerning the nature of polity; the
dysfunctional political climate arises from an incorrigible divide with respect to basic normative
matters, such as the scope of state action and the appropriate parameters for political freedom.
Although we’d expect a fair amount of heterodoxy with regards to such seemingly existential
notions, at the point where confusion produces crises we must take a turn to pragmatism in
order to overcome a utility-depleted paradigm.

Although matters dealing with ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ can never be perfectly validated like those of
the hard sciences, we still have an unyielding imperative to come up with something which best
addresses them: the most rational explanation, one which doesn’t necessarily disprove previous
paradigms, since any theory must be judged through contemporaneous standards (there is no
hindsight with theoretical propositioning), but, when possible, improves upon them. History and
scientific progress offer vital content for rational progress, for higher knowledge. A leading
thinker in matters of epistemological expansion, Karl Popper describes the importance of such
aims which turn out to be thoroughly practical,
“The immediacy or directness of the well-learned decoding process does not guarantee faultless
functioning; there is no absolute certainty, though certainty enough for most practical purposes.
The quest for certainty, for a secure basis of knowledge, has to be abandoned…security and
justification of claims to knowledge are not my problem. Instead, my problem is the growth of
knowledge. In which sense can we speak of the growth of or the progress of knowledge, and
how can we achieve it?”
To the extent that the liberal tradition prima facie disables the very notion of ‘higher knowledge’,
since the concept with the possible exception of constitutional ethics (as perhaps contained in
‘rights’, though they may be more preventative than normative in content), and yet carries itself
with unmistakable pride in its morality, we will find that this way of doing business, so to speak,
proceeds from a point of normative illegitimacy ; a critical misconnection with elementary
knowledge—that is, knowledge about the essence and origins of knowledge (including but not
limited to the psychological grounds of knowing)—which unwittingly precludes from political
discourse the objective parameters constituting 'rational' judgment vis-à-vis both foundational
and contextual matters. In this respect rational norms are underpinned by naturalized
knowledge (which concerns the mechanics of knowing), and, being propositional by nature,
generate a normative epistemology out of the objective fields of perception and thought. As Kim
states,
“..belief attribution requires belief evaluation, in accordance with the normative standards of
evidence and justification. If this is correct, rationality in its broad and fundamental sense is not
an optional property of beliefs, a virtue that some beliefs may enjoy and others lack; it is a
precondition of the attribution and individuation of belief—that is , a property without which the
concept of belief would be unintelligible and pointless. ..The naturalized epistemologist cannot
dispense with normative concepts or disengage himself from valuational activities.”
The liberal tradition’s general epistemology falters in the metapolitical level of thought largely
because of the way secularism has relegated ontological description to religious thought—as if
allowing description to have anything more than a belief-status would be a form of coercion.
What results is a disability in producing valuational content grounded in naturalism, resulting in
an epistemology insufficient for a metapolitical mandate of ‘freedom’—the liberal democracy’s
normative mainstay which, though perhaps clear at first glance, is hugely ambiguous upon
deeper reflection; that freedom is inherently given to positive and negative interpretations—
which, as they graduate into ideologies, become whole contravening—demonstrates the subtle
way in which foundational knowledge can divide a polity when couched in loose, socialized,
secular language instead of dialectical rationality . Lingering questions over personhood and
Statehood weaken democratic institutions as they allow for the subversion of rational inquiry by
political processes; normativity then eludes argumentative processes and is dominated by
pecuniary ones.
“In the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment has always aimed at
liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth
radiates disaster triumphant.” The West, and by extension the world at large, has consequently
found itself in an increasingly desperate situation wherein present normative establishments,
lacking affirmative ontologies, foster a political climate enabling chaotic systemic elements (e.g.
free market forces, corporate manipulation, popular whim) to overwhelm notions of public
welfare. The ensuing situation, what economists call a market failure, highlights the violation of
something important by nonrational, uncontrolled systemic elements—many of which that
signify market interests opposed to public interest (e.g. speculative practices of the sub-prime
crisis), and calls for a serious rethinking of democratic and freedom concepts which, ultimately,
trace back to humanistic ones.
Normative heterodoxy has become a fixture of the liberal democracy-- so much so, that in spite
of the known obstacles associated with this reality, there are many who stand vehemently by it
when the system itself is questioned on grounds of efficiency and, indeed, basic solvency:
pluralism--as (what amounts to) a competition of often counterveiling paradigms--in this moral
calculus is the norm, as it were, being the final derivative of uncharted political freedom, and as
a democratic foundation, an end in itself. Normative perspectives are epistemological
projections through which meta-political groundings, concerning the basic nature and purpose of
political organization, are born; pluralism as a normative epistemology is carried by the premise
that the only ‘ends’ in polity worth legitimizing are those of individual agency, and extra-
individual concepts like collectivity or civilizational progress are painted as forms of coercion.
While the stringent standard of secularized ontology embedded in the liberal-democratic
framework seems to beckon individual primacy—engendering a reasonable basis for libertarian
organization—we nonetheless find ourselves inescapably confronted by trans-individualistic
matters that lie plainly outside one's personal space, and yet which, in light of their public
significance, induce an ontology of the self that suggest limits to this private domain. Civil
responsibility has been firmly established as a normative pillar, but the basis for it remains
unclear. The lack of definitions in such a prominent area of everyday life reflects the epistemic
tension present when conceiving of the ‘self’ within the context of this ‘self’ as a member of a
group.
Among political theorists, there prevails a certain proclivity to interpret Age of Enlightenment as
a thoroughly-revealing and, most often, foundational source of philosophical import upon which
political systems ought to be ideologically grounded. Indeed, as the title conferred upon the
period vividly suggests, the Enlightenment is generally revered as a watershed moment for
humanity's moral, scientific, and political character—a powerful, indelible precipitator of
civilizational progress indeed whose ideas have propagated globally through, and in spite of,
historical change and cultural plurality. Political theory has thus tended to proceed from and
effectively presuppose ideas derived through and from the Enlightenment's ostensibly
exhaustive political philosophy, rather than engage in what may appear a futile desire to first
inspect the merits of such grounds themselves.
A lasting hallmark of the Enlightenment, the liberal tradition is celebrated for making ontological
relationships perhaps clearer and more in-line with popular sentiment than any other kind of
polity; as such, it can be viewed as the incumbent normative epistemology subtending popular
political discourse. The tradition is admittedly (and quite significantly) non-monolithic which
political theory through contemporary times has tended to proceed through as a basic dialogical
framework and foundational belief system, incorporated by a wide range of freedom-
interpretations to the point where the framework starts to seem contradictory. Even still, the
liberal tradition’s core implication, the notion of ‘rights’, having arisen in the context of human
dignity, encapsulate a gamut of collectively-held pronouncements with respect to human
ontology; so, we can feel secure that there does exist a foundational avenue toward a
protracted normativity.
That the liberal tradition is allegedly founded upon the state being ontologically accountable to
its citizens—in stark contrast to despotic traditions which in some places still exist—it then tends
to be elevated it to an exalted and even unchallengeable status in the political consciousness of
many, without second thought. Indeed, political commentator Francis Fukayama had gone so
far as touting the liberal democracy as not just the culmination of civilizational progress, but the
‘end of history’ itself! Surely, belief in liberal democracy politics as a final form of government
usually implies that the system itself is philosophically secure, if not exhaustive in the context of
secular inquiry, leaving human error and chaotic parameters generally as causes of systemic
deficiencies. Implicit within the bold assertion of a kind of endpoint in political rationality is a
belief that the ‘liberty’ and ‘democracy’, as values, most efficiently attenuate to the primordial
conditions on which political organization is founded (metapolitical foundations).
Rights are the grand pillars of normativity in the liberal democracy inasmuch as they explicate
the ontological grounds of the social-contract. They impose limitations upon the state and,
conversely, in the positive sense they also establish what citizens can demand in policy
contexts. But beyond formally configuring (by way of codification) the individual-state
relationship, on a more subtle level rights reveal a nation's consciousness, as they signify the
modes of thought which, at any given time, are exerting influence over the secular realm, in and
through their statutory power. Hence the power of rights is most radiant in their very origination,
in the process by which the contemplative and conceptual domain of ideas and principles
becomes exalted through its confluence with the political one.
The significant thing about rights for the present discussion is that they are pronouncements of
dignity, a central concept of secular liberalism that functions as a mediator practical and ideal
realms en route to yielding a tenable framework for moral polity. For dignity circumvents the
problem of countervailing doctrines with respect to human essence and worth (the difficulty in
postulating a definitive nature given the plain diversity of people and experiences) by attempting
to invoke common ground—that is, a universal, humanistic aspect of our nature that demands a
political system existentially-founded on it. But herein lies the problem: it is precisely due to the
conceiving of dignity in terms of an incontrovertible, seemingly naturalistic thing when in fact it is
quite evidently a valuation rather than description. So the ontology here is normative from the
get-go, rather than descriptive. Should ontological issues in politics even be descriptive, rather
than simply positing humans according to how we’d like to? The answer should be a resounding
‘no’: grounding a metapolitical schema in idealism—effectively a departure from realist, natural
thought—is the surest way to end up with a system which promotes ends that, insofar as being
weakly verifiable, are unintelligible and relative. To be clear, ‘freedom’ as an normative pillar has
both transcendent and practical connotations, leaving us to arbitrarily decide how the concept
ought to be imported into the system. And we see this all the time today: the appeal to freedom
as being a couched in dignity—even in the negative sense of the term alone—is idealistic and
we are evidently stuck as a result in an ideological war. A dangerously dysfunctional political
atmosphere now makes a practical normativity highly desirable. Pragmatism here lies in
appending intuitional concepts (e.g. freedom, dignity, equality) with phenomenological indices,
so that the idealism, if it can still exist in a tenable way, emerges from naturalistic grounds
instead of pure intellectualizing. Adorno states the problem of the original vagueness found in
liberalist ideology,
“Reflections on freedom and determinism sound archaic, as though dating from the early times
of the revolutionary bourgeoisie. But that freedom grows obsolete without having been realized
—this is not a fatality to be accepted; it is a fatality which resistance must clarify. Not the least of
the reasons why the idea of freedom lost its power over people is that from the outset it was
conceived so abstractly and subjectively that the objective social trends found it easy to bury.”
As a preliminary political concept, ‘freedom’ remains unfruitful in spite of attempts at increased
theoretical precision, most notably, in infusing the notion of ‘autonomy’ with the more definitive
idea of ‘self-determination’—an idea which, in contemporary times, has been predominately
championed by proponents of freedom in a potentiality-minded, positive sense. It takes dignity
as a function of (associated with) man’s natural capacities, in contrast to the negative intonation
of spheres of inviolability. The idea that man has, in essence, a natural capacity to create for
himself a 'good' life—a process of active vision—through a confluence of self-mastery and
external opportunity yields a virtually unassailable normative ethic for the state to promote this
end maximally and unfailingly. The liberal tradition gives us this valuable norm, yet as vivid a
conceptualization as it is, and in spite of its doubtless theoretical and intuitive appeal,
demonstrably inadequate in resolving the prevailing conceptual-indeterminacy encountered
when formulating the State’s practical/functional nature according to a contrived ontology that is
idealistic or emotive at the core (e.g. “all men are created equal”) but speculative at best.
Precisely what it means for the state to promote freedom as self-determination (positively) is a
deeply vexing issue—whether freedom is apprehended positively or negatively, its conceptual
substance is fundamentally disconnected from the reality of political economies. Again, defining
freedom in either positive or negative senses does not in-itself dictate any practical bright-line
for social-contract demands, since there lacks a notion of the individual describing the point at
which his degree of freedom is externally-influenced. This subject of causality with respect to
personal experience is a fuzzy one that will forever elude our limited faculties; we simply lack
the knowledge of what kinds of events and circumstances are or aren’t within our realm of
creative response, and whether we can use the term ‘freedom’ seriously when basic life
experience—with all the obligations and patterns of thought and behavior—beckons the idea
that the concept might be inescapably illusive.
That freedom remains a mostly universal criterion for governance speaks volumes of its
practical import, and ultimately what people fight for regardless of its conceptual indeterminacy.
So beginning at the most practical, vivid level, throwing out all conceptual elements, we can get
a fairly concrete sense of what freedom means when we feel it, literally. Adorno describes this
palpable negative aspect, “Freedom can be defined in negation only, corresponding to the
concrete form of a specific unfreedom.” Negative liberty alone creates the inescapable liberal
paradox wherein freedom is inevitably—and, indeed, purposefully—constrained in light of self-
abnegating constraints upon an individual’s realm of autonomy by his willful integration in a
contractive social context. Surely, Mill’s ‘harm principle’ illustrates how being a member of
society requires a certain level of individual restraint (or sacrifice), on behalf of others for whom
one’s actions may be intrusive, either directly or indirectly. Inveterate ideas such as ‘public
good’ or ‘societal well-being’, when given substance in constitutions and policy, require
individuals to be more than self-serving entities and to give up certain claims (most often,
property rights, through taxation) for an objective presumably higher in stature than the idea of
absolute non-intervention. What specifically is it about the human individual that renders the
state’s duty to restrain from coercive actions against him, and, moreover, at what point does
collectivism become more coercive than synergystic? Hegel highlights the myopic nature of
‘freedom’ taken as liberty and promoted maximally, where there is a limitation of intelligibility
and deeper reflection: “If we hear it said that the definition of freedom is ability to do what we
please, such an idea can only be taken to reveal an utter immaturity of thought, for it contains
not even an inkling of the absolutely free will, of right, ethical life, and so forth. “
The notion of social justice which surfaces in political theory signifies a call for equality on behalf
of those members of society for whom political liberty alone fails to create conditions for
prosperity and well-being; consequently, political theory becomes dominated by the pursuit to
properly accommodate social ends within the conceptual ideal of freedom. So political
insolvency persists as a result of a holistic contradiction identified when the individual is
conceptualized through the recognition of his patently two-fold identity: of a being-in-itself, and
the being in its social and material dimensions (external).
The lack of definitional certainty that extends from the conceptually synthetic nature of freedom
(i.e. what does it truly mean to be ‘free’?) insurmountably beclouds the liberal tradition’s notion
of dignity, resulting in a fabricated epistemology as opposed to an authentically humanistic one.
Freedom is simply too vague and too broad to invoke as an integral notion for a political
paradigm.The prominent 20th century political philosopher Isaiah Berlin--a champion of liberal
philosophy--himself concedes such ambiguity: “Almost every moralist in human history has
praised freedom. Like happiness and goodness, like nature and reality, it is a term whose
meaning is so porous that there is little interpretation that it seems able to resist.”
That there appears a general abstention from critical evaluation regarding the high degree of
foundational import frequently imputed to Enlightenment philosophy is quite vexing, since the
period and the mode of reasoning which developed within it were premised upon questioning
established epistemologies when they proved inadequate for what societies need. Such
disinclination is fundamentally attributed to the way in which philosophical inquiry (as generally
practiced in the West) has fashioned the epistemological basis of political theory: essential
convictions commonly apprehend as ‘self-evident truths’ have, to a large extent, by virtue of
such prima facie acceptance, imposed a kind of theoretical base according to which thought
ought to conform with in order to carry rationality and be fitting for application. Self-evidence
has been the liberal tradition’s philosophical backbone, and may lead to its destruction if not
configured in more nomological terms. Husserl says,
“Every ordinary appeal to self-evidence, insofar as it was supposed to cut off further regressive
inquiry, [is] theoretically no better than an appeal to an oracle through which god reveals
himself. All natural self-evidences, those of all objective sciences (not excluding those of formal
logic and mathematics), belong to the realm of what is ‘obvious’, what in truth has a background
of incomprehensibility. Every [kind of] self-evidence is the title of a problem, with the sole
exception of phenomenological self-evidence, after it has reflectively clarified itself and shown
itself to be ultimate self-evidence.”
There exists an intransigent imperative on behalf of any serious inquirer to free the grounds
for discourse in political theory from epistemic constraints such as that caused by what is often
a doctrinaire embracing of Enlightenment concepts; such notions must be further examined
before we can ascribe a sense of axiomatic argumentative-worth to Enlightenment philosophy.
Self-evincing propositions (i.e. ideas not requiring further explanation) that ground political
theory reveal a philosophical threshold or definitive epistemic boundary. For being that
normative declarations often assume validity in pre-established (and constitutionally embedded)
philosophical determinations, contemporary pursuits in political theory have a tendency of
attempting to logically synthesize Enlightenment principles (e.g. liberty and equality) with
ostensibly ‘self-evident’ judgments (e.g. ‘All men were created equal’) rather than engaging in
the bolder, more primordial, and infinitely more critical objective of penetrating deeper into the
proper origins of judgments apprehended as such. For as Hegel tells us regarding the limitation
of Lockean description of categories and understanding, “In this sole concern with derivation
and psychological origins, the sole obligation of philosophy—to determine whether these
thoughts and relationships possess truth in-and-for-themselves—has been overlooked.”
Self-evidence can never be more than what it is—something evident and true in itself, having
the quality being indubitable, unassailable, pre-reflective presence in consciousness. So self-
evident claims are nomological and, being thus descriptive rather than normative, are unsuited
for serving as metapolitical groundings from which ‘rights’ can be established. Political ethics
are exhaustive, synthetic productions (never a priori and depend upon reflection)formulated
from phenomenological givens that, as eidetic information, constitute the only epistemic inputs
that can be called a priori. The caveat, of sorts, here is that eidetic phenomena can only be
described as a priori to those who perceive them; therefore political ethics is not a universal
activity, but a task reserved for those who observe polity from an ontological perspective, whose
rationality is one couched in the real. Consequently the standard moral framework of ‘rightness’
on which rights are based is illegitimate, since the liberal democracy purports ontological
descriptions (e.g. that man is born ‘free’ and ‘equal’) which, though tending to conform with what
most believe, are not substantial enough to draw normative solutions from and carry more of an
emotive aspect than descriptive. Again, we can refer to Popper on this matter of legitimate
information and description.
“Only if we require that explanations shall make use of universal statements or laws of nature
(supplemented by initial conditions) can we make progress towards realizing the idea of
independent, or non ad-hoc , explanations…All this is only true, however, if we confine
ourselves to universal laws which are testable, that is to say, falsifiable. The question ‘What kind
of explanation may be satisfactory?’ thus leads to the reply: an explanation in terms of testable
and falsifiable universal laws and initial conditions.”
At the most elementary level, notions of political ethics derive from the phenomenological data
we take solely from our conscious experiences and which have the significant quality of
objectivity. The truth-value of a moral claim (its degree of rationality) thus depends upon the
extent to which it analytically follows or can be deduced from an initial,epistemically-foundational
premise—one whose negation would be logically vacuous instead of simply morally suspect. A
priori moral claims in secular politics sell public epistemology short, and undermine human
dignity therein by contriving a metapolitical foundation ascribing dignity an ambiguous post-
constitutional value and, consequently, in an insecure state: there can be no self-evident norm
—this is a logical impossibility, as the very notion of ‘norm’ implies a valuation of some kind; we
cannot "take" a claim to be self-evident, it simply is or isnt. Any self-evidence one might
perceive is one possibly of intuition, which certainly has its place in life experience but requires
dialectical rumination for it to be politically functional. Liberalist epistemology presupposes a
dichotomy between the normative and the natural, when in fact the former follows simply from a
proper configuration of the latter.
So the ontology of social contract members, secularly defined, serves as the prime grounding
from which secular judgments can be legitimately made. Ontological claims thus precede the
moral, inasmuch as the latter, signifying what is 'right' can only become intelligible following the
determination of what is. The liberal democracy determines freedom (mainly negative sense) as
the right, and the normative ultimatum. But freedom in this case fails to render a desireable
outcome due to its philosophical fuzziness, and hence there is a deficient metapolitical
grounding. For, as ontology is the prelude to ethics, it renders the only viable content from which
a political injunction can proceed. A hermeneutic methodology describing ontological status
through rational judgment in the context of phenomenological givenness—a kind of reflective
equilibrium--is fundamental, and this process of theoretical reconciliation between the absolute
and the gross establishes the metapolitical grounding exigently required for normative
resolution. In organizing naturalistic information—the world of phenomena—into a coherent
grounding for political incorporation, we require a conceptual avenue which would allow us to
overcome the obvious heterogeneity in experience and move toward a common ground of
knowledge in which humanistic considerations have their basis in nature—that is, in
experientially congruent dimensions of life which can be accounted for through both scientific
and reflective processes. Carnap advises on how we may get to this place, “Even though the
subjective origin of all knowledge lies in the contents of experiences and their connections, it is
still possible, as the constructional system will show, to advance to an intersubjective, objective
world, which can be conceptually comprehended and which is identical for all observers.”
Civilization is the effect of knowledge. Knowledge is not in an identity with fact; the two connote,
from basic translation alone, entirely separate things. Knowledge is, in a sense, the existential
consequence of a perceived fact. It is a utilitarian category through and through. Civilizational
progress is couched in increased utility, and utility is a wholly integral category, being a function
of rational epistemics , the activity of responding to the particular with the field of the general
illuminating the phenomenological parameters. So civilizational progress, what amounts to
human progress, can only be initiated by vision which consolidates facts instead of dully basking
in particularities.
Naturalized epistemology ascribes a limited degree of epistemic value to empirical content,
whereby such inputs from sensory experience and physical measurement are apprehended as
pure phenomenal information active within the same domain as experiential and humanistic
inputs , which procure objectivity through validation procedures such as intersubjective
exchange and empirical import from the humanities. Empirical knowledge is thus initially
subverted by direct ontological observation, or active introspection, and only thereafter can it
become available for fruitful application. Epistemic analysis of the constituent elements of
empirical knowledge allows for it to be properly configured in consciousness insofar as
ontologically- conceptualizing entities according to the real limits of perception, instead of
attributing a fabricated ontology that belies reality and enfeebles knowledge. Kim describes the
appropriate epistemological basis of beliefs, which ultimately compose a normativity.
If we consider believing or accepting a proposition to be an “action” in an appropriate sense,
belief justification would then be a special case of justification of action, which in its broadest
terms is the central notion of normative ethics. Just as it is the business of normative ethics to
delineate the conditions under which acts and decisions are justified from the moral point of
view, so it is the business of epistemology to identify and analyze the conditions under which
beliefs, and perhaps other propositional attitudes, are justified from the epistemological point of
view. It probably is only a historical accident that we standardly speak of “normative ethics” but
not of “normative epistemology.” Epistemology is a normative discipline as much as, and in the
same sense as, normative ethics.”

So, then, naturalized epistemology can be descriptive in a manner which consolidates

observation and cognition to yield a coherent, synthesized field of perception translatable into
objective—or secular—language. Normatively positioning such knowledge is the very essence
of rationality as organized eidetic perception conjoined with experiential reflection, wherein the
product is one measured in utilitarian terms according to what normative modes would best
serve man in light of what we can definitively impute to his nature. We can call rationality as
thus stated a phenomenological rationality, emphasizing the naturalistic basis for deductive and
prescriptive claims. The faculties of cognition and understanding work upon the perceptual
content to produce apodictic concepts whose practical application renders them objective ideas,
and where the content is ethical or normative, they become ideals. Taking our attention back to
the prevailing normative paradigm, we can see how the liberal tradition obfuscates the
substance/essence of human dignity by posturing dignity as something distinct and palpable, a
self-evident actuality. Since the only phenomena that we can say are given to us a priori are
nomological, and thus experiential, the epistemologist must recognize the prime facticity of
consciousness as the phenomenological substratum of experience. Only by entering this
universal field of experience can a philosopher begin exporting utility, transmitting judgments
which counter the relativistic void pervading liberalist epistemology. John Stuhr explains how
this kind of pragmatism is worth more than any other interpretative scheme,
“Pragmatism thus challenges postmodernism to become political, to situate and localize wills to
oppositionalities in social practices of resistance, transformation, and reconstruction, and to
create space within experience for the possibility of those practices, as well as their
contestation…the challenge of pragmatism to postmodernism is political: it is the challenge to
become genuinely instrumental.”
The task of describing human nature undoubtedly requires a sound appreciation for the diversity
and complexity in mankind. Thus only by discovering a thread of commonality or unity through
our various forms of being can universality be further imbued in political theory. We must
examine what is common of human experience, irrespective of the cultural pluralities which
exist. In a sense, Rawls’ original position demands this kind of discernment as it implies a
reaching beyond oneself in search of political principles. Such a task requires careful
employment of both the intellect and the intuition, the former being governed by categories of
understanding and the latter, as we take it to mean here, being the root of one’s experiential
perceptions and judgments of inductive worth which require a solid degree of interpersonal
awareness.
Critical inquiry into objective elements of experience requires examining some aspect of
experience that is both universally intelligible and germane to our beings as individual
possessors of rational faculty. Consciousness is verily such a source, being both the source of
and victor over internal obstacles, and the target of external impediments. So, then, a palpable
source of dignity has perhaps been identified, bringing us closer to understanding our nature,
and thereby the kinds of actions which would be most benign to it. Kim offers a conceptual
account of how consciousness can be appropriately taken as something more than a mere
phenomenal reality, on the basis of supervenience,
“On this view of consciousness as direct awareness of internal states, consciousness would be
supervenient on the basic physical/biological structure and functioning of the organism. The fact
that an organism is equipped with the capacity directly to monitor its current internal states is a
fact about its physical/biological organization and must be manifested through the patterns of it
behavior in response to environmental conditions. This means that if two organisms are
identical in their physical/biological make up, they cannot differ in their capacity for self-
monitoring capability. IN that sense, consciousness as a special first-person epistemic authority
may well be supervenient on physical and biological fact.”
Only by becoming aware of the objective dynamics which give form to subjectivity—the various
states of consciousness that are common to experience—can we bolster our conception of
freedom and its correlating state imperatives. The liberal tradition has tended to militate against
such phenomenological perspectives, since universal or non-particular properties of subjectivity,
as consciousness, is taken as something largely unintelligible inasmuch as it is perceived as
wholly subjective on account of individual personalities. Scientific materialism, a pervasive force
among the scientific community, undermines the very existence of rational thought with regards
to human affairs, and it weakens polity by depleting the field of secular thought of legitimate
human information. Liberty emerges as a moral justification for this epistemological
underdeterminism, becoming an intransigent barrier to a more descriptive ontology, as it
removes non-empirical knowledge from centralized power—wherein it carries greatest utility –
and politically delegitimizes it by rendering such perspectives as matters of personal belief
belonging to the subjective realm but never beyond it. What results is a confused political
epistemology which makes intersubjective experience and the empirical elements of it
categorically on par with religious belief. But indeterminacy due to relativism is a problem of the
past, and mankind now in an unprecedented position to uncover the aspects of his nature that
at one time seemed wholly speculative. Noted physicist and philosopher of science Henry Stapp
gives a telling account of the way in which philosophy had been coopted by modern science to
cause much of today’s global problems:
“..the old epistemology which held that men’s thoughts had no effects on actions and of material
determinism.. was based on the principle that each of us, being nothing but a mechanical
device, automatically pursues his calculated self-interests, as measured by a certain bodily
physical property, which is experienced in the realm of thought as pleasure. This principle,
which was in line with the commercial temper of the times, was fundamentally hedonistic,
though, from the scientific point of view, realistic. However, philosophers were able to elevate it
to a more socially satisfactory idea by arguing that the “enlightened” rational man must act to
advance his own “enlightened” self-interest: he must act to advance the general welfare in order
to advance, in the end, his own welfare. Yet there remained in the end only one basic human
value: no noble, heroic, or altruistic aim could have any value in itself; its value must be rooted
in the common currency of personal pleasure….Earlier traditions lost only slowly their grip on
the minds of men, and romantic and idealistic philosophies rose to challenge the bondage of the
human spirit decreed by science. From this ensuing welter of conflicting claims, each eloquently
defended, followed a moral relativism, where every moral viewpoint was seen as based on
arbitrary assumptions. This pernicious outcome was a direct consequence of the schism
between the mental and material aspects of nature introduced by science. That cleavage, by
precluding any fully coherent conception of man in nature, made every possible view incomplete
in some respect, and hence vulnerable. In the resulting moral vacuum the lure of material
benefits and the increasing authority of science combined to insinuate the materialistic viewpoint
ever more strongly into men’s thoughts… To change global beliefs one must change human
beliefs globally. To the extent that they exist at all, are the beliefs generated by science.
However, some of the most important science-generated beliefs that now pervade the world are
beliefs that arose from science during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries,
and are now outdated. Twentieth-century science as wrought immense changes in precisely
those beliefs that have in large measure created our present problems.
The liberal tradition as an offshoot of scientific materialism side-steps phenomenological human
information, and the resulting normativity is thus contrived rather than eidetic. Yet ethics is the
determining of the right in accordance with what is; and a human person is nothing less than a
unit of consciousness conceived durationally and psychophysically. Consciousness precedes
thought, and even destroys it, in a sense, when one enters sleep-consciousness. Contemporary
empirical research on mind-body interaction highlights age-old wisdom that consciousness may
not necessarily be constrained by the ‘harder’ biological substances, but that it can actually
transform it—both negatively and positively. We now know that a person carries the real
capacity to effect dynamical change such as, for example, increased intelligence and control
over neurobiological processes. What, or better yet, how a person ‘is’is therefore irreducible
from a potentiality-based ontology, since a seemingly infinite list of descriptive words and
phrases can be used to tell what man is, and the reality, as far as contemporary science has
taken us, shows that any intellectual description of human nature (i.e. an idealistic or contrived
sense as evident in liberalism) will obfuscate the vast potentiality of man which ranges from the
most horrible of people to the most extraordinary. As metapolitics cannot be speculative, but
rather founded on an ideal which is phenomenologically-traced, naturalism thus underwrites
ethics in the form of ontological pragmatism, wherein 'dignity' , far from a metaphysical or
transcendental notion, is instead a valuing of the individual according to a potentiality-based
context verified and further illuminated through psychology . Kim sums up the valuational
realism which emerges from the causal primacy in consciosuness, “..is there a positive reason
for thinking that normative epistemology is a viable program?...The short answer is this: we
believe in the supervenience of epistemic properties on naturalistic ones, and more generally, in
the supervenience of all valuational and normative properties on naturalistic conditions.”
The normative notion of ‘dignity’ which follows the onto-phenomenological description,
necessitates a metapolitical schema founded on the notion of human nature being
indeterminate or, in the same sense, infinite; most significantly, freedom is now couched in
something real, being a function of consciousness. But while human nature is highly
indeterminate in the abstract sense shaping the intellectual, pre-experiential (non-reflective)
standpoint, given that we can now legitimately discuss our nature in terms of consciousness and
its the associative dynamics revealed to us by the human sciences (particularly psychology), we
can now also say that human nature is just as highly determinable when we analyze the internal
and external causal elements which can shape one’s consciousness and, ultimately, determine
one’s fate. Framing freedom in this way, in naturalistic terms, avoids the ambiguity present in
the positive vs negative liberty discussion. For human nature is inscrutable from a purely
intellectual standpoint, and open only to pure, eidetic reflection from a philosophical standpoint
and quantifiable measurement from a scientific one. Consciousness, as the nomological field
through which we may understand our nature, conceived as a phenomenological correlate to
brain states not necessarily determined by them, can no longer be ascribed a mystical or occult
status. As physicist and philosopher Amit Goswami tells us,
"In the view of idealist science, the subjectivity of our experiences, both physical and the mental,
comes from consciousness. Modern philosophers trained in the Western tradition might find it
strange that we are speaking of the mind in an objective fashion, for they have traditionally
made the mistake of thinking consciousness as an aspect of the mind. But see the new
possibility that opens up when we correct this mistake: We should now be able to study the
mechanics of the mind with mathematics.
This new metapolitical grounding we’ve arrived at, a naturalistic one founded on consciousness,
carries the important standard of theoretical correspondance, given to us by Heinz Post, “The
most important heuristic restriction is the General Correspondence Principle. Roughly speaking,
this is the requirement that any acceptable new theory L should account for the success of its
predecessor S by ‘degenerating’ into that theory under those conditions under which S has
been well confirmed by tests.” A normativity of higher consciousness is not an idealistic one, but
simply a prudent one. It is both age-old and new age, a vision of transcendental realism made
possible by contemporary interdisciplinary discourses, and which echoes ancient wisdom from a
full gamut of cultures. Philosophy, in its finest, exalted state, is a kind of extrasensory
perception; it is the relaying of the of higher knowledge—the judgments which consolidates
millions of private subjectivities into a common, intersubjective home. Such judgments about
actual experience in its vastness and extremes are hardly analytic, and philosophy is thus
disparaged when presumed an intellectual activity. Instead the judgments which real philosophy
brings are experiential, grounded in intersubjective reflection.
Secular liberalism has been heavily influenced the logical positivist and empiricist doctrines, has
proven advantageous in eschewing dogmatics of the past, however, through this very same
process, it has disabled normative engagement by politically deactivating information that is
neither analytical nor empirical, and therefore subjective reflection is diffused. As Adorno states,
subjectivity in the liberal tradition becomes a plain contradiction, “The denial of objective truth by
recourse to the subject implies the negation of the latter: no measure remains for the measure
of all things; lapsing into contingency, he becomes untruth... The self, its guiding idea and it’s a
priori object, has always, under scrutiny, been rendered at the same time non-existent.”
Thought here becomes a personal right, ultimately collapsing into inviolable opinion. Yet the
intractable condensation of thought into action, ultimately, begets the possibility that thoughts—
and , for that matter, subjectivity—are not self-contained systems. Thoughts are effectual, and
we should thus be striving to produce the best effects within our power. To champion the
blossoming of the mind as thought, to the extent that it signifies thought acting upon thought—
the only way by which consciousness exerts causality upon brain-states, a breakage from our
latent physical determinism—and hence consciousness being self-aware (like looking in the
mirror), is to make a very fundamental ontological determination—that thought, or rather the
potential control of it, is a fundamental aspect of human nature. This is causal, mechanistic
formality here; thought precedes action, thus the freedom to act in various ways (enumerated in
most liberal constitutions) is actually contingent upon the freedom to intend any such action. So
the liberal tradition falsely posits freedom as something requiring protecting (in the negative,
inviolable sense) instead of fostering.
Framing dignity in terms of consciousness and founding a political system aimed at protecting
and expanding it (one and the same ends) does not strip us of the important ethics liberalism as
established, most of all the extensive enumerations of human rights. This new system, however,
goes a step farther by enabling us to understand policy issues in very much an empirical way,
allowing us to finally escape the rationally vacuous, and, for that matter, mindless business of
clashing ideologies and subjective whim. The phenomenological level of perceptual experience
is the sensory gateway for ‘higher consciousness’ , accessible following the understanding’s
grasping of causality with respect to a particular object’s nature, whereupon its meeting with
instinct determines how much or how little consciousness , conceived as one’s brain state
patterns, is effected after such knowledge.
Pragmatism here lies in restricting constitutional establishments--limiting state action--to what is
unequivocally given by integral knowledge, and leaving the rest to referendum. Idealism lies in
calibrating polity for higher consciousness and directing the evolution of consciousness. The
ideal is thus inspired polity through the fusion of knowledge and purposeness, whereas the
pragmatic is the protected parallelism between the two. In this context, idealism comes about at
the end of metapolitical schematization, rather than at the outset as we’ve seen is the case with
liberalism. This idealism takes the form of the expansion of consciousness for all, and hence a
political program aimed at creating a socio-economic environment conducive for each individual
to realize their potentiality through achieving higher states of consciousness. Dewey offers an
account of freedom founded on this notion of external impetus as a necessary condition for
potentiality-realization:
The "natural" rights of an individual consist simply in freedom to do whatever he can do--an idea
probably suggested by Hobbes. But what can he do? The answer to that question is evidently a
matter of the amount of the power he actually possesses..The answer in effect is that man in his
original estate possesses a very limited amount of power. Men as "natural", that is, as native
beings are but parts. As merely a part, the action of any part is limited on every hand by the
action and counteraction of other parts...There is no freedom to be reached by this road...man is
free only as he has power, and he can posses power only as he acts in accord with the whole,
being reinforced by its structure and momentum...no individual can overcome his tendencies to
act as a mere part in isolation. Theoretic insight into the constitution of the whole is neither
complete nor firm; it gives way under the pressure of immediate circumstances...Not power but
impotency, not independence but dependence, not freedom but subjection, is the natural estate
of man--in the sense in which this school conceived "the natural"...Freedom is not obtained by
mere abolition of law and institutions, but by the progressive saturation of all laws and
institutions with greater and greater acknowledgement of the necessary laws governing the
constitution of things...History is the record of the development of freedom through development
of institutions...Freedom is a growth, an attainment, not an original possession, and it is attained
by idealization of institutions and law and the active participation of individuals in their loyal
maintenance, not by their abolition or reduction in the interests of personal judgments and
wants."
A normative claim is at most a practical reconciliation between what we epistemologically
approximate and the universal set of interests associated with this inquiry. Such approximation
must not be confused with a kind of radical1 interpretation which postures holistic claims as
deductions from particular ones. Radical interpretation obfuscates fact, while naturalized
epistemics enhance fact with experiential value, producing ethical notions that carry utility. The
forward thinking philosopher and pioneer of integral studies, Ken Wilbur, describes the possible
avenue through which phenomenological data can penetrate the secular realm:
"There is phenomenological investigation and its verification in a community of intersubjecive
interpreters--just as you and I are doing now...Real philosophy, psychology, and
phenomenology--not behaviorism and not positivism, those are empiric and not rational affairs--
depend in large measure upon the quality of the community of interpreters. Good interpreters,
good thinkers, ground good phenomenology. They discover those truths that apply to the
subjective realm, and in that sense the truths are subjective truths. But that doesn’t mean mere
individual whim. First of all, bad interpretation will simply not mesh with general subjective
consensus. it si rebuffed by a reality that is subjective but very real and very lawful, just as bad
empiric fact is rebuffed by other facts. Second, a phenomenological truth, in order to be
recognized as truth, must be tested in a community of like-minded interpreters, just as an
empiric fact, to be so, must be tested against the community of other facts. It's no mere wishful
thinking and subjective license. The hermeneutic test is just as stringent and demanding as the
empirical test, but of course the empiric test is easier because it is performed by a subject on an
object, whereas phenomenology is performed by a subject on or with other subjects. Much more
difficult."
Integral knowledge, which is inherently normative, takes as its input the phenomenological limits
of the empirical sciences and generates a rational interpretation— the application of reason (the
a priori components of understanding) to common, transpersonal experience. The derivative
interpretation , obeying both empirical and experiential law, is then an epistemological
establishment that has the ultimate effect of raising awareness and sharpening our knowledge
of essence. Philosophy is a normative enterprise; its phenomenological hermeneutics are void
of utility until transposed into a prudential whole, a rational intention, a piece of wisdom. To the
extent that philosophy has the power deliver coherence between cosmological and psychical
dimensions, perpetually decoding empirics drawn from these two infinite fields , there is thus
evinced a quality of consciousness (of perception) that finds order, or at least semblances of it,
within such seemingly dichotomous planes. Whether or not any such ‘order’ exists is not as
significant as the utility gained from thinking that it does, or the opportunity cost from not.
We see that man is neither free nor un-free by nature, his very nature is that he is the unique
determinant of his own ontological status. Therefore no ontological description can be ascribed
to human nature beyond a probabilistic , very much analagous to quantum uncertainty, where
freedom correlates to a superpositioned, undetermined state and unfreedom, conversely, with
classical ontogenetic evolution. As the mind is known to be a bastion of both ingenuity and folly,
any theory of man must account for such vast disparities of conscious states among humanity.
The only rational judgment we can make about the apparent flux of inconsistency and diversity
is that man is an expansive being whose empirical states imply a range of ontic possibilities
which precludes any defining moment, but yet also make transpersonal information highly
intelligible. Freedom in this respect is a matter of
Liberal democracies today vitally require a shift to a unified epistemology, wherein philosophy
joins the hard sciences as a distinct inquiry into the natural world of which our existences as
conscious, perceiving beings is a part. As ‘thought’ has finally been understood as a very real,
psychophysical activity having bearing on overall ontic states, immense progress in public
welfare might be achieved if such empirical findings can be rationally-configured—a task of
philosophers—for normative incorporation. Thus integral study is a hermeneutic business, and
inasmuch as objectivity here is an emergent quality evinced by experiential parallelism (evinced
in intersubjecive dialogue), secularity is intrinsic to the dialogical mode.
Secular polity proscribes the objectification of belief according to the notion that the very act of
'believing' remains an inextricable dimension of one's dignity—that is, a natural extension or
implication of their freedom; this seemingly minor point becomes exigent upon closer
observation: liberalism (particularly the brand practiced by United States) has, in practice,
unwittingly excised much information of wholly secular content—critical rationality for humanity's
betterment- from legislative jurisdniction. What has followed has been a premature yielding to
the pluralistic process when normative confidence--a higher awareness--is indeed possible
through integrated knowledge which can serve to dampen the effects of ideological divergence,
and returning to knowledge and belief their proper distinctions. A normativity dictated by the
highest humanistic standards is a normativity good for democracy, a counter to the self-interest
forces of pluralism and corporatism. Most of all, naturalistic metapolitics is a yielding to not just
rational power, but human power. Only through an appeal to nature, and our veritable
experiences as beings within it, can the philosopher rise again with the light of rationality.
Philosophy begins from experience, develops in thought, and ends in action; a post-speculative
art therein, it is the blossoming of theory into inspiration.