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INTELLECTUAL THEMES BK. 1

RATIONAL IRRATIONALISM

The theme of archetypal realities leads to a further subject, of the
ultimate limit of truth (if there is one).

It is worth questioning the (relatively) recent naive dogma which was
produced by reductionism, namely the belief in the undefinability,
unsolvability, and incompleteness of truth.

For one thing, these things depend with their entire strength on the
soundness of reductionism, a premise which in itself may be very weak.

I have found in my sense of opposite categories an idea that minimal
premises may actually be sufficient to provide theoretical knowledge.
And knowledge beyond the theoretical may prove to be a very ridiculous
matter, because goodness knows we don't need to touch a burning
orange to know that it burns (and etc.).

With the idea that knowledge through experience is unnecessary, we are
already somewhat complicit in the idea of knowledge. This may be called
the Corollary of Complicity, and it may be found that under relativism it is
frankly undeniable.

So at this point, the only defense for the person arguing for
incompleteness is the idea that there are no such things as relative
truths. Perhaps it would seem daunting that what is required for
coherency is relative absoluteness, except that this is precisely what a
categorical system seems to provide.

And, after all, the view that knowledge is not relative may be reduced to
absurdity once it is realized that knowledge must exist by all types of
measurements, which correspond in varying degrees to varying types of
reality. And this is mostly what is meant by relativism.

At this point, the only thing left against knowledge is the problem of evil,
and any remaining ambiguous cases.

I will accept that fundamentally the problem of evil is unsolvable. Evil is
wrong, and undesirable, and it only takes away from the quality of
existence.

In my view, a different problem remains, the problem of knowledge which
is paradoxical or unknowable. This is what I call the problem of madness.

Naturally, since the problem of knowledge is already otherwise solved,
there is no choice but to admit that the ambition of knowledge should
concern itself with madness.

Madness is well known to be unresolvable in itself. True madness is
incurable, and involves a different condition of reality from ordinary
sanity and truth. Yet madness (according to my assumptions) exists in
the same reality as the sane. Thus, so far as rationality goes, it can be
subject to the same kinds of logic that apply to rational systems.

However, that does not yet explain how madness can be rational.

The obvious answer, however, is that madness must apply itself to
reason. And, since reason has so far been determined to be perfectible
through coherency, necessarily this perfect madness would also be a
form of reason, so far as reason goes.

The inverse corollary, that sanity would be a form of madness, also
applies, although I take this as an aside from the main point.

The real point is that madness is yet another form of reason, when it is
applied as a logical system.

For example, the solution to a paradox may be found by abversing all
the terms (a paroxysm).

Then irrationalism has four logical degrees: (1) Oppositeness, (2)
Dimension, (3) Paradox, and (4) Solution.

With methods like these, irrationalism has become rational irrationalism.

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