The apophatic theory of justice

Tobias

Partly inspired by @180 Proofs ideas on an apophatic metaphysscs I intend to start writing on an apophatic theory of justice. Apophatic theology or apophatic metaphysics is based on the idea that through positive statements on reality or God, we can never approach the issue thoroughly and we will continuously be disappointed. All our affirmative statement will be refuted, or lead to internal contradiction. All we might hope for is to approach God through the 'via negativa', articulating what God is not.

Similarly we can translate the approach to the philosophy of law or ethics. Many ethical systems offer a positive vision of justice and how to get to a just society. We cultivate viirtue through law, we protect certain rights we consider self evident, we argue that increasing utility is the right thing to do. However all these positive visions seem to run into problems. Uriltarianism leads to the sacrifice of the few to the many. Rights only exist when there is already a just legal order in place to protect them and virtues are a bone of endless contestation.

However, surprisingly maybe, people actualy seem to differ less when faced with injustice. In all ethical systems indiscriminate killing is wrong. They just differ about the reason why this is so. In ethical system, rape, insult, violence and libel just to mention a few are considere wrong.

In fact legal systems of different countries have prohibitions strikingly similar. The respect for the dead for instance. Disrespecting the body of the diceased is almost universally condemned. Take 'Go's law' in the Antigone, the demand to bury one's dead relative. The condemnation of incest is another famous universal example, An examination of law or legal systems past an present might yield fruitful results. Law deals with actual conflicts and decides in this 'negative' way. It looks back to a certain conflict and decides whether a party or a suspect acted contrary to rules and such acts are presumed unjust. Unless of course they can be justified by calling upon some sort of higher law or legitimation.

Through our agreement of what is non-just we might be able to say something about justice, allbeit in a negative way. At a minimum a just order refrains from doing x because x violates y. Now I am thinking that the examples will be crude at first but maybe they show family resemblences, likenesses in kind or a similar 'root' of injustice. Through such an analysis it might be possible to distill some statements about justice afterall, though not of the esentialist and affirmative kind...

So I am drawing on the body of thinkers here. Is there already literature about such an endeavour that you know of? Can you think of any research methodology? I am interested in the question how you would go about it and what sort of ideas and questions this basic idea of a 'via negativa' of justice would raise.

Hanover

↪Tobias

I disagree with the empirical claim of a generally universal underlying moral consensus.

Great atrocities have been and continue to be committed with moral justifications being offered.

Tom Storm

↪Tobias

I get where you are coming from and I often wondered if this might lead anywhere myself but I suspect there are too many divergent and contradictory ideas held as moral.

Why not explore one thoroughly and test where it leads? The prohibition against killing, for instance, is almost meaningless in its application. Police can kill. We can kill in self defence. The state can kill. We can commit euthanasia in some countries; abortion in others. We can invade countries and kill and kill to defend our own countries. We can kill members of tribes as payback for crimes done to us. We can kill others with the products we can legally sell. We can kill gay people in some places and apostates in others. Etc.

Philosophim

↪Tobias

Sounds like science. Proper science attempts to disprove the hypothesis, not affirm it. If you cannot disprove the hypothesis despite your best efforts, then it stands. Another way to view it is an attempt to make an induction a deduction. An induction has premises that do not necessarily lead to a conclusion. One way to refine an induction is go through all the possible conclusions that induction could lead to, and eliminate all possibilities but the one remaining.

Constance

Similarly we can translate the approach to the philosophy of law or ethics. — Tobias

But then, God IS ethics, an embodiment of ethical indeterminacy. That is, at the end of inquiry regarding what ethics is about and the search for justice and redemption, we face our own nothingness, the nothingness that shrouds our existence: indeterminacy. So your question about ethics and politics is really about ethics, or metaethics. Take Rawls' thinking on justice: if you're going to go apophatically on this, the call for the most advantaged to address the needs of the least advantaged is essentially an ethical obligation, and so rests with ethics; so then, what is the apophatic indeterminacy of ethics? God, that is, meta-God (delivered from the incidental cultural and political BS).

NOS4A2

↪Tobias

I would argue that “injustice” suffers the same problem as its antonym. It has no referent, but we know it when we see it. Better to reason about states of affairs in practical terms, with focus on individual cases, on human behavior, rather than building institutions with some ideal in mind.

180 Proof

Apophatic theology or apophatic metaphysics is based on the idea that through positive statements on reality or God, we can never approach the issue thoroughly and we will continuously be disappointed. All our affirmative statemen[ts] will be refuted, or lead to internal contradiction. All we might hope for is to approach God through the 'via negativa', articulating what God is not.

Similarly we can translate the approach to the philosophy of law or ethics. — Tobias

I'm looking forward to where this inquiry leads you, Tobias. :fire:

For me, so far, this

"irrealism" ... "actualism" — 180 Proof

i.e. plural-aspect, or dialectical, holism (by internally negating monisms / dualisms).

Hanover

Disrespecting the body of the diceased is almost universally condemned. — Tobias

No, people tend to respect the corpses of the respected, but the disrespected are often unceremoniously thrown into mass graves.

unenlightened

We already know that what ought to be is not, and what ought not to be is. And that is why one cannot derive the one from the other. Do we not know this from the outset?

And we know that the law seeks to remedy the unfairness and cruelty of what is - of the law of the jungle and reward virtue and punish vice, which is contrary to nature. God declares for freedom: "Do what is right and suffer for it, because it is right, or do what is wrong and be rewarded because it is expedient." But the law attempts to remedy God's error and make it expedient to be good. Do we not know this also?

Tobias

Great atrocities have been and continue to be committed with moral justifications being offered. — Hanover

No, people tend to respect the corpses of the respected, but the disrespected are often unceremoniously thrown into mass graves. — Hanover

The first comment I do not really understand. Sure, moral justifications are offered for crimes, but what does it hve to do with the topic at hand. The second is true, but it is a bit of an aside. Firtstly I do think it is always considered unjust, but that does not mean those acts are not committed.

Why not explore one thoroughly and test where it leads? The prohibition against killing, for instance, is almost meaningless in its application. Police can kill. We can kill in self defence. The state can kill. We can commit euthanasia in some countries; abortion in others. We can invade countries and kill and kill to defend our own countries. We can kill members of tribes as payback for crimes done to us. We can kill others with the products we can legally sell. We can kill gay people in some places and apostates in others. Etc. — Tom Storm

Well, because it does not lead anywehere for exactly this reason. The prohibtion against killing is of course not absolute, nor can any prohibition be. However, when faced with an act of indiscriminate killing, such as for instance the My Lai massacre, or th emassacre in Bucha, all, even the perpetrators I daresay would consider these acts to be unjust. They will claim an excuse, higheer orders, or temporary insanity due to the stress of conflict, but they will still condemn the act. If that is indeed the case, the question can be asked, why would such indiscriminate killing be wrong? This is not just, but what makes the act unjust? I would still not be looking for positive principles, like 'all life should be respected' or something but negative ones, what makes us recoil from such violence?

Take Rawls' thinking on justice: if you're going to go apophatically on this, the call for the most advantaged to address the needs of the least advantaged is essentially an ethical obligation, and so rests with ethics; so then, what is the apophatic indeterminacy of ethics? God, that is, meta-God (delivered from the incidental cultural and political BS). — Constance

I am afraid I do not understand you. Yes, Rawls offers us a cataphatic approach; under the veil of ignorance we would necessarily choose a system in which advantages for some are only justified when they also benefit the least well off. However, why would he need God? It is just the light of reason. Anyway, my approach would then be to look at cases which we find unjust and see whether we can distill such a principle from it, instead of resorting to reason under the veil of ignorance.

For me, so far, this
"irrealism" ... "actualism"
— 180 Proof
i.e. plural-aspect, or dialectical, holism (by internally negating monisms / dualisms). — 180 Proof

Would you mind unpacking this a bit? Acts of injustice as 'calling forth' a response? Or allowing for more perspectives on an act? The problem with the latter is, the approach would be based on the idea of a recognition of injustice. Indeed the question is "do we know injustice when we see it"? Not in fringe cases of course, but in clear cases.

We already know that what ought to be is not, and what ought not to be is. And that is why one cannot derive the one from the other. Do we not know this from the outset? — unenlightened

Well the is ought distinction is the basis for law. We know what is, but we also know what ought ot be, it is a basic premise one has to accept when dealing with law. My approach though would be more modest, not "what ought to be" but "what ought to be prevented at the very least".

And we know that the law seeks to remedy the unfairness and cruelty of what is - of the law of the jungle and reward virtue and punish vice, which is contrary to nature. — unenlightened

I wonder if this all is true. I do not think it is in fact. If I am right then we do recoil from acts of unjustice naturally. Law does not only punish vice, it also creates it and sometimes facilitates it. Like the law of war at times do.

I am still a bit at a loss in my project. How do we find out whether there is a root laying under all acts that we condemn. waht do we condemn and why? Is there in your opinion anything that is universally condemned?

Wayfarer

The Via Negativa is associated with Orthodox spirituality and the negative theology of the Patristic tradition. The original point was based on the intuition that God was beyond all speech and description and could only be sought in silent contemplation - it is particularly associated with Orthodox monasticism.

Apophaticism has other applications in rhetorics:

There are many other modes of retaliation, which, for several reasons, I choose not to mention. — Thomas Paine, The American Crisis (1783)

I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience. — Ronald Reagan to Walter Mondale, 1984.

but I can't see how the reference to apophatic theology lends any support to your OP.

Tobias

The Via Negativa is associated with Orthodox spirituality and the negative theology of the Patristic tradition. The original point was based on the intuition that God was beyond all speech and description and could only be sought in silent contemplation - it is particularly associated with Orthodox monasticism. — Wayfarer

Maybe 'justice' is beyond all speech and description, positive justice that is. We never know what 'the rght thing to do' is, because we never know the consequences of our actions in the long term and we can never know the intentions by which an action is undertaken, not even our own. Therefore, one might approach the issue of justice differently, by asking what to avoid.
Understanding justice may be well beyond the realm of human understanding, but injustice might not be. Through understanding what we consider unjust, we may come to reflect on ethical and legal intuitions better than by trying to figure out "what the right thing to do" is, paraphrasing Michael Sandel's book title. I see here an analogy with coming to an understanding of God (theorlogy) or reality (metaphysics).

unenlightened

There are facts of humanity, such as the long state of dependence of infants and our social nature, that lead to a conflict between what is best for the individual and what is best for others. If we were a species that laid eggs by the 100,000, our moral attitude to our offspring would be very different. If we were a solitary species like pandas, our morality would be far less important or even non-existent.

Justice is a social being's concept.

So then amongst social beings there can be conflict about the society's extent and its interests.

And we know that the law seeks to remedy the unfairness and cruelty of what is - of the law of the jungle and reward virtue and punish vice, which is contrary to nature.
— unenlightened

I wonder if this all is true. I do not think it is in fact. If I am right then we do recoil from acts of unjustice naturally. — Tobias

Yes indeed, we recoil naturally from injustice, (in that useless sense of natural where everything we do is natural) because we are social beings; but not all of us, and not when we are the beneficiaries of injustice so much. This is why those afflicted with moral qualms are at a disadvantage, and why social pressure, aka the law is needed to support sociality, particularly in larger more complex societies.

Poor old Abe could not tell a lie - a severe disability for a politician. Or perhaps that story was itself a lie? But there again language is useful for a social species, but only if what is said is true, for the most part, as the boy who cried 'wolf' found out when folks started ignoring him. I think this is what a naturalistic account of morals would look like, species specific, cooperative behaviour that benefits survival of the group.

An example of moral disagreement: Extinction Rebellion is a group urging a change in society to improve the survival prospects of the group/species. But according to other members of that society they are anti-social disrupters of the proper functioning of society.

Agent Smith

All that comes to my mind is Socrates. If there ever was a virtuso/master of the Via Negativa, it has to be this so-called gadfly of Athens. He, according to legend, asks for a definition and then adroitly demonstrates why that particular definition just won't do.

A typical conversation with the teacher of Plato would look like:

X: This
Socrates: No, not this.
Y: That
Socrates: No, not that.
Reiterate...ad infinitum/ad nauseum :vomit:

Neti neti if you were a vedic pundit!

I don't wanna know what it isn't. I wanna know what it is! — Skipper James T. Kirk

Odd thing to say for someone who wants to go where no man has gone before!

Constance

I am afraid I do not understand you. Yes, Rawls offers us a cataphatic approach; under the veil of ignorance we would necessarily choose a system in which advantages for some are only justified when they also benefit the least well off. However, why would he need God? It is just the light of reason. Anyway, my approach would then be to look at cases which we find unjust and see whether we can distill such a principle from it, instead of resorting to reason under the veil of ignorance. — Tobias

A reduction, then. It is there already, from Mill and before: do no harm. This is the principle you seek. Not so much apophatic, which is reductive to a vanishing point, like the eastern notion of neti neti, which leads to a vacuity where one finally discovers that it was language and the world of particulars that was obstructing insight. Apophatic inquiry leads to "silence".

Tobias

A reduction, then. It is there already, from Mill and before: do no harm. This is the principle you seek. Not so much apophatic, which is reductive to a vanishing point, like the eastern notion of neti neti, which leads to a vacuity where one finally discovers that it was language and the world of particulars that was obstructing insight. Apophatic inquiry leads to "silence". — Constance

No, that is not the principle I seek. Sometimes harm is needed for the greater good. Punishment, afterall, is harm. So, would you abolish all of criminal law? What about self harm? How far would you take harm? For instance drug addiction harms yourself but harms society as well, because of the costs of healthcare. When I am talking to a pretty girl or man, I might harm you because you wanted to talk to her / him instead. So no, unfortunately the harm principle sensible though it is, does not cut it.

Silence however... prhaps there is a deep insight here. The claims to justice might do more harm than good. So, perhaps, one of the first insights of the via negativa on justice is that one should not impose one's conception of justice on others...

Constance

No, that is not the principle I seek. Sometimes harm is needed for the greater good. Punishment, afterall, is harm. So, would you abolish all of criminal law? What about self harm? How far would you take harm? For instance drug addiction harms yourself but harms society as well, because of the costs of healthcare. When I am talking to a pretty girl or man, I might harm you because you wanted to talk to her / him instead. So no, unfortunately the harm principle sensible though it is, does not cut it. — Tobias

But your approach is apophatic. This leads you to foundational things. Do no harm is THE defeasible default principle. It is arrived at, not in the complexities that stir the pot of ethical issues; there is nothing apophatic about this. After all of the "not this, nor that's" of apophatic reduction, do no harm is simply what is left. 'Harm" is exceedingly general, but it covers all possibilities for what justice COULD BE about. No harm in the balance, then no issue of a justice nature.
Of course, once IN the actual world of human affairs, the harms of the world get entangled and indeterminate. But prior to this, harm carries its own injunction NOT to do something; it is inherently wrong, bad, evil; it is the existential basis for anything at all being wrong.

Silence however... prhaps there is a deep insight here. The claims to justice might do more harm than good. So, perhaps, one of the first insights of the via negativa on justice is that one should not impose one's conception of justice on others... — Tobias

I think justice is a subcategory of ethics, and ethics is has an existential essence: the bad or good of actual experiences, like scalding water on living flesh, or falling in love. These are absolutes. One does not argue about love being good. It always, already is. This means that it survives apophatic inquiry, the kind of weeding out what isn't necessary, or is merely accidental. Love cannot be bad. It is as impossible as a logical contradiction.

Banno

↪Tobias

Perhaps the error is in the attempt to set out explicitly the nature of justice.

After all we do use the word "justice" to great effect, recognising it when we see it, and even more so when we see injustice.

There have been discussions here recently about "real", about "women", about "religion" - in each case what is at issue is the definition of the word, and in each case the explication has been elusive.

But a child does not need to be able to set out explicitly the meaning of the word "tree' in order to climb it, ask for a treehouse, cry when it is cut down.

I know that my Dicksonia Antarctica is a tree-fern, but not a tree. Yet I could not explain why, or give an adequate definition of "tree".

So if you ask me what a tree is, I might point to some examples of trees and non-trees, but if you demand I put the distinction into words, silence might follow.

If silence did not follow, we might have a useful conversation about what counts as a tree and what doesn't. But a conversation is a process, and need never have an end. There is always more to be said. That need not stop us planting, climbing or building tree houses.

If that is so for something as obvious as a tree, then one might expect "real", "woman", "religion" and now "justice" to be at least as ineffable.

So we need not resort to silence, but might instead engage in a conversation, while keeping in mind the answer to Tolstoy's three questions.

Hanover

So, perhaps, one of the first insights of the via negativa on justice is that one should not impose one's conception of justice on others... — Tobias

Wouldn't the least just among us celebrate this decision the most?

Love cannot be bad. It is as impossible as a logical contradiction. — Constance

Suppose I love murder?

Not trying to be difficult here, but the idea that there is universal agreement on what is good (or not good as the OP suggests) and we just need to talk it out to see what it is so we can arrive at this naturally understood goodness necessarily assumes Attila the Hun and Adolph Hitler don't get a seat at the brainstorm session. On what basis do we exclude them?

That is to say, I have no doubt we, educated Westerners positioned in 2022 could all find some common ground regarding the ethics du jour, but that's as far as we'd get. The question would remain how we'd have confidence that our justice is true justice, and more meta-ethically whether speaking of True justice makes sense.

Wayfarer

Understanding justice may be well beyond the realm of human understanding, but injustice might not be. Through understanding what we consider unjust, we may come to reflect on ethical and legal intuitions better than by trying to figure out "what the right thing to do" is, paraphrasing Michael Sandel's book title. I see here an analogy with coming to an understanding of God (theology) or reality (metaphysics). — Tobias

Perhaps. But it should be considered that in respect of both theology and metaphysics, there is (ostensibly at least) an over-arching framework - that of classical and traditional theology and metaphysics. And that in turn embodies further principles such as 'natural law' theory. But from the perspective of today's culture much of that framework is regarded as reactionary or at best archaic. So the question arises, could there be such a conception as natural law set against the backdrop of the supposedly mechanistic picture of the universe that secular culture envisages?

Metaphysician Undercover

↪Tobias

I actually think we are moving in the opposite direction to what you suggest. It's much more productive to cultivate a good disposition and attitude in a person, and encourage one to behave virtuously, then to try and name, and outlaw, all the things which are apprehended as bad. This is because the person who is inclined to do bad things will continue to find more, no matter how many things you name and outlaw, while culturing one toward a good disposition only requires a general idea of what constitutes a good attitude, and the will to cultivate this.

Some evidence that this is the way that we as human beings are moving, can be found in the difference between The Old Testament's ten commandments of what not to do, and The New Testament's one commandment of what ought to be done, love your neighbour.

Constance

Not trying to be difficult here, but the idea that there is universal agreement on what is good (or not good as the OP suggests) and we just need to talk it out to see what it is so we can arrive at this naturally understood goodness necessarily assumes Attila the Hun and Adolph Hitler don't get a seat at the brainstorm session. On what basis do we exclude them? — Hanover

It's a merely descriptive matter, like the color yellow. One can imagine the color yellow being worn by fascists, the favorite color of a serial killer, and so on. But yellow remains yellow. Context relativizes. Then, there are the two kinds of love, aren't there? One is an exaggeration, perhaps, as, Freud loved cigars. Then there is being IN love. The latter serves the point best, but the love of a cigar, exaggeration or not, is still inherently a good thing, whether it is Stalin smoking it or Jesus (and we all know Jesus loved a good cigar!).
It does get confused when love becomes entangled with other affairs, and even the loving, liking, adoring, and so on, can become ambiguous, as with masochism: how much is he genuinely enjoying this? Not so cut and dry as a school boys romantic affection. But when it is good, it is not contingently good, is the point. The "goodness" is there on the sleeve, so to speak, and unalterably so, unless it becomes entangled in a competition, a comparison, and then, it is problematized.

Hanover

↪Constance

The idea that love is undisputably good is a most Christian sentiment and is understandably a sentiment that might be thought of as universal by someone immersed in Christian society, but, believe it or not, Judaism finds hate a virtue when deserved, drawing a sharp contrast against the Christian virtue of turning the other cheek.

"Regarding a rasha, a Hebrew term for the hopelessly wicked, the Talmud clearly states: mitzvah lisnoso—one is obligated to hate him."

https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cjl/texts/cjrelations/resources/articles/soloveitchikm.htm

Constance

The idea that love is undisputably good is a most Christian sentiment and is understandably a sentiment that might be thought of as universal by someone immersed in Christian society, but, believe it or not, Judaism finds hate a virtue when deserved, drawing a sharp contrast against the Christian virtue of turning the other cheek.

"Regarding a rasha, a Hebrew term for the hopelessly wicked, the Talmud clearly states: mitzvah lisnoso—one is obligated to hate him." — Hanover

I take it to be neither Christian nor anything else. For me, it is simply observation, nothing more. It is a reflex to assign a metaethics to some familiar institution, I know. But do consider it to be entirely independent of any of these contextualizations. Look at it as a phenomenon, a pure phenomenon, as you, say, luxuriate in the thought of the beloved, sitting in a meadow. All judgment and relativities in abeyance. The feeling simplciter is simply there.
Ethical issues are often hard, obviously, and Jews and their nazi tormentors are among the worst cases. Strawson argued in favor of resentment as part of the social morality, and I suppose it is. As long as we see that when we draw up these ideas, there is a foundation upon which this sits. Do no harm. But why not? Because harm hurts. What is wrong with something hurting? And then, what is right about something happy and pleasant? You see how these questions answer themselves?

Hanover

Do no harm. — Constance

But I'm saying sometimes we ought to harm and that your view is idiosyncratic, but you just keep telling me it's obvious we shouldn't harm.

Constance

But I'm saying sometimes we ought to harm and that your view is idiosyncratic, but you just keep telling me it's obvious we shouldn't harm. — Hanover

I'm telling you that do no harm is a foundation that gets entangled with complex affairs in which things are brought into competition and contextualized, relativized, and it is here doing harm becomes ambiguous. But harm itself carries an absolute proscription. Consider the color example. It remains what it is, most emphatically and without exemption, an absolute one might say (though this term is difficult); yet it can be taken up is countless ways that compromise this simplicity. Generally speaking, pleasure os good. But there is that exam on the horizon, so now it is bad to simply indulge and fail to study. This has no bearing whatever on the good of pleasure, though. That caviar Hitler had as he ordered thousands to a horrible death was no less delicious.

Bret Bernhoft

This is interesting. I've seen similar reductionist approaches to describing "truth" in Zen Buddhism. Even among Western world figures such as Eckhart Tolle and Alan Watts. I would enjoy reading more of your writings. Thank you for bringing this perspective to my attention.

Hanover

I'm telling you that do no harm is a foundation that gets entangled with complex affairs in which things are brought into competition and contextualized, relativized, and it is here doing harm becomes ambiguous. — Constance

You are making an impossible distinction here, arguing that there are two definitions of terms (1) the absolute meaning and (2) the contextualized meaning. All actually fall under category #2.

Consider the color example. It remains what it is, most emphatically and without exemption, an absolute one might say (though this term is difficult); yet it can be taken up is countless ways that compromise this simplicity. — Constance

There is no essence to the term "yellow." "Yellow" means however it is used, and there is not a Platonic form that represents true yellow from which to measure. You're arguing essentialism, which isn't a sustainable position.

Generally speaking, pleasure os good. — Constance

If one holds to hedonism, pleasure is good by definition, but that position isn't universally held.

Constance

You are making an impossible distinction here, arguing that there are two definitions of terms (1) the absolute meaning and (2) the contextualized meaning. All actually fall under category #2. — Hanover

That is right, and it is a big issue.

But think of it as Kant thought of reason. All rational affairs are given to us embedded in experience in the world, the actual content of which is, as he calls it, sensory intuition. Add to this the bulk of the living experience teaming with affectivity, etc. and you have all that Kant wants to dismiss, for analytic purposes, in the effort to discover the apriori form of judgment. He calls his foundational concepts 'pure'. Now, there are no pure concepts, really. This is an abstraction from the actual experienced world which is messy. But, it is not as if there is nothing in this actual world that aligns with Kant. This is logic. Again, there is no "logic" in the world; it is an abstraction from judgments we make. But the logical structure of thought is a feature of the lived experience. There is "something" in experience that is rigid and uncompromising, like modus ponens, in deductively structured thought.

Here, the issue is not logic and pure reason, but affectivity, or value. It is given to us in all of the messiness of lived life, yet analysis recognizes in this a feature which belongs to it, to the contextualized affairs of everydayness. The analysis doesn't obfuscate the quality, it simply brings it out and reveals it. Affectivity is already "reified", if you will, for it is discovered, not made (something Richard Rorty doesn't deal with well, if you've read him), so there is no chance of inventing it. Kant is essentially describing! the world's structural features. Here, I make this same claim: it is not about they way the world is interpreted historically in religion and so forth; It is about a descriptive feature of the world that is there for analysis.

The question then turns to affectivity. We have to look to the way it is experienced to discover what it is (and thereby discover what the world is). Music, art, being scalded and burned, falling in love, getting a splinter, you know, the various and sundry afflictions and blisses we deal with. These kinds of things saturate life. And it is here I claim we discover this "absolute" presence. That it is discovered IN the world cannot be understood as a a deflationary reduction to the mundane interpretations of everydayness. Just the opposite: It is found IN the world; this makes the world something that is just this.

There is no essence to the term "yellow." "Yellow" means however it is used, and there is not a Platonic form that represents true yellow from which to measure. You're arguing essentialism, which isn't a sustainable position. — Hanover

Not that. the term essence is ill advised, so if I used it, I invited ambiguity. Yellow as presence, is all I mean. You may argue that presence is also an embedded term, but this would lead to arguments of higher complexity. It is being understood as a "pure" phenomenon. The language that gives us this is and interpretative indeterminacy, but the presence is not. A tricky issue.

If one holds to hedonism, pleasure is good by definition, but that position isn't universally held. — Hanover

That pleasure is, call it apriori good, is my position. Pleasure qua pleasure cannot be other than good. It is apodictically good.

Hanover

That pleasure is, call it apriori good, is my position. Pleasure qua pleasure cannot be other than good. It is apodictically good. — Constance

So Kant's categorical imperative should have resulted in his being a Utilitarian since the hedonistic principle of Bentham was synthetic a priori?

Constance

So Kant's categorical imperative should have resulted in his being a Utilitarian since the hedonistic principle of Bentham was synthetic a priori? — Hanover

Bentham was not doing metaethics. He simply accepted the premise that pleasure could be quantified. Very hard to do, but there is something in the attempt: better to be a pig satisfied than a philosopher unsatisfied, or not? Quantifying the "good" of experiences, addressing the claim that Beethoven is better than rock? One would have to "observe" the aesthetics to compare, and most would say this can't be done, or, shouldn't be. But the ethereal against the "hard", this is not an impossible question.

Anyway, what Bentham was dealing with, value, generally speaking, is, if you want to talk Kant, synthetic apriori. It is there in the midst of the world (though Kant's idealism remains an open question) yet, and this has to be carefully considered: the joy of being in love or the agony of torture, are not contingent. The "propositional" putting it forth IS contingent, for language is interpretative and its contingency lies with meanings bound to other meaning to make meaning. But the non-propositional experience of agony is not contingent.
As I see Kant, there are two problems. One is the indeterminacy of the universalized maxim. I mean, should I steal? No. But wait, the "principle" in question is not about stealing in general. it is a bout stealing under conditions x,y, and z. What are these? This question so relativizes the principle that it vanishes altogether: the choice before one is a completely unique entity of impossible complexity to distill into a principle. The ought, in other words, meets reality, and is reduced to a homily the universalization of which is nor more than a heuristic.
the other problem has to with duty: Is not one motivated to do one's duty? One must "desire" this, no? There is no such thing as rational disinterest.

The apophatic theory of justice

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