7. CONCLUSION
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7. CONCLUSION |
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| 7.2 The Eonic Effect As A Resolution of Kant’s Challenge | ||||
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We can now see that the eonic effect shows the resolution
of Kant’s Challenge. As we study world history with our ‘eonic periodization’,
we suddenly, almost unexpectedly realize we stumble on the complex signature: a
regular movement in the play of human freedom is almost instantly demonstrable
from the eonic effect, and the result shows a cousin resemblance to Kant’s Third
Antinomy
. Our powerful model does this at a glance: we notice our three turning points show precisely the movement in the play of freedom as our levels eonic determination and free action alternate in degrees of freedom, and in relation to our two universal histories. The evidence is direct. We will say ‘resolved’ instead of ‘solved’, since we can see that the problem avalanches from randomness to directionality, hence teleology. That still does not fully solve the problem. The ‘mechanism’ is clearly beyond observation, the pattern seems to extend backwards into the Neolithic, and we see that while directionality is indicated, predictive teleology is foreclosed by our historical immersion. Idea of a Universal History Note that we proceed from a provisional idea for a universal history to an idea of a universal history: the question is resolved. We can see that, contrary to expectation and the standard views of history, we can detect a ‘regular movement’ in the play of freedom of the human will. This is our eonic sequence, with its cyclical emergentism based on ‘free action’ under ‘eonic determination’. We have created a terminology for a special subpattern, of the eonic sequence, the discrete freedom sequence, which throws especial light on the question. We can see that the eonic effect corresponds exactly to the implied question given in what we have called Kant’s Challenge. Our model resolves Kant’s Challenge, but that is not the same as ‘fully solved’. We are later, but not outside of history. Our discrete-continuous
sequence follows this ‘regular movement’
precisely in almost eerie fashion, with the (relative transform) evolution of
the state, religion, science, philosophy, all major categories of civilization,
in the cowcatcher mainline of the eonic sequence. Problem solved: world history
shows directionality, purposive evolution, incremental progress toward ‘civil
constitutions’, perfect or imperfect, and the unfolding of ‘nature’s secret
plan’ (in quotation marks). It is highly unlikely there could be any other
solution to this Challenge from Kant. This is a strong, because limited, result,
one that uses only large-scale blocks of history, simple periodization, and
metaphysical austerity, generic history by the book. No ‘theory’ is invoked or
required for the result, which is therefore a form of direct ‘pointing to’. It
is probably the case that the dynamic of this system relates to the category of
the ‘noumenon’ and is forever beyond observation, which will provoke a review of
various Hegelian issues, Hegel being one of the first to respond to Kant’s
essay. Kant’s Challenge, however, only asks for a regular movement in the play
of freedom. Hegel’s philosophy of history, his metaphysical system apart,
doesn’t see the eonic effect, and kludges an argument by design
to get his result. Beyond Kant, A Kantian Fix We have to make clear that we have produced our own perspective, and this assumes bypassing the confusion of asocial sociability. Since Kant scholars won’t agree, Kant is out the window for our model, if need be. We begin to see the resolution of Kant’s Challenge, in the
eonic effect, if we can bypass its interpretation in terms of the idea of
asocial sociability. Our three turning points show a clear solution to this
challenge: cyclical directionality. We can see that the eonic effect shows us
the resolution of the problem, and why Kant is ambivalent about ‘asocial
sociability’. We can say ‘resolved’,
rather than solved, because the overall form of the question’s answer is clear,
and because the dialectical question, ‘Is history random or teleological?’
avalanches toward directionality, raising the question of teleology, and short
of stating the teleological endstate. However, as we have noted our eonic
pattern, even as it fulfills Kant’s Challenge really bursts asunder the
conceptions of teleology mixed with the asocial sociability that lurk in Kant’s
incomplete philosophy, in the vein from Mandeville to Adam Smith, thus prone to
succumbing to the ideology of classical liberalism. We can see that Kant was
really asking question, one that our age can begin to answer. Clutching at
straws, Kant senses, as we can now see, correctly that, for example, the French
Revolution in some fashion demonstrates the factor of ‘freedom’s causality’. Our
larger framework can dispense with this Revolution, in its paralysis of futile
controversies, and move to a broader plane that fulfills Kant’s reasoning. We
can see Kant, just at the Great Divide, then Hegel and Marx, turning into ‘eonic
observers’ as they grapple with the modern transition. Still too immersed in the
process they would describe, they cannot yet detect the full pattern of the
eonic effect that we have found. Thus history on one
level is the field of free activity operating in open-ended fashion on the
surface of a planet. Yet if we attend to this ‘play of freedom’ as global fields
of free action we can easily detect a regular movement in it, the eonic effect,
although only in a limited snapshot since the onset of higher civilization and
the keeping of records. This regular movement is overlaid on the flat
distribution of general history and is directly associated with the eonic
generation of civil infrastructure, starting with the statist emergentism
visible in Dynastic Sumer and Egypt, the birth of the great religions and
democracy in the second, and the resurgence of democracy in the third. In
general a far more complex description is required of the fuzzy term ‘democracy’
in terms of incipient republican conceptions and much else. Further we see that
this regular movement tends to be in counterpoint to the mideonic fall off into
empire taken by a failed ersatz construct between state and its defined
boundaries in the context of globalization. This pattern clearly raises the
issue of teleology
, and is also complicated by the
distinction between relative free action and system generation. Freedom
generated by eonic determination cannot be purely free, and the jumpstart
process visible in the regular movement can only assist but not determine the
free action beset with the need to self-initiate its own freedom. Kant’s essay contains more than the first paragraph we have allotted ourselves, e.g. the idea of ‘Nature’s Secret Plan’, and the ‘progress toward a perfect civil constitution. Wary of hypostatized language such as ‘Nature’s Secret Plan’ we nonetheless see the unfolding of a coherent evolutionary or ‘eonic directionality’, suspicious an alternation sequence produces an historically given representation of some teleological process. The resolution of Kant’s Challenge, as a political problem, can be seen directly in the discrete freedom sequence. As to the progress toward a perfect civil constitution we see at once using periodization: TP1 birth of the state, ‘freedom’ in the state TP2 discrete freedom sequence, ecumenical religions TP3 discrete freedom sequence, dialectic of state in contradiction We don’t associate the birth of the State with freedom, but pace Hegel, it is easily seen to join the list. The same problem seems to be the case with the great religions in the emergence of the perfect civil constitution, because a secular New Age is reacting against theocratic regimes, starting with Luther. In its original context, however, the connection is graphically obvious. The plight of the Israelites, the source of a transcultural ecumenical religion, is a nationalistic one, and the Old Testament core is a state ideology which then flows into its mideonic field transforming into a universal religion, and then turning into an ideology of empire. In a model of the eonic type we don’t need to claim this succeeded or that its emergence represents an ‘end of history’ solution. Compare the anti-statism of the Buddhist Sangha, in parallel, as a group (with decided political ambitions) of ‘drop outs’ at the fringes of the State. Quite obviously the modern transition reacts against these, but that doesn’t disqualify them from being ‘evidence of the progression toward a perfect civil constitution’. Since they were imperfect, they appear to be in the process of being bypassed. The ancient failure of democracy in the discrete freedom sequence, and its consequent reappearance on cue in the eonic mainline is, therefore, the strongest candidate with almost spectacular eonic structure, and Hegel springs into action defending it. Hegel’s ‘end of history’ perception suffers an excessive sense of linear history. We see that he is championing the eonic emergence of liberal systems without realizing it. It is not the end of history as much as the reemergence of freedom at the dawn of a new era, at the ‘end of a transition’, and the need to maintain that freedom against mideonic retrogression. There the question of ‘economic freedom’ emerges to bedevil the whole mix. |
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