an amusing parallel

Following the early breed of pre-Socratics, several of them favoring one particular physical element as the root of everything, Empedocles incorporated the various elements into a system in which air, earth, fire, and water all stood on the same footing, mixed by love and hate.

When looking at the four poles of the fourfold, it also seems that there is at least one school of philosophy that favors each one as the most important thing there is. Namely:

*sensual qualities (correlationism, empiricism)

*sensual object (phenomenology; in some sense the whole point of phenomenology is that experience is not made up of “bundles of qualities,” it’s made of objects, just not what we usually call real ones)

*real qualities (naturalism, in my opinion; after debunking what is given in consciousness, naturalism thinks it reaches reality, but this reality is not made of objects, just of knowable qualities; for this reason they still aren’t real enough for me– insofar as something is knowable it is not real)

*real objects (most traditional realism, with its substances)

What the fourfold structure does is allow us to incorporate the insights of all four of these positions, while avoiding the reductionist tendencies shared by all of them.

Since it is a bit of a pain to keep speaking all the time of these four phrases, I used the playing card metaphor in the book and gave each one the nickname of a suit of cards. So I end up with the rather Empedoclean-sounding model of spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds, mixed by fission and fusion. (But of course, my objects are not root physical elements. In many cases they are complicated, even gigantic.)

The metaphor is also helpful if it aids you in remembering that there are always four aspects to any object, or four “suits.” For example, when observing a dog we could speak facetiously of a Dog of Spades, Dog of Hearts, Dog of Clubs, and Dog of Diamonds. But naturally, I do not recommend such language for the somber purposes of terminology.

And yes, I do think the diagrams are going to be helpful for readers.

The book ought to be totally finished by about the time Egypt either succeeds or fails against Algeria– say 10 PM or so.