The culture war between Intuition and Quantification, Categorizing and Enframing of experience seems to be forefront of what will shape the future at this point. The pervasive nature of "Systematization" as absolute truth seems to have become the motto of the herd, a distorted form of Human exceptionalism and Human centrism masked as truth. The mask isn't the problem here, it's how we treat the appearance of the mask as presentations of the truth.
Ulrich Beck, dare i say, Pyrrohnian belief and skepticism in his "Reinvention of Politics" reflects this anti-foundational dynamic.
“Yes, dear colleagues—for once, please be honest! Can you name a single theory from your area of expertise that is undisputed, universally accepted, and, in addition to being approved, does not have to deal with a mountain of doubts and opposing views—and hide them? As for me, I do not see any theory that possesses this quality; I am always ready to remind us of certain things that a theory (or an empirical study with all its conclusions) must necessarily make us forget in order to be accepted in our field”
While Beck applied this critic to socialogism, the same critic can be universally applied to all systems and theories.
What does this say about Truth ? Truth doesn't demand democratization, Truth doesn't demand anything, in other words absolute truth is uncomfortable, ineffable, paradoxical and almost parable like. Lao Tzu understood this in by formulating Tao as the formless way. Both Buddha (who formulated the noble eightfold path) and Nagarjuna( who formulated the Maddhyamaka - the middle way) knew this to be true. You leave the raft once you have crossed the river.
This discomfort with unresolved truth has a history. The Binary clarity that which is demanded by science originates from belief that there is a "disembodied objective god's eye view of reality" which both Nietzsche and later Wittgenstein fought against . This fetishness for clarity appears to have been trickled down from Socratic Rationalism and Plato's theory of Forms, this narrow minded literalism have pervaded even our most sacred activity which is art and music.
Dante and Homer both understood this, thereby creating their timeless masterpieces - Divine Comedy and the Odyssey. Poets and storytellers such as Dante are the anti-thesis to this dishonesty, but even poets lie, but they don't pretend that they are not.
Yes, Dante was a rigorous system Builder. Yes, Dante fought against Florentine Politics and the Church. Yes, Dante rebeled. And this makes him the perfect anti-thesis against dogmatic system builders and conceptual categorizers. His system bleeds and overflows like a flood in all directions with fury and love.
This brings us to the philosophical tradition that names this distinction most directly: Anti-foundationalism, the philosophical belief that calls out all other systems for their disingenuity. That there is no metaphysical ground to hold onto. There cannot be any objective information existing "out there" from a disembodied mind independent sense.
How do we then look at this abyss of clarity, and not see pure subjectivism, solipscism and Nihilism arising from it and still not be concerned ?
Both Greeks and the Buddhists have an answer for this, the Greeks ask you to stop looking for certainity and to live pragmatically. Our existence cannot be described through positive attributes, but only through negative attributes of what it is not. One such to way understand this is through the Negative dialetics developed by Theodar Adorno .
But that the essence of your being in the world only demands your pragmatic presence in the space that you are embodying. If it weren't obvious, We are not floating machines in space. We are dynamic agents of our own environment, functioning from a circular inter-subjective perspective. In Phenomonolgy , we call this enactivism, the bringing forth of world through action. Cognition isn't an objective representation of reality, but the co-creation of the world through this inter-subjectivity. The World and the Knower are inseperably interconnected.
System builders, while being gifted with their verbal fluency and the verbal precision and rigour of a spider building a cob-web, doesn't have the courage to deal with uncertainity and lack of clarity that comes with embodying the rich, complex and chaotic existence of lived experience. System Builders & thinkers would at the end need find an answer to the aggripan trilema 1) Infinite Regression 2) Circular reasoning 3) Dogmatism
There is no fourth door, Which means one can only reason through from Intellectual dishonesty and ignorance.
As always, I defer to the walrus moustache on this matter:
“I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity.” - Friedrich Nietzsche, [Twilight of the Idols]
Let me turn my attention back to anti-foundalist schools of thoughts primarily Buddhism and Taoism. Buddha didn't teach in doctrines nor through issuing commandments, his teachings are something which can be phenemonologically discovered by monks and students . Lao Tzu didnt build systems, he built the immortal way which negates all systems. The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The Ladder is something that needs to be kicked away. To live without Idols, life suspending and post-poning judgement as far as possible. To live without systems, labels and classifications.
The only questions that needs answering is: are you brave enough?