Pete Wolfendale
@deontologistics.bsky.social
Wandering philosopher. Purveyor of Platonic heresy, Kantian computationalism, and Hegelian minimalism. (he/him/it which speaks)
Needless to say, I'm inordinately jealous of all your gigs!
November 28, 2025 at 12:40 AM
Needless to say, I'm inordinately jealous of all your gigs!
I've seen GBE 3 times. Once my friend and I had a table on a balcony, and I could lie down with my back to the stage and just let the music flow over me. One of my all time favourite gigs. Only seen Magma once alas, in Gateshead, but would see them again in a heartbeat.
November 28, 2025 at 12:40 AM
I've seen GBE 3 times. Once my friend and I had a table on a balcony, and I could lie down with my back to the stage and just let the music flow over me. One of my all time favourite gigs. Only seen Magma once alas, in Gateshead, but would see them again in a heartbeat.
Anyway, I should stop there. Keep it unnatural guys. 🖖
November 27, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Anyway, I should stop there. Keep it unnatural guys. 🖖
The idea that we might experiment with freedom in order to celebrate its own peculiar novelty and diversity is not a possibility that either position can really countenance or comprehend. The intrinsic value of Freedom as an essentially unnatural thing.
November 27, 2025 at 12:37 PM
The idea that we might experiment with freedom in order to celebrate its own peculiar novelty and diversity is not a possibility that either position can really countenance or comprehend. The intrinsic value of Freedom as an essentially unnatural thing.
This is a question that normative naturalism can only ever really answer in the negative, and that utilitarianism can only ever answer with another question - 'Is it a *better* form of life'? - If yes, of course. If no, of course not. Mere difference is axiologically inert.
November 27, 2025 at 12:37 PM
This is a question that normative naturalism can only ever really answer in the negative, and that utilitarianism can only ever answer with another question - 'Is it a *better* form of life'? - If yes, of course. If no, of course not. Mere difference is axiologically inert.
This is perhaps the Promethean question par excellence, as posed by Mary Shelley, and is becoming sharper as we get deeper into the age of artificial intelligence. But it applies equally to the possibility of uplifting animals or simply enabling evolution of non-human sapients.
November 27, 2025 at 12:36 PM
This is perhaps the Promethean question par excellence, as posed by Mary Shelley, and is becoming sharper as we get deeper into the age of artificial intelligence. But it applies equally to the possibility of uplifting animals or simply enabling evolution of non-human sapients.
That's most of what I have to say here, though I want to close by highlighting what for me is the most complex and revealing question framing the relation between Beauty and Right: should we create, cultivate, or otherwise encourage the emergence of new forms of life?
November 27, 2025 at 12:36 PM
That's most of what I have to say here, though I want to close by highlighting what for me is the most complex and revealing question framing the relation between Beauty and Right: should we create, cultivate, or otherwise encourage the emergence of new forms of life?
This, then, is how I propose to capture the two impulses to which I am sympathetic: treating Nature as an internal condition of our extant form of life (epochal means), and treating Nature as an external condition of any evolving form of life (sublime outside).
November 27, 2025 at 12:36 PM
This, then, is how I propose to capture the two impulses to which I am sympathetic: treating Nature as an internal condition of our extant form of life (epochal means), and treating Nature as an external condition of any evolving form of life (sublime outside).
We must revere that which we have no control over as without it we would lose the source of that sense of agency (thriving) without which control is meaningless. Yet this reverence does not thereby override the need to cultivate control (surviving).
November 27, 2025 at 12:36 PM
We must revere that which we have no control over as without it we would lose the source of that sense of agency (thriving) without which control is meaningless. Yet this reverence does not thereby override the need to cultivate control (surviving).
This is where we return to reverence for Nature as a constraint upon our actions, insofar as natural contingency breeds practical contingency. Novelty and diversity in Nature engender novelty and diversity in Art and Life, through constraint as much as through emulation.
November 27, 2025 at 12:36 PM
This is where we return to reverence for Nature as a constraint upon our actions, insofar as natural contingency breeds practical contingency. Novelty and diversity in Nature engender novelty and diversity in Art and Life, through constraint as much as through emulation.
This brings us back to the first claim (beauty as practical contingency). My intuitions here are if anything even more vague, but I suspect that there is a nuanced connection between practical contingency and theoretical (or alethic) contingency that might bare some fruit.
November 27, 2025 at 12:35 PM
This brings us back to the first claim (beauty as practical contingency). My intuitions here are if anything even more vague, but I suspect that there is a nuanced connection between practical contingency and theoretical (or alethic) contingency that might bare some fruit.
This also seems pretty conservative (in both senses), as it suggests that whatever ethical obligations toward Nature ultimately arise from this process of aesthetic genesis are limited to preserving that which supports the coherence of our extant form of life.
November 27, 2025 at 12:35 PM
This also seems pretty conservative (in both senses), as it suggests that whatever ethical obligations toward Nature ultimately arise from this process of aesthetic genesis are limited to preserving that which supports the coherence of our extant form of life.
Of course, this is all too vague, but the point is that there is space to incorporate our relation to Nature within the more fleshed out genetic story about the emergence of Right from Beauty that I'm hoping to tell. The relation between Freedom and Nature is initially aesthetic.
November 27, 2025 at 12:35 PM
Of course, this is all too vague, but the point is that there is space to incorporate our relation to Nature within the more fleshed out genetic story about the emergence of Right from Beauty that I'm hoping to tell. The relation between Freedom and Nature is initially aesthetic.
And this concrete form of freedom is, prior to assessment for internal ethical consistency, a given structure subject to assessment of aesthetic coherence. Here it can be considered both as something natural and as something embedded in Nature.
November 27, 2025 at 12:35 PM
And this concrete form of freedom is, prior to assessment for internal ethical consistency, a given structure subject to assessment of aesthetic coherence. Here it can be considered both as something natural and as something embedded in Nature.
To make an analogy, even if language has necessary universal structure, one cannot speak without contingently choosing a particular language. The same might be said of ethical frameworks. There is no acting as only an abstract agent. There is always a concrete form of freedom.
November 27, 2025 at 12:35 PM
To make an analogy, even if language has necessary universal structure, one cannot speak without contingently choosing a particular language. The same might be said of ethical frameworks. There is no acting as only an abstract agent. There is always a concrete form of freedom.
I think this genetic story entangles Right with Beauty without identifying them. One result of this is a constitutive tension between the purely formal responsibilities characteristic of Kant’s ethics and Hegel’s abstract right and norms implicit in concrete forms of life.
November 27, 2025 at 12:34 PM
I think this genetic story entangles Right with Beauty without identifying them. One result of this is a constitutive tension between the purely formal responsibilities characteristic of Kant’s ethics and Hegel’s abstract right and norms implicit in concrete forms of life.
So even though we can independently define ethical right as absolute commitment, or that which must be done in the last instance, its content and its forces lies in securing the possibility of aesthetic excellence - cultivating that freedom which is the condition of beauty.
November 27, 2025 at 12:34 PM
So even though we can independently define ethical right as absolute commitment, or that which must be done in the last instance, its content and its forces lies in securing the possibility of aesthetic excellence - cultivating that freedom which is the condition of beauty.
Taking the second claim first, my position is that Beauty is the origin of value. That which is most unconditionally valuable is that there is unconditional value. But the existence of freedom is the condition of possibility of anything mattering in this way.
November 27, 2025 at 12:34 PM
Taking the second claim first, my position is that Beauty is the origin of value. That which is most unconditionally valuable is that there is unconditional value. But the existence of freedom is the condition of possibility of anything mattering in this way.
I should begin by reiterating the position I lay out in ‘Why Does Anything Matter?’, namely, that I think Beauty is to Right as contingency to necessity, and Right is to Beauty as a means to an end. Both claims are relevant to solving the problem.
November 27, 2025 at 12:34 PM
I should begin by reiterating the position I lay out in ‘Why Does Anything Matter?’, namely, that I think Beauty is to Right as contingency to necessity, and Right is to Beauty as a means to an end. Both claims are relevant to solving the problem.
This is a problem I’m still trying to untangle, and its solution depends upon disentangling other significant meta-ethical problems. But I can sketch a few ideas that I’ve been circling around hereabouts. Treat these thoughts as highly provisional.
November 27, 2025 at 12:34 PM
This is a problem I’m still trying to untangle, and its solution depends upon disentangling other significant meta-ethical problems. But I can sketch a few ideas that I’ve been circling around hereabouts. Treat these thoughts as highly provisional.
To put this in my preferred terms, the problem is to articulate the connection between Beauty and Right without collapsing the difference between them. Acknowledging Wonder as a source of value without making it into the ground upon which Justice rests.
November 27, 2025 at 12:34 PM
To put this in my preferred terms, the problem is to articulate the connection between Beauty and Right without collapsing the difference between them. Acknowledging Wonder as a source of value without making it into the ground upon which Justice rests.