New Eclectic Manifesto

  1. The New Eclecticist seeks to dissolve the bonds on discourse and engage productively with the world despite the limitations of knowledge.

  2. The traditional view is that discourse ends in resolution. That ethics aims to tell us what is right and wrong and theology aims to tell us the nature of divinity.

  3. Discourse does not end in resolution. Ethical dilemmas are argued ad infinitum and the nature of divinity is intractable.

  4. The resolution of discourse was not important to begin with. The value of ethical dilemmas is in their analysis not their resolution, and the nature of divinity is revealed through the failure to reveal the nature of divinity.

  5. Discourse has been limited by appeals to authority which are no longer sufficient. The most clear example is the academic monopoly on philosophy.

  6. The limitation of discourse has adverse effects with dire political consequences. These include 1) the suppression of voices from outgroups and 2) providing a space for fringe politics, bad popular philosophy, and “race realists” and their ilk to share their ideas without opposition.

  7. This limitation comes from imposing rules on acceptable discourse. Examples include academic style, media censorship, political dialectic, and logical positivism.

  8. These limitations on discourse are themselves artifacts of discourse.

  9. Just as a government's power comes from the willingness of its people to observe it, these limitations on discourse only exist insofar as they are upheld by each person. Since these limitations are just artifacts of discourse, they are all unresolved.

  10. Just as an anarchist seeks to dissolve the bonds of the state, the New Eclecticist seeks to dissolve the bonds on discourse.

  11. New Eclecticism is not the dissolution of meaning, but the assertion of meaning where it was suppressed.

  12. Meaning can be reasserted through pluralism; an individual can use perspectives that do not “rationally” cohere (because rationality is nothing more than a limitation on discourse). Interpreting art from multiple incompatible perspectives leads to better, not worse, understanding of the artwork.

  13. Beliefs are a tool. A terminally ill patient who chooses to believe they have a good prognosis is more likely to survive. Criticizing this person on the basis of rationality would be myopic.

  14. The use of beliefs as a tool allows a pluralistic reassertion of myth and meaning. Whether or not a man named Jesus physically rose from the dead on the third day is entirely irrelevant. In this way the New Eclecticist engages productively with the world despite the limitations of knowledge.

  15. Nothing in this document is exempt from these claims.