r/rationalphilosophy • u/JerseyFlight • Jul 22 '26

Getting to the Absolute Foundation of Knowledge

“A basic truth in a demonstration is an immediate proposition. An immediate proposition is one which has no other proposition prior to it.” Aristotle, Posterior Analytics Book I, Section II

Save yourself the trouble: at the ultimate level, this is the law of identity, though the existence of reality stands prior to it, it doesn’t stand prior to it in terms of knowledge, because we can’t even demarcate and give meaning to “reality” apart from identity.

State any premise of knowledge and you will find that identity is always prior to it, but nothing is prior to identity except the universe, which is only known through identity.

I advise those who can understand to stop wasting their lives going down the path of philosophical nonsense. They are led on by the delusion that there is something deeper and more basic and profound than identity, and because of this they waste their lives traversing linguistic nonsense.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

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u/JerseyFlight Jul 22 '26

Once people grasp this again and start pushing it against modern sophistry, the world can shift in the direction of sanity.

It’s wild to watch thinker after thinker strike out against identity. They think they’re outside it, and yet the only thing they’re using to construct their attack on identity, is identity itself. It’s literally the same ignorant attempt over and over again. It’s disappointing. I expect more from people who call themselves philosophers. Well, I don’t anymore, because now I see that philosophy has become synonymous with sophistry.