Jouissance and I!
Author’s Preface To Advent of American Idealism
By G.R. Tomaini
This historic e-pistle entitled Advent of American Idealism was disseminated to some 50 of the most prominent academics in the United States, including the Philosophy departments of Princeton, Harvard, and Columbia in order to raise awareness as to the significance of the publication of G.R. Tomaini’s Encyclopedia of American Idealism: Toward a Novel Method and System of Philosophy. Its method, Reconstruction, and its system, American Idealism, take their cues from Kantian Synthetic Logic, which after all was the source inspiration for Hegel’s own Dialectical Method. Orthodox Kantianism is championed in the work over and above Neo-Kantianism, while Deconstruction, Postmodernism, Analytic Philosophy, American Pragmatism, Psychoanalysis, Cognitive Science, Phenomenology, Epistemology, Dialectics, Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics, the Philosophy of History, Semiotics, and Metalinguistics are all synthesized using — again — the Kantian Synthetic Logic, in order to procure a comprehensive and formidable philosophical system. Playing the Hegel card on the Western Philosophical Canon, the Encyclopedia integrates and Reconstructs the most famous and renowned elements of the Canon into a behemoth of a system replete with some 98 subchapters, formally divided into three component parts of the system: Anthropoepistemology, Anthropocognitivity, andMetapolitics — jointly forming a tripartite division of the Philosophical Sciences, themselves. Within this work exists an exposition of its Method — Reconstruction — as well as the bold assertion of perhaps 100 or more novel and innovative theories of Philosophy — including an Anselmian General Theory of Objectivity, an argument for the existence of the so-called Boltzmann God, as well as a transcendent replacement of Hegelian-Marxian Dialectical Materialism — namely, Dialectical Harmonism — itself a new conception of dialectics that transcends the Hobbesian-Schmittian Logic inherent to the Hegelian Dialectical Method, itself rooted in Negation and Philosophical Negativity. Concluding in a Theory of International Harmony, inspired by Immanuel Kant’s seminal text, Perpetual Peace, the Encyclopedia likewise borrows heavily from the ingenious co-founder of Calculus, Gottfried Leibniz,who perhaps is the only individual cunning enough to properly compete with the profundity, scope, and depth of the Hegelian Philosophical System; indeed, Leibniz’s Best Possible World Theory and Theory of Pre-Established Harmony was the only way your author could make headway against the Hegelian Philosophical System. Perhaps the Encyclopedia’s greatest contributions lie in its division of Politics, where Just Mind Theory, Just Rule Theory, Just Environment Theory, Just Economy Theory, andJust World Theory are explicated across 9 subchapters on Political Justice; the division of Ethics likewise synthesizes some 18 Ideal Principles of Morality,yielding a General Theory of Ethics — Leibnizian Virtue Cyclological Speculative Optimalism. So much for Reconstruction and the United States’s First Philosophical System — American Idealism.
Signed,
Signore G.R. Tomaini
Poet, Theologian, and Systematic Philosopher
____________________________________________________________
Date: Sun, Feb 26, 2023 at 6:40 PM
Subject: Advent of American Idealism
To:
Dear Eminent Professors Axel Honneth, Jürgen Habermas, Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Avital Ronell, Gayatri C. Spivak, Simon Critchley, Robert Brandom, Ted Sider, Elizabeth Camp, Larry Temkin, Ruth Chang, Jacqueline Rose, Etienne Balibar, Costas Douzinas, Slavoj Žižek, Esther Leslie, Kwame Anthony Appiah, David Chalmers, Branden Fitelson, Tom Nagel, Peter Singer, Holly Smith, Alvin Goldman, Ernie Sosa, Amartya Sen, Daniel Dennett, Andrew Chignell, Souleymane Diagne, Giorgio Agamben, Michael Marder, Cian Dorr, and Gregory Defreitas:
***
Pardon — Professor Honneth — would you mind forwarding this e-mail to Professor Jürgen Habermas? I seem to have misplaced his e-mail address. Professor Dorr — could you please forward this e-mail to Professor Tom Nagel?
***
I write to you all as either former teachers or else as immense inspirations to me, for reasons I am short to explain. Introducing myself to some of you: my name is Gregory Richard Tomaini, and I am the author of some 9 books, at the age of 26, including 7 Books of Poetry and 1 Philosophical Encyclopedia; my Poetry manuscripts are soon to be converted into stage-plays, starting with my Poetry book introducing the concept of Queeritude.
Before I get started: Professor Butler, I enjoyed pitching to you the first question on Freud’s Death Drive and the Carceral State after your recent lecture at Princeton; Professors Žižek and Ronell — I am still reflecting on my question posed to you both at NYU not long ago, about Freud’s Pleasure Principle as a central operating force within formation of Human Ideology — in what, too, was the audience’s first question. Professor Spivak — I am still humbled by your remark that I am “too over-qualified” to function as your Research Assistant — again, for reasons I am short to explain.
As many of you well know — Drucilla Cornell — my Mentor, Interlocutor, Muse and Diotima of 7 years — recently passed away this December, putting an end to our philosophical correspondence that yielded over 800 digital “e-pistles” exchanged back and forth, on all manner of queries. She would always refer to my prose as “Keatsian”… I miss her dearly! I aim to immortalize her in my 7th book of Poetry. To me, she was always “Miss Drucilla”…
At any rate, it was Drucilla who encouraged me to enroll in her graduate seminars as but an undergraduate Sophomore at Rutgers University. After her retirement, I relished attending her Private Reading Groups. Once those were over, I was left with a thirst for knowledge that resulted in my auditing some 25 graduate seminars from all across the University — granting me an arguably erudite knowledge of the Philosophical Canon whether Analytic, Continental, or Historical. It was not until later on I met my Mentor and Professor of 5 Seminars — Professor Cornel West — that I took a deep dive into American Pragmatism, particularly the writings of John Dewey and Charles S. Peirce; Professor West was actually the first Philosopher I ever read, in the 8th grade, so his re-emergence in my life could only be have been brought about by the Hegelian Cunning of Reason — or perhaps the Luck of the Irish!
But before I met Professor West, I had actually teased Drucilla that I would perhaps write for her a journal article containing my critique of G.W.F. Hegel, our mutually favorite Philosopher. When the outline swelled to 30 single-spaced pages worth of bullet points, it began to dawn on me that there was more at stake than just another ready-made critique of Hegelianism. So, I told Drucilla that possibly we had the seedlings of a novel — perhaps method — of Philosophy. As the work fructified, it became impossible to deny that the rigor, complexity, and inter-relatedness of the text allowed for it to be understood as something altogether more rare in our times: a Philosophical System.
Drucilla insisted that she did not believe in systems anymore, but I pressed onward, for: the text was not merely a system, but also a process system, meaning that it is capable of adapting over time, in a fluid manner, given whatever corrections or “refutations” may lie in its future. Meaning, that the system was at that time in its development quite compatible with Hegel’s Dynamic Method, Whitehead’s Process Philosophy, but also Jacques Derrida’s Deconstruction. As I began to undertake the subversion of the Philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel — that beastly Fafnir, guarding his treasure trove of knowledge — like Siegfried, I wedged a dagger through the Negational heart of Hegelianism, and in so doing, yielded a new Philosophical Method that synthesized Derrida’s Deconstruction, Whitehead’s Process Philosophy, Dewey’s variety of American Pragmatism, as well as the Epistemological writings of Alvin Plantinga, Alvin Goldman, and Ernie Sosa: I borrowed an apt term from Dewey himself, written some 47 years before Derrida arrived upon the international scene: Reconstruction.
Once I took the Reconstructive Method for a test drive, I figured I would embark upon a formal critique of Hegelianism, just as I promised Drucilla in the beginning. Countering the behemoth scope and density of the Hegelian system, I found myself returning to the thought of Immanuel Kant in order to accomplish such a feat, and for a moment identified not as a Neo-Kantian, but as an Orthodox Kantian. Suddenly, the scales fell from my eyes, and I found myself using the Method to critique, revise, and reconstruct, not merely Karl Marx and Louis Althusser’s notion of the Superstructure, but also Habermas’s notion of Communicative Action, together yielding my coinages of the Linguistic Superstructure as well as the General Theory of Instinctive Production (Production being my term for any emanation of Mind, whether a speech act, thought act, or else traditional act).
Derek Parfit, who I knew from my time at Rutgers, had passed away before I could apply my Method to his own seminal Ethical Framework, effectively synthesizing not merely Utilitarianism, Deontology, and Virtue Ethics, but in total some 18 Ideal Principles of Morality, rooted in a Reconstruction of the Meta-Ethics of John Rawls himself. Not satisfied to have Reconstructed Derek’s Ethical Thought, I so too Reconstructed his writings on Personal Identity, effectively reinstating, bolstering, and fortifying the concept of Personal Identity by expounding a 7-part Holistic Theory of Personal Identity, simultaneously negating the claim that Personal Identity could only be made up of parts, as well as Derek’s own notion of Personality Nihilism. I fear I have run on too long, I will now identify my reason for writing:
A few days ago, the finished text was globally released after a first run in only Australia and New Zealand. If I may include an abstract for the work:
The Encyclopedia of American Idealism was accepted by three academic publishers who all expected to make the book masquerade itself as an academic monograph. “But here’s the real story” — it is actually America’s First Philosophical System in the Style of the Western Philosophical Tradition. Undoubtedly, Native Americans had, have, and have always had, Philosophy, but a kind separate and historically distinct from the Western Philosophical Tradition. What groups, then, may contend for the laurel of having produced America’s First Western-Style Philosophical System? Relevantly, the American Transcendentalists and American Pragmatists were actually both Anti-Systematic, and even the infamous Pragmatist Richard Rorty said no “good Pragmatist believes in systems,” meaning that those two camps of Philosophers never came close to a formal System of Philosophy. The closest the Pragmatists got to Systematicity was in the writings of Charles Sanders Peirce, but he was chiefly a Methodologist rather than a Systemizer. Therefore the Encyclopedia of American Idealism upon its recent publication became America’s First Philosophical System. The Encyclopedia, too, presents a novel Philosophical Method: Reconstruction, built atop Jacques Derrida’s Deconstruction. Likewise, the Encyclopedia also arguably entails a Checkmate as to the viability of Hegelianism, whose legendary Dialectical Method the Encyclopedia arguably dislodges, replaces, and subsumes into its own Method of Reconstruction, effectively playing the Hegel card on G.W.F. Hegel himself.
Prefaced by Professor Cornel West, and positively reviewed by Professor Slavoj Žižek, the work is available for purchase, here:
Named after Hegel’s Encyclopedia, as well as Diderot’s, my Encyclopedia of American Idealism: Toward a Novel Method and System of Philosophy is meant to inaugurate the advent of American Idealism, itself built atop Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel’s school of German Idealism, as well as most of the Western Philosophical Canon.
I fittingly dedicated the work to my teachers:
G.W.F. Hegel
Drucilla Cornell
Derek Parfit
Ted Sider
Cornel West
Slavoj Žižek
***
Wishing All of You Nothing But —
More Happy Love!
More Happy, Happy Love!
With Absolute Sincerity,
Gregory Richard Tomaini
February 26, 2023
P.S. Here is the table of contents: you may even find your own name cited below!
Encyclopedia of American Idealism:
Toward a Novel Method and System of Philosophy
Dialectics, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Cognitive Science, Psychoanalysis, Phenomenology, Metalinguistics, Aesthetics, Ethics, and Politics
Table of Contents:
1. Of the Acknowledgments
2. Of the Prefatory Remarks: Dr. Cornel West
3. Of the Introductory Remarks I: Leibnizian Reconstructive Imaginary Dialectics Contra Hegelian-Marxian-Heideggerian-Schmittian-Derridean Deconstructive Negative Dialectics; or, Of Analytic-Modernisms Contra Continental-Postmodernisms: Beyond So-Called Analytic and So-Called Continental Philosophical Modalities: Toward an Imaginary Dialectics Rooted in Leibnizian Harmony: Toward Reconstruction
4. Of the Introductory Remarks II: Of Philosophy For Wittgensteinian Duckrabbits: Beyond Berlin and Dworkin
5. Chapter I: Of Anthropoepistemology
6. Of the Noumenality of Being: Plato, Kant, and Hegel; or, Of the Doctrine of the Unfalsifiability of Being: Popper Contra Young Wittgenstein and Lewis
7. Of the Noumenality of Nothing: Hegel, Heidegger, and Sartre
8. Of the Platonic Imaginary Graph of Being: Parfit, Butler, and Sider
9. Of Conforming the Lewisian Ontological Graph of Being to the Platonic Imaginary Graph of Being
10. Of the Axes of Being
11. Of Heideggerian Being-in-the-World and a Bipartite Theory of Informativity; or, Of Aesthetic Informativity Versus Banal Informativity
12. Of the Augustinian-Bergsonian Phenomenology of Time
13. Of Bergsonian Durational Consciousness and the Zeitgeistal Jungian Collective Consciousness
14. Of the Cyclicality of Being, or, Of Nietzsche’s Wager
15. Of the Metaphysics of Informativity: Beyond Young Wittgenstein
16. Toward a Hegelian-Derridean General Theory of Procession
17. Toward a Perfectional Theory of Absolute Essence: Plato and Saint Anselm
18. Of the Metaphysics of Kantian-Searlean Social Constructs
19. Of Two Modes of Ascertaining Kantian-Searlean Social Constructs
20. Of the Emergence of Kantian-Searlean Social Constructs
21. Of Whiteheadian-Derridean Process Epistemology, Goldman, Sosa, and the Pragmatic-Cognitivist Consciousness
22. Of the Nietzschean Metaphysics of Indebtion: Speech Act Par Excellence I
23. Of the Metaphysics of the Question
24. Of the Pragmatic-Newtonian Science of Trajectorics
25. Of Vagueness Explained By An Appeal to the Idiosyncratic Qualitative Cognitive Graph of Being; or, Of Temporal Cognitive Idiosyncrasy Across the Temporal Timeline; or, Of Fluctuating Cognitive Mechanisms, the Mental Depository, and the Epistemic Relevantia Mechanism: Beyond Fine
26. Of Cartesianly Witnessing Concepts in the Mind
27. Of the Focalization of Concepts in the Mind: Plato and Derrida
28. Marxian Exposition: Of False Consciousness and Conspiracy Theories
29. Of the Set Theoretical Logic of Books
30. Aufhebung: Theory of the Hegelian-Freudian Productive Imprint; or, Of the Recentering of the Notion of the Author
31. Chapter II: Of Programmatology
32. Grounding of the Derridean-Fodorian Programmatology of Mind
33. Of the Pragmatic-Newtonian Trajectorics of the Trigger
34. Of the Trigger as the Fundamental Unit of History: Of Autosystemization and the Reflexivity Equation
35. Of the Automatic Faculty of Mind: Of Production and Systemization
36. Of the Freudian-Lacanian Cyclology of Mind; or, Of the Oligarchy of the Dominant Cycles
37. Of the Freudian-Lacanian Cyclology of Production; or, Of the Productive Faculty of Mind
38. Of the Noumenal Theory of Alienation From the Productivity of Mind: Beyond Habermas
39. Of Freudian Polyintentionality and the Productivity of Mind
40. Of the Freudian General Will and Freudian Polyintentionality
41. Of the Luhmannian Systematic Faculty of Mind
42. Of Berkeleyan Cognitive-Idealistic Sensory Projectionalism: Kant Alongside Moore
43. Of the Cartesian-Bergsonian Phenomenology of Mind
44. Of the Cartesian-Bergsonian Witnessant
45. Of the Systematic Limit of Phenomenology; or, Of the Liberated Consciousness: Chalmers
46. Of the Freudian-Lacanian Cyclology of the Dependent Consciousness
47. Of Animalistic and Linguistic Phenomenology: Beyond Marx, Althusser, and Derrida
48. Of the Mature and Immature Consciousnesses: Kant and Honneth
49. Of Ricoeurian Narrativity and the Emotivics of Heart
50. Of the Operation of Austinian Performativity; or, Of the Core Script: Beyond Parfit and Calculus
51. Of Triggernometry and the Kierkegaardian Phenomenology of Heart: Beyond Neo-Kantian Discursive Political Liberalisms; or, Of the Noumenality of Communicative Intimacy; Of Noumenality as the Fundamental Trigger in the Anthropoprogrammatology of Mind, Contra Heideggerian and Sartrean Nothingness
52. Of the Freudian-Lacanian Cyclology of Heideggerian Phenomenological Mood
53. Toward a General Theory of Productive Vibes: Of Freudian Subliminal Prioritization
54. Of Metalinguistics and the Chalmersian Enmeshed Consciousness
55. Of Austinian Linguistic Pragmatism and the Leibnizian General Theory of Projectional Optimalism
56. Of the Genealogy of the Hegelian-Lacanian Linguistic Superstructure
57. Of the Nietzschean Metaphysics of Indebtion: Speech Act Par Excellence II
58. Of Projectional Essentialism and Objective Essentiality: Nietzsche, Fish, and Dworkin
59. Of the Subliminal and Semiotic Language of Thought: Beyond Fodor
60. Chapter III: Of Metapoliticality
61. Of Aesthetics
62. Toward a General Theory of Platonic-Hegelian Zeitgeistology; or, Of the Metaphysics of Fashion
63. Beyond Species Aestheticism: Beyond Hume
64. Of the Work of Art and its Axic Alignment on the Platonic Imaginary Graph of Being
65. Toward a General Theory of Aesthetic Phenomenology Alongside the Aesthetic-Theory-of-Being-in-the-World: Fish and Chalmers
66. Of Bipartite Aesthetic Informativity and the Aesthetic Intuitive Thought
67. Of the Assessment of the Mature Consciousness and Zeistgeistal Mesmerization
68. Of Keatsian-Sadism, Lord Byron, and the Fashionable Consciousness; Of the Havishammian Supersession of Sadism, Itself Superseded By Artaudianism
69. Of Unorthodoxy, the Nietzschean Übermensch Contra die Unterfrau, and the Revolutionary Consciousness
70. Of Ethics
71. Toward Social Justice I: Grounds of the Benefic Speculative Formulation: Of Platonic Perfection
72. Toward Social Justice II: Of the Contentions of the Mature Consciousness: Of Cultural Manichaeism: Indigeneity Contra Imperialism: Rawls, Plato, and Kant
73. Toward Social Justice III: Of the Rawlsian Game Theoretics of Civilization and the Benefic Speculative Formulation
74. Toward Social Justice IV: Of the First Ethical Quartet of the Eighteen Ideal Principles of Morality: Gravitas, Hope, Autonomy, and Dignity
75. Toward Social Justice V: Of the Second Ethical Quartet of the Eighteen Ideal Principles of Morality: Grace, Utility, Civility, and Peace
76. Toward Social Justice VI: Of the Third Ethical Quartet of the Eighteen Ideal Principles of Morality: Trust, Hospitality, Decoloniality, and Beauty
77. Toward Social Justice VII: Of the Fourth Ethical Quartet of the Eighteen Ideal Principles of Morality: Defocality, Dehierarchality, Experimentality, and Improvement
78. Toward Social Justice VIII: Of the Applicative and Synthetic Ideal Principle of Morality: Leibnizian Harmony
79. Of the Benefic Lifestyle: or, Of Social Justice as Leibnizian Harmony; or, Of Speculative Optimalism: Toward a General Theory of Ethics: Aristotle, Skinner, Kant, Bentham, Buddha, Rawls, Temkin, and Parfit
80. Of Social Justice for Wittgensteinian Duckrabbits: Toward an Applicative Neo-Hegelian Process Ethics: Whitehead and Derrida
81. Of Social Justice and Subjective Harmony: Toward the Polyintentional Consciousness: Kant Alongside Egotism
82. Of the Autocontributional and Autocontractual Genealogy of Right: Hegel, Kant, West, and the Theory of the Über-Right
83. Of the Noumenality of God: or, Of Theogenesis, or Birth of God Theology: God as Hobbesian Leviathan; or, Of the Boltzmann God: Atheism Refuted
84. Of Politics
85. Of Phenomenological Constructivism and the Seven Part Holistic Theory of Personal Identity: Beyond Parfit and Sider
86. Of the Tripartite Nietzschean Theory of Political Anthropomodalisms: Hegel, Derrida, Marx, and Freud
87. Of Political Innativism and the Theory of Instinctive Production: Beyond Locke and Habermas
88. Of Polynomial Dialectics, the Masterscript, and the Ricoeurian Social Narrative
89. Of Karmic Social Idealistic Matrix Theory, Spivakian Subalternity, and Social Celestiality: or, Toward a General Theory of Power
90. Toward Political Justice I: From the Kantian Consciousness to the Democratic Consciousness: Nussbaum
91. Toward Political Justice II: Of the Right to Personhood and Its Subrights: Locke, Marx, Žižek, Aristotle, and Cornell
92. Toward Political Justice III: Of the Right to Political Justice and the Right to Political Scaffolding: Kant, Hegel, Habermas, Nussbaum, Whitehead, Derrida, and Leibniz
93. Toward Political Justice IV: An Aristotelian Metaphysical Theory of the Individual and of the Nation-State
94. Toward Political Justice V: Of Just Mind Theory, or, Of the Genealogical Development of the Democratic Consciousness: Kant, Kohlberg, Hegel, Goldman, Sosa, Rawls, West, Nussbaum, and Fukuyama
95. Toward Political Justice VI: Of Just Rule Theory, or Democratic Constitutionalism: Kant, Aristotle, Bentham, Adorno, Whitehead, Derrida, Dworkin, and Hegel
96. Toward Political Justice VII: Of Just Environment Theory and the Democratic Universal Safe Space: Crenshaw, Nietzsche, West, Habermas, and Locke: Revisiting the Theory of Instinctive Action
97. Toward Political Justice VIII: Of Just Economy Theory and the Democratic Universal Economy: Habermas, Fanon, Darwin, Locke, and Mill; Toward A General Theory of Ideological Natural Selection; Toward a Theory of the Adaptive Instinct
98. Toward Political Justice IX: Of Just World Theory, or Of the Genealogical Development of Leibnizian International Harmony: Leibnizian Dialectical Harmonism Contra Hegelian-Marxian Dialectical Materialism
***
G.R. Tomaini
“In the enigmatic realm of contemporary verse, G.R. Tomaini stands as an American Goethe, weaving the tapestry of modern life with poetic finesse.”
He / Him / His
Poet, Theologian, & Systematic Philosopher
Philosophy Editor — Decadent Cosmos Press
Poetry Editor — The Incognito Press
Rutgers Philosophy BA '18
MA Systematic Philosophical Theology '23
Union Theological Seminary
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