untitled

350 becoming more human by becoming more godlike

this phrase in a manner that gives history and transcendence their due

and that consequently puts in the place of a rationalizing teleology the

dialectic of path dependence and prophetic innovation.

A third preliminary draws the right conclusions from the near useless-
ness of the methods and meta- discourses favored by contemporary
academic philosophy. Th e agenda of self- transformation that I here
explore and defend is a fi rst- order proposal. It yields no rules and stan-
dards for application in moral casuistry. It nevertheless results in a vi-
sion of the conduct of life.
Th is argument about the conduct of life relies on a practice of thought
that insists on the connection between a higher- order discourse about
methods and presuppositions and a fi rst- order discourse about what
to do with them. For such a practice, the worth of every higher- order
discourse must be vindicated by its fi rst- order fecundity. Th e reach and
power of fi rst- order proposals are revealed by their implications for the
change of our higher- order presuppositions and methods.
We cannot be satisfi ed with a way of doing philosophy that explores
the contrasts among meta- discourses deployed to reach the same fi rst-
order results, or to arrive at no fi rst- order results at all. Nor should we
accept a philosophical practice that uses higher- order discourses only
negatively, to attack all other such discourses, as if the problem of how
to think could solve itself spontaneously.
Look and see what we fi nd in the school philosophy of today. In po liti-
cal philosophy, few disagree about the intended outcome: liberal social
democracy, some improved version of the social- democratic settlement
of the mid- twentieth century. They disagree only about the philo-
sophical vocabulary (social- contract, utilitarian, or communitarian) in
which the preset po liti cal line is to be defended. Th ey place a philosophi-
cal gloss of humanization on arrangements that they do not believe
themselves able to reimagine and remake.
Open the equivalent books of moral philosophy, with their supposed
contrast among consequentalist (especially rule- utilitarian), Kantian,
and contractarian approaches to moral obligation. It is easy to recon-
cile them; they have in common the idea that the task of moral philoso-
phy is to defi ne our obligations to one another and to do so on the basis
of a view that sees self- interest as the problem and a legalistic altruism,