The Ontological Contradiction (from Postulates and Empty Spaces) ('14)


Though the evidence from Kant's dialectics suggest that substance, that-which-is, causality, is accidental; and furthermore, that, if substance is accidental, indigenous meaning inhering in substance is unlikely; it also then becomes true that a question arises as to the practicality of interrogating the posited null set around inherent meaning in substance, that-which-is, from the side of complete and total immersion in substance/causality; and if meaning is seen to inhere in the possible meaningless or not; or if the beyond-us which must be antecedent to all-that-is necessitates a practical cognitive withdrawal.

If substance/causality is an accident, then it is also necessarily the result of a contingency, or strictly speaking, the contingent; the non-existence of substance subsisted as a possibility. What inheres in the contingent is the possibility of non-existence; yet accidents/contingencies are, or tend to be, contained and delimited by/within discrete successions within increments of time; the possibility, within contingencies, of non-existence, conditioned by an antithetical result (existence), seems also to necessitate discretion, discrete successions in which a change occurred (non-existence into existence). But all-that-is, substance, causality, necessarily always was and will be; time creates a formal condition of indiscretion, and endless series of successions. The Ontological Contradiction built into Kant's dialectics is this- substance/causality cannot be involved in contingency, or it would cease to be what it is (self-sufficient, permanent), which is impossible; yet, if substance/causality is an accident, it must have contingency in its economy as a hinge towards involvement, in some succession somewhere.