The Building of a Prosaic Philosophy

I hate to call these building blocks of prosaic thinking “principles”, as they then tend to presume or assume some kind of stance of ontology or reality.   But that is not the goal.  These principles just focus on the prosaic, the ordinary, the material place and space and time where we mostly live.   It is certainly true that we don’t live only in the prosaic – we also live in our ideals and dreams, which you might call living in the heroic, and in our needs, fears and nightmares, which you might call living in the basic. But mostly, we live in the prosaic.

Nevertheless, the basic premises of a prosaic understanding of reality would include these ideas, here set out in very conventional and perhaps inappropriate but traditional categories, all of which need more unpacking to be clear:

Metaphysics:               Metaphysics is local, not universal.

Reality/Existence:      A chief characteristic of pictorial space, which betrays its animal origin, is that it has a center. . . . Pictorial space therefore reappears, wherever an animal rises to intuition of his environment, and in each case it has its moral or transcendental center in that animal; a center which, being transcendental or moral, moves wherever the animal moves, and is repeated without physical contradiction or rivalry in as many places as are ever inhabited by a watchful animal soul. (Santayana)

Epistemology:             To eat a fruit is know its meaning. (Pessoa)

Values:                        What is aught, but as 'tis valued? (Shakespeare)

Morality:                     Our attachments are our blessings, our goods.

Ethics:                         There is a feigned disrespect for all the things which men in fact take most seriously, for all the things closest to them. (Nietzsche)

Meaning:                     The closer things are, the easier it is to find or confer meaning.  The sun and the moon, being close, seem more meaningful. Eating a fruit is closer than looking at it, and therefore more meaningful.  The farther things are, the less meaning. 

Purpose:                      If the world is cold, make fire. (Traubel)

Work:                          Play is man’s most useful occupation. (Hoffer)

Psychology:                It’s a good life if you don’t weaken.  (Irish proverb)

Aesthetics:                  Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play. (Heraclitus)

Politics:                       As long as there is a single god standing, Man’s task is not done. (Cioran)

Prosaic principles therefore eschew the notion that reality and what matters in reality is deeper rather than the surface, farther way than what is nearby, harder to find and reach than what is in front of us.   Pictorial space is where we are, which is the center of the universe (as for all animals).  Metaphysics are local and not universal. True meaning is closest to us and not far away at all.   Only values matter. What is morally significant to us is what we are attached to.  That we often forget that the things closest to us are what we take most seriously.  We find meaning in what is closest to us, and what has least meaning for us is what is furthest from us. We determine the purpose of life – our life. What we play at is more important than what we work at. That life (our life) can be good if we are strong enough for it. That we are our best selves when we play.  And finally, no Gods of any kind rule our lives.