Troy Southgate

Oct 25, 2024

THIS afternoon, I was contemplating how it might be possible to understand political sectarianism by way of mathematics and philosophy. Beginning with the former, Euclidean geometry has often been criticised for its reliance on a set of propositions based on Euclid’s five postulates. Its conclusions are said to be presupposed, rather than proven, and each of these presuppositions is an abstraction in which all context is removed. Whilst its axioms are said to have been intuited, the process of separating one geometrical figure from another is artificial and therefore represents a hypothetical ‘truth’ that one only finds within the realms of mathematics. This ‘truth’ is always limited in the sense that it is inferred, rather than established beyond any doubt.

In philosophy, on the other hand, the likes of Aristotle and Descartes were also influenced by the modus operandi of Euclidean geometry and pontificated in a similar fashion to the degree that they were eager to accept ‘self-evident’ truths from which other, dependant truths may be deduced. Alternatively, one may learn something from Hegel in the sense that his theory of absolute idealism warns against the use of a pure intuition that isolates a distinguishable ‘moment’ of discourse from the conceptual whole. Whilst identifiable, in other words, that which is under discussion as a ‘part’ or ‘element’ is ultimately inseparable from the One. Human experience is thus discursive and intuitive, and the latter becomes a ‘moment’ of intuition when it is grasped within the context of an incontrovertible entirety. Intuition unites each analysed component of discourse within an uncondensed All, and this coming-together may be perceived as ‘the issue under discussion’.

We find a similar phenomenon within the world of politics, whereby certain beliefs such as ‘social justice’ or ‘national identity’ are associated with particular movements, parties and organisations. In this case, the discursive features are never reconciled and the rigid boundaries between them maintained. Unlike the geometrical hypotheses that work together, or the philosophical monad that cannot be divided into parts, ideological formations are mutually fractricidal. Recalling what I said earlier about the essential human qualities of discursion and intuition, there is plenty of discussion between such circles – many hostile, even violent – but little in the way of intuition. Indeed, that political factionalism is unable to cultivate intuition without the need for conscious reasoning means that its protagonists are not only struggling against one another as distinguishable ‘moments’ of discourse, but also fighting themselves within the sum total of reality. This Absolute thus remains indeterminate on account of the limitations of rational engagement. This is the difference between making the assumption that discursus and intuition are separate faculties, and comprehending them as inseparable ‘moments’ of thought that cry out for synthesis. Not in the form of crystallisation, or mutual destruction, but as a common appreciation of context.