To Advance Completeness, Some Arguments

To my dear fathers, brothers, and sons in philosophy,

It is known that philosophy is an endeavor in building. To arrive
at an argument that is sound, a philosopher must have arrived
there by considering his other knowledge at hand and identifying
the yet missing fact that is the natural next. With items of
knowledge such as, "The rich have proven themselves the most
successful," "The most successful should be the most rewarded,"
"The rich, being empowered enormously by affluence, are the only
ones to make meaningful contributions to societal progression,"
and "The poor, being many of them, are more prepared and reliable
to share the burden of taxation," one can then come to the sound
argument, "The rich ought not be taxed."

There are, however, items in philosophy which do not need building
to, but rather, prove themselves to be stable arguments in
isolation. They do not need foundation, for they are themselves
foundational: Grand foundations, on the measure of, "I think,
therefore I am," may make one envious of some recent years ago,
when such claims were not yet articulated and given credit for.
But aside from the grand foundations, there are, as well, a very
great number of small foundations: items which, though there may
be seen no sagacity in committing them to writings, all the same
may be committed to writings in the hope that with their
cataloging and codification, one or another here or there may
prove to be some needed toehold for another argument of worthy
grandeur later in time.

Here, I put forth three such small foundations, likely all of them
already known to the man of prudent intelligence as truths that
need no belabored explanation.

First: The stars exist at some ceiling threshold in the vault of
the sky, and are made of material extremely light in weight. This
is known because the stars are the farthest things out--nothing is
ever seen to pass behind them--and, as small lily pads on water
and as large bergs on the sea, these stars must be made of
something that is lighter than air in order that they should
remain suspended up there. It is most likely that there is further
expanse of a yet lighter material beyond the stars, hence why they
all float up to that threshold and no farther: neither a lily pad
nor an iceberg would continue floating up past the water and into
the air, for the air is then lighter, it is a natural sorting.
There is, however, no possibility for any matter of substance to
exist beyond the threshold of the stars, for, as light spreads
dimly in water and greatly in air, the light of the stars would
spread enormously through the thinner substance yet above them,
and illuminate anything found in that further sky. As still no
thing has been seen to exist there, the stars prove to all reason
to be the highest.

Second: Our perception of invented characters invokes all of the
same faculties used to perceive persons before us in the flesh,
and moral crimes against invented characters are none different
than moral crimes against men of flesh. The punishment given to a
murderer--typically death or exile--is doled out to prevent the
murderer from committing the crime a repeated time, and to appease
the family of the victim that recompense has been settled. If some
poet tells a tale of a worthy and beloved man, and then suddenly,
as unprovoked as a murderer, tells tale of that man perishing in
some unsatisfying way, his audience is the same as the family of a
murdered man, and the poet the murderer, who ought then be put to
death or exiled. A poet telling a tale of a man vandalizing the
Parthenon, equal to the poet vandalizing the Parthenon himself, as
either has created the same image in the faculties of his intended
audience, making the poet and the vandal equal worthy of contempt
and punishment.

Third: It is none too pleasant a topic to bring to the immaculate
annals of philosophy, but for completeness in arguments, it ought
be said that--though I hesitate to put the word, I must--
bestiality, the hardly conceivable act of a man or a woman
engaging in sexual congress with a mere animal, is an act of moral
ruination, its perpetrators of no better moral worth than the
animals they have put themselves to. It is the act of barbarians
who live as animals do, running about the woods and hollering
their unintelligible gibberish. It is the act of lunatics so
confused on the foundations of love and worth that they are
present to a mare's whinny and hear an intelligently composed
lyric. It is the act of the desperate pervert who sees a vessel of
femininity or a dart of masculinity and is satisfied with that
alone, and disregards that it holds none of the magnitudes and
powers of a woman or a man, like an archer who attempts to fly
straw rather than arrows. A man or a woman engaging in sexual
congress with a mere animal is the complete abandonment of all
that upright society holds imperative, and one who does so is no
longer a moral agent, he or she has utterly thrown away his or her
ability to abide by our best structures.

For completeness, these have been a simple three small
foundations. Many more exist, I will endeavor to catalog them
further, and would encourage others to the same endeavor.

Be it known, as well, that my arguments are unlike those of men of
higher aspirations, who build one argument dependent on another
three, like a tower of cards poised to fail if one argument should
be disproven. I, rather, am far more fortified. One must disprove
"I think, therefore I am" itself before the whole can be
surrendered: indeed, my position is more alike to that of a trench
in hard dirt, where one must destroy every aspect of an argument
like removing shovels of soil, and all the while also needing to
address what may easily slide in in one argument's absence. And
until then, my faith in my own reasoning stands a worthy shell
above me, like an impregnable stone overhead.