Library/KelvoranDualism

Kelvoran dualism is a now mostly-extinct philosophical tradition, dating back to the early Shogunate.

There are no absolutes: no one stands in the place of another.

The distinctive feature of Kelvoran argument was the rejection of the concept of absolutes in favor of a procedure of contradiction. The person was believed to begin in a state of ignorance. Ignorance is replaced with truth, when the student turns his or her attention to the world. However, both attention and the thinker are also properties of the world, and hence can are always partial. This partiality is recognized when a principle or truth proves inadequate, and the thinker must once more focus attention on the world. The achievement of the Kelvorans, in their own view, were the Seventy-One Maxims, a set of procedures to speed the discovery of contradiction. A fully self-realizing person could use these to spend his or her existence in a state of constant contradiction, as they created and discarded new truths in perfect rythym with their perceptions. This philosophy bears a certain resemblance to Hegelian thought in our own world, in which theses and antitheses are united to produce new syntheses, which in turn have their own antitheses. However, unlike the Hegelians, the Kelvorans did not believe that contradiction represented a universal principle of growth -- instead, everyone stood in a different position, and the truths they would find would differ.

The just man strikes a blow and is not reproached. The wicked man strikes the same victim and is reproached.

Kelvoran philosophy was never a philosophy of the masses -- most people seek certainty, the one thing the Kelvorans utterly rejected. However, it had its adherents among the aristocracy. The War Ministry of the Shogunate believed that unconventional thinking of the Kelvoran style led to better strategy on the part of its generals, and for some centuries insisted that all officers above the talon level spend time learning from Kelvoran philosophers. This close association with the government also led Kelvoran thinkers to spend a great deal of time analyzing the nature and structure of political and economic power. Their studies were focused on the conventional nature of subjects like authority (which exists because both leader and follower choose to accept its existence), and how to maintain and encourage its growth. Kelvoran analysis tended to treat concepts like "rights", "precendent", "law", and "justice" as social conventions that create, maintain, and constrained power.

One age's gods are the next age's demons.

This is why Kelvoran dualism is now mostly extinct -- most of its proponents died during the Great Contagion, and in the aftermath the opposition of the Immaculate Order (which did not want the Dynasty to treat it as a purely instrumental device for pacifying the spirits and the masses) kept it from being re-established. Nowadays, only a few scholars even remember the Kelvorans' existence -- most of them in House Sessus. The famous atheism (and political savvy?) of the Sesus may in part be due to the way Kelvoran thinking continues to permeate their House.