A summary of trends in the Netanya school. Following the glorious philosophical tradition of those who were completely misunderstood in their lifetime - the philosopher establishes a new tradition of those who were not read at all. Prefaces as a summary - this is a fitting end to the work of a school that dealt with the future. In keeping with the school's condensed tradition, whose single book contains material equivalent to about a thousand non-fiction books, and which abhors the waste of time in philosophical jargon (which broke negative records in the twentieth century, in a trend common to both the analytic and continental traditions), the Netanyite compresses his entire doctrine into a short article. The rest is commentary
Ethics of the Future
Unlike utilitarianism, the philosophy of the future does not choose a goal in the future, but the future as a goal. The moral is what needs to be done in the present from a future perspective, and therefore there is always uncertainty in it, but it is not empty and there is no arbitrariness in it, for the future will surely come. Therefore, the long-term view is inherent in future-oriented ethics, which solves many philosophical problems, including hedonism and cynicism and Buddhism. For example, of course the future is against suffering in the past, but this is not a primary consideration, rather it is subject to advancing history in a positive direction in the eyes of the future.
Critics will argue against this ethics that it does not provide a stable criterion in the present, but there is always a dichotomy between the principled ethical criterion - and practical ethics. The uncertainty in the current moral act should instill modesty, not despair and nihilism, for we know with a high degree of certainty that murder has never been and will never be considered moral. In the philosophy of the future, not only moral error, but any error, stems from a lack of foresight. Epistemology and ethics are one (because any correct perception is the correct perception in the future specifically). In fact, as part of morality, it is required to predict the future, and as evolutionary machines built for the future (which is the definition of life) we are capable and built to do so. In fact, this is the only thing evolution does - builds future machines.
Our goal is not to err and go against a future consensus against us, and therefore there are many actions in shades of gray (which the future will not form a clear view of), but there is also a black and white domain. As with Plato - no one does evil willingly, and ethical error is an error of knowledge, but regarding the future. Let's take an extreme example: Hitler erred because he did not foresee the future (and in an extreme way). The victors write history. And this is precisely the moral work - to look far ahead. Evil is the will of the present to dominate the future. And in abstraction - evil is the rule of the present. Hence the confusion throughout the history of philosophy between good and purpose, because good stems from the future.
It is also true that the present can dictate, to some extent, a future view, if it succeeds in pushing history in its direction. But it needs to consider if this is the reasonable direction. And this circular game between morality in the present and morality in the future, where both can influence each other, is permissible and okay, and does not negate the criterion (because, in practice, it will be known in the future if there was an influence). Although every act is a moral gamble - there is still a good moral gamble and a bad one. Hitler fought against the future, and murdered part of the future - of what would have advanced the future without him. The concealment shows the knowledge that the act must be hidden from future judgment. Even the unintentional offender suffers from partial assumption due to lack of knowledge of his present, and not due to lack of knowledge of the future, meaning he agrees with the future moral view.
Future-oriented philosophy can solve the problem of creating a morality that will oppose slavery and the Holocaust and past injustices - without being dragged into an attempt to compensate for the past in the present. The morality of victimhood is a desire to judge the past according to the morality of the present - instead of judging the present according to the morality of the future. The subordination of ethics to the philosophy of language - as part of the broader language trend of the past century - is what led to political correctness (the French - often accused - are just an excuse) and therefore this is an ethical trend that emerged from Anglo-Saxon discourse specifically. In a world of language - ethics deals with "slander", and with what is forbidden and permitted to say, as opposed to classical ethics that deals with action. The understanding that this is an ethics stemming from a specific moment, which is already fading, in the history of philosophy, is what gives a more futuristic perspective on ethics. Learning the history of ethics is important - because it gives a more correct ethical future vision, and therefore more ethical. The righteous is the one who foresees the future, that is, the moral prophet.
Metaphysics of the Future
The past has no volume, a single line, one possibility that happened, and no longer exists, dead. The present is a thin hole that pulls a single thread out of an infinite world of possibilities, which always remains as such (as infinite), which is the future, and thus contracts it down to one dimension. The world of the future is constantly changing according to new possibilities and branching into countless futures, and is more alive and dynamic than anything else, narrowing as it approaches the present, because not every future can continue from the present, and only it exists. Because the present is actually the end of the different possibilities, the endpoint of the future, just like the point of creation of the universe, with the entire universe after it and nothing before it. In fact, the present is the end point of the world, which is all in the future, it is the collapse and catastrophe that turns future into past.
The soul, the living, is a touch of the future in the present of dead matter, due to its continuation in the future, and the moment of death is the moment when it remains in the past. Physically, the future is a space of possibilities, and the past no longer is. What distinguishes matter from life? The fact that life is an ongoing phenomenon in the future with the intention of existence in the future, which is its entire purpose - its purpose is the future itself. In this, it is already part of the future in the present, and in contrast, matter is already part of the past in the present. What distinguishes between soul and matter is their being on the side of the future or the past, exactly on the border between future and past. Because the soul is the end of possibilities that is still part of the possibilities, because that's where it is drawn - to the future, while matter is the end of possibilities that is no longer part of the possibilities, because that's where it belongs - to the past.
The infinite God containing all is the future, and therefore He cannot have an influence on the present in matter, except in the soul. From His revelations in the past, one can only know how He was in the future in relation to that past, that is, how the future looked from Moses' point of view, even though this future may have already passed. Creation is the present which is the point of God's contraction into matter and soul, from which in the past only matter remains. Revelation is actually a full encounter of the soul with the future, some deviation from the boundary of the present a tiny step - one moment - into the future, and then it is a point contained in the future, and at that moment even its immediate past is a moment of future, and there is no present, because there is no collapse and contraction of possibilities, it is contained in them - and this is the mystical. Love is an encounter of soul with soul and then they touch the future and also another point from the future from the side, because it is a moment of continuity of species and soul - which can create another soul between the two points.
Aesthetics of the Future
The sole purpose of the art world should be to produce masterpieces that will stand the test of time, and to consume those that have stood - and these two goals contradict each other, so they should be separated into different institutions. Nothing created in the current generation should be presented to the public, and any work that is not a masterpiece, or is expected by someone to be a masterpiece in the future, should not be created or displayed or read even in the present. And everything else is entertainment. In libraries too - there should be a separation between libraries for high literature and entertainment institutions.
Institutions that cannot afford masterpieces should only display excellent digital copies, such as reproductions, recordings, copies, and so on, and specialize in the context and knowledge provided around them. Therefore, the most important thing in the field is strong criticism, which will turn the field empty. Classical music is the model for healthy art, because in it the empty modernism did not gain prestige, and it is simply waiting for a better period. Visual art is in the worst state in its surrender to the logic of the present, and literature is in the middle.
Art, therefore, is not art at all in real time, but only in the future. Therefore, it is a non-existent field in the present, but only in the past. Because aesthetics is looking back, and seeing something from the past as something of value for future time. The purpose of art production is to convey meaning to the future, not to the present, it is not communication in the present and therefore cannot be political. What characterizes art is the desire to communicate with the future, and to convey a message to it. It is an appeal, prayer, warning, lesson, or any other content transfer, towards the future.
Therefore, indeed, in praxis, no one knows how to identify art in the present, and know what will be a masterpiece in the eyes of the future, because it is impossible, and therefore one can stop trying to pretend to do so. Only the artist, who sees himself as a prophet who has something to say to the people of the future - and not to the people of the present about the future - has the right to try to speak to the future, and only if he has something of tremendous importance to say to the future. And the main thing that an artist has to say to the people of the future is about the present, for example its preservation so it will not be forgotten. Therefore, art is often an expression of its time, and not because it is intended for its time.
Even beauty in nature is evolutionary beauty whose purpose is to convey something to the future. For example, through sex. Or a landscape that calls you into it. The interest of beauty is always not in the present but in the future. The peacock's tail is not useful to it in the present, but is useful to it in the future. This is the purposefulness that Kant found no purpose for - because the purpose is in the future. Therefore, artists cannot be pursuers of honor in the present, but pursuers of honor in eternity.
Epistemology of the Future
Knowledge is the transfer of information from the past to the future - all knowledge is an inference from the past (for example, sensory data, or previous stages in a mathematical proof) into the future. This is in contrast to ethics which is the transfer of information from the future to the present, and from aesthetics which is the transfer of information from the present to the future.
Metaphysics is special - it is the passage of the subject itself into the future, and not of information (or - if he is dead, the transfer of the subject into the past). Hence there is a meeting between ethics and aesthetics in it. Ethics in its greatness, when the subject is entirely enveloped in it and in what flows to it from the future, is a resemblance to its entry into the future, and therefore it is in the direction of life (for example, saving lives), and aesthetics in its greatness is a resemblance to its entry into the past, and therefore it is in the direction of death (for example, saving death).
What is not philosophical, but ordinary - is the present. The most terrible currents in philosophy preached for mundane life in the present, in being. The present is the natural and terrible transition, occurring all the time - from the future to the past. This is the transition against which life came out, and against which culture came out, and against which the disciplines of philosophy came out, and from it the philosophy of the future, as a spearhead.
Knowledge is always a hypothesis from the past to the future, and then ethics returns from the future to the present what needs to be done, and if the thing is done then it passes from the present to the past - which is a counterclockwise circle, the circle of justice, the right circle. Whoever makes this circle of passage in a large radius between all times, which the larger the circle the more righteous it is (passage from the depth of the past to the depth of the future and back) is the righteous one. And this is in contrast to the point circle that is really around the present, which resembles the present itself.
The deeper the transition between present, past and future reaches and the longer the time spans, the more righteous the ethics, the more masterful the aesthetics and the more well-founded the knowledge. One cannot compare knowledge about another second to knowledge about another thousand years, or to a masterpiece that has lasted a thousand years. The eternal, constant knowledge is mathematics. Since each previous stage in the proof is absolutely connected to the next stage, it is an unbreakable transfer of knowledge from the past to the future.
Political Philosophy of the Future
The state is an organizational framework that has an ethical aspect and an aesthetic aspect. It stems from ethics that teaches us that the state is necessary for it, because for thousands of years a state framework has been more ethical and therefore we have relatively solid knowledge that this will be the case in the future, and therefore we must maintain it in the present (the ethical inference). But it also has an aspect of aesthetics - to convey to the future how one should live, and to pass on to future generations a cultural and artistic heritage, and to interest the people of the future in our civilization. The state's greatest success is in history and archaeology.
But from the ethical side, the state must allow elections, which are a second-order ethical transition from the future to the present, that is, choosing subjects in the present as those who will do the ethical act in the future and transfer from the future to the present. The entire state is directed towards the future of the state, and therefore democracy is needed, which is oriented towards change, and not a state that is oriented towards preserving the past and its power, as in dictatorship or oligarchy. The future is the argument for democracy, and without perceiving it as the supreme time over all times, it cannot be imagined.
Democracy is always oriented towards the next elections, that is, indeed to the future, but of a few years. But part of the state is its improvement in the future, and making it more and more future-oriented in the future. The danger in democracy is short-term action, while the most ethical state action is always the longest-term, and the state method for this has not yet been deciphered, and therefore democracy is a flawed system, which should be replaced in the future.
For example, in addition to elections, complementary institutions should be initiated with longer-term elections, for example for ten and twenty years, and an institution where members are elected for life, and an institution whose purpose is to care for how the state will look in the eyes of eternity, that is, in the farthest future (and not in the eyes of the farthest past, which is not eternity, and therefore reliance on an ancient myth is not legitimate, unlike a futuristic myth). The one who cares for how we look in eternity from the side of the eyes of people of the distant past is actually religion, whose entire validity is only if the religion will hold in the future, and thus we will merit good judgment from the people of the future. Therefore, only long-term religions are reasonable, and new religions are cults. And therefore the beginning of religion is in the religion of the fathers - how we look in the eyes of our dead fathers, and the beginning of the state is in caring for children. This is the justification for its power and the source of the social contract.
