Vaestic philosophy

Vaestic philosophy is characterised by its overwhelming concern for concrete reality. Speculative philosophy or idealism is not discouraged, but impossible in the Vaestic framework: fields such as metaphysics or ontology which may be understood as abstract and speculative in occidental thought are understood in Vaestic philosophy to refer to definite, tangible scientific realities. Vaestic philosophy—which in its full significance is identical with Knowledge—conceives itself as a grand theoretical architecture describing the totality of existence as such (sharing this universalism with its antecedents in Sirian philosophy), starting from the basic structure of pure existence itself and expanding through various emanations to ever more complex levels of intelligibility. It integrates and unites every academic discipline, every technical specialism, and every field of human life: all paradoxes and contradictions are understood as lacunae in human Knowledge, emanations of the metacosm which are only partially understood. Nothing is unmeasurable when the totality of existence—both mundane and transmundane—is taken into account.

Ontology

In Vaestic thought, ontology comprises the study of the existential infrastructure of the universe. This is understood more strictly than the Ellish term may suggest, as it does not comprise metaphysical questions of forms similar to "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Vaestic ontology is manifested narrowly in formal logic and pure mathematics, which are understood to be the study of the limitless parameters of pure existence beyond space and time. This pure ontology therefore precedes any kind of physics or natural science: all things which have ever or will ever exist in space or time share in the basic property of pure existence, which is limitless and independent of any of these aspects. The converse implication of this observation is summarised by the formula, "There is nothing that does not exist". On the one hand, this states the obvious fact that non-existence is not, but what is more, even fictions and logical impossibilities are governed by the principles of pure existence, regulated by their ability to be imagined. Anything which lies beyond intelligibility is not only irrelevant, but meaningless: the field of Knowledge (that is, the domain of intelligibility) encompasses an absolute totality, Knowledge is at the summit of all existence.

Existence and thought

The human subject is not viewed as fundamental in Vaestic philosophy. The formula "thought itself has a structure" is intended to deflect the solipsistic notion that thought is enough to imply existence. In contrast to the universal Knowledge of the metacosm in general, thought in the mundane world is restricted by its situation in space and time, and it cannot symbolically comprehend the structure of its own contemplation. Because of this, thought is not enough to imply existence: on the contrary, existence implies more than thought. In Vaestism, pure existence is axiomatic by definition. Since there is nothing that does not exist, the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is meaningless.

The subject emerges contingently from Knowledge—namely, the fundamental knowledge of its own existence. This Knowledge is ontological, that is, it precedes symbolic thought, since it is already necessary before any thought can take place. It is a parameter of the metaphysical soul: in other words, Knowledge precedes thought (just as it precedes spatial and temporal existence more generally).

Metaphysics

Monism

Vaestic metaphysics is strictly monist, that is, it acknowledges no fundamental division between mind or soul and matter. The mundane body is an emanation of the soul, a collocation in space and time which corresponds to an existential reality at the metacosmic level. The fact that, in Vaestic doctrine, the soul is potentially freed after death does not indicate that the soul and the body are two distinct entities: they are physically connected as two parts of a whole, but this connection spans the interface between the mundane world and the wider metacosm and does not disclose itself in ordinary physics. The death of the body is the manifestation of the process of reincarnation, rather than preceding it: the body is not a prison around the soul, but precisely an extension of it in the ordinary world.