Necessity, Contingency, and Being

It occurred to me that the necessity in Collingwood's concept of duty implies that there is a definite being. People are a certain way. More specifically, we simply think and feel certain things.

We are not pure becoming. We are not a blank slate that can be transformed into whatever we want. We come from definite histories that determine, to a certain extent, our patterns of feeling and thought.

Contingency, however, emerges in how we make sense of our being. Contingency comes from the relationship between our thoughts and feelings.

Duty, it seems, is just a certain type of self-knowledge. A knowledge of our hearts and minds that tells us that we cannot act any other way.

Strange. So, it is a little bit clearer to me how Collingwood's concept of duty involves a certain sense of necessity, yet leaves room for contingency.

I still don't really understand.

But it has something to do with the firm reality of our thoughts and feelings. It has something to do with determinism.

Something to do with the use of consciousness to glean a truth that we already know somewhere deep inside of us.

Duty is beginning to feel a little bit aesthetic, a little bit zen. That is, after all, where I knew this writing had to go. But now that I've realized that duty has something to do with being, something to do with definite ways of thought and feeling inside of us, it seems more obvious to me that duty is really just about a type of expression.

It is properly aesthetic, as Collingwood defines it. It is the use of consciousness to clarify a truth that has already been grasped in some ways by our heart.