Action as Both Possible and Necessary

Possibility and necessity seem like exclusive concepts.  Possibilities are by definition plural.  Necessity is by definition singular.

Yet Collingwood argues that the highest form of moral action, which he calls duty, happens at the intersection of the possible and the necessary.

I've been dropping bits and pieces about this problem of duty lately.

I don't know how to write about it yet.  I fear I'm not being very diligent with my studying.

But I do think that this idea of dutiful action as necessary action has something to do with self-knowledge.  We would find an action to be both possible and necessary because we understand ourselves, and understand that our character and our situation offer us no other alternative.  Even if we can conceive of other alternatives, we know we can't do anything else.

Self-knowledge, moreover, is in many ways knowledge of our habits.  Knowledge of habits, in turn, has something to do with historical knowledge.  Knowledge of both our own history, and our larger history.

All of this makes me think a little bit about the relationship between language and emotion.  Language as the house of being.

Last night a friend asked me about the problem of truth.  I asked him about Zen and the idea that everything is flux and flow.  How is truth preserved in this conception of the world as flux and flow?  Is the truth of Zen somehow a historical truth?

The idea is that there is no such thing as a general emotion, only particular emotions.  Emotions acquire their particularity, moreover, from historical moments, from the unique cultural (linguistic) circumstances of an age.

So is truth always an historically situated truth?  Does Zen aim for a historically situated truth?

I think yes, but can't be sure.