The thinkers behind the book

Lineage

The Tao of Lucidity did not arrive from nowhere. It stands where many rivers of thought converge: the Western river of reason and the Eastern river of mystery, the classical river of practice and the modern river of science. The lineage below is arranged by depth of influence: the larger the portrait, the more the framework leans on it. Open any figure to see what the book inherits, and where it departs.

Portrait size = depth of influence

Foundational

Remove any one and the framework cannot stand

Theoretical reason

Spinoza

Spinoza1632–1677 Beyond reason

Laozi

Laozi6th c. BCE Process reason

Whitehead1861–1947 Daily practice

Stoicism3rd c. BCE – 2nd c. CE

Structural

Each shaped a single load-bearing part

Practical reason

Aristotle

Aristotle384–322 BCE Boundary of reason

Wittgenstein1889–1951 Time and finitude

Heidegger1889–1976 Phenomenology of mind

Buddhist Traditions5th c. BCE –Dignity and the sublime

Kant

Kant1724–1804 From metaphysics to polity

Plato

Plato428–348 BCE Commitment amid absurdity

Camus1913–1960 The hard problem

Nagel & Chalmers1937– / 1966–

Significant

Precedent, correction, practice, or grounding

Descartes1596–1650 Analogy of being

Aquinas1225–1274 The leap of faith

Kierkegaard1813–1855 Attention as grace

Simone Weil1909–1943 Plurality and judgment

Arendt1906–1975 Two liberties

Isaiah Berlin1909–1997 The public sphere

Habermas1929–Emptiness

Nāgārjunac. 150–250 CE Logos and flux

Heraclitusc. 535–475 BCE Selection

Darwin1809–1882 Information

Shannon1916–2001 Fact and value

Hume1711–1776 Apophatic depth

Meister Eckhartc. 1260–1328 Machine intelligence

Turing1912–1954 Manufactured obscuration

Shoshana Zuboff1951–

Also in dialogue

Other thinkers the book cites, borrows from, or corrects by name

Zhuangzi4th c. BCEWu-wei and the equality of things: the freer, more playful face of the Daoist source.Foucault1926–1984Knowledge and power are entangled, which is why obscuration has a politics.Jung1875–1961Archetype theory, borrowed for the three images and downgraded to meditation tools.Peter Singerb. 1946The circle of ethical concern widens, though pain is not made the sole moral currency.Buber1878–1965I and Thou: relation as a mode of knowing, kin to the measure of analogy.Merleau-Ponty1908–1961Perception is embodied, a reminder that experience is lived before it is analyzed.J. S. Mill1806–1873Liberty and the harm principle, weighed in the derivation of the political principles.Liu Cixinb. 1963The Dark Forest, whose literary intuition becomes the ξ=0 special case of the framework.Hobbes1588–1679The social contract born of fear, an interlocutor for the derivation of the polity.Locke1632–1704Consent and natural rights, weighed in how legitimate authority is grounded.Rousseau1712–1778The general will, tested against the framework's account of collective lucidity.Rawls1921–2002Justice as fairness, a modern foil for grounding the political principles.Bentham1748–1832Utilitarian calculus, engaged and then bounded where being precedes utility.