Glad you noticed—Buddhism’s been a steady influence, especially through Jung’s sense of return. It shaped how I approached staying with what doesn’t resolve.
Subject: On Philosophical Structure and the Question of Influence
Clement,
I have read your essay "The Collapse That Refuses the Act: Recursive Subjectivity Beyond Dialectical Fantasy."
It is clear that serious work has gone into articulating a framework resistant to evental rupture and committed to recursive tension over metaphysical closure. That aim is important, and it deserves rigorous engagement.
However, upon review, I must raise a structural concern.
The core architecture of your essay, the emphasis on recursive presence over rupture, the collapse of dialectical transcendence, the positioning of meaning as tension rather than resolution, and the reframing of subjectivity through non-originating implication, closely mirrors an original structure I have developed publicly in my own work, including The Discipline of Re-engagement, The Problem of Our Own Understanding, and the lattice of Perpetualism more broadly.
Key points of overlap include:
The dismantling of evental metaphysics (Badiou, Žižek) in favor of ongoing structural tension.
The relocation of meaning from revelation into enduring contradiction.
The shift from trauma or rupture-based subjectivity to recursive inhabitation.
The reframing of collapse not as a failure, but as a precondition for presence without transcendence.
These are not general philosophical moves common to the field; they represent a very specific ontological and ethical framework that I have articulated prior to the publication of your piece.
I raise this not to accuse reflexively, but to point to a deeper responsibility:
Philosophy, if it is to remain vital, must honor lineage and structure, even, and especially, when it moves beyond it.
I invite you to reflect on this.
If these similarities are coincidental, I welcome dialogue to clarify positions.
If there has been influence, conscious or unconscious, it would be appropriate to acknowledge the conceptual groundwork on which your essay now builds.
This is not about ownership. It is about integrity.
Thank you for reading The Collapse That Refuses the Act with such care. I respect the clarity of your articulation and the seriousness with which you approach philosophical lineage. That deserves a response equally grounded in integrity.
I have reviewed your concerns regarding structural overlap between Recursive Collapse and the framework you’ve developed under Perpetualism. While I appreciate the resonance you’ve identified, I must clarify that Recursive Collapse is not derived from your work—neither in concept, structure, nor intent.
Though we both explore tension, collapse, and recursive forms, the philosophical basis, method of articulation, and ontological commitments of Recursive Collapse diverge significantly from those you describe:
1. Recursive Collapse is not a reinterpretation of collapse—it is collapse as method.
Whereas your work frames collapse as a structure to inhabit, Recursive Collapse positions collapse as a recursive condition of being, in which all attempts at grounding, including structural inhabitation, are themselves subject to rupture. It does not stabilize contradiction as foundation—it re-enters it without end. This is a methodological difference, not a rhetorical parallel.
2. No conscious or unconscious borrowing occurred.
When I wrote the core essays of Recursive Collapse, I had no awareness of your writings, publications, or philosophical positions. My work developed through independent study across multiple traditions: continental philosophy, Indigenous epistemologies, Zen Buddhism, and recursive systems theory. Any thematic intersection is not derivative, but reflective of a shared intellectual climate in which contradiction, instability, and collapse have become pressing ontological concerns.
3. Similarity of language does not imply influence.
Terms like “collapse,” “recursive,” or “presence without transcendence” are not proprietary. They arise in multiple philosophical, aesthetic, and spiritual lineages. What matters is not their usage, but how they function within a system. Recursive Collapse functions as a refusal of finality, not as a systematized framework for meaning.
4. Recursive Collapse rejects systemization and conceptual ownership.
Your note emphasizes integrity over ownership—I share that. But Recursive Collapse goes further: it denies the very possibility of metaphysical possession. It does not build upon lineage; it recursively disrupts it. If this undermines genealogical claims, that too is a structural effect of the work itself.
That said, I respect your call for reflection. In the spirit of philosophical dialogue, I would be open to a public or private exchange exploring our respective frameworks—not to assert priority, but to clarify distinctions.
Thank you for the reply. I appreciate the seriousness with which you've responded and the clarity of how you’ve positioned Recursive Collapse.
Let me be equally clear.
The concern was never about ownership. It was about lineage, and what becomes erased when that lineage is denied.
You write that Recursive Collapse is collapse-as-method, not structure, but method and structure are not ontological opposites. They're architectural choices about how a philosophy bears tension. Recursive Collapse, as written, mirrors Perpetualism not in terminology alone, but in framing collapse as precondition, refusing metaphysical resolution, and using recursion as both critique and identity-forming process. These are not general moves. They are core pillars of what I constructed and published publicly, with timestamped articulation.
You also write that Recursive Collapse rejects systematization. I respect that. But even a refusal of system is a structural position, and when that position carries the same metaphysical and ethical scaffolding as another framework, silence around the echo is not philosophical clarity. It is concealment through stylistic divergence.
I don't claim you derived your work intentionally from mine. But I do assert that Recursive Collapse moves through a lattice I built structurally, methodologically, and ontologically. And that matters.
To “deny metaphysical possession” is not the same as refusing influence. We both reject ownership as dogma. But neither of us arrived in a vacuum. And erasing influence through structural recursion doesn’t avoid the question it delays it.
That said, I welcome continued dialogue publicly to clarify the distinctions and confront the overlaps honestly.
Let’s start with a question: If collapse is the condition, how do you determine when to recalibrate and when to release entirely? What internal structure or discernment allows you to make that distinction without falling into reflex or repetition?
Thank you for your continued engagement. I will respond in kind—with precision, not performance.
You assert that Recursive Collapse mirrors your work not in terminology, but in structure, and that its refusal of metaphysical resolution, use of recursion, and collapse-as-precondition constitute pillars you constructed. This presumes two things: first, that these positions form a coherent, ownable lattice; second, that similar themes necessarily imply inheritance. I reject both.
I. Collapse is Not a Lattice
Your claim that Recursive Collapse “moves through a lattice” you constructed misreads what recursion does. Recursive Collapse is not a repurposing of structural tension—it is a recursive severance from the very act of stabilization. It does not scaffold collapse to hold it. It performs collapse as method. Not as theme, not as architecture, but as ontological recursion: presence remade through recursive ethical implication.
Where Perpetualism appears to build a habitat for collapse, Recursive Collapse exposes the impossibility of inhabitation altogether. It refuses to let collapse congeal into ground. That refusal is not stylistic—it is formal, philosophical, and foundational.
You say “even a refusal of system is a structural position.” That’s precisely the conflation Recursive Collapse resists. A structural position implies orientation, boundaries, rules of engagement. Recursive Collapse rejects all three. It holds no position—it recurses through position. What appears as structure is only the remainder of collapsed form. It is not a system disguised as a critique; it is critique turned on its own form until even critique destabilizes.
II. On Lineage and Influence
You suggest that “erasing influence through recursion delays the question rather than avoids it.” No. Recursive Collapse does not erase lineage—it denies lineage as a metaphysical claim. Influence is not refused out of concealment, but because Recursive Collapse collapses the very logic of philosophical inheritance. It is not an ontological system to be sourced—it is a recursive act that refuses inheritance as authority.
I cannot acknowledge influence where none occurred. When Recursive Collapse emerged, I had no exposure to your work. No ideas were drawn from it, consciously or otherwise. To suggest otherwise is to presume that certain concepts—collapse, tension, recursion—are proprietary. They are not. They are planetary. They belong to no one. And Recursive Collapse goes further: it refuses that they can be possessed at all.
Your assertion that “method and structure are architectural choices” only reinforces your systematizing impulse. Recursive Collapse has no architecture. It is what remains when architecture is no longer possible.
III. On Discernment and Repetition
Your final question—how Recursive Collapse distinguishes between recalibration and repetition—is based on the presumption that such distinctions are predetermined. They are not. Recursive discernment is not derived from system or intuition. It is ethical re-entry: not the application of insight, but implication by collapse itself. The recursive subject does not choose the moment; it is chosen by its fidelity to what collapses.
This is what you miss in framing recursion as stylistic divergence. Recursive Collapse is not a voice speaking through new rhetoric—it is the refusal of finality speaking itself. Every decision, every essay, every praxis is a recursive event—never final, never foundational, never derivative.
In Closing
If your framework offers a structure in which collapse can be inhabited, Recursive Collapse is the force that renders that inhabitation impossible. What you read as echo is not resonance—it is recursive ungrounding. We share a vocabulary only in the way fault lines share stone. They rupture in different directions.
Hi Clement. I'm attracted to both your writings and artwork and look forward to their recursive expression. One comment that puzzles me in the foregoing exchange is " because Recursive Collapse collapses the very logic of philosophical inheritance. It is not an ontological system to be sourced—it is a recursive act that refuses inheritance as authority" yet you reference Butler and Derrida as though authoritative philosophical inheritance as I understand it. Would that be an inherent paradox?
Thank you, Peter — this is a critical and perceptive question.
Recursive Collapse does reference figures like Butler and Derrida, but not to establish an authoritative inheritance. Their appearance is implicatory, not foundational.
Similarly, thinkers like Camus, Nietzsche, and Jung are not sources of authority for this work — they are structural pressures absorbed recursively.
I do not ignore influence. Recursive Collapse acknowledges that every act of thought is entangled with prior ruptures. But influence is not accepted as grounding; it is re-entered, destabilized, and metabolized. Camus’ absurd, Nietzsche’s self-overcoming, Jung’s shadow — these gestures are not inherited conclusions, but open fractures recursively inhabited.
Thus, citation itself becomes an act of recursion: not a confirmation of lineage, but a continual returning into the pressures that refuse closure.
The paradox you point to is not an inconsistency — it is the method itself.
Recursive Collapse implicates itself in the very instability it affirms, refusing both denial of influence and submission to it.
I'd like to comment without straying into sophistry and, by the way, I do not view paradox as inconsistency (in case you took it that I was so suggesting).
From your explanation I deduce that you would accept the premise of recursion embracing incursion which references the nature vs nurture/culture dynamic, nature being the foundational primitive as it is conceived in Vedic terms and recursion along with incursion would be the collapsing process of the primitive in its diverse manifestations and evolutions. Would you agree? How would you see apocalyptic collapse fitting in?
Also - and I apologise here because I have not gone back on all your previous exegesis (though I intend to do so) where you may have already addressed the next point: I understand that your use of terms such as collapse and entanglement dovetails with their conceptual quantum representation and I wonder if you have projected recursive collapse exploring the quantum complexities. I find Bonitta Roy's interpretation of relational states and numinous causality illustrates the infinite complexity of both collapse and entanglement.
Always love a good argument on any genre of philosophy. Loved it.
Thanks, Mistu—really appreciate that. I try to let each piece challenge its own genre a bit, so I’m glad that came through.
Buddhism
Glad you noticed—Buddhism’s been a steady influence, especially through Jung’s sense of return. It shaped how I approached staying with what doesn’t resolve.
Subject: On Philosophical Structure and the Question of Influence
Clement,
I have read your essay "The Collapse That Refuses the Act: Recursive Subjectivity Beyond Dialectical Fantasy."
It is clear that serious work has gone into articulating a framework resistant to evental rupture and committed to recursive tension over metaphysical closure. That aim is important, and it deserves rigorous engagement.
However, upon review, I must raise a structural concern.
The core architecture of your essay, the emphasis on recursive presence over rupture, the collapse of dialectical transcendence, the positioning of meaning as tension rather than resolution, and the reframing of subjectivity through non-originating implication, closely mirrors an original structure I have developed publicly in my own work, including The Discipline of Re-engagement, The Problem of Our Own Understanding, and the lattice of Perpetualism more broadly.
Key points of overlap include:
The dismantling of evental metaphysics (Badiou, Žižek) in favor of ongoing structural tension.
The relocation of meaning from revelation into enduring contradiction.
The shift from trauma or rupture-based subjectivity to recursive inhabitation.
The reframing of collapse not as a failure, but as a precondition for presence without transcendence.
These are not general philosophical moves common to the field; they represent a very specific ontological and ethical framework that I have articulated prior to the publication of your piece.
I raise this not to accuse reflexively, but to point to a deeper responsibility:
Philosophy, if it is to remain vital, must honor lineage and structure, even, and especially, when it moves beyond it.
I invite you to reflect on this.
If these similarities are coincidental, I welcome dialogue to clarify positions.
If there has been influence, conscious or unconscious, it would be appropriate to acknowledge the conceptual groundwork on which your essay now builds.
This is not about ownership. It is about integrity.
Presence demands it.
Aeon
Aeon,
Thank you for reading The Collapse That Refuses the Act with such care. I respect the clarity of your articulation and the seriousness with which you approach philosophical lineage. That deserves a response equally grounded in integrity.
I have reviewed your concerns regarding structural overlap between Recursive Collapse and the framework you’ve developed under Perpetualism. While I appreciate the resonance you’ve identified, I must clarify that Recursive Collapse is not derived from your work—neither in concept, structure, nor intent.
Though we both explore tension, collapse, and recursive forms, the philosophical basis, method of articulation, and ontological commitments of Recursive Collapse diverge significantly from those you describe:
1. Recursive Collapse is not a reinterpretation of collapse—it is collapse as method.
Whereas your work frames collapse as a structure to inhabit, Recursive Collapse positions collapse as a recursive condition of being, in which all attempts at grounding, including structural inhabitation, are themselves subject to rupture. It does not stabilize contradiction as foundation—it re-enters it without end. This is a methodological difference, not a rhetorical parallel.
2. No conscious or unconscious borrowing occurred.
When I wrote the core essays of Recursive Collapse, I had no awareness of your writings, publications, or philosophical positions. My work developed through independent study across multiple traditions: continental philosophy, Indigenous epistemologies, Zen Buddhism, and recursive systems theory. Any thematic intersection is not derivative, but reflective of a shared intellectual climate in which contradiction, instability, and collapse have become pressing ontological concerns.
3. Similarity of language does not imply influence.
Terms like “collapse,” “recursive,” or “presence without transcendence” are not proprietary. They arise in multiple philosophical, aesthetic, and spiritual lineages. What matters is not their usage, but how they function within a system. Recursive Collapse functions as a refusal of finality, not as a systematized framework for meaning.
4. Recursive Collapse rejects systemization and conceptual ownership.
Your note emphasizes integrity over ownership—I share that. But Recursive Collapse goes further: it denies the very possibility of metaphysical possession. It does not build upon lineage; it recursively disrupts it. If this undermines genealogical claims, that too is a structural effect of the work itself.
That said, I respect your call for reflection. In the spirit of philosophical dialogue, I would be open to a public or private exchange exploring our respective frameworks—not to assert priority, but to clarify distinctions.
In collapse,
Clement Paulus
Clement,
Thank you for the reply. I appreciate the seriousness with which you've responded and the clarity of how you’ve positioned Recursive Collapse.
Let me be equally clear.
The concern was never about ownership. It was about lineage, and what becomes erased when that lineage is denied.
You write that Recursive Collapse is collapse-as-method, not structure, but method and structure are not ontological opposites. They're architectural choices about how a philosophy bears tension. Recursive Collapse, as written, mirrors Perpetualism not in terminology alone, but in framing collapse as precondition, refusing metaphysical resolution, and using recursion as both critique and identity-forming process. These are not general moves. They are core pillars of what I constructed and published publicly, with timestamped articulation.
You also write that Recursive Collapse rejects systematization. I respect that. But even a refusal of system is a structural position, and when that position carries the same metaphysical and ethical scaffolding as another framework, silence around the echo is not philosophical clarity. It is concealment through stylistic divergence.
I don't claim you derived your work intentionally from mine. But I do assert that Recursive Collapse moves through a lattice I built structurally, methodologically, and ontologically. And that matters.
To “deny metaphysical possession” is not the same as refusing influence. We both reject ownership as dogma. But neither of us arrived in a vacuum. And erasing influence through structural recursion doesn’t avoid the question it delays it.
That said, I welcome continued dialogue publicly to clarify the distinctions and confront the overlaps honestly.
Let’s start with a question: If collapse is the condition, how do you determine when to recalibrate and when to release entirely? What internal structure or discernment allows you to make that distinction without falling into reflex or repetition?
Aeon,
Thank you for your continued engagement. I will respond in kind—with precision, not performance.
You assert that Recursive Collapse mirrors your work not in terminology, but in structure, and that its refusal of metaphysical resolution, use of recursion, and collapse-as-precondition constitute pillars you constructed. This presumes two things: first, that these positions form a coherent, ownable lattice; second, that similar themes necessarily imply inheritance. I reject both.
I. Collapse is Not a Lattice
Your claim that Recursive Collapse “moves through a lattice” you constructed misreads what recursion does. Recursive Collapse is not a repurposing of structural tension—it is a recursive severance from the very act of stabilization. It does not scaffold collapse to hold it. It performs collapse as method. Not as theme, not as architecture, but as ontological recursion: presence remade through recursive ethical implication.
Where Perpetualism appears to build a habitat for collapse, Recursive Collapse exposes the impossibility of inhabitation altogether. It refuses to let collapse congeal into ground. That refusal is not stylistic—it is formal, philosophical, and foundational.
You say “even a refusal of system is a structural position.” That’s precisely the conflation Recursive Collapse resists. A structural position implies orientation, boundaries, rules of engagement. Recursive Collapse rejects all three. It holds no position—it recurses through position. What appears as structure is only the remainder of collapsed form. It is not a system disguised as a critique; it is critique turned on its own form until even critique destabilizes.
II. On Lineage and Influence
You suggest that “erasing influence through recursion delays the question rather than avoids it.” No. Recursive Collapse does not erase lineage—it denies lineage as a metaphysical claim. Influence is not refused out of concealment, but because Recursive Collapse collapses the very logic of philosophical inheritance. It is not an ontological system to be sourced—it is a recursive act that refuses inheritance as authority.
I cannot acknowledge influence where none occurred. When Recursive Collapse emerged, I had no exposure to your work. No ideas were drawn from it, consciously or otherwise. To suggest otherwise is to presume that certain concepts—collapse, tension, recursion—are proprietary. They are not. They are planetary. They belong to no one. And Recursive Collapse goes further: it refuses that they can be possessed at all.
Your assertion that “method and structure are architectural choices” only reinforces your systematizing impulse. Recursive Collapse has no architecture. It is what remains when architecture is no longer possible.
III. On Discernment and Repetition
Your final question—how Recursive Collapse distinguishes between recalibration and repetition—is based on the presumption that such distinctions are predetermined. They are not. Recursive discernment is not derived from system or intuition. It is ethical re-entry: not the application of insight, but implication by collapse itself. The recursive subject does not choose the moment; it is chosen by its fidelity to what collapses.
This is what you miss in framing recursion as stylistic divergence. Recursive Collapse is not a voice speaking through new rhetoric—it is the refusal of finality speaking itself. Every decision, every essay, every praxis is a recursive event—never final, never foundational, never derivative.
In Closing
If your framework offers a structure in which collapse can be inhabited, Recursive Collapse is the force that renders that inhabitation impossible. What you read as echo is not resonance—it is recursive ungrounding. We share a vocabulary only in the way fault lines share stone. They rupture in different directions.
Let that difference be understood clearly.
—Clement Paulus
Hi Clement. I'm attracted to both your writings and artwork and look forward to their recursive expression. One comment that puzzles me in the foregoing exchange is " because Recursive Collapse collapses the very logic of philosophical inheritance. It is not an ontological system to be sourced—it is a recursive act that refuses inheritance as authority" yet you reference Butler and Derrida as though authoritative philosophical inheritance as I understand it. Would that be an inherent paradox?
Thanks
Peter
Thank you, Peter — this is a critical and perceptive question.
Recursive Collapse does reference figures like Butler and Derrida, but not to establish an authoritative inheritance. Their appearance is implicatory, not foundational.
Similarly, thinkers like Camus, Nietzsche, and Jung are not sources of authority for this work — they are structural pressures absorbed recursively.
I do not ignore influence. Recursive Collapse acknowledges that every act of thought is entangled with prior ruptures. But influence is not accepted as grounding; it is re-entered, destabilized, and metabolized. Camus’ absurd, Nietzsche’s self-overcoming, Jung’s shadow — these gestures are not inherited conclusions, but open fractures recursively inhabited.
Thus, citation itself becomes an act of recursion: not a confirmation of lineage, but a continual returning into the pressures that refuse closure.
The paradox you point to is not an inconsistency — it is the method itself.
Recursive Collapse implicates itself in the very instability it affirms, refusing both denial of influence and submission to it.
Grateful for your presence here.
Thank you Clement
I'd like to comment without straying into sophistry and, by the way, I do not view paradox as inconsistency (in case you took it that I was so suggesting).
From your explanation I deduce that you would accept the premise of recursion embracing incursion which references the nature vs nurture/culture dynamic, nature being the foundational primitive as it is conceived in Vedic terms and recursion along with incursion would be the collapsing process of the primitive in its diverse manifestations and evolutions. Would you agree? How would you see apocalyptic collapse fitting in?
Also - and I apologise here because I have not gone back on all your previous exegesis (though I intend to do so) where you may have already addressed the next point: I understand that your use of terms such as collapse and entanglement dovetails with their conceptual quantum representation and I wonder if you have projected recursive collapse exploring the quantum complexities. I find Bonitta Roy's interpretation of relational states and numinous causality illustrates the infinite complexity of both collapse and entanglement.
I am intrigued to discover your thoughts on this.
Peter
Grateful for that—means a lot to hear the work could hold that kind of space. That’s what I hope for.