Finishing AZI

I have an idea about how I am to finish the AZI project. It involves an essay that could stand alone, but that will also fit directly onto the end of the project.

It is the essay I have been hinting at in a few posts, tentatively titled 'Duty, Agonistic Pluralism, and Historical Pedagogy'.

The problem I am encountering is one of ordering. How exactly to fit it into the project?

Because the last thing I was doing in AZI was a survey of political themes in Collingwood's final books.

I stopped working on that survey about three months ago when I reached The New Leviathan, which just so happens to be the final book in the survey. I didn't understand crucial things about the book. I am still missing certain things. But I now have a grasp on a few of the central ideas that were eluding me. In particular, I now understand what it means for Collingwood to develop a concept of duty that is disentangled from conceptions of right and utility.

There are a few other things that I don't really understand, still.

But I still think I grasp the concept of duty enough to write about it. Well, almost.

The question, however, is how grasping TNL will leave me in a position to finish AZI.

It seems that TNL and the ideas I'm having now are really pushing at the limits of the project. I'm not sure if they really fit in there. Or if the project is really coherent at all.

Because what the whole thing is ending on is this idea of an aesthetics of decision making. That it is appropriate to think of a certain attitude towards decision making as 'aesthetic'. The analogy is still legitimate. Still makes sense in some ways. I have some evidence for this. But I dunno.

I don't understand how I can make this new series of ideas fit into AZI.

Maybe I should just write it straight up on its own, as a sort of laboratory for AZI. Because the truth is that the essay is different enough from AZI that it should be written separately, but similar enough that it could go in.

I think I should write it separately, then decide what to do. If I feel like it I can just tack it on to the end of AZI. Or I can use it as a starting point for more writing.

Who knows.