War is a suicide pact.

In his scholarly article, William Hogeland portrays the Declaration of Independence as a kind of suicide compact; that by signing their names to it, “fifty-six men put their lives on the line” — words mixed with blood. Benjamin Franklin had already written the abstract, however, when he declares: “We must all hang together or we shall hang separately.”

The Cold War introduced an ecumenical and succinct variation: mutually assured destruction.

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William Hogeland, “Suicide Pact: 56 Men Put Their Lives on the Line by Signing the Declaration of Independence,” American History 48, no. 3 (2013).

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In antiquity the commitment to bracketing was inspired by humans in heat who thought they could know the nature and essence of a thing — the eidos, as it were. The commitment to bracketing was referred to as epoché, or the suspension of judgement about what a thing truly is, and it came after a careful analysis of the thing and an even carefuller analysis of how one truly goes about knowing anything about anything let alone the true thing about the thing.

Epoché, say the ancients, is both ability, as demonstrated by the act of suspending so as to suspend, and humility as a mental attitude as the disposition and condition and state of being human so as to suspend judgment. Epoché means a readiness and willingness and ableness to suspend such that suspension such that suspension means having suspended.

Part of the problem, say the ancients, was in the thing which almost always concealed its true self whatever that may be behind manifolds and fluxes of mere appearances. The other part of the problem was in the thing wanting to know the thing, that thing being the human animal, which was itself always compromised by its own inconstancies and impotencies in truly knowing. The knowing thing fluxes in relation to a fluxing thing so as to cast fluctuation as the thing as it is known by the knowing thing. All is then distorted this way and that.

So after careful inquiry about both the thing to know and the knowing thing wisdom resides at the end of the search as epoché, or the suspension of judgement about the truth of a thing by the knowing thing.

The aim and effect was the disposition and condition and state of being human as tranquility and quietude (ataraxia) where one has looked an apple straight in the eye and wondered deeply about this apple, now bemused and looking back, so as both to say, I just really don’t know about you one way or another and we are both okay with that, we being me and the apple. Then I eat the apple. No more apple.