Introduction
This text continues the argument begun in "From Metamodernism to Truth“, where the meaning of life was defined as alignment with structure. Here, that structure is unfolded through three existential limits: bodily, rational, and generational. These are not properties, choices, or social roles — they are conditions for the reproduction of life, thought, and culture.
Each level sets its own criterion: biological, cognitive, and historical. They determine which forms can endure, be understood, and be transmitted. Outside these limits, stability collapses.
The problem of modernity is not the absence of values, but the loss of discernment. Meaning has come to be seen as personal feeling, truth as social consensus. Yet the structure of life continues to operate. It selects, excludes, clarifies. And any proposition, to be viable, must pass the test across all three axes.
Body
The body is neither a “platform“ nor a “subject of experience.“ It is the carrier of the species, a filter of viability, a mechanism of differentiation. It is limited — and precisely for that reason, form is possible within it.
Contemporary body discourses — from body-positivity to cyber-utopias — begin with the claim that “the body must not define.“ But the body always defines. It provides the limits on which reason depends. Without limits, there is no orientation; without orientation, no sustainable form.
To declare every body “normal“ cancels the mechanism of selection. When normativity disappears, so does the ability to distinguish the viable from the unviable1. This is not merely a theoretical error — it undermines the very capacity of form to reproduce.
Dominant bodily ideologies insist that all physical states are valid, and that form is merely a cultural construct. This inclusive gesture ignores a central fact: biological form is functionally and environmentally constrained. To sever that constraint is to deny the selective conditions of durability2.
The more accurate position is this: the body may vary, but not every body is fit for continuation. Epigenetic factors play a decisive role here: bodily form is not only inherited, but also shaped by the conditions in which it develops34. Environment, nutrition, stress, and activity influence gene expression — and with it, the viability of future generations. Physical resilience is not an aesthetic standard but a structural condition. Caring for the body is not self-expression, but acceptance of life's form.
Reason
Reason is not a source of freedom but an instrument of measure and constraint. Its task is to find the point at which sustainable existence becomes possible. It does not create meaning; it uncovers it5.
One of the last contexts where truth and falsehood still matter is the context of survival. I recall speaking with a man in a rural area, where everything depends on precise decisions: weather, land, livestock — nothing forgives error. His speech was clear, his judgments tightly bound to outcomes. Rationality was not a posture — it was a condition of harvest. In such settings, falsehood is not theoretical. It kills. Where reason fails, life fails.
In contrast, error is de-risked in environments where consequences are deferred. In urban intellectual circles, one can spend decades theorizing without testing for survivability. There, reason loses its anchoring in reality because falsehood bears no cost. Theoretical error doesn’t starve. Debate replaces selection. Rationality becomes a style rather than a mode of alignment. This is the paradox of late modernity: the higher the abstraction, the lower the resilience. Reason detaches from necessity — and loses its function.
Modernity exalted reason; postmodernity dismantled it. Metamodernism attempts to save reason through irony. But irony offers weak footing. One cannot rely on reason that no longer believes in itself.
Cognitive traditions — from constructivism to post-structuralism — argue that reason produces reality. This is partially true. But one thing is forgotten: reality still resists. It has a form that cannot be imagined away.
Today, reason is often reduced to a servant of desire — a rationalization machine, not a discerning faculty. Thought becomes a means of self-confirmation. Meanwhile, the idea of subjective meaning suggests that everyone constructs their own truth. But if meaning is wholly subjective, the possibility of the shared vanishes — and with it, the very space where discernment matters.
These approaches displace the function of reason. Thinking becomes an act of expression, not discovery. But reason detached from measure and order ceases to be reason. It dissolves into infinite interpretation or collapses into rhetoric6. To think is not to express oneself, but to orient oneself. Not to be free, but to be exact.
Lineage
Lineage is the most unacceptable topic in the contemporary philosophical landscape. No concept provokes such discomfort as the idea of continuation — because it negates individualism.
But lineage is not an opinion. It is a part of the structure one does not choose. You are either included in it — or disappear. Life continues only through those willing to be a form for what comes next. Lineage is not just about offspring — it is about the transmission of a stable form. If a life project cannot be passed on, it is not a form. It is noise.
Today, the link between philosophy and reproduction is broken. Contemporary culture rejects lineage as a structural condition, making itself vulnerable to systems where lineage remains central7. One example is the cultural Islamicization of Britain and parts of the EU. This shift is not driven by ideological superiority, but by the loss of transmissible form on the other side. Where philosophy and culture lose connection to lineage, their form cannot withstand competition.
Modern thought, influenced by theorists like Foucault and Butler, tends to view lineage as a construct or instrument of oppression, and transmission itself as a kind of violence. This makes continuity impossible. But lineage is not suppression — it is selection. It distinguishes the viable from the unstable not at the level of belief, but at the level of structure. Continuation is not a duty, but a test: does the form endure across time and transmission? Only what can be passed on possesses resilience8. Everything else is a closed biography.
Conclusion
Body, reason, and lineage are not domains of choice, but levels of structural verification. Every concept, every way of life, can be assessed along these three axes: does it preserve biological viability, allow cognitive validation, ensure continuity?
Truth in this framework is not an ideal or a conviction. It is what reproduces, explains, and persists. What fails selection, thought, or transmission is not morally false — it is structurally invalid. It simply fails the test of form.
Contemporary relativism offers a multiplicity of meanings. But not all survive. What survives is what finds convergence across the bodily, the rational, and the generational. That is the measure of truth. To live as a human being is to sustain a form that endures life, thought, and continuation. ■
Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological (1943) — explores the distinction between norm and pathology as a foundation for biological and social viability.
Kevin Warwick, I, Cyborg (2002) — examines the limits of transhumanist ideology and its dependence on biological embodiment.
Michael Meaney & Moshe Szyf, “Environmental programming of stress responses through DNA methylation: life at the interface between a dynamic environment and a fixed genome,” Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience (2007) — demonstrates how environmental factors influence gene expression and intergenerational transmission.
Rachel Yehuda et al., “Holocaust Exposure Induced Intergenerational Effects on FKBP5 Methylation,” Biological Psychiatry (2016) — empirical evidence for epigenetic transmission of trauma.
Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) — presents reason as a process of ascent toward unified understanding.
Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (1986) — defines objectivity as a mode of ontological integrity.
Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) — analyzes the evolutionary role of social structures and inclusive reproduction.
Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? (1995) — interprets philosophy as a transmissible practice rather than individual self-expression.