This appendix exists not merely to trace historical ideas or compare theological and philosophical schools, but to locate this framework precisely, to prevent misclassification, and to expose where apparent agreements conceal structural divergence. The method employed is ontological triangulation—a diagnostic approach that evaluates proximity to relational–correspondent truth, rather than surface similarity of terminology or method.
Ontological triangulation assesses each model along four irreducible dimensions:
Ontological Grounding – Does the model begin from revealed being, or does it construct its ontology from within epistemic, linguistic, or procedural systems?
Epistemic Structure – How does the model account for access to truth? Is truth encountered, disclosed, recognized, or merely inferred, stabilized, or constructed?
Semiotic Integrity – Does the model preserve referential anchoring, or does it permit meaning to become endogenous to systems of signification?
Moral–Relational Posture – Does the model treat moral orientation as ontologically significant, or as an external ethical overlay?
Unlike conventional comparative philosophy, this framework refuses neutrality. Neutrality itself is a metaphysical posture—often a concealed one. This appendix therefore does not ask whether a model is coherent, but whether it is ontologically aligned.
Coherence can be manufactured. Alignment cannot.
This method is not polemical but diagnostic: it identifies where genuine overlap exists, where divergence enters, and what kind of realignment would be required for correspondence with the revealed typological ontology advanced in this project.
Classical metaphysics—spanning Aristotle, Neoplatonism, medieval scholasticism, and early modern rationalism—primarily concerns itself with being qua being. Its central questions are categorical:
What does it mean to exist?
What kinds of things exist?
What is substance?
What is causation?
What is form and matter?
What is essence and existence?
Classical metaphysics is structurally ontological, but it is not relational-first. It typically treats:
Personhood as a special case of substance
Morality as a derivative domain
Truth as a property of propositions
Knowledge as primarily intellectual
Revelation as supplementary
Its aim is descriptive: to inventory and systematize what is.
This framework does not begin with categories of being. It begins with the conditions of intelligibility.
It asks not:
What kinds of things exist?
But:
What must reality be like for meaning, truth, morality, personhood, and accountability to be possible at all?
This is a relational-first metaphysics. It treats personality, moral orientation, and referential intelligibility not as add-ons to being, but as constitutive of it.
Where classical metaphysics is taxonomic, this metaphysics is diagnostic.
Where classical metaphysics inventories, this metaphysics interrogates.
Where classical metaphysics assumes epistemic neutrality, this metaphysics denies it.
It holds that:
Truth is not a property of propositions but a relation to being
Meaning is not endogenous to language
Signs do not ground themselves
Systems cannot validate themselves
Logic tracks reality but does not generate it
Moral posture affects epistemic access
Rebellion is ontologically significant
In this sense, Submetaphysics is not a new branch of metaphysics—it is a critique of metaphysical starting points.
Aquinas affirms many crucial realities:
Being is real, not constructed
Truth is correspondence
God is the ground of being
Goodness is convertible with being
Intellect is ordered toward truth
Yet Aquinas preserves several separations that this framework cannot accept:
Moral posture and epistemic access are separable
Revelation supplements reason rather than structuring it
Personhood is primarily categorical rather than relational
Logic is formal rather than recognitional
In Thomism, one may be epistemically correct while morally misaligned.
In this framework, that separation collapses.
Knowledge is covenantal.
Truth is confrontational.
Rebellion is epistemic.
This is not a rejection of Aquinas—it is a continuation past where he was structurally able to go.
Ontological triangulation evaluates philosophical and theological models across four irreducible axes. These are not thematic emphases but structural constraints—each one marks a domain where collapse, displacement, or inversion typically occurs.
This axis asks: What is taken as most real?
A model is ontologically grounded if it begins from revealed being—that is, from an external, non-negotiable ontological source that is not generated by human cognition, language, or procedure.
Ungrounded models:
Derive being from epistemology (Kantianism)
Derive being from language (structuralism, postmodernism)
Derive being from consensus (pragmatism)
Derive being from function (technocracy)
This framework insists that:
Truth is not constructed
Meaning is not endogenous
Reality is not negotiated
Ontological grounding is the condition of falsifiability itself: something can only be wrong if something else is already right.
This axis asks: How is truth accessed?
Most modern systems assume epistemic neutrality. They treat the knower as a detached observer and truth as a passive object.
This framework rejects that assumption.
It holds that:
Truth is encountered, not inferred
Knowledge is recognitional, not generative
Moral posture affects epistemic access
Suppression is a real epistemic category
Truth does not merely inform—it confronts.
This axis therefore distinguishes between:
Assent (ontological alignment)
Consent (functional compliance)
And insists that these are not psychologically but metaphysically distinct.
This axis asks: Can signs lie?
Semiotic collapse occurs when meaning becomes self-referential—when systems of signification no longer answer to external referents.
This framework affirms:
Signs do not ground themselves
Language does not generate meaning
Coherence does not equal reference
This leads to the distinction between:
Typophoric reference (anchored)
Nominal assembly (synthetic)
Ontological effigiation (counterfeit)
Meaning is not procedural—it is participatory.
This axis asks: Does posture matter?
Most systems treat morality as external to ontology—an overlay, a choice, or a preference.
This framework treats posture as ontologically consequential.
Alignment is not ethical—it is metaphysical.
Rebellion is not psychological—it is epistemic.
Truth is not morally neutral.
This section begins the comparative work using the revised diagnostic axes. Each entry is not a historical summary but a structural assessment.
Ontological Grounding: Strong. Aquinas affirms God as the ground of being.
Epistemic Structure: Incomplete. While Aquinas affirms correspondence, he treats knowledge as primarily intellectual rather than covenantal.
Semiotic Integrity: Mixed. Analogical reasoning is preserved, but typological instantiation is underdeveloped.
Moral–Relational Posture: Secondary. Moral alignment does not condition epistemic access.
Structural Limitation: Aquinas preserves separations that this framework collapses:
Between moral posture and knowledge
Between revelation and reason
Between logic and ontology
Ontological Grounding: Displaced. Ontology is subordinated to epistemology.
Epistemic Structure: Containment-based. Knowledge is limited to appearances.
Semiotic Integrity: Procedural. Meaning is stabilized by categories.
Moral–Relational Posture: Formalized. Moral universality is procedural, not ontological.
Structural Limitation: Kant quarantines noumenal reality, preserving coherence while forbidding contact.
This framework rejects this containment. Dissonance is evidence of ontological contact.
Ontological Grounding: Affirmed. God is self-revealing Subject.
Epistemic Structure: Event-based. Revelation is treated as moment rather than instantiation.
Semiotic Integrity: Preserved, but not ontologically anchored.
Moral–Relational Posture: Strong, but dialectical.
Structural Limitation: Barth recovers divine initiative but resists ontological participation.
Ontological Grounding: Partial. Ellul affirms divine reality but does not articulate an explicit ontological typology.
Epistemic Structure: Prophetic-diagnostic. Truth is discerned through confrontation with systems of domination.
Semiotic Integrity: Strong. Ellul exposes linguistic distortion, technocratic myth, and narrative manipulation.
Moral–Relational Posture: Eschatologically serious, but restrained.
Structural Limitation: Ellul diagnoses collapse but does not formalize ontological repair. Ethical resistance is emphasized over typological restoration.
Ontological Grounding: Strong. Emphasis on participation, mystery, and divine energies.
Epistemic Structure: Contemplative-relational.
Semiotic Integrity: Mixed. Apophatic discipline preserves transcendence but risks semantic indeterminacy.
Moral–Relational Posture: Strong.
Structural Limitation: The essence–energies distinction is preserved rather than resolved. Typological begetting and procession are not fully clarified in relational–prerogative terms.
Ontological Grounding: Recovered. Scripture and divine sovereignty are re-centered.
Epistemic Structure: Forensic-covenantal.
Semiotic Integrity: Weak. Lack of explicit semiotic ontology.
Moral–Relational Posture: Serious.
Structural Limitation: Election is abstracted from ontological participation. Scholastic categories are retained, muting reformative depth.
Ontological Grounding: Partial. Forms gesture toward transcendent reality.
Epistemic Structure: Anamnetic.
Semiotic Integrity: Strong at the level of typal distinction.
Moral–Relational Posture: Aspirational.
Structural Limitation: Abstraction from incarnational and revelatory grounding.
Ontological Grounding: Strongly realist.
Epistemic Structure: Teleological-rational.
Semiotic Integrity: Functional.
Moral–Relational Posture: Secondary.
Structural Limitation: Substance ontology lacks personal-relational grounding.
Ontological Grounding: Phenomenological.
Epistemic Structure: Disclosive.
Semiotic Integrity: Weak.
Moral–Relational Posture: Ambiguous.
Structural Limitation: No teleological typology; Being is unmoored from divine prerogative.
Ontological Grounding: Process-based.
Epistemic Structure: Emergent.
Semiotic Integrity: Weak.
Moral–Relational Posture: Immanent.
Structural Limitation: Flux replaces instantiation; divine anchoring is symbolic rather than real.
Ontological Grounding: Denied.
Epistemic Structure: Deconstructive.
Semiotic Integrity: Collapsed.
Moral–Relational Posture: Indeterminate.
Structural Limitation: Instability is treated as final rather than diagnostic.
This section evaluates major linguistic and semiotic frameworks through the lens of ontological triangulation. The central diagnostic question here is not whether these models function, but whether they preserve referential integrity—that is, whether signs remain answerable to something other than themselves.
Ontological Grounding: Absent.
Epistemic Structure: Differential-relational.
Semiotic Integrity: Collapsed.
Moral–Relational Posture: Neutralized.
Structural Limitation: Meaning is defined purely by internal contrast, not external reference. Language becomes a closed system.
Relational Diagnosis: This framework explains semantic motion but cannot explain semantic truth.
Ontological Grounding: Implicit but undeclared.
Epistemic Structure: Triadic–inferential.
Semiotic Integrity: Gestural toward referentiality.
Moral–Relational Posture: Secondary.
Structural Limitation: The triad gestures toward typology but does not anchor signs in divine instantiation.
Ontological Grounding: Denied.
Epistemic Structure: Deconstructive.
Semiotic Integrity: Dissolved.
Moral–Relational Posture: Suspended.
Structural Limitation: Derrida correctly diagnoses instability but mistakes pathology for ontology.
Relational Diagnosis: Instability is a symptom, not a metaphysical condition.
Ontological Grounding: Partial.
Epistemic Structure: Rationalist–abstractionist.
Semiotic Integrity: Defended but procedurally.
Moral–Relational Posture: Strong but autonomous.
Structural Limitation: Semantic stability is grounded in human rationality rather than divine reference.
Relational Advancement: This framework subsumes Rand’s insight into conceptual corruption, reframing “anti-concepts” as cases of ontological effigiation—counterfeit signs severed from real instantiation.
None of the examined models fully integrates all four diagnostic axes.
Some recover ontological seriousness but evacuate semiotics.
Some preserve linguistic acuity but collapse ontology.
Some defend moral urgency but lack referential stability.
Some articulate participation but resist instantiation.
Only the relational–ontological framework advanced here maintains coherence across all four axes simultaneously:
Ontology is revealed, not constructed.
Truth is encountered, not inferred.
Meaning is participatory, not procedural.
Posture is metaphysically consequential.
This framework does not offer a new theory of everything. It offers a restoration of what must be true for anything to be intelligible at all.
It is not synthetic. It is diagnostic.
It is not neutral. It is accountable.
It does not merely explain collapse. It explains why collapse is possible.
And it does not end in abstraction—it ends in confrontation.
This framework differs from all prior systems in one decisive respect: it begins not with categories, but with prerogative.
Not with structures, but with revelation.
Not with logic, but with being.
Not with language, but with truth.
Not with method, but with alignment.
Where other systems stabilize meaning, this framework answers to it.
Where other systems protect coherence, this framework exposes fraud.
Where other systems permit distance, this framework insists on encounter.
