Foundations of Decision-Making – A Review

• Individual: Decisions that rest on the individual person's experiences, values, needs, fears, intentions, and perceptions.

• Collective: Decisions formed in and through groups, communities, traditions, norms, and social agreements.

• Political: Decisions grounded in power structures, systems of governance, laws, ideologies, and the administration of societies.

• Economic: Decisions governed by supply, scarcity, resources, exchange value, production, and consumption.

• Religious: Decisions motivated through beliefs, revelations, doctrines, dogmas, and sacred texts.

• Relative: Decisions that lack a fixed ground and instead adapt to situation, perspective, interpretation, and circumstances.

• Absolute: Decisions that rest on something assumed to be unchanging, valid independently of human interpretations and situations.

Here follow the mutual consequences as they appear when these grounds operate simultaneously.

Individual ↔ Collective

When individual decisions collide with collective ones, the tension between self-determination and adaptation arises.

If the individual dominates, the collective risks dissolving. If the collective dominates, the individual risks dissolving.

The consequence becomes a constant shifting of responsibility:

• Who bears the blame?
• Who owns the decision?

Collective ↔ Political

When collective decisions become institutionalized, they become political. Living agreements then turn into formal structures.

The consequences are that:

• responsibility moves from relationship to system
• obedience replaces mutual consent
• representation replaces presence

The political can then begin to live independently of the people it claims to represent.

Political ↔ Economic

When economic grounds govern political decisions, value is replaced by valuation and necessity by profitability.

The consequences are that:

• human needs are subordinated to resource optimization
• life is reduced to cost
• the future becomes calculation

Politics then loses its existential content.

Economic ↔ Religious

When religious grounds meet economic ones, either:

• ownership is sanctified

or

• material conditions are rejected

The consequence is often double bookkeeping:

• one morality for speech
• another for action

A split arises between the sacred and the necessary.

Religious ↔ Relative

When the religious is relativized, it loses its absolute bearing. When the relative is religified, dogmatic arbitrariness arises.

The consequence is that:

• the absolute becomes negotiable
• the relative gains absolute claims

The ground begins to slip.

Religious ↔ Political

The religious is politicized → becomes law. The political → becomes dogmatic governance.

Consequence:

• The religious becomes law.
• The political makes a claim to truth.

Result:

• The ground becomes totalitarian.
• The individual's possibility to choose or interpret disappears.
• Responsibility and legitimacy concentrate in the system.

Relative ↔ Absolute

Here lies the clearest ground consequence:

If everything becomes relative → then no ultimate ground for decision-making remains.

If something is absolute → then there is something that cannot be negotiated, calculated, or reinterpreted away.

The consequence is therefore:

Relative grounds can never carry absolute responsibility. Absolute grounds cannot be justified relatively.

Risk Consequence Analysis of Mixed Grounds Without Clear Hierarchy

When the different decision grounds – individual, collective, political, economic, religious, relative, and absolute – operate simultaneously without clear priority, a complex network of risks arises. The addition of Religious ↔ Political reinforces certain effects and introduces specific risks:

1. Shifting of Responsibility

Description: When several grounds influence decisions, it becomes unclear who bears responsibility – the individual, the collective, politics, or religion.

Deepening with religious ↔ political grounds: The totalitarian dynamic concentrates responsibility in institutions and dogmas. Individuals may feel forced to act against their own conviction, creating systematically suppressed personal responsibility.

Risk: The individual's capacity for reflection and responsibility erodes, leading to blind obedience and increased risk of abuse of power.

2. Legitimacy Drift

Description: The legitimacy of decisions becomes fluid because different grounds pull in different directions. What is valid for an individual may conflict with collective, political, or religious demands.

Deepening: When religious principles become law and politics becomes dogmatic, double legitimacy arises: what is "true" religiously may be enforced by the state regardless of individual consent.

Risk: People may experience decisions as illegitimate despite being formally binding, increasing social tension and the risk of civil disobedience.

3. Decision Confusion

Description: When multiple grounds pull in different directions, uncertainty arises about which rules, values, or priorities apply.

Deepening: The religious-political totality makes it difficult to distinguish between what is legal, moral, and voluntary. Individuals must navigate between coercive religious norms and dogmatically issued political directives.

Risk: The ability for rational and ethical decision-making deteriorates; decisions may be delayed or become inconsistent.

4. Moral Double Structures

Description: The individual may need to follow one morality in one context and another in a different context.

Deepening: Religious demands, when politicized, force people to justify actions both against religious doctrine and political regulation, creating inner conflict and potential hypocrisy.

Risk: Psychological stress, fragmented identity, and reduced credibility in both social and institutional contexts.

5. Contradictory Motives for Action

Description: When different grounds compete, contradictory reasons for the same action arise.

Deepening: With religious-political interaction, the individual may experience that the same action is both obligatory and condemned depending on the ground: for example, following the law = betraying personal faith, or following faith = breaking the state's demands.

Risk: Actions become inconsistent, planning is made difficult, and system stability is threatened.

6. Totalitarian Reinforcement of Uncertainty

Especially with the Religious ↔ Political Aspect: The combination of religious legitimacy and political dogmatic claim creates a powerful centralization of both norm and power. This reinforces all the above risks and can:

• make it almost impossible for the individual to exercise critical judgment
• transform normative guidelines into coercive institutions
• increase the risk of abuse of power and repressive structures

Overall Consequence of the Entire Setup

When these grounds are mixed without clear hierarchy, the following arise:

• shifting of responsibility
• legitimacy drift
• decision confusion
• moral double structures
• contradictory motives for action

The risks accumulate as responsibility is transferred, legitimacy shifts, decisions lose inner coherence, and actions are justified by incompatible grounds.

7. At the Bottom

Decisions are made – without it any longer being clear from which ground they actually derive their validity.

When the religious and the political additionally interact, power and truth coincide, and this groundlessness is intensified and accelerated.

The Next Step Is to Test

What happens if one removes one ground at a time and sees what happens if only a single one remains and is allowed to carry all responsibility.

1. If we remove all Individual decisions

Decisions can no longer rest on:

• personal experiences
• will
• conscience
• perception
• first-person responsibility

What then remains is:

• collective norms
• systems
• structures
• roles

Consequence: No one can any longer, in a proper sense, be responsible – only functional. Decisions exist, but without inner anchoring.

2. If we remove the Collective

Decisions can no longer rest on:

• community
• tradition
• custom
• culture
• agreements

What then remains is:

• isolated individuals
• power structures
• economy
• private opinions

Consequence: No common validity can any longer arise. Decisions cannot be shared – only collide.

3. Remove the Political

Decisions can no longer rest on:

• law
• institutions
• representation
• legitimized power

What then remains is:

• private wills
• economic drives
• religious conceptions
• temporary agreements

Consequence: No formal boundary for coercion any longer exists. Power remains – but without recognized form.

4. Remove the Economic

Decisions can no longer rest on:

• allocation of resources
• cost
• profitability
• efficiency
• production/exchange

What then remains is:

• values
• belief grounds
• political will
• individual motives

Consequence: No decisions can any longer be implemented materially. All will becomes symbolic.

5. Remove the Religious

Decisions can no longer rest on:

• holiness
• ultimate meaning
• transcendence
• sacred order

What then remains is:

• power
• utility
• majority
• calculation
• preference

Consequence: No decision can any longer be sacred, only useful. Nothing can any longer be forbidden in itself.

6. Remove the Relative

Decisions can no longer adapt to:

• situation
• perspective
• circumstance
• interpretation
• change

What then remains is:

• fixed grounds
• unconditional claims
• non-negotiable frameworks

Consequence: All movement congeals. All change ceases to be legitimate.

7. Remove the Absolute

Decisions can no longer rest on:

• something unchanging
• something that applies independently of humanity
• something that cannot be negotiated away

What then remains is:

• individual
• collective
• political
• economic
• religious
• relative

But all of these now in turn become relative.

Consequence: No decision can any longer be necessary in itself. All validity becomes temporary. All accountability becomes negotiable.

When Only the Most Sustainable Is to Remain

The test shows the following without introducing anything new:

Individual without the absolute → arbitrariness Collective without the absolute → majority power Political without the absolute → structure without ground Economic without the absolute → efficiency without meaning Religious without the absolute → symbol without bearing Relative without the absolute → dissolution

But:

The absolute can exist without the others. The others cannot sustain themselves without the absolute.

What Remains When Everything Is Tested Away

When all are removed one at a time according to this framework, only one ground remains that:

• is not relativized by the removals
• does not lose its validity when everything else falls
• does not need to be legitimized by anything external

This is the absolute ground.

Testing Whether the Absolute Can Be Empty

We Now Test Whether the Absolute Can Be Empty at All, and What Happens If the Absolute Is Identified with Existence, Essence, or Phenomenon – Exactly One at a Time.

1. Can the Absolute be empty?
2. Does any necessity arise if one begins with the concept of Absolute Existence?

1. Test: Can the Absolute Be Empty?

If the Absolute is assumed to be:

• without content
• without determination
• without properties
• without being

then only the word "Absolute" remains without reference.

But:

An Absolute that is empty cannot be a ground for anything. An Absolute that carries nothing cannot carry decisions. An Absolute without Existence cannot even function as a starting point, because a starting point already presupposes that something is.

Consequence of this test: An empty Absolute ceases to be Absolute in a functional sense. It then becomes only a linguistic shell without necessary bearing.

Therefore:

• In its emptiness it loses its ground function.
• It can no longer be a starting point in any real sense.

2. Test: If One Begins with Absolute Existence

This already means, in the concept itself:

• Existence that is not dependent on anything else
• Existence that cannot cease
• Existence that is not conditioned
• Existence that is not relative

Here a necessity arises directly from the concept itself, not through interpretation:

If Existence is Absolute → it cannot be temporary If Existence is Absolute → it cannot be reduced to anything else If Existence is Absolute → it cannot be empty, because emptiness would then be its content and thus its condition

Consequence:

Absolute Existence cannot be:

• nothingness
• emptiness
• absence

It must be actual Existence, otherwise the concept cancels itself.

Difference Revealed by the Test:

An Absolute without Existence → collapses as a ground An Absolute that is Existence → becomes a necessary ground

Emptiness functions logically only as absence in relation to something that is. It therefore cannot itself be the Absolute.

Result of This Specific Test:

An empty Absolute is not sustainable as a starting point. Absolute Existence contains a necessity through its own meaning.

Thereby a ground arises that cannot be relativized without cancelling itself.

Must Absolute Existence Necessarily Have an Essence?

Must Absolute Existence Necessarily Have an Essence, and Can Phenomenon at All Arise from Absolute Existence Without Introducing Any Additional Assumption?

1. Test: Must Absolute Existence Have an Essence?

Starting point: Absolute Existence = Existence that is unconditional, not dependent on anything else, not relative.

If Absolute Existence lacks Essence: Then:

• It is, but is nothing specific.
• It exists, but without determination, without nature, without a way of being.

Consequence:

Then there is no difference between: that it is and that it is anything whatsoever

It then becomes exactly equal to pure indeterminacy.

But: Pure indeterminacy cannot be distinguished from emptiness in terms of determination.

And then the same problem arises as before:

There is nothing that is this rather than something else.

• Nothing can be distinguished.
• Nothing can appear.

Thus:

• Absolute Existence without Essence is formally empty with regard to determination.
• It therefore cannot function as a ground for anything determinate.
• It cannot explain the emergence of anything with distinct character.

If Absolute Existence has Essence: Then:

• Existence is something determinate.
• It has its own way of being.
• It is not only that it is, but how it is.

Consequence: Then there is a ground for:

• difference
• form
• direction
• the possibility of manifestation

Thus:

• If Absolute Existence is to be more than empty presence, it must have some form of Essence.

Result of the First Test: Absolute Existence can be conceived without Essence, but then it becomes incapable of carrying determination, difference, and emergence.

Thereby a logical necessity appears:

If anything at all is to be this and not something else, Existence must have Essence.

2. Test: Can Any Phenomenon Arise Without Essence – Directly from Absolute Existence?

Now only this is presupposed:

• Absolute Existence
• but no Essence

The question is:

Can Phenomenon nevertheless arise directly from this?

What is a Phenomenon in this test? At a minimum it requires:

• something that appears
• something that can be distinguished
• something that shows how something is

But:

If no Essence exists → there is no how. If no how exists → there is only that it is, but nothing that can show itself as something determinate.

Then it follows:

A Phenomenon without Essence would be:

• appearance without form
• difference without ground
• experience without something experientially given

This is a logical contradiction.

Therefore:

• Phenomena cannot arise from pure Existence without Essence.
• Phenomena always require that something is in a certain way.
• That "certain way" is exactly what is meant by Essence.

Combined Consequence of Both Tests

Without introducing anything new, your test shows:

Absolute Existence without Essence becomes formally empty with regard to determination.

Phenomena cannot arise from such empty Existence.

Essence therefore emerges as a necessary mediating level between Existence and Phenomenon.

This is not an addition – it is the logical consequence of a test.