An open philosophy
for a continuing
humanity.
The Continuance is a philosophy developed by Martin Rothery. It asks what consciousness, responsibility, grief and the things we leave behind mean for the way we live now. Read the ideas, argue with them, use what proves useful, and bring your own judgement.
but a continuance.
Explore the Continuance
Mystery matters here. So does what we do with our lives.
Consciousness, meaning and the possibility of continuance matter here. So does the discipline of not turning mystery into proof.
Why The Continuance exists →Consciousness
Consciousness is treated as fundamental to reality. How that is so remains uncertain.
Consequences
No life is isolated. What we do travels into relationships, institutions and generations.
Uncertainty
Private experience may matter deeply without becoming public evidence or authority over another person.
Personal agency
You do not have to surrender your judgement, your boundaries or your right to leave in order to belong.
You are not required to manufacture certainty.
There is room here for unusual experience, scepticism, grief, scientific inquiry and the possibility that the most honest answer is still, “I do not know.” No interpretation is beyond question.
Experience may be real; interpretation is human and fallible.
Read the difficult questions →What is worth carrying forward?
The Continuance gives people room to explore life, death and what may follow without demanding certainty. Reason matters. Experience matters. So does the freedom to say, “I do not know.”
Find clear, accessible introductions to the ideas and texts.
Community without rank, ownership or enforced agreement.
Practices that enlarge ordinary daily life when life needs enlarging or steadied.
Thirty-four books with plenty of human life in them.
The Common Books are thirty-four works of imaginative literature, organised into nine volumes. They contain creation stories, households, journeys, rulers, rebellion, war, law, work, ageing, dying, songs, letters, disputes and mistakes. These are literary worlds for thinking with, rather than evidence of a lost religious history.
The books disagree with one another. That is deliberate. Human experience seldom fits a single tidy answer.
Most of it happens on ordinary days.
The Continuance is meant to be lived in kitchens, on walks, around tables, in grief, in celebration and in the choices people make when nobody is watching.
“We are part of a larger story. And the story continues.”
The Continuance does not promise certainty. It asks what kind of life becomes possible when mystery is allowed to remain mystery, while responsibility remains real.
You do not need to begin with thirty-four books.
Start with the essentials. Read a little. Ask difficult questions. Try a simple practice. Then decide for yourself whether there is anything here you want to continue.
The introductory PDF is free. The Common Books and other Continuance books are available separately.
You can read, question, disagree, stay or leave. Your judgement remains your own.