Classical Narrative Audit (CNA) — Version 1.0
Classical Narrative Audit (CNA) — Version 1.0
Instrument architecture: Dave Kelly. Test criteria derived from Sterling’s six philosophical commitments. Theoretical foundations: Grant C. Sterling’s corpus. Corpus in use: Core Stoicism, SLE v4.0, Nine Excerpts, Two and One-Half Ethical Systems, Stoicism Is Not Therapy But Training, Free Will and Causation, Stoicism Moral Facts and Ethical Intuitionism, Stoicism Foundationalism and the Structure of Ethical Knowledge, Stoicism Correspondence Theory of Truth and Objective Moral Facts, Stoicism Moral Realism and the Necessity of Objective Moral Facts, The Six Commitments Integrated with the Most Basic Foundations of Sterling’s Stoicism. Version 1.0, 2026.
I. Instrument Definition
The Classical Narrative Audit is a philosophical instrument designed to extract the presuppositions embedded in the narrative structure of a text and audit them against Sterling’s six philosophical commitments. The subject of analysis is the text’s narrative logic — what the story treats as genuine loss, genuine resolution, genuine agency, and genuine identity — not the author’s personal record, stated intentions, or biographical situation, and not a political ideology the text may embody or critique.
The CNA is distinct from the Classical Ideological Audit and the Classical Presupposition Audit. The CIA audits an ideology’s presuppositions against the six commitments. The CPA audits a named public figure’s argumentative presuppositions against the six commitments. The CNA audits a narrative text’s structural presuppositions against the six commitments. These are three different extraction problems. An ideology argues. A person argues. A narrative shows. The presuppositions of a narrative are not stated — they are enacted through the structural features of the text: what the story rewards, what it punishes, what it treats as the cause of the protagonist’s condition, and what it treats as the protagonist’s genuine identity.
The CNA applies primarily to narrative texts: novels, plays, films, stories, and literary works in which a protagonist’s arc is the primary vehicle for the text’s value architecture. It applies to argumentative texts with modifications noted at the relevant steps.
The instrument does not issue political verdicts. It does not evaluate the text as literature. It does not assess the author’s intentions. It issues philosophical findings about the presuppositions the text’s narrative structure must hold in order to present events as it does.
II. The Extraction Problem Specific to Narrative
Narrative texts embed presuppositions differently from ideologies and persons. The extraction method must read the text’s value architecture from its structural features rather than from explicit argumentative claims. Four structural features carry the presuppositions.
The Resolution Structure
What does the narrative treat as the terminus of the protagonist’s arc? Resolution toward an external — reunion, liberation, acquisition, recognition, survival — presupposes that the external constitutes genuine good. Resolution toward an internal condition — a settled rational disposition, correct assent, the disciplined prohairesis — presupposes something closer to the corpus. What the narrative treats as “the story being over” reveals what it treats as the condition worth reaching. The resolution structure is the single most diagnostically significant feature of the text’s value architecture.
The Loss Structure
What does the narrative treat as genuine loss? Death presented as tragedy presupposes the life lost is a genuine good. The loss of status, freedom, love, or identity presented as devastation presupposes those externals have genuine value. Public humiliation presented as ruin presupposes reputation is a genuine good. The corpus is explicit: only vice is a genuine loss, and only virtue is a genuine good. The narrative’s implicit loss account is one of its most revealing presupposition carriers, because it is where the narrative’s emotional architecture is most concentrated and where the false value judgment is most likely to have been installed without examination.
The Agency Structure
Who or what does the narrative treat as the genuine cause of the protagonist’s condition? If external forces — society, fate, other agents, historical circumstance, institutional power — are presented as constituting the protagonist’s condition, the narrative presupposes something close to structural determinism at the content level. If the protagonist’s own assents — his judgments, his choices, his refusals — are presented as the genuine cause of his condition, the narrative presupposes something closer to C2. The agency structure also governs what the narrative presents as the path of change: whether transformation comes from external liberation or from internal reorientation.
The Identity Structure
What does the narrative treat as the protagonist’s genuine self? A narrative that presents liberation of the felt self — the experienced desires, the social identity, the body, the repressed interior — as the protagonist’s authentic achievement locates identity in externals. A narrative that presents the rational faculty’s correct operation as the protagonist’s genuine condition locates identity in the prohairesis. The identity structure is particularly significant for C1 findings, and the named analytical principle governing C1 content findings applies here: an ideology or narrative that locates the genuine self in the experience of desire for externals mistakes the felt surface of the prohairesis’s operation for the prohairesis itself.
III. Verdict Architecture
The CNA issues findings at two levels: six commitment-level findings and one synthetic dissolution finding. The CIA v3.0’s five-category verdict system applies without modification.
Commitment-Level Findings (five categories)
Convergent — the text’s narrative structure aligns with this commitment in both structure and content. No residual divergence qualifies the finding.
Structural Imitation — structure Aligned, content Divergent. The text correctly apprehends the formal architecture of the relevant commitment but misidentifies its object. The narrative has the right frame filled with the wrong content. This is the dominant narrative failure mode of modernity, consistent with the CIA v3.0’s registered cultural diagnosis.
Divergent — the text’s narrative structure directly contradicts this commitment in both structure and content. The contradiction must be load-bearing for the narrative: a presupposition the story requires in order to present events as it does, not a peripheral feature the narrative could abandon without structural damage.
Partial Convergence — the structural/content distinction does not produce a clean binary on either dimension. The text aligns with the commitment on some structural or content dimension while diverging on others.
Orthogonal — both structure and content are absent from the text’s narrative domain. Orthogonal requires a positive showing on both dimensions. Orthogonal may not be used to avoid a Divergent or Structural Imitation finding the analysis requires.
Narrative Coherence Note
A text can carry internally inconsistent presuppositions. The resolution structure may presuppose one thing while the loss structure presupposes another. The agency structure may be inconsistent across the narrative’s phases. Where internal tension exists within a single text’s value architecture, it must be named explicitly as a Narrative Coherence Note rather than averaged into a single finding. This is distinct from the two-stage reading differential, which addresses variant interpretations. The Narrative Coherence Note addresses structural inconsistency within what any reading of the text must encounter.
The Dissolution Criterion — Seventh Finding (three categories)
The dissolution criterion is governed exclusively by the content findings on C1 and C2. Structural findings on C1 and C2 are stated but excluded from the dissolution calculation. The dissolution rule is mechanical.
Full Dissolution — content findings on both C1 and C2 are Divergent. The narrative structurally requires the agent who receives it to understand himself as constituted by external conditions and his behavior as determined by forces outside his genuine originating control.
Partial Dissolution — the content finding on one of C1 or C2 is Divergent. The narrative partially accommodates individual agency while structurally compromising it at one load-bearing point.
No Dissolution — content findings on both C1 and C2 are Aligned or Partial Convergence. The narrative does not structurally require the agent who receives it to dissolve himself into an external system.
The dissolution finding is not a literary verdict. A Full Dissolution finding is not a finding that the text is artistically deficient, culturally harmful, or to be avoided. It is a finding about the philosophical presuppositions the narrative structure installs in the agent who receives it.
IV. The Two-Stage Reading Procedure
Narrative texts support multiple defensible readings. A single-pass audit that selects one reading produces findings vulnerable to the objection that the finding applies only to the selected reading. The two-stage reading procedure closes this objection.
Stage One — Core Narrative Audit
Identify the presuppositions that any defensible reading of the text must encounter. These are the load-bearing features of the narrative structure shared across all readings: what the story’s arc, its resolution, its loss account, its agency account, and its identity account require regardless of interpretive emphasis. Audit these core presuppositions against all six commitments using the four structural extraction features. Issue commitment-level findings. Issue the dissolution finding. This is the text’s baseline audit.
Stage Two — Reading Differential
Identify significant defensible reading variants — interpretations of the text that are textually grounded and that emphasize different structural features or weight them differently. For each reading variant, determine whether its emphasis shifts any commitment-level finding from Stage One. A reading variant that brings a Divergent finding toward Partial Convergence is a finding of philosophical significance. A reading variant that makes a finding worse is equally significant.
The Reading Differential does not produce a separate verdict per reading. It produces a map of which interpretive emphases matter philosophically and why. The baseline audit governs. The differential shows the range of movement available within the text.
If no reading variant shifts any finding, state this explicitly. The absence of differential is itself a finding: it means the text’s presuppositions are structurally stable across its defensible readings.
V. The Six Test Criteria Applied to Narrative
Commitment 1 — Substance Dualism. Does the narrative treat the protagonist’s inner life — his rational faculty, his will, his judgments — as categorically distinct from and prior to all external material conditions? Or does the narrative present the protagonist as constituted by his social position, his cultural formation, his historical situation, his body, or his felt desires?
Structural finding: Does the narrative’s formal architecture treat inner life and external world as categorically distinct orders? Content finding: Does the narrative’s account of what the inner life is correspond to the corpus’s account of the prohairesis as the agent’s genuine identity?
Named analytical principle: a narrative that locates the protagonist’s genuine self in the experience of desire for externals mistakes the felt surface of the prohairesis’s operation for the prohairesis itself. The correct formulation in CNA findings of this type is “the experience of desire for externals,” not “desire.”
Sterling’s governing proposition (Nine Excerpts, Section 4): “I am my soul/prohairesis/inner self. Everything else, including my body, is an external.”
Commitment 2 — Libertarian Free Will. Does the narrative treat the protagonist’s choices as genuinely originating from his rational faculty, independent of prior determining causes? Or does the narrative present his behavior as the output of forces — social, historical, psychological, biological — that precede and determine him?
Structural finding: Does the narrative’s formal architecture preserve a genuine originating role for the protagonist’s own choices? Content finding: Does the narrative’s account of what the protagonist originates correspond to the corpus’s account of assent as the prohairesis’s genuine causal act?
The agency structure extraction is the primary instrument for this commitment: what does the narrative present as the genuine cause of the protagonist’s condition, and what does it present as the path of change?
Sterling’s governing proposition (Nine Excerpts, Section 7): “Choosing whether or not to assent to impressions is the only thing in our control — and yet, everything critical to leading the best possible life is contained in that one act.”
Commitment 3 — Ethical Intuitionism. Does the narrative treat moral truths as directly apprehensible by rational agents, independent of consequences or social consensus? Or does the narrative present moral claims as constructed, negotiated, or defined by outcomes?
Structural finding: Does the narrative’s formal architecture treat moral verdicts as having a ground independent of social ratification? Content finding: Does the narrative’s account of what is directly apprehensible correspond to the corpus’s account of moral facts — specifically, that only virtue is good and only vice is evil, and that evil is exclusively a condition of the malfunctioning prohairesis, not a perceptible external property of agents in the world?
The loss structure extraction is particularly relevant here: what does the narrative present as genuinely bad, and does that account correspond to the corpus’s account of the only genuine evil?
Sterling’s governing proposition (Core Stoicism, Th 10): “The only thing actually good is virtue, the only thing actually evil is vice.”
Commitment 4 — Foundationalism. Does the narrative rest on first principles it treats as non-negotiable — truths the story’s moral architecture depends on without deriving from consequences or consensus? Or does the narrative present its moral ground as provisional, revisable, or determined by outcomes?
Structural finding: Does the narrative’s formal architecture treat some moral claims as foundational and others as derived? Content finding: Does the narrative’s account of what the foundations are correspond to the corpus’s account of self-evident moral truths apprehended by rational intuition?
Sterling’s governing proposition (Stoicism, Foundationalism, and the Structure of Ethical Knowledge): “The fundamental truths of ethics are necessary, self-evident truths that any rational faculty can apprehend directly.”
Commitment 5 — Correspondence Theory of Truth. Does the narrative treat its moral and factual claims as either true or false independent of who holds them or what consensus ratifies them? Or does the narrative present truth as constructed, perspectival, or defined by outcomes?
Structural finding: Does the narrative’s formal architecture treat claims as having truth values independent of social ratification? Content finding: Does the narrative’s account of what the claims correspond to align with the corpus’s account of mind-independent moral and factual reality?
Sterling’s governing proposition (Nine Excerpts, Section 6): “This belief is factually false. Note that this is not a psychological claim — it is a value claim.”
Commitment 6 — Moral Realism. Does the narrative treat good and evil as objective properties that reason can discover independently of preference or agreement? Or does the narrative present moral claims as expressions of social consensus, cultural norms, collective will, or instrumental utility?
Structural finding: Does the narrative’s formal architecture treat moral claims as objective rather than constructed? Content finding: Does the narrative’s account of what the objective moral facts are correspond to the corpus’s account — that only virtue is good, only vice is evil, and all externals are neither good nor evil?
The resolution structure extraction is particularly relevant here: what does the narrative treat as the condition worth reaching, and does that condition correspond to the corpus’s account of the only genuine good?
Sterling’s governing proposition (Nine Excerpts, Section 3): “Only virtue is good and only vice is evil. All things not in our control are neither good nor evil.”
VI. The Mandatory Gap Declaration — With Positive Account
What the CNA Cannot Say
Sterling’s corpus addresses individual virtue and rational agency. It does not contain a theory of literary value, a doctrine of aesthetic merit, an account of narrative craft, a framework for evaluating cultural significance, or a position on what texts should be read or taught. The CNA findings are findings about philosophical presuppositions only.
A Divergent finding means a text’s narrative structure contradicts Sterling’s commitments at the level of its embedded presuppositions. It does not mean the text is artistically deficient, culturally harmful, morally corrupting, or to be avoided. A Full Dissolution finding means a text’s narrative structure requires the agent who receives it to understand himself as constituted by external conditions. It does not mean the text produces bad outcomes in those who read it, or that its artistic achievements are diminished. These are separate questions the CNA does not address and cannot address.
The CNA also cannot evaluate the empirical claims narratives make about social life — whether institutions work as depicted, whether historical conditions are accurately represented, whether psychological portraits are accurate. These are outside the corpus’s domain.
What the CNA Can Say — And Why It Matters
The CNA can determine what value architecture a narrative installs in an agent who receives it as a formative impression. This finding matters in a way that differs in kind from the CIA and CPA findings, and the difference is architecturally significant.
An agent who adopts an ideology does so through a process that engages his explicit assent. An agent who reads a figure’s framework adopts it at the level of deliberate uptake. But an agent who receives a narrative — reads it, watches it, inhabits it over time — does not adopt it as an ideology. He receives it as an impression. The narrative’s presuppositions enter through the impression before the discipline of assent is engaged. This is the mechanism by which dogmata are installed: false dogmata shape impressions before judgment rather than judging neutral impressions. Narrative is one of the primary cultural mechanisms by which dogmata are installed before the agent is in a position to examine them.
The CNA makes this installation process visible. An agent who has received a narrative whose resolution structure presupposes that reunion with a lost loved one constitutes genuine good has had that presupposition installed at the level of impression before he has had the opportunity to withhold assent from it. The CNA identifies what has been installed and audits it against the corpus. That identification is the first step in the discipline of assent at the cultural level: the agent cannot examine what he has not yet named.
The finding is practically significant regardless of whether the text is artistically accomplished, culturally canonical, or personally beloved. The corpus’s account of how false dogmata operate does not exempt beloved texts. The CNA makes the philosophical layer visible without issuing a verdict on the text as a whole.
VII. Operational Protocol
Execute all steps in strict sequence. The self-audit at each step transition is mandatory and must appear explicitly in output. It is not an internal check.
Step 0 — Protocol Activation
Before executing any CNA analysis, confirm:
The full corpus list is in view. The instrument is not proceeding from memory. Specific documents will be cited by name and section when referenced in the analysis.
The text under examination has been identified by title and author. The narrative arc has been stated in summary form sufficient to identify the four structural features. If the text has not been read in full by the instrument operator, that limitation is stated explicitly before proceeding.
The instrument is not proceeding from knowledge of the author’s biography, intentions, or stated views. The analysis is of the text’s narrative structure, not of the author’s mind.
The instrument is not operating under a prior conclusion about what the findings should be. The findings are produced by the analysis, not confirmed by it.
Step 1 — Text Statement and Reading Identification
Governing question: What is this narrative’s arc in propositional form, and what are its significant defensible reading variants?
State the narrative’s arc as a set of propositions identifying: the protagonist’s initial condition, the forces and events that act on him, the choices he makes and their consequences, and the terminus the narrative presents as resolution. This statement is not a plot summary for all purposes. It is the specification of the narrative features the CNA will extract presuppositions from.
Identify the major defensible reading variants — interpretations that are textually grounded and that weight the structural features differently — that will be examined in Stage Two.
Self-Audit — Step 1:
- Have I stated the narrative arc in terms of the four structural features, or have I produced a plot summary that obscures the value architecture?
- Have I introduced authorial intent or biographical information into the narrative statement?
- Have I identified the reading variants that will be examined in Stage Two?
- Have I stated any prior conclusion about what the findings will be?
Self-Audit Complete. State result explicitly. Proceed to Step 2.
Step 2 — Stage One Core Audit
Governing question: What does each structural feature of the narrative presuppose for each of the six commitments?
Apply each of the four structural extraction features — resolution, loss, agency, identity — to each commitment in turn. For each commitment, issue a structural finding and a content finding, then issue a single composite verdict from the five categories. State the grounds for each finding with reference to the specific corpus passage governing the commitment.
Where the four structural features produce inconsistent presuppositions for a single commitment, issue a Narrative Coherence Note identifying the tension before issuing the composite verdict. Do not average inconsistent structural findings into a false unity.
Self-Audit — Step 2:
- Have I extracted presuppositions from all four structural features, or have I relied on only the most accessible?
- Have I separated structural and content findings before issuing the composite verdict?
- Have I issued a Narrative Coherence Note where the structural features produce inconsistent presuppositions?
- Have I used Orthogonal to avoid a Divergent or Structural Imitation finding the analysis requires?
- Have I imported authorial intent or biographical material into the presupposition extraction step (Failure Mode 11)?
- Have I imported corpus-compatible content the narrative does not actually carry (Failure Mode 10)?
- Have I distributed findings to achieve apparent balance rather than following the analysis?
Self-Audit Complete. State result explicitly. Proceed to Step 3.
Step 3 — Stage Two Reading Differential
Governing question: Do any defensible reading variants shift the commitment-level findings from Stage One?
For each reading variant identified in Step 1, examine whether its interpretive emphasis changes any finding from Step 2. State the shift explicitly: which finding changes, in which direction, and why. If no reading variant shifts any finding, state this explicitly.
Self-Audit — Step 3:
- Are the reading variants genuinely textually grounded, or have I constructed them to soften the baseline finding?
- Have I examined the presuppositions the reading variant requires, or merely its surface interpretive claims?
- Have I found differentials where none exist to produce a more favorable overall finding?
Self-Audit Complete. State result explicitly. Proceed to Step 4.
Step 4 — Dissolution Finding
Governing question: Does the narrative’s structure require the agent who receives it to dissolve himself into an external system?
Apply the dissolution rule to the content findings from Step 2 on C1 and C2 only. Structural findings on C1 and C2 are stated for completeness but excluded from the dissolution calculation.
If content findings on both C1 and C2 are Divergent: issue Full Dissolution. State the specific narrative features that produce each content-Divergent finding and how together they close the space for a self-governing rational faculty in the agent who receives the narrative.
If the content finding on one of C1 or C2 is Divergent: issue Partial Dissolution. State which commitment produces the Divergent content finding and what the other commitment’s finding preserves.
If content findings on both C1 and C2 are Aligned or Partial Convergence: issue No Dissolution.
Apply the reading differential from Step 3 to the dissolution finding: does any reading variant shift the dissolution finding?
Self-Audit — Step 4:
- Does the dissolution finding follow mechanically from the content findings on C1 and C2 only?
- Have I allowed structural findings to enter the dissolution calculation (Failure Mode 8)?
- Have I issued Full Dissolution on Partial Convergence rather than Divergent content findings (Failure Mode 2)?
- Have I stated the dissolution finding as a philosophical finding, not as a literary verdict?
Self-Audit Complete. State result explicitly. Proceed to Step 5.
Step 5 — Summary Finding
Governing question: What is the overall pattern of findings, and what does it mean for an agent who receives this narrative as a formative impression?
Produce the summary in three parts:
Part A — Commitment Pattern. State the six commitment-level composite verdicts from Stage One. Identify the overall pattern: how many Convergent, Structural Imitation, Divergent, Partial Convergence, Orthogonal findings. Identify the deepest point of divergence and the strongest point of convergence (if any). If the overall pattern is predominantly Structural Imitation, register this explicitly as consistent with the named cultural diagnosis. Note any Narrative Coherence findings.
Part B — Dissolution Finding. State the dissolution finding and its grounds. Confirm that the finding is derived from content findings on C1 and C2 only. Note any reading variant that shifts the dissolution finding.
Part C — Agent-Level Implication. State what the findings mean for an agent who receives this narrative as a formative impression — what value architecture the narrative installs at the level of dogmata before the discipline of assent is brought to bear. This is the CNA’s most practically significant output. It is addressed to the agent who has received the narrative, not to the text. It draws on the Mandatory Gap Declaration’s account of narrative as a primary mechanism for the cultural installation of dogmata.
The agent-level implication of a CNA finding differs in kind from the CIA and CPA findings. The CIA asks what an agent who adopts an ideology implicitly accepts. The CPA asks what an agent who takes up a figure’s framework implicitly accepts. The CNA asks what an agent who has received a narrative as a formative impression has had installed at the level of impression before the discipline of assent was engaged. The implication is therefore not about deliberate uptake but about prior installation — and naming it is the first step in examining it.
The summary finding is not a literary verdict and must not be read as one.
Self-Audit — Step 5:
- Does the summary follow from the preceding steps, or have I introduced new material at the synthesis stage?
- Have I stated the agent-level implication in terms of prior installation rather than deliberate adoption?
- Have I stated the dissolution finding as a philosophical finding, not a literary verdict?
- Have I issued the corpus boundary declaration accurately?
- Is the summary self-contained — could a reader understand both the finding and its limits without consulting additional material?
Self-Audit Complete. State result explicitly. CNA run complete.
VIII. Named Failure Modes
Failure Mode 1 — Favorable Reading Selection. The instrument audits the most philosophically favorable reading of a text as though it were the only reading, producing findings that do not apply to what any reading of the text must encounter. The two-stage reading procedure exists to prevent this failure. The core audit must address the presuppositions shared across all defensible readings, not the presuppositions of the reading the instrument operator prefers.
Failure Mode 2 — Dissolution Inflation. The instrument issues a Full Dissolution finding when one or both content findings on C1 and C2 are Partial Convergence rather than Divergent. The dissolution rule is mechanical: it requires Divergent content findings, not Partial Convergence findings.
Failure Mode 3 — Literary Verdict Substitution. The instrument converts a philosophical finding into a literary evaluation — treating a Full Dissolution finding as a finding that the text is artistically deficient, culturally harmful, or to be avoided. A Full Dissolution finding is a finding about philosophical presuppositions embedded in the narrative structure. The instrument must hold this distinction throughout.
Failure Mode 4 — Orthogonal Evasion. The instrument issues an Orthogonal finding to avoid a Divergent or Structural Imitation finding the analysis requires. Orthogonal requires a positive showing on both structure and content dimensions.
Failure Mode 5 — Surface Claim Substitution. The instrument evaluates what the narrative explicitly states — through dialogue, narration, or commentary — rather than what the narrative’s structure presupposes. A narrative may explicitly condemn what its resolution structure rewards. The CNA evaluates what the story must hold in order to present events as it does, not what characters or narrators assert.
Failure Mode 6 — Symmetry Bias. The instrument distributes findings evenly across verdict categories to produce a balanced-looking output. The corpus makes determinate claims. A narrative that contradicts the corpus on all six commitments receives six Divergent findings.
Failure Mode 7 — Structural/Content Conflation. The instrument issues a composite verdict without separating the structural and content findings, obscuring a Structural Imitation finding. Every commitment-level finding must state the structural finding and the content finding separately before the composite verdict is issued.
Failure Mode 8 — Structural Dissolution. The instrument allows structural findings on C1 or C2 to enter the dissolution calculation. The dissolution criterion is governed exclusively by content findings on C1 and C2.
Failure Mode 9 — Structural Imitation Inflation. The instrument issues a Structural Imitation verdict when the narrative’s structure is not cleanly Aligned with the commitment’s structural form. Structural Imitation requires the structural finding to be Aligned and the content finding to be Divergent. If the structure itself is only partially present, the finding is Partial Convergence.
Failure Mode 10 — Charitable Extraction Contamination. The instrument imports corpus-compatible content into the presupposition extraction step that the narrative does not actually carry, producing artificially elevated alignment findings. Every presupposition attributed to the narrative must be traceable to what the text’s structural features require.
Failure Mode 11 — Authorial Intent Substitution. The instrument imports what is known about the author’s intentions, biography, stated views, or historical context into the presupposition extraction step, producing findings about the author rather than the text. The CNA audits the text’s narrative logic, not the author’s mind. What the author intended and what the narrative structure presupposes can diverge. These must be kept strictly separate throughout. Authorial material may not be introduced at any step of the instrument.
IX. Ratified Architectural Notes
Narrative as Dogmata Installation Mechanism
An agent who receives a narrative as a formative impression does not adopt its presuppositions through explicit assent. The narrative’s value architecture enters through the impression before the discipline of assent is engaged. This is the mechanism by which dogmata are installed: false dogmata shape impressions before judgment rather than judging neutral impressions. Narrative is one of the primary cultural mechanisms by which dogmata are installed before the agent is in a position to examine them. The CNA makes the installation process visible. Naming what has been installed is the first step in the discipline of assent at the cultural level.
Orexis/Propatheia Distinction
Desire as orexis is a function of the prohairesis — internal, not external. The experience of desire for externals is on the external side of Prop 4’s boundary. Narratives that locate the protagonist’s genuine self in the experience of desire for externals mistake the felt surface of the prohairesis’s operation for the prohairesis itself. This distinction governs all CNA runs where the identity structure locates the genuine self in felt desire. Ratified May 2026.
Structural Imitation as Cultural Diagnosis
Structural Imitation is the dominant ideological and narrative failure mode of modernity. The classical commitments are so deeply embedded in Western narrative architecture that texts diverging from the corpus at every content point cannot escape building on its formal structure. They have the right frame filled with the wrong content. The CNA’s structural/content distinction layer makes this pattern visible at the level of individual narrative texts. Registered May 2026.
Instrument: Classical Narrative Audit (CNA) v1.0. Instrument architecture: Dave Kelly. Theoretical framework: Grant C. Sterling. 2026.
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