The Place of Judgment
判断力的位置
The Prequel and the nine main papers of this series have been published. They are about what a person standing before a decision is doing: two negations, not-doing and cannot-not-doing; a cannot-not that hangs on conditions, rather than ought; judgment, which the person completes himself and which cannot be done by rules in his place; and the two lines that run through the whole series, holding to anti-colonization inwardly and striving for cultivation outwardly. This paper lays down no propositions. It does four things. First it steps outside the nine papers and has this machine give an account of itself: what it asks and what it does not ask, what its sentence form and its domain are, and where judgment is placed. Then it interfaces with traditions, at two depths: full conversations with Aristotle, Kant, Williams and Frankfurt, Korsgaard, the Stoics, Wang Yangming, the Analects, the ethics of care and Hirschman; adjacent placement only for the analytic philosophy of action. In each conversation it writes only how the two illuminate each other, and for each point of contact it writes, it writes one difference that cannot be smoothed over; these differences mostly fall on three lines: whose measure it is; when "is it mine?" is decided; how the line not followed, and the time one did not manage it, are entered in the account. Next it settles the last forward assignment handed down from upstream, the place concerning the ethics of care that Value Theory ceded to this series, and hands over to the Second Critique, the Third Critique and the planned Theory of Government. Last, following the practice of Value Theory Paper 0, it registers in six slots the places where this series stops.
The title names the one thing this paper sets out to make clear: where judgment is placed in this series, and between which positions in the traditions it falls. It is not in rules, not with a practically wise person who passes verdicts in others' place, and not in an endorsement that a single reflection in the moment can complete; it is in the person standing before the decision, and it can be questioned, can be wrong, and can be looked back on afterward.
Introduction
This paper was written only after the nine papers were finished. A conversation can be had only once one's own object stands: only someone who knows what he himself is saying can tell where what others say differs from it (the same measure as Meaning Theory Paper 0, Introduction). The main texts of the nine papers name no outside theorists, and leave the traditions to this paper; this paper is exempt from that rule, and the other disciplines hold as before.
This paper lays down no propositions, makes no new demands on the reader, and changes no sentence of the nine papers. When it cites this series, it gives the paper and the proposition number; when it cites the schools, it says only what each holds and where, and gives the smallest checkable source. The schools are interlocutors, not premises of this series; this paper does not write of this series correcting anyone, nor of anyone anticipating this series. What it writes is this: where the two meet, whether they speak of the same thing, how far agreement goes, where they part, and the strongest objection from the other side, with this series' reply.
The sources of outside texts are registered, in four tiers, in the external-source table published with this paper. What has been confirmed in the original is quoted as it stands, with the original, the standard location and the translation used; what is in hand in the original but whose location has not been confirmed is quoted, with a note saying so; what has been confirmed only through reliable secondary sources is only paraphrased, with what it rests on stated; what could not be confirmed is not cited. English renderings of Greek, Latin, German and classical Chinese are this paper's own unless noted.
§1 What Kind of Machine This Is
§1.1 What It Asks
What this series asks is this: what is a person standing before a decision doing, in this matter? It asks in the first person, and it asks within its domain.
It does not ask what makes an event an action, and it does not write a causal metaphysics of action; nor is it a general psychology of action, asking how habits are formed or how emotions arise. The nine papers did not state these two sentences outright; this paper adds them here. The reason is that the objects differ. The first kind of question marks out the extension of "action": it asks under what conditions an event counts as something a person did, and its answer holds for every agent and is also meant to be checkable by every observer. This series asks what the few acts are that a person performs once he already stands before the matter, and its answer holds only for a person standing on the premise. The second kind of question asks about mechanisms. Paper 4 of this series writes about how body, emotion, capacity, habit and hesitation enter judgment (Paper 4, D19–D22), and writes only about their place once they have come in, not about how they arise. Both kinds of question have their own grounds; this series does not deny them, nor does it answer them on their behalf; at the point where it lies adjacent to the analytic philosophy of action, §8 will set out the division down to particular propositions. These adjacent questions have interfaces with this series, and an interface is not the same as a shared jurisdiction; §8 only locates the interfaces, and does not take these questions in as unfinished parts of this series.
Nor is it a decision procedure. There is no table into which reasons are entered and out of whose other end the action comes (Paper 1, §6). The Prequel said what it is not: not a success manual, not a list of correct conduct that fits everyone, not a call to mobilize issued by history to the individual, and not a proof that "if the heart is good, there is no call to look at how one actually treats others" (Prequel, §1).
§1.2 Sentence Form
When a person makes a decision on a matter, what he does is negate. Not-doing is the negation of doing something; cannot-not-doing is the negation of not doing something (Paper 1, D1, D2). Neither needs a goal affirmed beforehand; they are two acts, and neither follows from the other (D3).
A cannot-not always hangs on conditions (D5). This series does not write ought, and the reason is given in Paper 1, §4: ought, as a way of speaking, is itself a command, issued to a person from outside; even when the one issuing the command is his own reason, the sentence still has the shape of a command; and "I ought" cannot keep out a rule poured in from outside, since that rule can just as well be voiced as "I ought." Cannot not does not state a command; it states that something cannot be cancelled in this position. Every ought routed to this series from upstream is repaid, without exception, in cannot-not and in what is open either way (Prequel, §3); the stretch that is open either way is where a person's freedom lies.
§1.3 Domain
The premise is that oneself is an end, and others are ends too. This is the domain, stated only once: for a person who does not stand on this premise, this series does not hold, and it does not try to persuade him (Prequel, §4).
The domain is not an identity. A person can leave this position in a given matter; leaving goes matter by matter, and having left in this one matter does not mean he is from then on no longer a person who treats people as ends (Paper 1, §4). Only one thing is blocked: saying that he treats people as ends while cancelling it in the same matter; those two statements cannot sit together in one person (D5).
§1.4 Where Judgment Is Placed
Judgment cannot be done by rules in anyone's place: rules, facts, reasons and feelings can all enter a judgment, yet applying, weighing and taking up remain the work of the one who judges (D6). Any set of rules that tries to replace it still comes down, in the end, to a person judging whether it applies to the case in front of him (Paper 1, §5).
It has two layers (D5). The shared layer is mostly about how people are regarded, and cannot be cancelled while one stands on the premise. The case layer is mostly about what to do this time; it is the person's own judgment, can be questioned, can be revised, and may be obstructed in the doing, and two people who both treat people as ends can judge differently at this layer. Judging wrongly is possible; this series does not guarantee that anyone judges right (Conflict Treatise §3; Paper 1, §5). The feeling of whether something goes smoothly gives judgment a direction; it is only a clue, liable to be bent by habit; it does not prove that something issues from oneself, still less can it be used to judge others (D6).
After a judgment, three kinds of thing remain; only the kind that bears on what is to be done this time, yet lies outside what this time handles, is the remainder (D4). When two lines drawn collide, the one not followed is not cancelled by that, nor is "there was no choice" used to sign for it after the fact (D3).
The title is taken from this place. Judgment lies outside rules, outside anyone who passes verdicts in another's place, in the person himself; it can be questioned, can be wrong, and can be looked back on afterward. Nearly every one of the conversations with the schools below comes back to this question of where judgment is placed.
§1.5 The Two Lines
Hold to anti-colonization inwardly, strive for cultivation outwardly (Paper 2, D12). Anti-colonization, in action, begins as a not-doing: not doing what others use to colonize one, and not taking as one's own the views others use to colonize one; this not-doing does not need one to know first what one's own law is (D9). In recognizing one's own cannot-not-doing, one recognizes at the same time that another person's share can only be set by that person himself (D11). Outwardly, cultivation is a direction; it depends on the other person being willing to receive it, being suited to receive it, and the time being ripe, and these three cannot be answered in his place; if the timing, the person or the manner is wrong, cultivation may turn into a kind of colonization; so cultivation necessarily leaves a blank, and what is left is the other person's share: whether he accepts, how he judges, whether he changes, whether he leaves (Paper 6, D33, D34). These are the two lines that run through the whole series (Prequel, §7; Paper 9, §9).
§1.6 This Machine Is Itself One Construct
It stands on a premise that it does not prove any further down, and it stops at a few places where it has no tools to go further. These places are registered in §10; they do not count as dealt with just because this paper is a meta-paper.
§2 The Method of Interfacing
§2.1 The Four Steps
Each conversation takes four steps, following the practice of Meaning Theory Paper 0, §2.3. First, a checkable common question, or a surface of contact, is sought; where the two share something they refuse, that is stated, without requiring the two to hold the same negation. Next, whether the two speak of the same thing; many resemblances are only two words pointing at two things. Next, how far agreement goes, and where the two part. Last, the strongest objection from the other side, with this series' reply. This objection is mostly reconstructed by this paper: none of the schools addressed a theory that did not yet exist. This paper marks it as reconstructed, and tries as far as it can to let it touch the other side's strength. Some exchanges reach only "the other side asks why you do not do that, and this paper answers that it is not among the objects of this series"; that states a division of labor, not a completed objection and reply, and at such places this paper writes only the division of labor.
§2.2 Two Depths
§§3 to 7 hold nine units in all, and these take all four steps: Aristotle; Kant; Williams and Frankfurt; Korsgaard; the Stoics; Wang Yangming; the Analects; the ethics of care; Hirschman. §8, on the analytic philosophy of action, goes only as far as the division. This is not because it matters less, but because the two sides do not ask the same question, and the surface of contact is not yet wide enough to write the fourth step (see §8).
The nine units are arranged in five groups, in the order of the nine papers: judgment and sentence form (Paper 1); cannot-not and one's own law (Papers 1 to 3); can and cannot (Paper 4); cultivation (Paper 6); mixed reality (Papers 7 to 9). Paper 5, Developing One's Own Value, has no group of its own; its propositions appear in the conversation with Korsgaard. Where a school touches another paper, the paper and the proposition number are given on the spot.
§2.3 The Differences Fall on Three Lines
Once the nine conversations are written out, the differences turn out not to be scattered; they fall again and again on three lines. The three lines are set up here first; the later sections only point out which line a difference falls on.
The first line: whose measure it is. In quite a few traditions, the measure of whether this time was done right, or whether enough was given, is held by another party, or holds equally for others: the practically wise person; the trainer; the legislator; the teacher's diagnosis; the response of the one cared for, taken as the condition for whether a stretch of care counts as care; a set of rules that fixes an order of priority. This series leaves the three, being willing, being suited and the timing, on the other person's side (D34), and treats whether something goes smoothly only as a clue, not as something to judge others by (D6).
The second line: when "is it mine?" is decided. Identification, wholeheartedness, reflective endorsement and innate knowing mostly place the constitutive discrimination in the practical position of the present moment, though some of them also admit that the present is not transparent. This series says that when for a time one cannot tell, it is a real inability to tell, and hands the checking expressly to looking back afterward; looking back can be wrong, can itself be looked back on, and does not rewrite what has already happened (Paper 3, D16, D17).
The third line: how the line not followed, and the time one did not manage it, are entered in the account. One duty limits another, and the limited one drops out this time; lower-level principles in non-ideal circumstances grant a permission; the legitimacy of staying hangs on voice later on; one wishes for things to happen as they happen. This series: the line not followed is not cancelled by that (D3); disagreeing inwardly does not wash away actual participation (Paper 7, D39); the time one could not carry it does not erase the consequences (Paper 4, D24).
The three lines are this paper's generalization, not any school's own division, nor an exhaustive classification of the differences in the nine conversations. On which of them a school parts from this series is stated on the spot in each section; differences that do not fall on the three lines are likewise written down on the spot, and are not forced into a class.
§2.4 Sources
This paper cites outside texts in four tiers. A: the sentence and its location have been confirmed in a reliable original. B: the original is in hand, but the exact location or the exact wording has not been confirmed. C: confirmed only through reliable secondary literature. D: could not be confirmed. Tier A is quoted as it stands; tier B is quoted, with what is unconfirmed noted; tier C is only paraphrased, with the secondary source it rests on stated; tier D is not cited. Sentences that are often misquoted or misattributed are listed separately, in a section of their own in the external-source table, and are not used in the text.
§3 Judgment and Sentence Form
§3.1 Aristotle: Judgment in Particulars, and the Measure of the Practically Wise Person
The common question. Both ask: once rules have said all they can, how is this time judged? Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics that how far, and how much, a person may deviate from the mean before he deserves blame is not easy to mark off in words: "such things lie in particular cases, and the judgment rests with perception" (τὰ δὲ τοιαῦτα ἐν τοῖς καθʼ ἕκαστα, καὶ ἐν τῇ αἰσθήσει ἡ κρίσις; NE II.9, 1109b20–23; repeated at IV.5, 1126b2–4, in slightly different words). He also says that ethical discussion can seek only the precision its subject matter allows (I.3, 1094b23–25), and that practical wisdom is concerned not only with universals but also with particulars (VI.7, 1141b14–16). In this series, Paper 1, D6 says that judgment cannot be done by rules in anyone's place, and that applying, weighing and taking up remain the work of the one who judges. Both put the difficulty in particular cases, not in how many rules there are; this is the earliest, and also the steadiest, meeting between this paper and the tradition.
There is more than one point of contact. Aristotle says, "we are not unbribed judges of pleasure" (οὐ γὰρ ἀδέκαστοι κρίνομεν αὐτήν; II.9, 1109b7–9); this answers to the second half of D6: the feeling of whether something goes smoothly is only a clue, liable to be bent by habit. He says, "where doing is up to us, not doing is up to us too" (ἐν οἷς γὰρ ἐφʼ ἡμῖν τὸ πράττειν, καὶ τὸ μὴ πράττειν; III.5, 1113b6–8); this answers to Paper 1's writing of not-doing as an act (D1). He discusses the mixed action of throwing cargo overboard in a storm, and says that such actions are more like voluntary ones, because at that moment doing and not doing both lie with the agent (III.1, 1110a8–19); this answers to D3, "the one not followed is not cancelled by that," and to Paper 7, D39, "disagreeing inwardly does not wash away actual participation." He places the mean at the right times, about the right things, toward the right people, for the right end, and in the right way (τὸ δʼ ὅτε δεῖ καὶ ἐφʼ οἷς καὶ πρὸς οὓς καὶ οὗ ἕνεκα καὶ ὡς δεῖ; II.6, 1106b21–23), and says that one can miss in many ways but hit in only one (1106b28–33); this answers, item by item, to the timing, the person and the manner of Paper 6, D34.
Is it the same thing? Not entirely. The most important difference falls on the first line: whose measure it is. Aristotle defines virtue as a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us, "determined by reason, that is, as the practically wise person would determine it" (…ὡρισμένῃ λόγῳ καὶ ᾧ ἂν ὁ φρόνιμος ὁρίσειεν; II.6, 1106b36–1107a2); the good man is the "standard and measure" in each kind of thing (κανὼν καὶ μέτρον; III.4, 1113a29–33). This is a measure that holds equally for others: as the practically wise person judges, so you are to judge. This series does not take up this measure. D6 says that whether something goes smoothly cannot be used to judge others; Paper 6, D31 says that one does not see another person as an unfinished version of oneself; Paper 9, D56 says that one does not hand over one's judgment under "we decided together."
It is also worth seeing clearly who fixes the "relative to us." Aristotle's example is the trainer: an amount of food that is too little for Milo is too much for a beginner, and the trainer fixes the amount for each person (II.6, 1106a29–b7). The one who fixes the amount is the one who gives. Paper 6, D34 says that the three, being willing, being suited and the timing, lie on the other person's side and cannot be answered in his place; the "overshooting" it speaks of is reaching into the other person's share, not giving too much. So "going too far is as much a miss as falling short," which this series borrows (§6), is not another name for the mean: leaving a blank is not giving the right amount; what is left is the other person's share.
The third difference lies in habit. Aristotle says that legislators make citizens good by habituating them (οἱ γὰρ νομοθέται τοὺς πολίτας ἐθίζοντες ποιοῦσιν ἀγαθούς; II.1, 1103b3–5), and that upbringing is to be regulated by law (X.9, 1179b31–35). For him, habituation constitutes character. Paper 4, D20 says only that habit changes the cost of not-doing, and that a law is held in place by habit and is also swapped out within habit. Aristotle puts habituation arranged by the legislator into the mechanism by which virtue is formed; here this series parts from him. By Paper 6, D34, if some habituation in fact completed the learner's share in his place, and closed off his place to refuse or to change course, it would have overstepped the blank that cultivation leaves; this paper does not on that account equate the legislator's habituation with colonization; it only points out that the two structures differ over who completes that last step.
The fourth difference lies in the starting point. Aristotle's deliberation presupposes an end already affirmed; what is deliberated about is the way to reach it (III.3, 1112b11–12), and all pursuit points in the end to happiness. Neither of this series' two negations needs a goal affirmed beforehand (D1, D2); the comparing in D7 is done only within one matter, comparing risk, timing and feasibility, and does not presuppose a master scale across persons and across sources. This is not a repair of Aristotle; the starting points differ.
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as "judgment lies in particulars, and is made by the one who judges." Aristotle describes the person without self-control as like "a city that passes all the right decrees and has good laws, yet makes use of none of them" (VII.10, 1152a20–24); this answers to Paper 4's "the line is clear, and the person does not walk by it." But he judges lack of self-control to be a state of character, one that is "half-bad" (VII.10, 1152a17), and Paper 4 makes no such judgment: weakness cannot be judged from hesitation alone (D21).
One more point of wording is made plain here. One common English translation renders φρόνησις as prudence; the prudence of this series' Paper 1 means only comparison within one matter (Paper 1, §6), and judgment, too, is "not a special kind of cleverness" (Paper 1, §5). Neither is a translation of φρόνησις: φρόνησις goes together with the ethical virtues, looks to the good life as a whole, and is something the young do not yet have (VI.8, 1142a13–16); this series' judgment does not presuppose a character that has been formed.
The strongest objection from the other side (reconstructed by this paper). Without the outside measure of the practically wise person, "one's own law" cannot be told apart from caprice; if judgment belongs only to the person himself, there is no standard that can be learned, and none by which he can be corrected.
Reply. First, judgment in this series has a layer that cannot be cancelled: no one standing on the premise can cancel the way of regarding people as ends (D5); caprice is exactly what can be cancelled at any moment. Second, the case layer can be questioned, can be wrong, and can be revised (D5; Paper 1, §5); correction comes from checking the facts, from other people's questions (the illumination of Paper 6, D32), and from looking back afterward (Paper 3, D17), not from someone who passes verdicts in his place. Third, what this series gains by doing without the outside measure is not judging in others' place; the price is that no procedure can replace judgment and guarantee that it is not wrong. This series admits this plainly, and does not pass off any one person's judgment as such a procedure. One contemporary criticism of virtue ethics says that it amounts to finding a moral exemplar and doing what he would do (as recorded in the SEP entry "Virtue Ethics," per secondary sources); this series does not take that step either, but it does not conclude from this that the Aristotelian tradition admits only that one reading.
§3.2 Kant: Judgment, Sentence Form, and the Perfection of Others
SAE comes out of Kant's lineage. This conversation is the longest, and it sets out, point by point, where this series leaves Kant.
The first common question: judgment cannot be taught by rules. In the introduction to the transcendental power of judgment in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant says that to give general instructions on how to subsume cases under rules would take yet another rule, and this rule would in turn call for judgment to guide it, and so on without end; so the understanding can be instructed by rules, but judgment is a special talent, one that "cannot be taught at all, only practiced" (welches gar nicht belehrt, sondern nur geübt sein will). Education can pour rules into a person, but the capacity to use rules correctly "must belong to the pupil himself" (dem Lehrlinge selbst angehören; KrV A133–134/B172–173, location per secondary sources). Paper 1, D6 and this sentence illuminate each other: rules can enter judgment, but applying them is done by the one who judges. Paper 1, §5 had already established this from within this system (The First Critique, ch. 4; Value Theory P4 V45); Kant's sentence is one end of it, the end that lies in the tradition.
The second common question: ought has the sentence shape of a command. In the second section of the Groundwork, Kant says that all imperatives command either hypothetically or categorically; for a holy will there are no imperatives, and ought is out of place there, because its volition is already of itself in unison with the law; imperatives are only formulae expressing the relation between objective laws and the subjective imperfection of a finite will such as the human will (GMS, Section II, conventionally 4:414; wording checked against Abbott's public-domain English translation). The Critique of Pure Reason says that ought expresses a kind of necessity and connection found nowhere else in the whole of nature (KrV, conventionally A547/B575). Paper 1, §4 says that ought, as a way of speaking, is itself a command, issued to a person from outside; these two places in Kant are its ground in the original texts. The same section of the Groundwork also says that if the will looks anywhere else for the law that is to determine it, the result is always heteronomy, and heteronomy admits only hypothetical imperatives: "I ought to do something because I wish for something else" (GMS, Section II, trans. Abbott). This illuminates the other argument of Paper 1, §4: a rule poured in from outside can just as well be voiced as "I ought."
The third common question: enlightenment and not colonizing. In a footnote to §40 of the Critique of Judgment, Kant says that what truly constitutes enlightenment is "something merely negative" (das bloß Negative); the main text at the same place calls a passive reason, the propensity to be led by others, prejudice (KU 5:294 and note). This answers to Paper 2, D9: anti-colonization, in action, begins as a not-doing, and does not require one to know first what one's own law is. The string in "What Is Enlightenment?", "a book that has understanding for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a doctor who judges my diet for me" (Habe ich ein Buch, das für mich Verstand hat, einen Seelsorger, der für mich Gewissen hat, einen Arzt, der für mich die Diät beurteilt; WA, location to be verified), answers to Paper 3, D13: what comes from outside can be material and illumination, but cannot be the legislating source. Paper 3 is finer than this sentence: what it negates is the position of deciding in a person's place, not the use of outside evaluation.
The fourth common question: the perfection of others. For Paper 6 this point matters most. In section IV of the introduction to the Doctrine of Virtue, on which ends are also duties, Kant says that to make the perfection of another my end, and to hold myself duty-bound to promote it, is self-contradictory; for a person's perfection as a person consists precisely in his being able to set ends for himself according to his own concept of duty, and to require that I do "what only he himself can do" (was kein anderer als er selbst tun kann) is self-contradictory (MS TL Introduction IV; AA page to be verified). Paper 6 says that cultivation necessarily leaves a blank, and that what is left is the other person's share: whether he accepts, how he judges, whether he changes, whether he leaves (D34); what another gains, once avowed by his own law, is his, and the one who provided the conditions does not thereby become the one who completed that step for him (D36). In their reasons the two are nearly the same in structure: that step can be taken only by the person himself. In "On the Common Saying," Kant says that a paternalistic government, which governs the people with a father's heart toward his children, is the greatest despotism conceivable (TP, per secondary sources, location per the SEP); Paper 6, D34 says that reaching into the other person's share is colonization, however gentle the means. This illumination crosses levels: Kant's sentence is about government, and D34 is about what lies between two people.
The fifth common question: when others do not keep it, the law still holds. Kant says that a rational being, even if he keeps the maxim himself, cannot count on others keeping it likewise, and yet the law, "Act according to the maxims of a member of a merely possible kingdom of ends legislating in it universally," remains in full force (GMS, Section II, trans. Abbott). Paper 7, D38 says that external conditions change how a person can act, and do not reset the direction and principles of his action. Both are about living by the law amid what is not yet achieved.
Where this series leaves Kant. At six places.
First, the source. Kant's autonomy takes universal legislation as its form: the will of every rational being is conceived as a will that legislates universally (GMS, Section II). In this series, one's own law governs only oneself: two people who both treat people as ends can judge differently (D5), and the same principles do not produce the same action for everyone (D38). To say that one's own law is Kant's autonomy would be a mistake.
Second, the sentence form. A cannot-not that hangs on conditions is not a hypothetical imperative: its conditions are a position, the facts in front of one and this time's judgment, not a desired end; for the layer that cannot be cancelled while one stands on the premise, the antecedent is a recognition, not a willing. Nor is it a categorical imperative: Kant's categorical imperative does not make its validity conditional on whether the agent avows some premise; this series' cannot-not holds only within a position already stood in, "oneself is an end, and others are ends too," and if a person leaves this position in a given matter, this cannot-not is no longer there for him in that matter (Paper 1, §4). Nor is it the necessity of a holy will: what this series removes is the sentence shape of a command, not human finitude; a real cannot has a place to stop (Paper 4, D25).
Third, judgment. Kant says on the one hand that judgment cannot be taught, and on the other gives judgment a rule in the practical domain, namely the Typic: ask yourself whether, if the action you propose were to take place by a law of nature of which you yourself were a part, you could regard it as possible through your will (KpV 5:69). This series gives neither: it gives judgment no rule, and it does not check maxims by a test of universalization. As for the three maxims of common sense (sensus communis) in §40, to think for oneself, to think from the position of everyone else, and to think consistently (KU 5:294), Kant himself says that they do not belong to the critique of taste itself; to describe this series' judgment as Kant's reflective judgment would also be a mistake.
Fourth, the remainder and the line not followed. Kant allows wide duties to limit one another, one maxim of duty limiting another (MS TL Introduction, per Abbott's public-domain English translation); the limited one drops out this time. In this series, when two lines drawn collide, the one not followed is not cancelled by that (D3), and after a judgment there is still a remainder (D4). This falls on the third line.
Fifth, the perfection of others: the same reason, a different conclusion. From the fact that that step can be taken only by the person himself, Kant infers that promoting the perfection of others is not my duty; Paper 6, by contrast, for a person standing in the position that "others are ends too," writes cultivation as a direction that cannot be cancelled (D33), and at the same time states that it necessarily leaves a blank (D34). Only the half that is the reason can be matched.
Sixth, the direction between ought and can. The phrase "ought implies can" is not Kant's own wording. In the example of the gallows, Kant says that a person judges that he can do something "because he is conscious that he ought" (Er urtheilt also, daß er etwas kann, darum weil er sich bewußt ist, daß er es soll; KpV 5:30). The direction runs from ought to can, in order to establish freedom. This series does not write ought, nor does it infer can from ought; it acknowledges the real cannot, and acknowledges that extreme situations compress conditions and room (Paper 4, D25; Paper 7, D43). The gallows example asks only that the man acknowledge that refusing is possible, not that he die; on this point it can be matched with D43.
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as judgment not being done by rules in anyone's place, the other person's step being one that only he can take, and the law holding all the same amid what is not yet achieved; the two part first over the source, the sentence form, a rule for judgment, the remainder and the perfection of others.
The strongest objection from the other side (reconstructed by this paper). A cannot-not that hangs on conditions makes morality hypothetical. Without an unconditional ought, this series speaks only to those already standing on the premise; to those who do not stand on it, it has nothing to say.
Reply. First, it is not made hypothetical: the antecedent of the shared layer is a recognition, not a desire; a person cannot stand here and cancel it at once (D5); this resembles the analytic proposition that whoever wills the end wills the means, and the difference lies in the antecedent. Second, speaking only to those who stand on the premise is a domain, not a concession. This series issues no universal command, nor does it deny that universal commands have grounds elsewhere. Third, how a person standing on the premise faces those who do not stand on it, and the workings that treat people as means, is something this series has written about; the whole of Paper 7 is about exactly this. How power that treats people as means is restrained at the level of institutions is the business of the planned Theory of Government (§9).
§4 Cannot-Not and One's Own Law
§4.1 Williams and Frankfurt: Cannot But
The common question. A reader who meets cannot not will most likely think first of these two. Bernard Williams writes of practical necessity: when a person says "I must" or "I cannot," this necessity does not come from a command outside; it comes from himself; in recognizing it, he recognizes at the same time what he can and cannot do (Williams 1981, pp. 124–131, wording per secondary sources). Harry Frankfurt writes of volitional necessity: what a person cares about lies closer to the character of his will than the decisions and choices he makes, and what he cares about is generally not under his immediate voluntary control (Frankfurt 1988, pp. 84–85, per secondary sources). Paper 1 says that cannot-not-doing is the negation of not doing, and that, like not-doing, it does not need a goal affirmed beforehand (D1, D2); what it states is that something cannot be cancelled in this position, not a command (Paper 1, §4); Paper 2 says that what a person recognizes is his own law (D10). On the point of placing the "cannot but" in the agent himself, and not in an outside command, the three stand closest together.
There are three further points of contact. The first is "is it mine?" Frankfurt distinguishes what occurs in a person's mind from what belongs to him, calling the latter identification and the former externality (Frankfurt 1971; 1976); he also admits that whether a decision a person means to make wholeheartedly really is wholehearted is often not obvious (Frankfurt 1988, p. 175, per secondary sources). Paper 3 says that what has entered a person's heart is not thereby already his law (D14), and that when for a time one cannot tell, it is a real inability to tell (D16). The second is what comes after a conflict. In "Ethical Consistency," Williams argues against the view that, of two conflicting oughts, one is necessarily cancelled entirely (Williams 1973, pp. 183–184, per secondary sources). What this illuminates is the second half of Paper 1, D3: the one not followed is not cancelled by that. The third is what has been done. Williams says that there is a particularly important kind of regret, which he calls agent-regret, "which a person can feel only towards his own past actions" (Williams 1981, p. 27); the lorry driver who, through no fault of his own, runs over a child feels differently from any bystander (p. 28). This illuminates Paper 3, D17 and Paper 4, D24: looking back does not rewrite what has already happened, and the time one could not carry it does not erase the consequences. Williams's criticism, in chapter 10 of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, of what he calls the morality system and its conception of obligation (Williams 1985, per secondary sources) also points the same way as Paper 1, §4, "Why Cannot-Not, Not Ought."
Is it the same thing? No. There are four differences, and the first two matter most.
First, the domain. Neither necessity is restricted in its content. Williams himself says that practical necessity is not peculiar to ethics (Williams 1985, per secondary sources); Frankfurt, replying to Susan Wolf, admits that wholehearted caring can be directed at something extremely bad (Frankfurt 2002, pp. 247–248, per secondary sources). This series' cannot-not holds only in the position "oneself is an end, and others are ends too"; and this series itself admits that the "cannot but" a person feels may come precisely from colonization: a rule poured in from outside can also make a person feel he cannot but do a thing (Paper 2, D9; Paper 1, §4). To say that this series' cannot-not is volitional necessity would be to give up its domain.
Second, the nature of the cannot. When Williams writes of moral incapacity, he means that a person cannot bring himself to do something (Williams 1995, wording not verified to the page); Frankfurt's volitional necessity means that what a person cares about leaves him unable to bring himself to do certain things (per secondary sources). Both speak of a kind of incapacity in the agent. The "cannot be cancelled" of this series' shared layer is something else: standing in this position and cancelling it at once are two statements that cannot sit together in one person (D5). A person can leave this position, and this series does not judge him for it (Paper 1, §4). What it states is that two statements are incompatible, not a psychological inability to bring oneself to act. Williams criticizes the morality system for describing obligation as inescapable; the "cannot be cancelled" of this series' shared layer is close to that word on the surface, and the difference lies exactly here: one can leave. This point came clear to this paper only on looking back, and is registered in §10, sixth slot.
Third, being unable to do and being unable to bring oneself to do fall in two different papers. Williams's moral incapacity ties "cannot bring oneself to" to a person's character, and admits that it can sometimes also be a defect (Williams 1995, wording not verified to the page). What answers to it is Paper 1's not-doing and shared layer (D1, D5), not Paper 4's "real cannot." Paper 4's real cannot is being unable in body or in capacity, and D19 deliberately separates these from the law: they do not decide for a person what his law is.
Fourth, the remainder is not the moral remainder. What answers to Williams's argument about the overridden ought is the second half of D3; this series' remainder refers to something else: what, after a judgment, bears on what is to be done but lies outside what this time handles (D4). Nor does this series prescribe what feelings a person is to have about the line not followed: a stance, Paper 4 says, is not a positive or negative emotion (Paper 4, §7).
There is also a difference in time, which falls on the second line: Frankfurt's identification takes a present decision as its constitutive condition; this series looks at where a person stands now, and hands "is it mine?" to looking back afterward to check (D17). In fairness, one sentence is added: Frankfurt himself admits that whether one is wholehearted is not transparent, and it would be unfair to write him as more naive than his text.
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as the "cannot but" coming from the agent himself and not being given by an outside command; the two part first over the reach of content and the nature of the cannot.
The strongest objection from the other side (reconstructed by this paper). Restricting the domain is a kind of cheating. The phenomenon of practical necessity does not pick its content; a wholehearted evildoer also has his "cannot but"; this series merely shuts out the ones it does not like.
Reply. This series does not deny that the phenomenon exists; it speaks of something else: the cannot-not of standing in a position. A sense of necessity outside the position is something this series neither endorses nor tries to persuade anyone about; it may come from character, or from colonization, and this series does not decide which it is. What the domain does is make clear for whom these statements hold, not declare that other phenomena do not exist. The often-cited words of Luther, "Here I stand, I can do no other," appear in the historical sources in later printed versions, not in the records made at the time; this paper does not use them as Luther's own words.
§4.2 Korsgaard: Reflective Endorsement and Looking Back; the Double-Level Theory and the Three Stages
The common question. Among contemporary Kantians, Christine Korsgaard places the source of normativity in the structure of reflection. She says that "the normative question is one that arises in the heat of action" (Korsgaard 1996, p. 91), and that "autonomy is the source of obligation" (p. 91). When an impulse comes, "I back up and bring that impulse into view and then I have a certain distance" (p. 93); whether it counts as a reason is for me to endorse. Paper 3 meets this step: that something has entered one's heart does not mean it is already one's law (D14). The heteronomy she speaks of, and the two branches of colonization Paper 2 speaks of, both likewise refuse a legislator who decides from outside in one's place (D8, D9). In Self-Constitution she says that before your choices and actions there is no you already there (Korsgaard 2009, p. 19, per secondary sources); this answers to Paper 3, D15: "Discovering one's own value is not retrieving a self long buried; it can be arriving in place for the first time."
Is it the same thing? No. There are five differences.
First, the source. Korsgaard sets out to derive, from what constitutes an agent as an agent, a normativity that holds for every agent. This series only declares a domain: for a person who does not stand on the premise, it does not hold, and it does not try to persuade him. A well-known objection to constitutivism asks why being an agent is required of me (Enoch 2006, per secondary sources); the step this question targets is one this series has not taken, so this series can neither say that it has answered the question nor say that it is exempt from it; the two carry different burdens of argument.
Second, time. This is the most important difference, and it falls on the second line. For Korsgaard, "is it mine?" is passed in the moment of deliberation; in this series, the question often cannot be answered in the moment, and not being able to answer it is a real inability (D16); telling it apart rests on looking back afterward (D17). This difference is not a detail: a person who has taken an outside standard as his own will, in present reflection, endorse exactly that standard. Colonization goes deepest exactly where the colonized person says, in present reflection, "this is mine."
Third, the sentence form. What she speaks of is obligation and ought, and unconditionally so; she says that a person who violates his practical identity is as good as dead, or worse (Korsgaard 1996, p. 102, per secondary sources; on the next page of the same book she also says that a person can for a time fail to be himself and still come back). This series' cannot-not hangs on conditions and does not write ought; a person can leave in a given matter (D5). Paper 7, D43 also says that the law does not require a person to prove it still stands by keeping his body from harm.
Fourth, bad action. In constitutivism, bad action is defective action, action that fails to constitute the agent as a unified author (Korsgaard 2009, p. 32, per secondary sources). This series' anti-colonization begins as a not-doing (D9), and gives no test for measuring whether an action passes; nor does this series give a test for judging a person from outside (Paper 8, D44).
Fifth, the task. Korsgaard writes of carving out a personal identity as a task no person can escape (Korsgaard 2009, pp. 23–24, per secondary sources). Paper 5 says that development can deepen, can revise, and can stop to rest awhile (D28); developing one's own value is not processing oneself into a better tool for future contribution; one is also an end (D26).
The double-level theory and the three stages. Here her structure is first set down exactly. At the very start of "The Right to Lie: Kant on Dealing with Evil," Korsgaard says that Kant's ethics is often charged with leaving us "powerless in the face of evil" (CKE p. 133). Drawing on the distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory, she proposes a "double-level theory" (PPA 1986, p. 342): the Formula of Humanity and the kingdom of ends are the ideal of everyday conduct; in dealing with evil, "we may depart from this ideal," the Formula of Humanity does not then apply, and the Formula of Universal Law sets the limits; and of the ideal she still says, "It defines the goal towards which we are working" (p. 346). The task she leaves to Kantians is to work out "special principles to use when dealing with evil" (p. 349).
Paper 7 meets this construction. Neither side lets the kingdom of ends lapse in a reality that is not ideal, and both refuse to be powerless in the face of evil; her point about not allowing one's honesty "to be used as a resource for evil" (p. 340) points the same way as Paper 7, D40 on invisibility: "wherever one is able not to lend one's strength to institutions that colonize others, one does not lend it." Where they part is in the construction. She sets up lower-level principles for non-ideal circumstances, and grants a permission to depart from the ideal; Paper 7 says that different situations do not produce different versions of "a person is an end" (D38); what changes is how a person can act, and the judgment in the case; compromise does not take an institution's prescriptions for people as one's own law, and disagreeing inwardly does not wash away actual participation (D39). The three stages are stages in the proportions of the mix, not the presence or absence of an assumption of compliance. This series sets up no lower-level principles; it only lets each person judge the shape that one and the same law takes in different situations. This falls on the third line. This paper does not say on Korsgaard's behalf that her lower-level principles "leave no residue"; her texts take up that question elsewhere, and this paper does not answer it for her.
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as refusing a legislator who decides from outside in one's place, and refusing to be powerless in the face of evil; the two part over the source of normativity, the time at which the discrimination is made, the construction of non-ideal circumstances, and the way the task is written.
The strongest objection from the other side (reconstructed by this paper). Unless normativity is derived from the constitution of action, "one's own law" has no ground; why one stands on this premise can only be arbitrary.
Reply. This series does not prove this premise here; the Prequel states it once, as the domain (Prequel, §4). Calling it arbitrary first calls for saying arbitrary for whom. For a person standing on this premise, it is not a preference that can be swapped out at any moment: standing on it and cancelling it at once are two statements that cannot sit together (D5). For a person who does not stand on this premise, this series does not hold, and it does not go and persuade him. Taking on one proof fewer does not make this series more stable than constitutivism; it says only that it does not carry that one.
§5 Can and Cannot
§5.1 The Stoics: A Reaction Is Not Assent, yet Others Are Not Nothing to One
The common question. Both ask what a person can govern and what he cannot, and how he stands when what he cannot govern comes in. Epictetus's Handbook opens: "Of all the things there are, some are up to us, and some are not up to us" (τῶν ὄντων τὰ μέν ἐστιν ἐφʼ ἡμῖν, τὰ δὲ οὐκ ἐφʼ ἡμῖν; Ench. 1.1). The dichotomy of control is the modern name for this sentence; the original's own phrase is up to us. Paper 4 asks about this very place: the line is clear, and the person does not walk by it; what happens in between?
On the Stoic side the closest point is the Epictetus reported in Gellius's Attic Nights: when something sudden and frightening happens, the mind of the wise man too is necessarily moved for a moment, contracted and turned pale (sapientis quoque animum paulisper moveri et contrahi et pallescere necessum est), motions that run ahead of mind and reason; but he does not assent (οὐ συγκατατίθεται; Gellius, NA 19.1.17–21). Paper 4, D19 says that body, emotion and capacity can enter judgment as facts and reasons, and do not decide for a person what his law is: being tired is not not wanting, and being afraid is not disavowing. Both separate the reactions that arise in a person from whether he assents to them.
There are several further correspondences. Epictetus says: "If you do not want to do something, do not do it, but accustom yourself to doing something else in its place" (εἴ τι μὴ ποιεῖν ἐθέλῃς, μὴ ποίει αὐτό, ἀλλʼ ἔθισον ἄλλο τι πράττειν μᾶλλον ἀντʼ αὐτοῦ; Disc. II.18.4). Paper 4, D20 says that what habit changes is the cost of not-doing. Marcus Aurelius writes to himself: "Do not hope for Plato's republic; be content if the smallest thing goes forward" (μὴ τὴν Πλάτωνος πολιτείαν ἔλπιζε, ἀλλὰ ἀρκοῦ, εἰ τὸ βραχύτατον πρόεισι; Med. 9.29); "Life is to be put together one action at a time" (Συντιθέναι δεῖ τὸν βίον κατὰ μίαν πρᾶξιν; Med. 8.32). Paper 9, D51 says that being unable to decide macroscopic outcomes alone does not make present non-colonization, illumination, protection and consensus lose their meaning, nor is any single action inflated into something bound to change the world. Marcus also speaks of acting "with reservation" (μεθʼ ὑπεξαιρέσεως; Med. 6.50), turning to something else when obstructed; this answers to Paper 4, D22: interrupting is not giving up, and one and the same stop is read by the step at which it stops.
Is it the same thing? No, and the differences matter more than the points of contact.
First, the scope of up to us. For Epictetus, what is up to us comes down to judgment, will and the related activities of the mind; body, property, reputation and office all lie on the other side (Ench. 1.1). Paper 4 lets body, emotion, capacity, habit and hesitation all enter action, as facts and reasons; on the day of his fever, the man who prepares the reports in the nine papers could not go, the law was still there, and he records this as it was, without rewriting it (D19, D24). To say that Paper 4's "can and cannot" is the dichotomy of control would be to read "a real cannot" as "nothing to me."
Second, others. This is the difference that can least be smoothed over. The Handbook teaches one to be ready to say, of what is not up to us, "It is nothing to me" (οὐδὲν πρὸς ἐμέ; Ench. 1.5); Marcus says that a person who obstructs my acting becomes to me one of the indifferent things, no less than the sun, the wind or a wild beast (Med. 5.20). Paper 6, D33 says that when a person is truly taken as an end in a matter, whether his law can unfold is something anyone standing here will think about, and "cannot treat as nothing to do with himself." Taken literally, the two sentences are exact opposites. In fairness one sentence is added: the Stoics are not callous; Epictetus says that he is not to be unfeeling like a statue, but is to keep up his various relationships (οὐ δεῖ γάρ με εἶναι ἀπαθῆ ὡς ἀνδριάντα, ἀλλὰ τὰς σχέσεις τηροῦντα; Disc. III.2.4); but in his ledger of good and evil, the fortunes of others are not my good or evil. Paper 7, D41 says that invisibility and exit are not a judgment that the other is unworthy: no longer lending one's strength, no longer keeping in touch, coexist with recognizing that he is a person; this too differs from classing the one who obstructs among the indifferent things.
Third, the emotions. The Stoics set out to drive the emotions out, and Seneca himself sets this against the Peripatetics: "Our people drive them out; the Peripatetics temper them" (Nostri illos expellunt, Peripatetici temperant; Ep. 116.1). This series neither drives them out nor tempers them; it lets emotions enter judgment as facts and reasons (D19). The passage in Gellius illuminates only one half, that "a reaction is not assent": the Stoics go on to have a person conclude that there is nothing frightening in the thing, and Paper 4 draws no such conclusion; it says that there are facts in fear.
Fourth, acceptance. The Handbook says: "Wish for things to happen as they happen" (θέλε τὰ γινόμενα ὡς γίνεται; Ench. 8); Epictetus also likens a person to a hand or a foot of the whole, with no private interest of his own (Disc. II.10.4). Paper 4, D24 says that the time one could not carry it does not erase the consequences; Paper 9, D53 says that macroscopic phase transition requires waiting, while recognition of the person in front of one does not wait; D50 and D52 say that a shared phase transition is not a higher end entitled to requisition a person, and that one is not fuel for the phase transition. To say that D51 is "accepting things as they are" would be a mistake.
A clarification: "the door is open." Epictetus says again and again that "the door is open" (ἤνοικται ἡ θύρα; Disc. I.9.20, I.24.20, I.25.18–20, II.1.19–20, III.8.6, III.13.14, III.22.34). By their contexts, all seven places refer to leaving life; III.22.34 asks outright: "Is the door shut? Is one not allowed to die? One is." Diogenes Laertius records the Stoic view that the wise man may, for good reason, take himself out of life (DL VII.130). Paper 7's exit is something else: no longer lending one's strength, no longer keeping in touch, coexisting with recognizing that he is a person (D41); D43 says that extreme situations compress conditions and room, not the law, nor does the law require a person to prove it still stands by keeping his body from harm. What it speaks of is taking on risk, not proving by death, nor exiting by death. The two cannot be joined; this paper writes this down plainly here only to prevent a misreading.
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as this: the reactions that arise in a person are not assent; the two part first over the scope of up to us and the place of others.
The strongest objection from the other side (reconstructed by this paper). As long as the body, the fortunes of others and outside circumstances are not mere material, but can become a person's reasons for changing what he does, his practical freedom is still governed by what is not up to him. To take outside facts into one's reasons is to hand good and evil back to external things; how can that still be called freedom?
Reply. This series does not define freedom as being unaffected by outside states of affairs; it refuses only to let outside states of affairs complete the legislating in a person's place. Facts change what he can do; they do not thereby reset what his law is (Paper 4, D19; Paper 7, D38). So the two are not offering different technical solutions for one and the same concept of freedom; they part on whether outside facts can enter as reasons. Nor does this series take peace of mind as its goal: it does not promise peace of mind, and it does not judge unease a failure. Someone will say that in this way "a real cannot" will become an excuse; this series has answered this question itself: self-preservation is a real reason, and precisely because it is real, it is the handiest thing for covering something else; when for a time one cannot tell whether one was so afraid that one could not do it, or did not want to do it and would not admit it, that is handed to looking back (Paper 4, §§5–6; Paper 3, D16, D17). This series admits this risk, and does not remove it by striking out the body and other people.
§5.2 Wang Yangming: The Same Refusal to Know First and Act After, but Knowing without Acting Renamed Not Yet Knowing
The common question. The place Paper 4 asks about, where the line is clear and the person does not walk by it, most likely calls up first, for Chinese readers, Wang Yangming's unity of knowing and acting. The two meet at two places. First, both refuse the order "first know, and then one can act." Wang Yangming says that if one insists on waiting until one's knowing is true before going to act, then "one will not act all one's life, and so will also not know all one's life" (故遂终身不行，亦遂终身不知; Chuanxilu, Part I, recorded by Xu Ai, conventionally item 5); Paper 3 says that a person who lives by his own law acts within not being able to tell, and does not wait until he can tell before moving (D16). Second, neither lets fixed principles from outside take the place of judgment. Wang Yangming says to his students: "That bit of innate knowing of yours is your own standard" (尔那一点良知，是尔自家底准则; Part III, item 206); Paper 3, D13 says that what comes from outside cannot be the legislating source of a person's value, and Paper 1, D6 says that applying and weighing are done by the one who judges.
There is one more. Wang Yangming says that in teaching the unity of knowing and acting, "what I want is precisely for people to understand that where a single thought stirs, that already is acting" (正要人晓得一念发动处，便即是行了; Part III, recorded by Huang Zhi, item 226; wording per secondary sources). Paper 1, D1 says that what a person strikes out may also be a way of regarding a person or a thing: a view held in the mind also falls within the scope of not-doing. Neither lets "not yet having made any outward move" serve as a reason to let a way of regarding things pass.
Is it the same thing? At the most crucial point, they run in opposite directions. The item recorded by Xu Ai is built like this. Wang Yangming grants that the case of "having known it but not done it" does occur, but he does not call it knowing: "This has already been cut off by selfish desire; it is no longer the original substance of knowing and acting. There has never been anyone who knows and does not act. Knowing and not acting is simply not yet knowing" (此已被私欲隔断，不是知行的本体了。未有知而不行者。知而不行，只是未知); the sages teach knowing and acting precisely in order to "restore that original substance" (复那本体; item 5; the wording of "There has never been anyone who knows and does not act" per secondary sources). He gives the example "like loving a lovely color" (如好好色): on seeing a lovely color one already loves it; it is not that one sees it and then sets up a separate intention to love it (same item). So for him there is no further link between true knowing and acting; knowing without acting is renamed not yet knowing, traced to selfish desire, and treated with the medicine of restoring the original substance.
Paper 4 takes this gap as real, and differs from this precisely at four points. Naming: when one has judged and did not manage it, the law is still there; the failure does not rewrite the law already avowed (D24). Attribution: body and fear are facts and reasons; being afraid is not disavowing (D19); it is not another name for selfish desire. Structure: reasons, judgment, drawing the line and setting off are separate acts (Paper 1, D7; Paper 4, D21, D22), and within hesitation there is also the kind "decided, but not yet moving." Treatment: Paper 4 prescribes no regimen of moral effort as medicine; the time one did not manage it, and its consequences, hang under the original avowal (D24), and what cannot for a time be told apart is handed to looking back. To say that Wang Yangming and Paper 4 confirm each other would go wrong at these four points; to write Paper 4 as "not doing it shows one did not truly avow it" would, in turn, violate D19 and D24.
Two other points also run in different directions. The context of item 226 is teaching people to overcome an evil thought the moment it stirs: "it is to be done thoroughly, root and branch, so that not one bad thought is left lying hidden in the breast" (须要彻根彻底，不使那一念不善潜伏在胸中); this series makes no demand that thoughts be rooted out entirely, and a thought appearing in the mind is not an avowal either (Paper 3, D14). Innate knowing "knows right as right and wrong as wrong" (是便知是，非便知非; item 206), and its destination is the restoring of its original substance; Paper 3 says that when for a time one cannot tell, it is a real inability to tell (D16), and that discovering one's own value is not retrieving a self long buried, but can be arriving in place for the first time (D15). The latter point is a direct opposite.
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as "knowing and acting cannot be split into two stages, one before the other, and fixed principles from outside cannot take the place of judgment." One point of measure is also written down: Wang Yangming himself says that the unity of knowing and acting is "words to correct a bias and remedy a fault" (补偏救弊的说话), "medicine for an illness" (对病的药; item 5), aimed at the scholarly habit of his day of splitting knowing and acting into two halves and never acting all one's life. The difference between the two is therefore a difference between two ways of asking and two illnesses, not a matter of Wang Yangming having failed to see the gap.
The strongest objection from the other side (reconstructed by this paper). To admit that "knowing but not yet acting" really exists is to leave selfish desire a place to settle; to write the gap as real is to find reasons for not acting.
Reply. Paper 4 does not give the gap legitimacy; it only does not rewrite it. A failure is recorded as it was: it is not described as having been done, nor is the law said never to have been one's own (D24); it is not said that not doing means not avowing, nor that avowing amounts to doing. If selfish desire is mixed in and for a time cannot be told apart, it is handed to looking back, to check the source, the facts, and the standing with which it enters one's reasons today (D17). The medicines differ because the two see different illnesses: what Wang Yangming guards against is knowing and acting split in two and never acting all one's life; what Paper 4 guards against is rewriting the real limits in a person as a verdict on his law.
The line "where a thought stirs, that is knowing, and that is also acting" (一念动处便是知，亦便是行) is often quoted as coming from the Chuanxilu; it is not in the Chuanxilu, and this paper does not use it.
§6 Cultivation
§6.1 The Analects: Ritual as the Action Theory of Humaneness
The common question. In Reading the Analects Through Self-as-an-End, the author reads the Analects and draws out the sentence "ritual propriety (li) is the action theory of humaneness (ren), the outward mode of operation of the end," and makes a self-diagnosis: "SAE and Kant are both strong on 'the end' and 'the law,' and weak on 'how the law actually unfolds before the body, time and other people'"; the same place also says that "the legitimacy of ritual always lies outside ritual (in humaneness)" (the Reading, Part I, The Instrument, the closing overview to Book 4 (Li Ren)). What this series reaches in Papers 4 and 6 is exactly this blank: how the law unfolds before the body and time, and how it unfolds before other people. This series has not supplied a set of rituals. It takes body, emotion, habit and hesitation into judgment as facts and reasons (Paper 4, D19–D22), and writes "before other people" as the three, being willing, being suited and the timing, together with the blank that is necessarily left (Paper 6, D33–D35).
Where the two answer to each other is in this: ritual requires a subject who makes judgments. "If a man is not humane, what has he to do with ritual?" (人而不仁，如礼何; Analects 3.3). On the hemp cap and on bowing below the hall, Confucius follows custom where he follows custom and goes against the crowd where he goes against it: "Though it goes against the crowd, I bow below" (虽违众，吾从下; Analects 9.3). "The Master was free of four things: no conjecture, no insistence on certainty, no rigidity, no egoism" (子绝四：毋意，毋必，毋固，毋我; Analects 9.4). Paper 1, D6 says that applying is done by the one who judges; Paper 3, D14 says that a habit already in the heart does not gain the standing of one's own law by being there; D38 says that direction not resetting with the situation does not mean that concrete judgments cannot be revised in light of new facts. "Practicing humaneness comes from oneself; how could it come from others?" (为仁由己，而由人乎哉; Analects 12.1) answers to Paper 2, D11: another person's share can only be set by that person himself.
Three sources. In Paper 6 this series borrowed the words of one saying from the Analects, "going too far is as much a miss as falling short"; the sense of two other passages appears there only in plain words, without the original. Following the series' convention, the main text did not name sources, and they are given here. All three are borrowed by this series; this paper does not claim that Confucius's original meaning was about cultivation and colonization.
"Going too far is as much a miss as falling short" (过犹不及; in Paper 6's English, the heading "Overshooting and Falling Short") comes from Analects 11.16 (in Yang Bojun's numbering; Zhu Xi's Collected Commentaries divides it as 11.15). Zigong asked which was the better, Zizhang (Shi) or Zixia (Shang), and Confucius said, "Shi goes too far; Shang falls short" (师也过，商也不及); Zigong asked, "Then is Shi the better?" (然则师愈与), and Confucius answered, "Going too far is as much a miss as falling short." The subject in the original is the temperament of the two disciples, and the one who passes the judgment of going too far and falling short is the one who teaches. What Paper 6 uses it to say concerns the cultivator's own act this time: reaching into the other person's share is overshooting; judging that the giving was one's own to do and not giving is falling short; either is a failure, and not giving is not the side that is safer in advance (D34). So in this series the saying does not mean "moderation in all things," nor is it a saying from the Doctrine of the Mean. The Reading's Part III, In the Room, judges this chapter an anchor; this paper only links to the judgment and the reading given there.
"On hearing something, does one act on it at once?" (闻斯行诸) comes from Analects 11.22 (Collected Commentaries 11.21). Zilu (You) and Ran You (Qiu) asked the same question, and Confucius gave them opposite answers; Gongxi Hua was puzzled, and Confucius said: "Qiu holds back, so I urged him forward; You has the energy of two men, so I held him back" (求也退，故进之；由也兼人，故退之). The same words, heard by a different person, may turn from fitting into going too far or falling short; this answers to "the person" in D34. This chapter is Confucius's diagnosis plus an instruction, whereas the illumination of Paper 6 does not judge for the new hire what he is to do (D32); so the chapter is not taken as a model of illumination, and illuminates only the one item, the person.
"I do not open the way for one who is not struggling to understand, nor prompt one who is not struggling to speak; if I hold up one corner and he does not come back with the other three, I do not go on" (不愤不启，不悱不发，举一隅不以三隅反，则不复也) comes from Analects 7.8. The struggling to understand and to speak answers to the timing of which Paper 6 speaks; holding up one corner answers to the presenting and asking of D32; leaving three corners for the other person to come back with himself answers to D34: "what is left is not words but the other person's share." "I do not go on" (则不复也) calls for the other half of Paper 6 beside it: not cultivating this time is not losing one's ground, while not closing the other person's ways to refuse, revise, exit and change course cannot be cancelled (D35); "not going on" (不复) is not read as not giving by default. The Reading's Part II, The Man Who Would Not Be a Sage, reads this chapter as an operational definition of cultivation.
Is it the same thing? At two points it is not.
First, ritual is a set of public forms that can be learned; this series gives no rules. Paper 6, D32 says that illumination is not a list of techniques; Paper 7, D42 says that ways of acting such as reflection, writing, protection and resistance do not form a ladder from low to high. To say that this series is SAE's study of ritual would be to supply it with a set of procedures it expressly declines to give.
Second, "withdrawing" is not invisibility. "When the Way prevails under heaven, show yourself; when it does not, withdraw" (天下有道则见，无道则隐; Analects 8.13); "When the state has lost the Way, he can roll it up and keep it in his bosom" (邦无道，则可卷而怀之; Analects 15.7): withdrawing in the Analects is about whether to serve or to stay out of office, assigned according to whether the state has the Way. Paper 7's invisibility is staying inside the institution, and not lending one's strength wherever one is able not to lend it to institutions that colonize others (D40); D42 says precisely that these ways of acting are not assigned by the names of institutions. Nor does invisibility seek to keep oneself clean: disagreeing inwardly does not wash away actual participation (D39). The Reading judges the passage of 8.13 on "when it does not, withdraw" (无道则隐) a non-anchor. So this point is only a contrast, not an interfacing.
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as the legitimacy of ritual lying outside ritual, and ritual requiring a subject who makes judgments; the two part first over ritual being a set of public forms that can be learned.
The strongest objection from the other side (reconstructed by this paper). Without ritual, humaneness cannot come down into the body and into time; to give no forms is to leave ordinary people with nothing to lean on.
Reply. This series admits this blank, and admits that the study of ritual saw it. Its way of answering is not to supply a set of rituals, but to write the unfolding as description, not as procedure: the four positions of an action in time; habit changing the cost of not-doing; the distinction between the two kinds of hesitation; the three conditions of cultivation, and the blank it leaves. The forms of ritual can be a person's material and illumination, not his legislating source (D13); the sentence "the legitimacy of ritual lies outside ritual" is exactly what this series holds to. Where this paper mentions the Reading's system of judgments, it follows the current terms: anchor and non-anchor, with a separate line of what is opposed.
§6.2 The Ethics of Care: Discharging the Place Value Theory Ceded
This place is an entry in the accounts. In its conversation with the ethics of care, Value Theory Paper 0 wrote: "That the ethics of care has no single measure does not mean that anything goes; what it asks for is context-sensitive practical judgement. And the term for judgement appears nowhere in the seven papers and is nowhere set up as an independent explanatory device, its full theoretical work having been handed by P5 to the Theory of Action. So this series does not contend with it here; the two are simply not speaking on the same ground" (Value Theory Paper 0, §4.7). The Prequel registered this item as "Not yet discharged (address: Action Theory Paper 0)" (Prequel, §5, V-8). Paper 1 of this series has given judgment its place; this time, the two speak on the same ground.
The common question. Both refuse to let rules make the judgment in a case. The voice of care that Carol Gilligan describes sees moral problems as contextual and narrative rather than formal and abstract (Gilligan 1982, p. 19, per secondary sources); Virginia Held rejects moral reasoning that takes the more abstract to be the better (Held 2006, p. 11, per secondary sources); Joan Tronto calls for a deep and thoughtful knowledge of the situation and of the positions of all those involved (Tronto 1993, p. 136, per secondary sources). The case layer of Paper 1, D5, together with D6 and D7, answers to these: what to do this time is decided by the one who judges, on the strength of what is in front of him, and does not presuppose a master scale.
Both also see that well-meant giving can turn into domination. Uma Narayan points out that the colonial enterprise was once seen as being "for the good of, and as promoting the welfare of the colonized" (Narayan 1995, pp. 133–134); that care discourse at times works ideologically, "to justify or conceal relationships of power and domination" (p. 135); and that the "paternalistic caring" of colonial discourse can also be used as a form of control and domination (p. 135). She reminds contemporary care discourse to ask "who defines these often contested terms" (p. 133). Paper 6, D31 says that not colonizing is not seeing another person as an unfinished version of oneself, not taking his coming to agree with oneself as the point of helping him, and not settling the account in thanks, obedience or joining; D34 says that if the timing, the person or the manner is wrong, cultivation may turn into a kind of colonization, and that reaching into the other person's share is colonization, however gentle the means. Of the nine conversations in this paper, this is the most direct correspondence. It is the ethics of care's criticism of itself, not a defect this series points out on its behalf.
The third point is mutuality. Paper 6, D37 says that the one who cultivates can also be cultivated, and that the two sides are not fixed as giver and receiver.
Is it the same thing? At four points it is not, and the third can least be smoothed over.
First, the source. The ethics of care mostly starts from relationships, dependency and care-giving; this series' two lines come from one and the same recognition, that oneself is an end and others are ends too (Paper 2, D12); relationships are the occasions in which cultivation happens, not its source.
Second, the sentence form. The claims of the ethics of care are mostly stated as ought; this series writes a cannot-not that hangs on conditions. For a person standing in this position, cultivation is a direction that cannot be cancelled (D33), and whether to cultivate this time, who does it, and how, rest on judgment. Judgment has two layers, and sensitivity to context belongs only to the case layer; not legislating for the other person and not closing his ways are two things that do not change with context (D35). To say that judgment is sensitivity to context would leave out the shared layer.
Third, completion and the blank left run in opposite directions. Nel Noddings writes the reception and response of the one cared for into the conditions under which care exists: "Without an affirmative response from the cared-for, we cannot call an encounter or relation caring" (Noddings 2005); this response can be explicit thanks, or as simple as a baby's smile (Noddings 2008). Paper 6, by contrast, does not settle the account in thanks, obedience or joining (D31): whether the thing worked is a matter within the other person's own law, not something settled by the cultivator's assessment (Paper 6, §3); what another gains, once avowed by his own law, is his (D36). To say that leaving a blank is Noddings's "completion" would erase the most important cut that Paper 6 makes.
Fourth, the place of paternalism. In the ethics of care, paternalistic care is bad care, but still within care; in Paper 6, the moment one reaches into the other person's share, it is already a kind of colonization (D34). So this series' not colonizing cannot be equated with some particular virtue of care, responsiveness for instance; it is the boundary of cultivation, not a quality within cultivation.
Two points of wording are also made plain. Paper 6, §1 restates the self-test in the Economics paper: "a person who has truly been cultivated is better able to say no to the one who cultivated him; if he cannot, it has become dependency, and dependency is the gentle form of colonization" (Economics P2 §4.2). The dependency there means leaning on the giver in one's judgment; the dependency that Eva Kittay puts at the center of the theory of justice is the dependency and care that human life necessarily involves. The two are not the same in meaning, and this series does not call the latter colonization. Tronto's attentiveness, a term Value Theory Paper 0 took up, and Noddings's engrossment are kept apart in this paper as two terms, and neither is used for the other.
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as this: rules cannot make the judgment in a case, and well-meant giving can turn into domination; the two part first over the source, the sentence form and completion.
The strongest objection from the other side (reconstructed by this paper). If the other person's response is not the test, cultivation becomes the cultivator's monologue, and he has no way of knowing whether he is cultivating; leaving a blank will also turn into irresponsibility.
Reply. In this series, the other person's response is material, not a settling of the account. The three, being willing, being suited and the timing, show themselves from the other person's side in the first place; it is for the cultivator to look at them, and he cannot answer them in the other person's place (D34); if he misreads them, that is a wrong judgment, which can be questioned and can be revised. What leaving a blank leaves is the other person's share, whether he accepts, how he judges, whether he changes, whether he leaves; it is not doing less; judging that the giving was one's own to do and not giving is likewise a failure (D34). Where this series parts from the ethics of care here is not over whether to look at the other person, but over what is done with what one sees: it is used for judging, not for certifying whether a relationship has come off.
It is said this far and no further, and nothing is said about who filled whose gap. The place that Value Theory Paper 0 ceded is discharged here.
§7 Mixed Reality
Hirschman: Exit, Voice and Loyalty
The common question. What Albert O. Hirschman asks is how members respond when firms, organizations and states decline. He distinguishes two responses: exit, "Some customers stop buying the firm's products or some members leave the organization: this is the exit option" (Hirschman 1970, p. 4); and voice, defined as "any attempt at all to change, rather than to escape from, an objectionable state of affairs" (p. 30). The third concept is loyalty: "As a rule, then, loyalty holds exit at bay and activates voice" (p. 78). Paper 7 writes about how a person can act in the Inversion stage of mixed reality: compromise, invisibility, exit, protection, resistance. Both ask: does a person who disagrees stay or leave, and if he stays, what does he do?
There are three points of contact. First, whether exit is available, and what it costs. Hirschman says that in organizations such as the family and the state, exit is scarcely available, and voice is the only response open to dissatisfied members (p. 33). Paper 7, §1 says that exit is often possible in form, but possible does not mean affordable: the cost of exit can be so high that it comes close to being locked in (Economics P2 §5.1); D38 says that external conditions change how a person can act, and do not reset the direction of his action. Second, "disagreeing and staying inside." Hirschman concedes, on the one hand, that among enlightened policy makers some are needed who are "still 'inside'," and warns, on the other, that this kind of reasoning is often an after-the-fact justification of opportunism (pp. 103–104); he also writes of a public official required to act as a member of the team, who is thereby made to "give up in advance his strongest weapon," which he calls "the member-of-the-team trap" (pp. 116, 119). Paper 7 writes that compromise can slide: after some years of handing in the sheets, when he himself looks at a person, the first thing he thinks of is where that person ranks, and by then compromise has already been swapped for something else (Paper 7, §3); Paper 9, D56 says that one does not hand over one's judgment under "we decided together." Third, looking back late in life on East Germany, Hirschman says that private flight and public protest, until then mostly treated as two alternatives, worked together in 1989 (Hirschman 1993, abstract). Paper 7, D38 and D42 say that the relation among the same ways of acting changes with the situation, and that ways of acting are not assigned by the names of institutions. This is only a formal correspondence; this paper does not write East Germany in 1989 as an example of the Inversion stage.
Is it the same thing? No; there are four differences.
First, the starting point and the aim. Hirschman starts from decline; what he looks for are the forces that make the actor who has lapsed "revert to the behavior required for its proper functioning" (p. 1), and exit and voice are both seen as mechanisms of recovery (p. 82). Paper 7 starts from the workings that treat people as means, and such workings can go along with rising performance; Paper 9, D54 says that what guarding guards is people no longer being reduced to means, not the survival of some organization or form.
Second, invisibility falls into none of the categories. Invisibility is not exit: he stays in the company. Nor is it voice: it is not defined by changing the organization, nor by making criticism public; he simply does not lend his strength wherever he is able not to lend it to institutions that colonize others (D40). Later research added a fourth response to exit, voice and loyalty: neglect, meaning passively letting conditions deteriorate through reduced interest or effort (Rusbult et al. 1988, p. 600); invisibility is not that either, because invisibility has a direction: the work of one's own post is done as usual, and strength is withheld only at the point where it would help colonize others. Still less is it loyalty in that model, which includes public support for the organization.
Third, compromise is not loyalty. Loyalty is attachment to an organization; compromise is accepting limited results, adjusting expression and giving way for a time, without taking an institution's prescriptions for people as one's own law (D39); it gives the organization no extra support, nor does it deny that one took part. What is most easily smoothed over here lies in the passage at Hirschman pp. 103–104: long staying can gain a social usefulness, "provided it turns into spine (voice) at the decisive moment" (p. 104). The legitimacy of staying hangs on voice later on. Paper 7, D39 says that disagreeing inwardly does not wash away actual participation; by the same reasoning, later voice does not sign for earlier participation after the fact either (Paper 1, D3; Paper 3, D18, non-fabrication). This falls on the third line.
Fourth, perspective. Hirschman's analysis is a study of how dissatisfied members respond as a group, and he also makes institutional proposals; Paper 7 writes about one person's direction, not a standard (D40), and offers no institutional design. The institutional question of offering exit in form while in fact sealing it off at a ruinous cost has a destination of its own (§9).
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as this: whether a person who disagrees stays or leaves, and what he does once he stays, are real questions; the two part first over the starting point, the object of classification, and how compromise is entered in the account.
The strongest objection from the other side (reconstructed by this paper). The value of exit and voice lies in producing feedback: the one applies pressure through loss, the other corrects through voice. Invisibility neither exits nor is defined by changing the organization; what does it add, as a response within an organization? If it has no feedback effect, it is only a private gesture; if it has an effect, why is it not simply a kind of voice, loyalty or neglect?
Reply. What this series classifies is not an organization's feedback mechanisms, but the position a person stands in between his own law and what an institution requires; so it allows for a way of acting that produces no effective feedback for the organization, yet still has meaning as first-person action. Effects can enter judgment: Paper 1, D7 speaks of comparing risk, timing and feasibility within one matter; but effects do not decide the standing of this act in this series, nor is its meaning settled by its effects: Paper 9, D51 says that being unable to decide macroscopic outcomes alone does not make present non-colonization, illumination, protection and consensus lose their meaning. Nor does invisibility seek to keep oneself clean: disagreeing inwardly does not wash away participation (D39). A shared phase transition is made up of limited contributions, share by share (Paper 9, D50, D51); invisibility is the share among them that does not lend strength to colonization, not the whole.
A note on words: Hirschman's voice and this series' resistance (Paper 7, D42) are two different words, and neither is used for the other.
§8 Adjacent Placement: Analytic Philosophy of Action
This section goes only as far as the division.
The two opening questions of the analytic philosophy of action are set out here as they stand. Frankfurt asks the problem of action: where lies "the contrast between what an agent does and what merely happens to him" (Frankfurt 1978, p. 157). Davidson holds, of explaining actions by reasons, that "rationalization is a species of ordinary causal explanation" (Davidson 1963, p. 685). Around whether reasons are causes, deviant causal chains, and whether the agent disappears from the causal story, this tradition has built up more than half a century of discussion. What this series asks is something else: what a person standing before a decision is doing, in this matter (§1.1).
The first division: the dispute over causalism. Paper 1, D7 says that reasons do not turn into action by themselves, and that making the judgment into this time's line is an act done by the one who judges. What it denies is a calculation from reasons to action, not the causal role of reasons; in the dispute over whether reasons are causes, D7 is acceptable to both sides. Paper 1, §6 says that the intention "grows out of that pile of reasons, but it is not derived from them"; this sentence is a description, and takes no position on causalism.
The second division: what makes a reason the one acted on. This is the one place in Davidson's question that this series really touches. Meaning Theory supplies a field of reasons, and does not supply rules for calculating from reasons to action (Meaning Theory P4, §5); Paper 1 says that the one who draws the line is the one who judges. As to what, among the many reasons a person has, makes one of them the one he acts on, this series says only that it is his drawing of the line, and says nothing further. This place is registered in §10, first slot, and is not written up as already answered.
The third division: not-doing and omission. This tradition distinguishes mere omission from deliberate refraining: what a person never thought of doing does not count as his omission (Clarke 2014, per a book review); refraining is actively keeping oneself from doing something (Mossel 2009, abstract). Paper 1, D1 says that not-doing is a person's negation of doing something, and this answers to that distinction: what one never thought of does not count as one's not-doing. They part at three points. D1 says that what a person strikes out may also be a way of regarding a person or a thing, which has no counterpart in the discussion of omission; D2's cannot-not-doing is a further negation of not doing, and D3 says that neither follows from the other, which also has no counterpart; and this series takes up neither the ontology of omission nor the moral asymmetry of doing and allowing. To say that not-doing is omission would count in what "simply did not happen."
There are several further meetings, only pointed out here and not developed. G. E. M. Anscombe marks out intentional action by the question Why? (Anscombe 1957, §5, per secondary sources); this answers to the "can be questioned" of the case layer in Paper 1, D5: the one uses the question to mark out, the other to correct. Davidson distinguishes the all things considered judgment from the all-out judgment (Davidson 1978, per secondary sources); this answers to D7, and that an outweighed consideration still holds bears on D3, not on the remainder. Michael Bratman's planning theory answers to the sustaining, interrupting and changing of Paper 4, D22, but this series gives no norms of planning rationality. Nor is Paper 4 a theory of weakness of will: that Wednesday afternoon, when his fever rose, stopping was interrupting, not giving up (D22), and D21 says that weakness cannot be judged from hesitation alone.
§9 Accounts and Handovers
§9.1 Settlement
The forward assignments that upstream expressly handed to this series were settled in public in the Prequel, §5: twenty-nine rows in all. Only one row among them was registered as "Not yet discharged (address: Action Theory Paper 0)": V-8, the interfacing with the ethics of care that Value Theory Paper 0, §4.7 ceded. This paper's §6.2 discharges it; that place in Value Theory Paper 0 can be settled at this landing point. This is the receiving side's own statement, not an acceptance made on upstream's behalf; how well it has been discharged is for whoever reads both sides to check (the same measure as the Prequel, §5).
The other twenty-eight rows the Prequel has already settled; this paper does not reopen them, and only records where they went: V-4 was publicly reassigned to the Second and Third Critiques, and the second half of V-5 to the Second Critique; Y-11 was publicly reassigned to On Accountability; Y-4 was partly discharged, and the rest stays at its original address. C-1, by the Prequel's measure, discharges the way that kind of requirement is handled; this paper does not upgrade it to "fully completed."
Settlement follows the rule laid down in Value Theory Paper 0: discharge, public reassignment, public withdrawal; settling in parts is a combination of the three routes and does not set up a fourth kind; "A public version note counts; an internal working record does not" (Value Theory Paper 0, §7).
§9.2 Handover to the Second Critique
This series writes how one acts on a cannot-not, and does not prove whether it ought to be so (the second half of V-5). A cannot-not as a person's own choice, with its standing, its boundaries and its relation to universality, is the business of the Second Critique; the cannot-nots set out in these nine papers, and their standing, will be what the Second Critique examines. This series first says action out in full; it does not rehearse that Critique, and does not say less because it will be examined later (Prequel, §6).
§9.3 Handover to the Third Critique
Judgment cannot be done by rules in anyone's place, yet it can be questioned. This series writes how judgment is done, and does not prove the standing of one person to pass a verdict on another's case and claim his assent (V-4). The Prequel's §5 reassigned that standing to the Second and Third Critiques; what is handed over here is the side of it that belongs to the critique of judgment. Judgment and Aesthetics has already set the general direction of judgment and aesthetics; this paper only points out the interface, and does not cite the papers on aesthetics that are not yet published.
§9.4 Handover to the Theory of Government
Three items. First, the institutional side of guarding: what kind of institutions can guard mutual recognition already formed; Paper 9 left an interface for this in its Conclusion. Second, calling to account: this series writes of reflection, writing, protection and resistance on the individual's side (Paper 7, D42); who calls power to account, and whether calling to account has a final bearer, is the business of the Theory of Government. Third, the concern about offering exit in form while in fact sealing it off at a ruinous cost has already been handed over from On Accountability to the Theory of Government (§7).
§9.5 This Paper's Own Account
The three handovers above are all forward assignments whose address is fixed. An address being fixed is not the same as being settled (Value Theory Paper 0, §7); until the Theory of Government and the two Critiques are written, they are registered in their present state. Apart from these three, this paper hands no further definite new work to what comes after; the research candidates of §10 and the questions that came to light on looking back do not turn into definite handovers by being listed in this paper.
§10 Where This Series Stops
Following the practice of Value Theory Paper 0, registration is in six slots. What the six slots distinguish is the nature of what was not continued; they are not six blanks that every series is to fill.
The first slot: the remainder left by this construct. One item: within the field of reasons a person already has, why this item is the one he actually takes as the ground of this action. This series goes as far as saying that it is his drawing of the line (Paper 1, D7), and the existing definitions and material go no further (§8); how this selection arises in psychological and causal mechanisms belongs to the second slot. This paper does not prejudge whether it can be pursued further with this series' tools.
The second slot: objects adjacent within the jurisdiction. The causal metaphysics of action and the general psychology of action (§1.1), including how the selection among reasons arises in psychological and causal mechanisms; the mechanisms by which habit, capacity and emotion arise, since Paper 4 writes only of their place once they have entered judgment; the distribution of responsibility for action, where matters of office go to On Accountability, and fault, causal consequences and repair are checked separately, by their own sources (Prequel, §5, Y-4, Y-11); the mechanism of the phase transition, which belongs to the Economics series and the Moral Law (Paper 9, Conclusion).
The third slot: a limit already established. At the case layer of judgment there is no procedure that can complete the judgment in the person's place and guarantee that the judgment is right: this series goes as far as saying that judgment cannot be done by rules in anyone's place, and that the case layer can be questioned (D5, D6). This does not rule out checking facts, re-checking, discussion, training and other procedures that help judgment; they enter judgment, and do not gain the position of passing verdicts in the person's place. Improvement lies in being questioned, in checking facts and in looking back (Paper 1, §5).
The fourth slot: research candidates proposed by this paper. Two items. The capacity to cultivate differs from person to person (D33); as to where it comes from and how it develops, this series has only established that it exists. How "cannot be cancelled" and "can leave" hold at once in the shared layer, this series explained in Paper 1, §4 by two statements that cannot sit together; a formal account of it can be given separately.
The fifth slot: handovers whose address is already fixed. The Second Critique, the Third Critique, the Theory of Government (§9); On Accountability (Prequel, §5, Y-11).
The sixth slot: questions that only came to light on looking back. Three items, all of which came clear only while this paper was being written against the schools; this paper has answered them on the spot, and registers here only that they were seen on looking back. One: the "cannot be cancelled" of the shared layer is close on the surface to the inescapable that Williams criticizes; the difference is that one can leave (§4.1). Two: the "dependency" of the Economics paper, as Paper 6 restates it, is not the same in meaning as the dependency the ethics of care speaks of (§6.2). Three: Paper 1's sentence "This intention grows out of that pile of reasons" is a description, and takes no position on causalism (§8).
§11 Closing
The whole series can be gathered into four sentences. When a person makes a decision, what he does is negate: not-doing, cannot-not-doing, and the line not followed is not cancelled by that. A cannot-not hangs on conditions, and ought is not written; the shared layer cannot be cancelled while one stands on the premise, and the case layer is judged by the person himself, can be questioned, and can be wrong. Hold to anti-colonization inwardly, strive for cultivation outwardly; cultivation is a direction, and it necessarily leaves a blank. In a mixed reality, what the situation changes is how one can act, not "a person is an end."
Where judgment is placed: this paper asked this in nearly every one of the nine conversations. It is not in rules, not with the practically wise person or the trainer, not in the carer's assessment of whether a relationship is complete, and not in an endorsement that a single reflection in the moment can complete; it is in the person standing before the decision, and it can be questioned, can be wrong, and can be looked back on afterward. The schools are interlocutors, not premises of this series. What this paper has written is where the divisions lie, how far agreement goes, and on which three lines the differences fall; the questions outside the jurisdiction each have their own grounds, and this series does not answer them on their behalf, nor does it deny them.
Acknowledgments
This paper is Paper 0 in the Action Theory branch of the SAE (Self-as-an-End) philosophical system, and is signed by Han Qin alone. All philosophical argument and all decisions between alternatives were finally adjudicated by the author, who bears sole responsibility for the final text.
Drafting assistance and review were carried out with the help of large language models. Drafting, the search for and checking of external sources, and the internal precision audit were undertaken by Claude (Anthropic), and structural gatekeeping with pre-publication signature by ChatGPT (OpenAI). This paper was read by the internal precision audit and the structural gate, followed by a check of every revised sentence. Thanks are due to these systems and to the research and engineering teams behind them. Their comments were adjudicated by the author item by item, and both what was adopted and what was rejected are on record.
This paper's external-source table is published with it (in Chinese). It records, item by item, the source and verification tier of every external citation, stating which were confirmed in the original and which rest only on secondary sources, and it lists separately the sayings often misquoted or misattributed that the text does not use, and the places still to be checked against print. This paper's restatements of the other texts of this system are recorded separately in its paraphrase check table, which compares restatement and original item by item, continuing the standing product of this series' paraphrase audit tables. The record of revisions and withdrawals across the rounds of review is kept in the review returns and is not reproduced here. This English edition is an independent rewrite of the Chinese final text; a separate parity audit compared it with the Chinese paragraph by paragraph. The review markedly improved the precision and consistency of this paper, and thanks are due for it.
References
Group I lists works of this system, archived on Zenodo with Chinese and English versions under the same record; the DOIs cited are concept DOIs, always pointing to the latest version, so version numbers and access dates are not given separately; all are single-authored (Han Qin). Group II lists external works in the order of the conversations; the verification tier of each is given in the external-source table published with this paper (in Chinese). External works were mostly checked against public-domain transcriptions and online originals, not one by one against print; the places still awaiting a re-check are listed in the table. Group III lists public-domain classical texts and translations. Drafting and review assistance is described in the Acknowledgments.
The text restates the other texts of this system in plain words, with the paper and proposition number, or the title of an unnumbered section, noted in parentheses at the place of use. These restatements are compared item by item with the originals in this paper's paraphrase check table.
I · This system
Qin, H. (2026). What Action Is Not (SAE Action Theory, Prequel) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970747
Qin, H. (2026). Not Doing and Cannot-Not-Doing (SAE Action Theory, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970752
Qin, H. (2026). Anti-Colonization (SAE Action Theory, Paper 2) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970758
Qin, H. (2026). Is It Mine? (SAE Action Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970762
Qin, H. (2026). Can and Cannot (SAE Action Theory, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970769
Qin, H. (2026). Developing One's Own Value (SAE Action Theory, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970771
Qin, H. (2026). Not Legislating for Others (SAE Action Theory, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970777
Qin, H. (2026). Living by One's Law in Mixed Reality (SAE Action Theory, Paper 7) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970781
Qin, H. (2026). Finding One Another (SAE Action Theory, Paper 8) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970783
Qin, H. (2026). One's Own Share of Strength, and Guarding (SAE Action Theory, Paper 9) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970787
Qin, H. (2026). Interfacing with Existing Traditions, and the Prospect (SAE Value Theory, Paper 0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22265396
Qin, H. (2026). The Jurisdiction of the Question of Meaning (SAE Meaning Theory, Paper 0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22802041
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Conflict Treatise: How Subjecthood Is Not Swallowed by Conflict Itself [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22313628
Qin, H. (2026). The Other End of the Bridge: Economic Rationality When 15DD Faces a Party Who Does Not Enter 15DD (SAE Economics, Paper 2) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19381666
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Judgment and Aesthetics (SAE Foundations) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19296710
Qin, H. (2026). On Accountability · Wei (SAE Rights Theory, Specialist Paper) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22853810
Qin, H. (2026). Part I · The Instrument (Reading the Analects Through Self-as-an-End, Part I) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22656207
Qin, H. (2026). Part II · The Man Who Would Not Be a Sage (Reading the Analects Through Self-as-an-End, Part II) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22656223
Qin, H. (2026). Part III · In the Room (Reading the Analects Through Self-as-an-End, Part III) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22656232
II · External works
Aristotle, the Stoics and the other classical texts are in Group III.
Kant, I. Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781/1787). Cited by A/B pagination.
Kant, I. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785); Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788); Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790); Die Metaphysik der Sitten (1797); «Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?» (1784); «Über den Gemeinspruch» (1793). Cited by Akademie-Ausgabe volume:page.
Williams, B. (1973). Ethical Consistency. In Problems of the Self (pp. 166–186). Cambridge University Press.
Williams, B. (1981). Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980. Cambridge University Press. (Moral Luck, pp. 20–39; Practical Necessity, pp. 124–131)
Williams, B. (1985). Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Fontana / Harvard University Press.
Williams, B. (1995). Moral Incapacity. In Making Sense of Humanity (pp. 46–55). Cambridge University Press.
Frankfurt, H. G. (1971). Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person. The Journal of Philosophy, 68(1), 5–20.
Frankfurt, H. G. (1976). Identification and Externality. Reprinted in The Importance of What We Care About (1988), pp. 58–68. Cambridge University Press.
Frankfurt, H. G. (1978). The Problem of Action. American Philosophical Quarterly, 15(2), 157–162.
Frankfurt, H. G. (1988). The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge University Press.
Frankfurt, H. G. (2002). Reply to Susan Wolf. In S. Buss & L. Overton (Eds.), Contours of Agency: Essays on Themes from Harry Frankfurt. MIT Press.
Korsgaard, C. M. (1986). The Right to Lie: Kant on Dealing with Evil. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 15(4), 325–349. Reprinted in Creating the Kingdom of Ends (1996), pp. 133–158.
Korsgaard, C. M. (1996). The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge University Press.
Korsgaard, C. M. (2009). Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity. Oxford University Press.
Enoch, D. (2006). Agency, Shmagency: Why Normativity Won't Come from What Is Constitutive of Action. The Philosophical Review, 115.
Wang Yangming. Chuanxilu (传习录). Item numbers follow the standard numbering (Wing-tsit Chan, Wang Yangming Chuanxilu xiangzhu jiping 王阳明传习录详注集评).
Yang Bojun. Lunyu yizhu (论语译注). Zhonghua Book Company. Chapter numbers follow this edition.
Legge, J. (Trans.). The Chinese Classics, Vol. I: Confucian Analects. Chapter division follows Zhu Xi's Collected Commentaries (论语集注).
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. Harvard University Press.
Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. University of California Press.
Noddings, N. (2005). Caring in Education. The Encyclopedia of Pedagogy and Informal Education (infed.org).
Noddings, N. (2008). Caring and Peace Education. In Encyclopedia of Peace Education. Teachers College, Columbia University.
Held, V. (2006). The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. Oxford University Press.
Tronto, J. C. (1993). Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. Routledge.
Kittay, E. F. (1999). Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency. Routledge.
Narayan, U. (1995). Colonialism and Its Others: Considerations on Rights and Care Discourses. Hypatia, 10(2), 133–140.
Hirschman, A. O. (1970). Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Harvard University Press.
Hirschman, A. O. (1993). Exit, Voice, and the Fate of the German Democratic Republic: An Essay in Conceptual History. World Politics, 45(2), 173–202.
Rusbult, C. E., Farrell, D., Rogers, G., & Mainous, A. G. (1988). Impact of Exchange Variables on Exit, Voice, Loyalty, and Neglect: An Integrative Model of Responses to Declining Job Satisfaction. Academy of Management Journal, 31(3), 599–627.
Anscombe, G. E. M. (1957). Intention. Basil Blackwell.
Davidson, D. (1963). Actions, Reasons, and Causes. The Journal of Philosophy, 60(23), 685–700.
Davidson, D. (1978). Intending. Reprinted in Essays on Actions and Events (1980). Oxford University Press.
Bratman, M. E. (1987). Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason. Harvard University Press.
Clarke, R. (2014). Omissions: Agency, Metaphysics, and Responsibility. Oxford University Press.
Mossel, B. (2009). Negative Actions. Philosophia, 37, 307–333.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Virtue Ethics; Aristotle's Ethics; Epictetus; Kant's Social and Political Philosophy.
III · Public domain
Aristotle. Ethica Nicomachea. Ed. I. Bywater. Oxford, 1894. English translation consulted: H. Rackham (Loeb, 1926). Cited by Bekker page and line. (Public domain)
Epictetus. Dissertationes and Enchiridion. Ed. H. Schenkl. Leipzig, 1916. English translation consulted: G. Long (1890). (Public domain)
Marcus Aurelius. Ad se ipsum. Ed. J. H. Leopold. Oxford, 1908. (Public domain)
Seneca. Epistulae morales ad Lucilium. English translation consulted: R. M. Gummere (Loeb, 1917–1925). (Public domain)
Aulus Gellius. Noctes Atticae. English translation consulted: J. C. Rolfe (Loeb, 1927). (Public domain)
Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. English translation consulted: R. D. Hicks (Loeb, 1925). (Public domain)
Kant, public-domain English translations: T. K. Abbott (Groundwork; Critique of Practical Reason; Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals); J. M. D. Meiklejohn (Critique of Pure Reason); J. H. Bernard (Critique of Judgement). (Public domain)
Lunyu (the Analects); Chuanxilu. (Public domain)