Self-as-an-End
SAE Love Theory · Paper 3

It Is I
是我

Han Qin (秦汉) · Independent Researcher · 2026
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23627774 · Full PDF on Zenodo · CC BY 4.0
Abstract

Love Theory reads love by layers; a layer is an aspect of asking, not a stage of love. This paper reads the layer of the self: it is I who love her; love has an owner. In SAE's levels, this layer is written 13DD.

This layer has six propositions. At this layer love has an owner: it is I who love her, not she who made me love her, and not fate. When I see her wrongly, this judgment is mine, even if she kept something from me; her keeping it from me is a separate entry; pushing this judgment away, saying "It was you who made me see wrongly," does not show the folding back here; but neither, from outside, does a sentence of blame certify that there was no folding back on that occasion. The beloved is looking too: she has her own looking and judgment, can also see wrongly, and is not only the way she appears. I cannot fully say why I love her; this layer cannot read the purpose that drives it. A former life and destiny are readings given to that instant after the fact, an account I give myself, not a component of that instant. The direction of colonization read from this layer is taking her in as my mirror: what I love is the I who loves her, and I want her to confirm who I am; being in love with love itself, where anyone who comes will do, stays with me, and so long as it has not reached her by way of words and deeds, no direction toward her is read.

Love at this layer has a kind of ending that falls on "I was the one who saw her wrongly": the mistake folding back onto oneself and pushing the mistake onto her are two different endings; having one's seeing wrongly corrected need not make love end. This paper interfaces with Augustine and Freud. This paper does not prove that a love that knows itself is higher than one that does not, nor that love must be able to give its reasons.

Introduction

They have known each other for nearly a year. She is a veterinarian; he works in city planning. He loves her; whether she knows it, he cannot say for sure. For one month her replies suddenly grew short: she wrote back only every few days, and her tone was polite. He decided she was pulling away from him: probably it was the last get-together, when he had said something tactless in front of friends, and since then she had thought less of him. The more he thought about it, the more it fit. He wrote to an old friend: that is just the kind of person she is, warm one moment and cold the next; it was she who made me misread her.

Only later did he learn that her mother had been in the hospital that month; she saw patients by day and sat up in the ward at night, and every reply had been typed on her phone in the corridor. He read those short replies again, and his face went red: I saw wrongly.

This paper begins from this instant.

What this paper reads. Paper 1 reads that moment: a voice, a small difference, pulled at him, and at that moment there was only her; but at that moment he could not say why, and had not yet said to himself "it is I who love her." This paper reads another face: love has an owner. SAE divides this into two layers: at the layer of the self, judgment has an owner; at the layer of purpose, a person has a direction of his own, where he is going.1 This paper reads the first of these (13DD); the second is Paper 4.

A layer is not a stage; a love does not go first through first sight and afterward through "it is I." The same love has a face at each of the two layers: that moment's pull, which came from who knows where, and "it is I who love her" can both be in him. Paper 1 has said that a layer records one operation, not a person; it is applied here as it stands.

The self and purpose are written in two papers because the directions of colonization read from the two layers are very different. The one read from the layer of the self takes her in as my mirror and falls on "who I am"; the one read from the layer of purpose turns my direction into her ruler and falls on "where she ought to go." The first this paper reads; the second belongs to Paper 4.

This paper does not write how self-awareness comes about, and neither does Aesthetics Ray 10, The Beauty of the Self; this paper writes only how the owner of love looks when it is seen in one love. This owner is very thin, so thin that it is only a place where a mistake can fold back; precisely because it is thin, it fixes for no one what kind of person he ought to become.

Method. As in Paper 1: the conclusions of upstream papers are said here in plain words; sources, the proposition numbers of other papers and the places where upstream words are carried beyond their original place all go in the notes, and where something is extended or transferred, this series takes it on as its own undertaking. The examples use made-up people and events, and one example runs through the whole paper: the veterinarian and the planner. Both are within scope: she acknowledges that she cannot do without her work at the examining table, and he too has a city plan that he has revised again and again and still cannot let go of; both know that each of them has somewhere to go that the other cannot choose on his or her behalf. This is a matter of capacity; his seeing her wrongly that month is the operation of that one occasion; the two are entered separately.

§1 Love Has an Owner

L18 At this layer love has an owner: it is I who love her, not she who made me love her, and not fate

Aesthetics Ray 10 writes how judgment comes to have an owner: "A living thing, when it sees wrongly, does not say the world was wrong; it says: I saw wrongly. Judgment has an owner."2 The owner asks for very little: it is not a sovereign, and need not be a constant substance; it need only be "the place where a mistake can fold back."3

Love has this point too. At the moment of Paper 1 the pull came, and no one avowed it; at this layer someone says: it is I who love her. What this sentence says is not that he loves much, nor that he loves rightly; it says that this love has an owner.4

"It is I who love her" rules out two accounts. One is "it was she who made me love her": it pushes the origin of love onto her, as if she did something and love then landed on him. The other is "it is fate": it pushes the origin of love onto a place that is no one. Both accounts can be said without being false: she really did do certain things, and the pull really was not his to choose; but both push avowal away. What this layer speaks of is exactly avowal: wherever it came from, this love is mine.

The owner often shows itself when one sees wrongly. Ray 10 says that when a judgment is right, it seems as if the world itself said it; "Only when it is wrong does it show that this judgment was made by someone."5 So it is with love. While everything goes smoothly, this love seems to be something she brought, something heaven gave; only when he saw her wrongly and went red could he see that the judgment in this love was made by him.

Avowing love is not possessing her. "It is I who love her" says that this love is mine, not that she is mine. Nor is the owner a sovereign: he has avowed this love, but he cannot govern where it comes from, nor can he stop it just by saying so; what he avows includes the seeing wrongly within it.

This owner is finite. Ray 10 goes on: "This owner is finite: it has an origin and edges; where it is going, the direction is not yet its own."6 Why he loves her comes in part from his own origin: how he grew up, whom he has met over these years, what kind of voice and what kind of earnestness move him; none of this did he choose. So "it is I who love her" does not conflict with his being unable, at the moment of Paper 1, to say why. What the owner avows is this love, not its whole provenance. The origin was not his choice; the love is his all the same.

Finitude has another face. Where upstream writes of self-awareness, it says that awareness of death is self-awareness seeing that its own predictions contain "I will die" and being able to keep its distance from that prediction.7 In love he can see one thing more: she too will die; both of them will die. Once he has seen this, how to give this love a meaning in the face of it is Paper 4's matter.

Saying "it is I who love her" need not be aloud. He went red, read those short replies once more and said nothing to anyone; that instant is there too.

L19 When I see her wrongly, this judgment is mine, even if she kept something from me; her keeping it from me is a separate entry. Pushing this judgment itself away, saying "It was you who made me see wrongly," does not show the folding back here; from outside, a sentence of blame does not certify that self-awareness was not operating on that occasion

He judged her "warm one moment and cold the next"; that was a judgment he made. It was wrong, and the mistake folds back onto him: I saw wrongly.

Take another case. Suppose she had kept quiet deliberately: she did not want him to worry, and in her replies said only that all was well. Then his seeing wrongly has a share of its cause in her. But the judgment is his all the same: "she is pulling away from me" is something he read out of a few short replies, and no one read it for him. Her not saying is a separate entry, entered on her side; how that entry is read depends on the dealings on her side and is not in this proposition. The two entries do not cancel each other out: her keeping it from him does not turn his seeing wrongly into hers, and his seeing wrongly does not make her not saying cease to count.

Push this judgment itself away, say "It was you who made me see wrongly," and the mistake lands on her and does not fold back. Here the owner cannot be seen. Paper 2 has read a similar form: by the remembered her, discerning that the her before him is "wrong"; there the question is how what is remembered measures what is before one; here the question is whether the owner of the judgment is there.

But from outside, a sentence of blame does not certify that there was no folding back on that occasion. In his letter he told his friend "it was she who made me misread her"; that sentence can be seen; whether something in him turned round as he wrote cannot be seen. A person can push it away in what he says while in his heart it has already folded back; he can also admit it in what he says while in his heart it has not. Whether one loves is the affair of the one who loves, as Paper 1 has laid down; where the instant of seeing wrongly lands is likewise his own matter. From outside, only clues can be seen.

The folding back is inside him. Whether he goes and tells her "I saw wrongly" is another matter: if he says it, the sentence enters her conditions of occurrence and is a new effect, read separately;8 if he does not, the folding back is there all the same. The folding back this layer asks for does not require a ritual of admitting one's mistake.

This proposition does not judge people. It does not say what kind of person pushes it away; it reads only where this one judgment lands.

L20 The beloved is looking too: as this layer asks, she too has her own looking and judgment, and can also see wrongly; she is not only the way she appears

Ray 10 says that this layer has a point peculiar to it: "what is seen is itself looking."9

At the moment of Paper 1 she was, to him, an appearance: a voice, a look. Asked from this layer, she is not only what is looked at. That month she was looking at him too: his letters grew longer one after another, asking why she did not reply; reading them, she too made a judgment: he cares only about his own feelings. She too may have seen wrongly: he wrote long letters because he was afraid.

This proposition speaks as this layer asks. It does not say that she was operating at this layer at that moment, nor does it avow anything for her; it says that the other side love meets at this layer is a person who makes judgments and can also see wrongly. How she sees him is her judgment, and she is its owner. He can disagree, and can tell her she has seen wrongly; he cannot admit it for her, nor revise it for her.

Later they talked it through. He said: that month, I thought you were pulling away from me. She said: that month, I thought you cared only about yourself. Each had seen wrongly once: two mistakes, each folding back onto the one who made it. He cannot admit her mistake for her, nor she his. When he told her of his seeing wrongly, what he told her was what he had seen and what he had seen wrongly; he did not fix for her how she ought to see him; how she understood it was left to her. Relation Theory reads two directions in a single effect: cultivation, which goes toward making space; colonization, which goes toward pouring in and occupying.10 If his telling her carries a direction, it points toward making space.

This point will be used later. The direction of colonization read from this layer goes to occupy precisely this point: it wants her looking to reflect the way I want to be seen (L23).

§2 Not Fully Said, and Accounts After the Fact

L21 I cannot fully say why I love her; this layer cannot read the purpose that drives it

Ask him why he loves her, and he can say some things: when she dresses the wound of an injured cat, her hands do not shake at all; she speaks slowly, and says a thing only once she has thought it through. As he goes on talking, he himself knows that this is not all of it.

Upstream sets this layer an edge: the self cannot read its purpose, and can only be constrained by it; toward the layer of purpose it can neither read the content nor be aware that a purpose is driving it.11 At this layer the owner avows this love, yet cannot read what is driving it, or toward where. That he cannot fully say is not because he is not honest enough, nor because he has not thought enough; it is that this layer cannot read it in the first place.

When Aesthetics Ray 11 says of reasons, "He can give some of his reasons, not all of them," it is speaking of the direction at the layer of purpose: the direction comes, the reasons follow behind it, and they can never all be said.12 That is Paper 4's matter. This layer lays down only one thing: not being able to say it all does not prevent its being I who love her.

Pressed to say why he loved someone, Montaigne answered: "because it was he, because it was I."13

It is the same the other way round. He asks her: why do you love me? She can say some things, and she cannot say it all either. If he requires her to say it all, so that not being able to say it all means not loving enough, he is measuring her with something that cannot be read; what cannot be read at this layer cannot be read on her side either.

This paper does not prove that love must be able to give its reasons. What can be said can be discussed; what cannot be said is not one bit less for that.

L22 A former life and destiny are readings given to that instant after the fact, an account I give myself, not a component of that instant

Later they were together. Once he said to her: we must have known each other in a former life; otherwise why would I have panicked so that month?

Paper 1 divides the sense at first sight of having long known someone into three: the quality of a face that seems familiar stays at that layer; resembling someone belongs to Paper 2; a former life and destiny, readings given to that instant after the fact, belong to this paper.

A former life and destiny are an account he gives himself. When that instant happened, no former life was present; speaking of a former life gives that instant a provenance as one looks back. It is not a component of that instant: take the sentence away, and that instant is still that instant. This paper does not say that this account is wrong, nor that it is right; it says only that it is a reading, and that it stays with the one who says it.

It has to be squared with L18 at one point. L18 says that it is I who love her, "and not fate." If talk of destiny says "this love is not mine; fate arranged it," it pushes the owner away and has the same form as the pushing away in L19; if it says only "meeting her felt as if it had long been fated," the owner is still there, and it is an account he gives of this love. The two are told apart within the one who speaks.

Talk of destiny can also be put to another use: "since it is fated, I should wait for her always." Then it is no longer only a provenance; it has become a reason for where he is going, which is a matter for the layer of purpose and belongs to Paper 4.

Once this account is said to her and put to another use, it is read separately. "You are fated to be mine" no longer speaks of his own provenance; it fixes for her where she ought to go; that kind falls in Paper 4.

§3 The Direction of Colonization Read from This Layer

L23 The direction of colonization read from this layer is taking her in as my mirror: what I love is the I who loves her, the I who is loved by her. Wanting her to reflect me and confirm who I am is at this layer; wanting her to become something according to my plans is in Paper 4. Being in love with love itself, where anyone who comes will do, stays with me; so long as it has not entered her conditions of occurrence in word or deed, no direction toward her is read; only when the demand that she play a role in my story has entered her conditions of occurrence is a direction toward her read

After they were together, he found that he liked the self he was while loving her: attentive, patient, knowing how to wait. This in itself carries no direction. He often asked her: "Tell me, don't I understand you well?" Sometimes she said yes; sometimes she smiled and did not answer. When she did not answer, he grew uneasy and asked again.

Two things must be told apart here. One is that I love her and, along the way, have come to like the self who loves her. The other is that what I love is precisely the I who loves her, the I who is loved by her; she is there in order to reflect me. The second, on the side of beauty, Ray 10 calls a counterfeit: it lists self-admiration, and persona and reputation, among the things that pass themselves off as the beauty of the self.14 Carried into love, "what I love is the I who loves her" is the form in which something passes itself off as "it is I who love her": there seems to be an I here too, but that I is not the place where the mistake folds back; it is a mirror that wants someone else to polish it.

Wanting to be seen by her is not the mirror. What love meets at this layer is a person who is looking too (L20); being seen by her is part of love from the start. He hopes she will see his panic that month; this hope carries no direction. The mirror kind is wanting her looking to follow, in advance, a form already fixed: what she sees is not up to her.

The mirror itself is with him. Only when he wants her to do the reflecting does it enter her conditions of occurrence. He asks "don't I understand you well?"; she may say anything at all, and this question carries no direction. If every time she says "not entirely" he requires her to take it back, until she says the sentence he wants to hear, her looking is being required to reflect a form fixed beforehand. L20 has said that her looking is hers; this requirement heads toward pouring in and occupying that point, and slides in the direction of colonization.15 Whether it took hold is seen in how she afterward sees him and sees herself: if from then on she sees him only in the form he wants, and no longer dares to say even what she herself sees, this direction has taken hold.

"The I who is loved by her" is the other face of the mirror. He asks "do you still love me?"; asked once, it is a question; how she answers is her response. Relation Theory says that the other party's response is material, not a settling of the account.16 Asking often, or growing uneasy if she goes a day without answering, is not yet enough on its own for a direction toward her to be read. Only if he requires that every time she can answer only with the sentence he wants to hear, does not allow her not to answer or to answer otherwise, and wants her response to reflect, fixedly, the I who is loved, settling for him the account of who he is, is he using his own image to prescribe her response, heading toward pouring in and occupying. Whether it took hold is likewise seen in her afterward.

Wanting her to reflect me and confirm who I am is at this layer; wanting her to become something according to my plans is in Paper 4. The first falls on "who I am," the second on "where she ought to go." Within the same act there can be both; they are read separately.

There is a thinner kind still: being in love with love itself, where anyone who comes will do. An old friend of his has just broken up and is in a hurry to fall in love again; whoever is kind to him, he goes toward. What he loves is the fact of "being in love"; who comes does not matter. This kind puts a person in a replaceable position; in this series it is precisely this kind, and only this kind, that treats a person as a means of getting love. It differs from the wavering of Paper 4: wavering is not yet having decided between two people, and in his eyes neither of the two can be exchanged; "anyone will do" means that whoever comes can be exchanged from the start.

"Anyone will do" first stays with him; it is a matter between him and himself. So long as it has not entered another person's conditions of occurrence in word or deed, no direction toward her is read: a relation exists only when an identifiable effect actually enters the conditions of occurrence of the other side, and thoughts not expressed in word or deed cannot enter the other party's conditions of occurrence.17 If he starts writing a role for the other person and says to her: you are the one who has come to save me; you should stay with me until the wounds of the last one have healed, this role enters her conditions of occurrence, and only then is a direction toward her read.

What is spoken of here are all directions, not labels. It does not say that he is a narcissistic person, nor that this is a mirror kind of relation; it reads only where this one effect heads.

§4 How Love at This Layer Ends

This series divides ending into four kinds: an appearance passes; my love ends; the shared dealings terminate; commitments and effects remain unsettled. The section of each paper that writes of ending writes only of the kind that belongs to that layer. What this layer reads is one form of the second: if the love that rested on his seeing wrongly has ended, how he acknowledges "I was the one who saw her wrongly." Having one's seeing wrongly corrected need not make love end.

Some years later he slowly came to see that what he had been loving all along was in part a her he had written himself: someone who appears only when he needs her and is never flustered. The real she gets flustered, gets tired, answers in a few words on her phone in a corridor. He did not say "it's you who have changed," nor "it's you who lied to me"; he said: I saw wrongly. Part of this love ended in that instant; the ending folds back onto himself.

Set against it is another ending: pushing the mistake onto her. "You are not at all the person I thought you were": if this sentence is only an instant in his heart, it stays with him; if he says it to her, and further requires her to accept "it was you who made me see wrongly," he pushes this judgment onto her and fixes for her who she is. That direction Paper 1 has read: taking one way she looks and fixing by it who she is slides in the direction of colonization.18

Nor is folding back taking everything upon oneself. "It is all my fault; I am not fit to love anyone" sounds as if it too lands on oneself, but the sentence itself does not make that one mistaken judgment clear; instead it characterizes the whole self; from this sentence alone the folding back at that point cannot be seen, nor can it be certified that there was no folding back in his heart. This kind the SAE Laughter series reads as the swamp of the layer of the self: "the subject is present, but judges itself without direction."19 The folding back this paper reads lands only on the one who made that judgment, and on that judgment.

Neither ending clears anything from the books. The promises and reliance already between them are entered separately under the propositions on commitment and ending, and Paper 4 reads them again; if she really did keep something from him, that entry too is entered separately (L19). The ending's folding back onto him does not thereby settle what he owes; pushing the mistake onto her does not make her owe one entry more.

Love at this layer ending is not the same as his no longer loving her. The part that was seen wrongly has ended; the rest he may love just the same.

Boundary. Seeing wrongly and folding back may also happen before love: what then shows in the folding back is still the owner of the judgment, not the owner of love; that instant may make room for a love, and love still begins from that moment's cannot-not.20

§5 Interfacing with Tradition

For each, this paper writes faithfully what he sees and why he looks, where he presses on this paper, where they meet and where they part; other traditions appear in their own words. This paper reads only the face of love that is turned toward her.21

I did not yet love, yet I loved to love. At the opening of Book III of the Confessions, Augustine looks back on the time when he first came to Carthage: "I did not yet love, yet I loved to love ... I sought something to love, loving to love."22 He writes this book to confess to God, looking back on the hunger in his heart at that time: a hunger that was in truth for the inner food, for God. What he sees: love can at first be without an object, can first fall in love with "love," and then go looking for something to love. He presses on this paper: if love always first falls in love with love and then fills a person in, is the "her" of "it is I who love her" always only something filled in afterward? They meet in: he first falls in love with "love," and then seeks an object he can love; whether the object sought is one where anyone who comes will do is a further question, which this paper divides only in L23, by whether the object can be exchanged. They part at two points. First, he reads that hunger as a hunger for God, with a true object waiting; this series does not supply love with a true object, and reads only whether, in one effect, the object can be exchanged. Second, he reads where a heart goes; this series reads whether it has entered another person's conditions of occurrence: if it has not, it is only with him.

The narcissistic type and the anaclitic type. In "On Narcissism: An Introduction" (1914), Freud lists two kinds of object choice: "A person loves: 1) according to the narcissistic type: a) what he himself is (himself), b) what he himself was, c) what he himself would like to be ... 2) according to the anaclitic type: a) the woman who feeds him, b) the man who protects him."23 He looks in order to bring narcissism into the theory of the libido, and also for clinical work. What he sees: a person can love himself in another person: what he is, what he was, what he would like to be. He presses on this paper: even if object choice forms along the narcissistic and the anaclitic avenues respectively, how is this one person still this one, and not merely a substitute along those avenues? They meet in: loving the I who loves her has a side close to loving "what he himself would like to be" (L23); nor does he divide people sharply into two groups: both paths of object choice are open to every person.24 They part at: his two types ask where object choice comes from; this series does not judge from provenance whether this love is for her, nor judge from provenance the effect directed toward her; where attraction comes from is acknowledged but not judged.25 What is asked here instead is whether, this time, her looking was used to reflect, fixedly, the form I want to become. The side of the anaclitic type that concerns early objects and their substitutes can be read alongside the section of Paper 2 that reads "resembling someone."

§6 Drawing Together and Downstream

This paper has laid down six propositions. Taken together, they say: at this layer love has an owner: it is I who love her; the owner is finite: it has an origin and edges, and the direction is not yet its own. When I see her wrongly, this judgment is mine; pushed away, no folding back can be seen, but from outside it also cannot be certified that there was none. She is looking too, and her looking is hers. I cannot fully say why I love her; this layer cannot read the purpose that drives it. A former life and destiny are an account given after the fact. The direction of colonization read from this layer is taking her in as my mirror; being in love with love itself, where anyone who comes will do, is only with oneself until it enters another person's conditions of occurrence.

This paper does not prove that a love that knows itself is higher than one that does not, nor that love must be able to give its reasons.

The question left open. Ray 10 writes the question it leaves open as: "once there is an I, where does the I go."26 He has avowed this love, but avowal does not give it a direction. Its origin was not his choice, and where it goes this layer cannot contain either. Why, though other people make sense too, he cannot exchange her; how this love became where he himself is going: that is Paper 4, No Substitute.

Downstream. On whom the mistake lands when one sees wrongly (L19) is read against Paper 2's discerning, by the remembered her, that the her before him is "wrong." Reasons that can be given in part and never exhausted, the persistent cannot-not, and giving a meaning to this love and to the death of both are in Paper 4. The mirror and the ruler are kept apart: wanting her to confirm who I am is at this layer; wanting her to become something according to my plans is in Paper 4. "Anyone will do" is kept apart from wavering; wavering is in Paper 4. Recognizing her as her own end, set against this layer's mirror, is in Paper 5. The ending at this layer, together with the endings at every layer, Paper 0 treats together.

Acknowledgments

This paper is signed by Han Qin alone; the author decided every argument and choice and bears sole responsibility for the text. Models from Anthropic and OpenAI assisted with drafting and review; the author thanks them.

Notes

  1. The notation of layers follows the Revision Notes of From Self-Awareness to Non Dubito: "splits 9D into 13DD law of self-awareness + 14DD law of meaning". The layer of the self is 13DD; the layer of purpose is 14DD. ↩︎
  2. Aesthetics Ray 10 §3. ↩︎
  3. Aesthetics Ray 10 §2. ↩︎
  4. Ray 10 speaks of the owner of the judgment; reading it as the owner of love is this series' own transfer (own undertaking). ↩︎
  5. Aesthetics Ray 10 §2. ↩︎
  6. Aesthetics Ray 10 §3. ↩︎
  7. "Awareness of death = self-awareness seeing that its predictions contain 'I will die' and being able to keep distance from this prediction." (From Self-Awareness to Non Dubito §2.2) The original sentence speaks of one's own death; carrying it to her death, and to the death of both, is this series' own extension (own undertaking). ↩︎
  8. "Conditions of occurrence" is Relation Theory's term: once an act of one party, or what it leaves behind, identifiably and actually enters the other party's conditions of occurrence, that is, the conditions on which whatever afterward occurs on that party's side depends (what can be seen, what can be thought, what can be done, what is run into), there is a relation (Relation Theory Paper 1, H1). ↩︎
  9. Aesthetics Ray 10 §2. ↩︎
  10. Relation Theory Paper 1, H8. The direction is read on this one effect; whether it took hold is seen in the other party's later understanding and action. Cultivation and colonization are not the two extremes of one scale: the same act can carry both directions, and can also carry no direction at all. ↩︎
  11. "the self cannot read its purpose; it can only be constrained by it"; of 13DD toward 14DD, "its readout is zero: it can read neither the content of 14DD nor that there is a 14DD driving it at all" (Information Theory XIII, Abstract). ↩︎
  12. Aesthetics Ray 11 §2. ↩︎
  13. Aesthetics Ray 13 §8 has already interfaced with this sentence; it is invoked here, not rewritten. ↩︎
  14. Aesthetics Ray 10 §5 lists "self-admiration" and "persona and reputation" among the things that can pass for the beauty of the self. Carrying this into love is this series' own transfer (own undertaking). ↩︎
  15. Relation Theory H8. ↩︎
  16. "The other party's response is material, not a settling of the account" (Relation Theory Paper 4, H33). H33 originally says that a response settles nothing; reading it onto "who he is" is this series' own extension (own undertaking). ↩︎
  17. Relation Theory's minimal condition of relation requires that an identifiable effect actually enter the conditions of occurrence of the other side (Relation Theory Paper 1, H1). Relation Theory Paper 6, H57, has the sentence "thoughts of his that he has not expressed in word or deed do not enter the other party's conditions of occurrence"; that sentence originally stands where exit is treated; using it here is this series' own extension (own undertaking). ↩︎
  18. Paper 1, L9. ↩︎
  19. Laughter II §2.3. Laughter here follows Psychoanalysis III in reading this kind of self-judgment as the 13DD swamp. ↩︎
  20. On the owner of the judgment, see Aesthetics Ray 10 §2; on love beginning from that moment's cannot-not, see Paper 1, L1. Paper 7 reads Elizabeth's instant in Pride and Prejudice. ↩︎
  21. The figures Aesthetics Ray 10 has already interfaced with, Kierkegaard's "relation that relates itself to itself," Montaigne, Augustine writing of his friend's death, Hume, Ricoeur and others, ask about the beauty of the self; they are invoked here, not rewritten. Aesthetics Ray 13 has already interfaced with Montaigne's "because it was he, because it was I." Relation Theory Paper 2 has read the relation between a person and himself; Relation Theory Paper 0 has already done the interfacing at the layer of relation, in §§5 to 14, and this paper has come upon nothing there that it needs to point back to. ↩︎
  22. Nondum amabam, et amare amabam … Quærebam quod amarem, amans amare (Confessiones III.1.1). ↩︎
  23. Man liebt: 1) Nach dem narzißtischen Typus: a) was man selbst ist (sich selbst), b) was man selbst war, c) was man selbst sein möchte … 2) Nach dem Anlehnungstypus: a) die nährende Frau, b) den schützenden Mann. ↩︎
  24. Same essay, original printing of 1914, p. 13: "Wir haben nun nicht geschlossen, daß die Menschen in zwei scharf geschiedene Gruppen zerfallen, … sondern ziehen die Annahme vor, daß jedem Menschen beide Wege zur Objektwahl offen stehen" (from the transcription of the original printing at freudedition.net). ↩︎
  25. Paper 1, L5: where attraction comes from is acknowledged but not judged. ↩︎
  26. Aesthetics Ray 10 §8. ↩︎

References

All SAE works below are cited by concept DOI, which always resolves to the latest version. Quotations are checked item by item in the accompanying audit table.

I · SAE works directly cited in this paper

Qin, H. (2026). The Beauty of the Self (SAE Aesthetics, Ray 10) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22990079

Qin, H. (2026). The Beauty of Purpose (SAE Aesthetics, Ray 11) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22991142

Qin, H. (2026). The Beauty of Mutual Non Dubito (SAE Aesthetics, Ray 13) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23000910

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Information Theory XIII: 9D Information, the Processing at 13DD and the Unalterability of 14DD [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20533431

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Laughter · II: This Judgment Is Mine [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23287559

Qin, H. (2026). From Self-Awareness to Non Dubito: Completing Kant (9D–10D) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18808584

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 0: The Place of Relation Theory [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545115

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 1: What a Relation Is, and What It Is Not [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545047

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 2: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23541778

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 4: Dealings and Expectation [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545057

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 6: Asymmetry, Divergence and Ending [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545087

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Love Theory Paper 0: The Place of Love Theory [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23627790

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Love Theory Paper 1: At First Sight [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23627762

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Love Theory Paper 2: Longing [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23627766

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Love Theory Paper 4: No Substitute [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23627776

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Love Theory Paper 5: Without Waiting for You [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23627779

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Love Theory Paper 6: That Moment [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23627781

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Love Theory Paper 7: Stories [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23627784

II · External works

The Latin follows the Latin text in Project Gutenberg #33849; the German follows the separate edition of 1924. The English renderings are made from the originals.

Augustinus. Confessiones, liber III, 1.1. (Project Gutenberg #33849)

Freud, Sigmund. Zur Einführung des Narzißmus. Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, Bd. VI, 1914 (original printing per the freudedition.net transcription); separate edition, Leipzig/Wien/Zürich: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1924, S. 21–22.

Interfaces

  • Main upstream: Aesthetics Ray 10, The Beauty of the Self (§§2, 3, 5, 8); Information Theory XIII (Abstract).
  • Also used: From Self-Awareness to Non Dubito (Revision Notes; §2.2); Laughter II (§2.3); Aesthetics Ray 11 (§2); Aesthetics Ray 13 (§8); Relation Theory Paper 1 (H1, H8), Paper 2 (the paper on time), Paper 4 (H33), Paper 6 (H57).
  • This series: Paper 1 (L1; L5; L9; the threefold division of the sense at first sight of having long known someone); Paper 2 (L11; "resembling someone"); Paper 4 (L25, wavering; L27, meaning-conferral; L30, the ruler); Paper 5 (recognizing her as her own end); Paper 7 (Pride and Prejudice); Paper 0 (the propositions listed together, the shared words and the endings of each layer).