The Years
岁月
This paper reads marriage over the long years. Each person's yesterday, today and tomorrow land in one and the same stretch of dealings; people change, and after they change, the two choose again together. Choosing again together takes two shapes: neither law changes, and a new arrangement is formed; or one party, or both, separately revise, and the two then confirm together that the new way of doing things fits. Where only one party has revised and no shared reading has yet formed between the two, the original matter exits, and this does not yet count as choosing again together. To measure the other as he is now by the other as he was then, and to say it out loud, fixing for him who he is, slides in the direction of colonization.
Division of labor is a present arrangement the two have acknowledged together; it can be avowed anew, and it can be changed; its binding force passes separately through each party's own law. Where division of labor slides into a fixed requirement aimed at the other, by being treated as something the other may not change, by being hung on who the other is, or by being swapped out within habit, there is a tendency toward colonization: saying it out loud and characterizing the division of labor slides in the direction of colonization; making it unchangeable for the other in running carries the direction of colonization. One party's own treating the division of labor as unchangeable is his self-relation, and is not within this tendency. Division of labor is not exchange. A moment of exchange is falling back; it is common, and is sometimes words said in anger: the whole marriage is not characterized on the strength of this one occasion; what has been said out loud this time is read for direction by the effect of this one occasion; whether it has since become fixed into a continuing requirement is read separately, as sediment.
Expression is read separately by three grounds: a requirement that holds in one's own law; a role requirement explicitly arranged by both parties; only an expectation of the relation; expectation alone does not establish either of the first two in reverse. To hang an expectation on who the other is, or on what he cares about, and on that basis to judge for him, slides in the direction of colonization. Conflict can be an avenue of chiseling, and this possibility is read together with its cost; after conflict has occurred again and again, stopping points can have become routine, and stalling can have become the normal state; a long absence of conflict is not evidence of cultivation. What admits of diagnosis is this operation on this occasion, not this person; consensus does not ratify the past; whether, after a violation, one can come back, acknowledge and repair is read with two ledgers in parallel. This paper interfaces with Cavell, Beauvoir, Aristotle and Ban Zhao. This paper does not prove that longer is better, does not prove that change means two people ought to part, and does not prescribe how the division of labor ought to be divided.
Introduction
He Shoucheng and Meng Qiuyun have been married thirty-one years. When he was young he was a signalman on the railway, working rotating shifts; she taught Chinese at a secondary school. In the first year of their marriage the two agreed: he worked nights, so the meals and the accounts at home were hers; whatever broke in the house, and the heavy lifting and carrying, were his. This agreement was used for more than twenty years. Their daughter has long had a family of her own, and lives in another city.
The year Qiuyun turned fifty-two, she enrolled at a pottery studio in the provincial capital, going three days a week, leaving early and coming back late. The evening she told Shoucheng, the first thing he said was: "You weren't like this when you were young." Then he asked: "So who's cooking on those three days?" Qiuyun answered him: "I've cooked for you for over twenty years, and you can't even manage three days?" That night neither of them said another word.
The few sentences said that night are each a separate thing. "You weren't like this when you were young" takes up her as she was back then; "who's cooking" asks after a division of labor used for over twenty years; "I've cooked for you for over twenty years" enters these years as an account. Beneath these three sentences lies a larger thing: both people have changed. This paper reads how marriage is lived over the long years.
Paper 1 has read that marriage is not one promise; it is the same promise made anew each day: whoever stands there on any given day is the person of today.1 That paper read how this sentence binds a person, and how it does not. This paper reads how it is lived over thirty-one years: whoever stands there on any given day is the person of today, and the person of today is no longer the person of thirty-one years ago.
What this paper reads. It reads four things. First, change: people change; after they change, how do two people choose again together, and how do they not measure the other as he is now by the other as he was then? Second, division of labor and exchange: how a division of labor acknowledged together can be changed, and how it slides into a requirement that may not be changed; how a moment of exchange is read. Third, expression and expectation: what was said out loud over the long years and what was not, each read on what grounds. Fourth, what conflict, having occurred again and again, sediments into in dealings. On each of these the direction of colonization can be read: measuring her as she is now by her as she was then; division of labor sliding into a fixed requirement aimed at the other; fixing a moment of exchange in place; hanging an expectation on who the other is.
Colonization, in this series, names the direction of one effect: toward pouring in and occupying; the other direction is cultivation, toward making space. The two are not the two extremes of one scale; the same act can carry both directions, and can also carry no direction at all; the direction is read on this one effect, and whether it took hold is seen in the other party's later understanding and action: the half that is action can be seen from outside, while the half that is understanding needs the other party's own first person.2 "A tendency toward colonization" and "slides in the direction of colonization" both speak of direction, and are not read as having already taken hold.
Shared words. "Law" and "arrangement" are used apart. A person's own law is the layer that he bears in the first person and by which he goes on organizing his action; an arrangement is how time, roles, procedure and the conditions of action are laid out. The Conflict Treatise keeps the two layers apart: an arrangement can untie a matter, and "the arrangement itself neither generates a third law of one's own nor, on its own strength, rewrites either party's law."3 Division of labor lies at the layer of arrangement.
"Change" and "revision" are used apart. Change is a person's rises and falls over the long years: interests shift, the center of gravity moves, the way he talks becomes different; revision is a person's altering, in the first person, a law of his own, and keeping the books on it. Change does not prove that revision has occurred, nor does revision rely on change to prove it.4
"Conflict" is taken in the Conflict Treatise's sense: two laws, each formed separately, require incompatible action in the same situation, and the way it is handled would touch the position at which a person goes on making first-person revisions and goes on being open to questioning.5 Many quarrels between husband and wife are not conflict in this sense, only collision; whether a matter has passed the Conflict Treatise's two gates is checked separately. "Terminus," "stopping point" and "stalling" are the Conflict Treatise's own terms, and are explained below where each first appears.
"Exchange" speaks only of what lies between husband and wife, you give me this, I give you that; Paper 1 has already kept it apart from "obtaining in return."6 "Division of labor" is not exchange: division of labor is an arrangement the two have acknowledged together, not requirements of each other.
Method. As in Paper 1: the conclusions of upstream papers are said 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, this series takes it on as its own undertaking. What has already been said at the relational layer is used here directly, not rewritten; how love works within marriage belongs to Love Theory. This paper speaks only of structure, not of good and bad, and issues no ought: it does not rank marriages by length, by stability, or by how much the two quarrel.
One couple, He Shoucheng and Meng Qiuyun, runs through the whole paper. Both are within scope: Qiuyun goes to learn pottery, and Shoucheng later acknowledges that this is her affair; after he retires, Shoucheng wants to go back to his home village to live for half the year, and Qiuyun too acknowledges that this is his. This is a made-up example, used only to see structure; from outside, a married couple's words and deeds are only clues, and do not certify who is at which layer. The Conflict Treatise's two people who live together are also borrowed in this paper, only as an example of shared life: the Conflict Treatise does not say that they are husband and wife, and they are not taken here to have an endorsement either.
§1 Change and Choosing Again Together
MA22 Growth over the long term: each person's yesterday, today and tomorrow land in one and the same stretch of dealings; people change, and after they change, the two choose again together. Choosing again together takes two shapes: neither law changes and a new arrangement is formed, or one party, or both, separately revise, and the two then confirm together that the new way of doing things fits
Two Lines of Time Landing in One Stretch of Dealings
When Relation Theory reads a person's relation to himself, what it reads is time: the self of today and the self of yesterday, the self of today and the self of tomorrow; the three positions are not three subjects, and what actually acts is always today alone.7 In marriage there are two such lines of time. Shoucheng has his yesterday, today and tomorrow, and Qiuyun has hers; the two lines of time do not merge into one, yet they land in one and the same stretch of dealings.
Landing in one and the same stretch of dealings means that what a person's yesterday leaves enters not only his own today but also the other's today. The agreement of the first year of their marriage, "You work nights, I'll do the cooking," is a construct left by what the two did that year; it entered the conditions of occurrence of every day the two lived over the twenty-odd years that followed: what time Qiuyun hurried home each day after work, the days on which Shoucheng need not ask what was for dinner. The tomorrow in Qiuyun's mind today, wanting after fifty-two to learn a craft, does not work only within her either; once she has said it out loud, it enters Shoucheng's today.
Each of the two lines of time has its own four directions: the conditions yesterday left can open some position in today, and can also be swapped out within habit, judging in today's place; today's arrangement can leave open for tomorrow the position of revision, and can also seal tomorrow in running.8 In marriage these directions show not only in one person; they also pass through dealings and land on the other.
People Change
The marriage principles in the appendix to How Is Institution Possible (Foundational Paper 6; cited as F6) write: "The person you fell in love with at twenty-five will not be the same person at thirty-five. Neither will you. If you expect the other to remain forever as they were when you fell in love, you love not a person but a snapshot."9 This paper does not judge by this sentence what anyone loves; what it borrows is the shape of the snapshot, read in the next proposition. Under the same item there are two more phrases that carry evaluation, "will eventually resent the relationship" and "the best thing you can give this relationship"; this paper does not take that layer.10
People change; this in itself is neither a pathology nor evidence. Over thirty-one years, Shoucheng went from a man who came home from the night shift and fell straight asleep to a man who, retired, watches the weather forecast every day and frets over the few plots of land in his home village; Qiuyun went from someone who said little at home to someone who argues over glaze colors with young people in a pottery studio. These are changes. They do not prove that anyone revised any law of his own, nor do they prove that anyone did not. One content fades, another surfaces, the center of gravity shifts: these are rises and falls at the level of running; they do not prove the position of revision open, nor do they prove it closed.11
Whose change is whose. Qiuyun's going to learn pottery is her own affair; what she becomes is hers to make. What Shoucheng can do is create conditions for it, and question; this is read in Paper 3. This paper pins down only one sentence: change is not within the range of what one person arranges on another's behalf.
Choosing Again Together
After change, the original arrangement may no longer fit. The marriage principles write in the same item: "After change, two people may need to revisit 'do we still want to be together? in what form?'"12 The former question, whether to stay, is read in Paper 7. This paper reads the latter: in what form to be together.
Choosing again together takes two shapes. The Conflict Treatise distinguishes two consensuses: one is arrangement consensus, "Neither law changed; the two jointly formed a solution under which the current action requirements can be jointly realized"; the other is revision consensus, "One party or both separately completed first-person revisions, and the new action requirements attained compatibility." Revision consensus needs one more step: after one party has revised, the two then confirm the new compatibility together; where no shared reading of the two has yet formed, the Conflict Treatise says that this is not a terminus, only the original matter exiting from that point.13 The terminus is the first of the Conflict Treatise's three technical destinations, the other two being the stopping point and removal; both consensuses are termini (Conflict Treatise §23, §24). What the Conflict Treatise speaks of is how a conflict that has passed the two gates obtains a terminus; borrowing its two shapes here to read choosing again in marriage after change is an extension, this series' own undertaking.
What happened later between Shoucheng and Qiuyun had both.
First, an arrangement. On the third day after that night, the two sat down and talked it through. Shoucheng still felt that a household must have a proper dinner every day, that this is what makes a household a household; Qiuyun still felt that what she wanted in these years was in that studio in the provincial capital. Neither changed. What the two agreed was: on the three days she goes to the provincial capital, Shoucheng cooks; if it doesn't turn out well, no complaining. Neither law changed, and the current action requirements could be jointly realized: this is a new arrangement.
Later, a revision. Shoucheng learned to cook for two years, and one day, on the phone with their daughter, he mentioned that he had always thought cooking was women's work; it was something his mother had said all her life, and he had never thought about it himself. He said he no longer thought so. Suppose that this is his having revised, in the first person, a law of his own, and kept the books on it; Qiuyun's was not revised. Afterward the two agreed that from then on whoever got home first would cook, and confirmed together that this fits: this is revision consensus. Had he alone revised, with no shared reading between the two, the original matter would exit, and it would not count as choosing again together.
Both are done by the person of today. Choosing again is not digging out that evening thirty-one years ago and signing it over again as it stands; Paper 1 has said that what is made anew each day is the same promise, and that what was promised, and the effects already left, run on unbroken.14 What choosing again together changes can be the arrangements beneath the commitment: who cooks, where they live, how money is spent. If what is changed is the commitment itself, the two together changing something they once promised, that is joint revision of the agreement; in the division of breach of faith, joint revision of the agreement is not breaking it.15
Nor does choosing again together make the two merge into one "we" that chooses on each one's behalf. Each one's share is acknowledged by each by his own law; the binding force of a rule the two have agreed passes separately through each one's own law.16 Which branch "we" is here, Paper 2 reads.
MA23 To measure the other as he is now by the other as he was then, and to say it out loud, fixing for the other who he is, slides in the direction of colonization
The Remembered Her, and the Her Before Him
"You weren't like this when you were young."
In this sentence there are two Qiuyuns: the one Shoucheng remembers, and the one before him, who is going to the provincial capital to learn pottery. The remembered one is the one he has thought of time and again over these years, and taken up anew time and again; it is with him, not with her. Reading the layer of longing, Love Theory has said: the remembered her is not the original, and each time I think of her, I take her up again; rewriting the remembered her is with me, and is not colonization; only when it lands on her by way of words and deeds is direction read.17
So when Shoucheng, in his own mind, compares her as she was with her as she is, that moment is with him. He can rewrite the remembered one by it: so she always did want to go out and see something of the world; it was only that in those years the household could not spare her. Or he can leave it unrevised, and by the remembered one discern that the her before him is "wrong."
Saying It Out Loud
Leaving it unrevised and saying it out loud, fixing for her who she is, slides in the direction of colonization. Love Theory's own words: when the anticipated her falls through, what turns back and moves is the remembered her, in one of two ways: revising it, or not revising it and by it discerning that the her before me is "wrong"; "Not revising, and saying aloud that she is 'wrong,' fixes for her who she is and slides in the direction of colonization; whether that takes hold is seen in her later understanding and action"; only when crystallization or the first meeting is used to measure the her who is later before me, fixing for her by way of words and deeds who she is, is the direction of colonization read.18 In marriage over the long years, what is remembered is not only the first meeting but also the years back then: her at twenty-five, her when their daughter was small, her the year she turned down a transfer for the sake of this household.
How "You weren't like this when you were young" is used is how it is read. If it is an exclamation that speaks of his own situation, that for a moment he cannot recognize her and is somewhat at a loss, that is saying his own end; she can answer it, can laugh at him. If it is used to characterize the her before him: the you of back then is the real you, the you of now has lost its shape, this person going to the provincial capital doesn't count, then it takes her as she was as a ruler, fixing for her as she is now who she is. What is looked at is function, not wording.19
Whether it took hold is seen in her later course. If from then on Qiuyun measures herself by "her younger self," feeling that wanting to go to the provincial capital means she has lost her shape, that direction has taken hold; if she goes on treating going to the provincial capital as her own affair, that direction has not taken hold of her. What can be seen from outside is the half that is action: that evening she said nothing, and the next day she went to the provincial capital as usual; the half that is understanding, whether in her own mind she measured herself by that ruler, needs her own end.
This place has the same form as Relation Theory's reading of a person's looking back on himself: looking back can loosen an old knot and leave room for restatement; it can also take a script and fix the interpretation of yesterday rigidly.20 There, what is spoken of is a person and his own yesterday; here, a person takes the yesterday of her as he remembers her, to fix her today. The former is within self-relation; the latter has entered what lies between the two, and is read as an effect on her.
The snapshot in that sentence of the marriage principles has its use here: measure a living person by a snapshot, and what the measure always shows is "lost its shape." This paper does not say whether the one holding the snapshot loves her or not; it reads only what that sentence, said out loud, fixed for her.
§2 Division of Labor and Exchange
MA24 Division of labor is a present arrangement the two have acknowledged together; it can be avowed anew, and it can be changed; its binding force passes separately through each party's own law. Where division of labor slides into a fixed requirement aimed at the other, by being treated as something the other may not change, by being hung on who the other is, or by being swapped out within habit, there is a tendency toward colonization: saying it out loud and characterizing the division of labor slides in the direction of colonization; making it unchangeable for the other in running carries the direction of colonization. One party's own treating the division of labor as unchangeable is his self-relation; structurally it has no outward direction, and it is not within this tendency
Division of Labor Lies at the Layer of Arrangement
In the Conflict Treatise there are two people who live together, stuck for a long time over household matters: one holds that household matters should be talked through before they are done, the other that what one can finish alone need not be put to a meeting. Later they stopped arguing about whether things should be discussed first, and "sorted household matters into three kinds: some finished first and mentioned afterwards, some mentioned before doing, some settled only by both together"; after the sorting, that thing no longer happened every day. The Conflict Treatise states exactly what happened there: neither law changed at all; what changed was time, resources, roles, procedure and the conditions of action; the arrangement itself generates no third law, nor does it rewrite either party's law.21
Division of labor lies at this layer. Shoucheng and Qiuyun's "You work nights, I'll do the cooking; whatever breaks in the house, that's yours" is a present arrangement the two acknowledged together. It did not produce a law set above the two, nor did it rewrite anyone's law; Shoucheng's law is still Shoucheng's, and Qiuyun's is still hers.
A rule the two have agreed can go on being used. The Conflict Treatise then adds a qualification: "that rule's binding force must pass separately through each party's own law, or come from a procedure both have acknowledged."22 The binding force of division of labor comes this way too: for twenty-odd years Qiuyun hurried home every day to cook, and that binding passed through her own law; she had acknowledged this matter; each time Shoucheng fixed a water pipe, it passed through his own. There is no third law called "division of labor" set above the two and requiring them to comply.
So division of labor can be avowed anew, and can be changed. Reading today's commitment to tomorrow, Relation Theory has said a sentence that can be used as it stands: a present arrangement marked as one that tomorrow can avow anew, with revising and exit actually reachable, does not fall into locking.23 Division of labor is such a present arrangement: acknowledged in the first year of marriage, it can be avowed once more twenty-odd years later, and it can also be changed. After Qiuyun began going to the provincial capital, the cooking on those three days became Shoucheng's: it has been changed.
Division of labor is not exchange. Qiuyun's cooking is not in order to get Shoucheng's fixing the pipes; Shoucheng's fixing the pipes is not paying back Qiuyun's cooking. The two are arrangements the two acknowledged together, not requirements of each other.24 A division of labor can be unequal, one doing more, the other less; inequality does not make it exchange, nor does it make it a debt.
Sliding into a Fixed Requirement
Division of labor slides. A fixed requirement, as spoken of here, means a requirement aimed at the other: an arrangement the two acknowledged, taken up by one party against the other as something the other must comply with. Sliding into such a requirement takes three shapes, which can be tangled together.
One is being treated as something that may not be changed. Here the layers must first be set right. If Qiuyun herself treats it as something that may not be changed, and each time she wants to change it she is overruled by her own "it's always been this way," with no one saying anything to her, that is her self-relation: read as Relation Theory reads a person's today and tomorrow, that is locking, and locking in itself carries no direction of colonization; structurally it has no outward direction either, and it is not within the tendency spoken of here. If Shoucheng meets her avowing it anew with "Haven't you always done it all these years?": it's been this way, so this is the only way it can be, that is saying it out loud and characterizing the division of labor, treating this arrangement, on her behalf, as an irrefutable final ground, and it slides in the direction of colonization. If in running he makes the step of her changing it unreachable, for instance using the household money, or his black looks, to keep her from changing it, that is sealing her path, and it carries the direction of colonization.25 Division of labor being treated as something the other may not change speaks of the latter two.
Another is being hung on who the other is. On the second day after that night, Shoucheng said one more thing: "Cooking is naturally your job." This sentence is not the same as "You work nights, I'll do the cooking." The ground of the earlier sentence was the conditions back then: he worked nights. The ground of the later sentence has become who she is: she is the wife, she is a woman. Relation Theory Paper 4 has written this shape: to attach a qualifying condition to an expectation, fixing for the other party what something means to him, for instance by hanging it as a criterion on who he is or what he cares about, is to slide in the direction of colonization.26 Once division of labor is hung on who the other is, changing the division of labor becomes changing who she is; her not cooking amounts to her not being a good wife.
Another is being swapped out within habit: "a law is held in place by habit, and is also swapped out within habit";27 maintaining with grounds can be surreptitiously swapped out within habit.28 Over those twenty-odd years Shoucheng had long since stopped working nights, and the cooking was still Qiuyun's. The night-shift condition at the start had changed, yet the original arrangement was still there. It may still be an arrangement the two now acknowledge, or it may already have been swapped out; it is not judged so on the strength of no one's having asked about it for years. Habit in itself is not a swap, for a law is held in place by habit to begin with; to read a swap, one must check separately whether this arrangement has already been treated as a final ground not open to revision. Whether each of the two has avowed it anew, these appearances cannot answer for them.
These three all speak of division of labor sliding into a fixed requirement aimed at the other. Where it has slid, there is a tendency toward colonization: it heads toward fixing for one party what he should do and who he is, toward occupying his own step of avowing anew and arranging anew.29 A tendency is not having taken hold. Whether it took hold is seen in that party's later understanding and action: if from then on Qiuyun feels that not cooking means she is not a good wife, that direction has taken hold; if she goes on thinking for herself what cooking is, for her, that direction has not taken hold of her. What can be seen from outside is the half that is action: that night she answered with "I've cooked for you for over twenty years," and on the third day she sat down with him to talk about changing it; the half that is understanding needs her herself.
The kind that is swapped out has one more place to be read apart. On Qiuyun's own end, the original ground was gone and she still hurried home every day to cook: whether that is her own habit running, or Shoucheng's "naturally your job" running, cannot be told apart from outside. The former is her own affair, like her own treating it as unchangeable above, and is not within this tendency; what had its origin outside and was reconsidered and avowed by her herself does not count as a swap either.30 The latter is a requirement aimed at her that has used her habit to judge in her place, and only that is within this tendency. This place needs the first person.
Division of Labor Given by a Construct
The customs of many places, a family line's sayings, the climate of an era, all lay down a division of labor between husband and wife in advance: the man outside, the woman inside; whose family to spend New Year with, who manages the money. These are given by constructs; this paper acknowledges them but does not judge them, and does not say which custom is right.31 This paper reads only the stretch at which it enters what lies between the two: Shoucheng's "Cooking is naturally your job" is something his mother said all her life; a family line's custom, by way of his mouth, entered what lies between these two people, heading toward becoming a fixed requirement on Qiuyun. What is read is this one effect, not that custom.
MA25 A moment of exchange is falling back; it is common, and is sometimes words said in anger. The whole marriage is not characterized on the strength of this one occasion; if on this occasion one has already said out loud something that writes one's own giving as an account the other must repay, the direction is read by the effect of this one occasion; whether it has since become fixed into a continuing requirement is read separately, as sediment
Falling Back
"I've cooked for you for over twenty years, and you can't even manage three days?"
This sentence can be used to draw up an account to be repaid: I gave over twenty years, you owe three days; it can also merely say out loud a situation that has long gone unseen. In marriage one hears such things: "I've kept this household for thirty years," "Think how much I've given up for you all these years." If in fact it is the former, that moment is read as falling back; if it is only the latter, it is not judged to be exchange on the strength of the words "over twenty years" and "three days." How it was used that night is checked below, apart, by the material.
In the former, that moment is falling back: at that moment there was no operation in the direction of recognizing the other as an end too; it fell back to the reckoning of you give me this, I give you that; falling back is very likely, and falling back is read as it occurs and does not overturn the direction.32 The whole marriage is not characterized on the strength of this one occasion: one sentence said in anger does not make thirty-one years a transaction. A purely transactional marriage is one in which both parties treat the other only as a means; Paper 1 has read it: it is an ideal type, and from outside only clues can be seen.33 One moment of exchange is very far from it.
When it is used as an account, why this sentence does not make sense structurally: Relation Theory Paper 3 has a sentence that can be used as it stands: "So the sentence 'You owe me a month of meals' does not make sense structurally"; what can be said is: you promised, and I arranged my shifts on it. The first sentence reads commitment as a duty; the second speaks of what was promised, in word and deed, and of the effects left, and both of these are true.34 Qiuyun's twenty-odd years of cooking were made, one day at a time, on her side, by the arrangement she had acknowledged; this is real, and it also left real effects: these years Shoucheng never had to worry about dinner, and his days were arranged on it. But it does not become a debt Shoucheng owes her. Love Theory, in the moment of loving each other, has said a sentence of the same form: "I love you, so you ought to love me" writes love as exchange.35 Relation Theory Paper 3's reading at this place is applied only to the use that writes it as an account.
The Direction of This Occasion
This sentence has already been said out loud; its direction is read by the effect of this one occasion.36 The reading looks at function, not wording.
If it says her own situation, that she is tired, that she feels unseen these years, that she wants Shoucheng to know, that is saying her own end; Shoucheng can answer, can say he never thought of it; that sentence is a form of questioning. If it is used to fix for Shoucheng what is already fixed at his end, you owe me, if you can't manage it you have no conscience, so that from then on whatever he says is read as not having paid up yet, then it fixes for him what these three days mean to him, and slides in the direction of colonization.37 On which side that night's sentence falls depends on how it was used that night; that night neither of the two said anything more; the material is insufficient, and the reading stops at undetermined.
Nor is one sentence a position. Reading introjection, Value Theory states plainly: "an utterance is an event and introjection is a positional state".38 One sentence said in anger, even if on that occasion it slid in the direction of colonization, does not by itself make an attribution irrefutable.
Becoming Fixed
Whether it has since become fixed into a continuing requirement is read separately, as sediment.39 After that night, if each time the two quarreled Qiuyun brought out "over twenty years of cooking," piling it up time after time, what is read is no longer one sentence said in anger but a position this stretch of dealings has sedimented: for instance, whether the position at which Shoucheng says that he sees this matter otherwise was, in those years, still within reach. The reading of sediment is given in positions, written by content-domain and period, and the whole marriage is given no overall direction; whether that position is occupied by an external end is asked separately, when the reading reaches the value layer. Conversely, on the third day she sat down with him to talk about changing the division of labor, and that sentence stopped at that night.
The discipline here is this: a moment of exchange, and the sediment afterward, are read apart. The moment is read as falling back, and is not characterized on one occasion; whether this occasion carries a direction is read by the effect of this occasion; whether it became fixed is read separately, as sediment. The three questions do not stand in for one another.
§3 Expression and Expectation
MA26 Expression is read separately by three grounds: a requirement that holds in one's own law; a role requirement explicitly arranged by both parties; only an expectation of the relation; expectation alone does not establish duty or accountability in reverse. To hang an expectation on who the other is, or on what he cares about, and on that basis to judge for the other, slides in the direction of colonization
Not Remaining Silent
The marriage principles have an item called expression: "Do not remain silent." Beneath it are written "Discomfort must be spoken," "Needs must be spoken," "Good things must also be spoken."40 What must be read exactly is which ground this item stands on.
Writing of marriage, F6 divides expression into three grounds: "First, where it is a requirement established within the bearer's own law, set for themselves so as not to let silence stand in for self-bearing, it is handled under one's own law, as a duty. Second, where it is an explicit arrangement between the two parties, sustained by the power of the relation, it is handled as accountability. Third, where it is only an expectation of the relation, it is not forced into either."41 The three are read apart.
The first lies with each person himself. For many years Qiuyun did not like going back to Shoucheng's home village every New Year, and never said why. One year she said to herself: I'm not keeping this bottled up any more; I have to say it. This is a requirement she put to herself by her own law, not letting silence stand in for bearing it herself. F6 calls this kind a duty; in this series duty faces only inward, and that share is hers toward herself, not something she owes Shoucheng.42
The second is accountability. If the two had said explicitly that at the end of each month Qiuyun would read the accounts out to Shoucheng, and this term were also maintained by the power one party holds in the household, it would have become a role requirement. That is a reading of accountability; it belongs to the institutional part, and this series only registers it, and does not judge.43
The third is expectation. All these years Shoucheng had assumed that if anything made Qiuyun uncomfortable, she would naturally say so. This is something he, on the strength of dealings, arranged on his own side and pointed at her later conduct; expectation is at the end of the one who expects, does not turn into a duty of hers, and does not certify that she has avowed anything.44
Expectation Alone Does Not Establish Them in Reverse
Expectation alone does not establish either of the first two in reverse.45 From Shoucheng's assuming that she would say, it cannot be inferred that she had acknowledged in her own law "if there's something, say it," still less that she bore a role requirement. So when, about her own side of the New Year matter, which she had not spoken of for more than ten years, Shoucheng says "Why do you never say anything?", if he is asking, that is a form of questioning; if he is fixing what duty she has violated, he has taken his expectation as her duty.
Expectation can leave the third slot, and has two exits: the person of whom it is expected takes it on in her own law, or it becomes a role requirement explicitly arranged by both parties and maintained by relational power.46 Qiuyun's saying to herself that year "I have to say it" is the former exit; it was not Shoucheng's expectation that pushed her into it; she took it on herself.
Attaching a Qualifying Condition
Saying an expectation out loud is a form of questioning; attaching a qualifying condition slides in the direction of colonization.47
Under "Needs must be spoken," the marriage principles write one sentence: "'You should know what I want'—they don't."48 This sentence is exactly the look of attaching a qualifying condition. Qiuyun once said: "If you really had me in your heart, you'd know what I want without my having to say it." This sentence writes whether Shoucheng knows what she wants as the criterion of whether he has her in his heart: if he does not know, that amounts to not having her in his heart. It fixes for Shoucheng what "having her in his heart" consists of. Shoucheng too said something of the same form: "If you really cared about this household, you wouldn't go running off to the provincial capital three days a week." This sentence writes whether she goes to the provincial capital as the criterion of whether she cares about this household.
Both sentences slide in the direction of colonization. Whether it took hold is seen in the other party's later course: if from then on Shoucheng judges by this sentence whether he has her in his heart, that direction has taken hold; if Qiuyun goes on thinking for herself what caring about this household is, that direction has not taken hold of her.49 That she heard it and went to the provincial capital as usual is the half that is action, which can be seen; how she herself thinks of caring about this household needs her own end. What is spoken of here is direction, and each of the two said one such sentence; people are all mixed, and this paper does not on this basis judge who is at which layer.
Saying an expectation out loud is not in itself a problem. "I'd like you to come with me to my parents' this weekend," "With you gone three days a week, I get a bit lonely on my own": these say what I hope for, and my situation; the other can answer, can leave it unanswered, can say he can't manage it. This is a form of questioning, and carries no direction of colonization.
§4 Conflict and Sediment
MA27 Conflict can become an avenue of chiseling in a relation, and this possibility is read together with its cost. After conflict has occurred again and again, stopping points can have become routine, and stalling too can have become the normal state; a long absence of conflict is not evidence of cultivation. What admits of diagnosis is this operation on this occasion, not this person; consensus does not ratify the past. Whether, after a violation, one can come back, acknowledge and repair is read with two ledgers in parallel
The Possibility of Chiseling, and Its Cost
The marriage principles write: "Conflict is not the enemy of the relationship. Conflict is the relationship's chisel."50 Relation Theory gathers this sentence into the mode of possibility: collision itself, conflict included, can be an avenue of chiseling; the possibility of chiseling is written together with its cost.51 Can, not will; and the cost is real.
That quarrel between Shoucheng and Qiuyun chiseled one place open: Qiuyun said for the first time that, of these twenty-odd years of hurrying home every day to cook, some years she had acknowledged it, and some years she simply had not dared to stop; Shoucheng heard it for the first time. The cost was real too: that night neither of them slept well, and for a week afterward they spoke to each other as politely as two neighbors. The two are entered together. This paper does not say that conflict is the mark of a good marriage, nor that there ought to be conflict in marriage.
After It Has Occurred Again and Again
Shoucheng and Qiuyun have one more matter they have quarreled over for more than ten years: whose family to go back to for New Year. Every year, as soon as the twelfth month begins, the two are at a standoff; once the first month is past, neither brings it up again.
Whether this matter has passed the Conflict Treatise's two gates, whether it is two laws, each formed separately, colliding at one place, is checked separately. What is read here is what a matter, having occurred again and again, sediments into in dealings. Relation Theory says that after conflict has occurred again and again, the sediment has two shapes: stopping points that have become routine, and stalling that has become the normal state; from outside there is no closure-guaranteeing criterion between the two.52
A stopping point, in the Conflict Treatise's definition: "An articulable arrangement or condition has been established that genuinely deactivates the current incompatibility of action; it does not pass itself off as a terminus; it may reopen when activating conditions recur."53 Stalling: the Conflict Treatise writes its shapes, "not raising it, going around it, becoming the background hum under everything else in the house, covering it with busyness"; stalling without closure is "the substitution of a standing condition for conflict."54
In Shoucheng and Qiuyun's first years, it was stalling: a standoff in the twelfth month, silence in the first, and the matter became the background hum of the household every winter. Then for some years Qiuyun would say first, each year, "Let's go to your family's again this year," and Shoucheng did not ask whether she wanted to; the matter stopped being quarreled over. This can be a stopping point: one party alone changed how she does things, the current incompatibility was deactivated, and once the activating conditions recur, for instance Shoucheng's mother falling ill, it may reopen. It can also still be stalling, only in a different form. From outside, both look like no longer raising it, and cannot be told apart. Later still, the two sat down and agreed: odd years at his family's, even years at hers. If the two formed this solution together, neither law changed, and the current action requirements can be jointly realized, that is arrangement consensus, which in the Conflict Treatise is a terminus.55
A Long Absence of Conflict
In the years of Qiuyun's "Let's go to your family's again this year," there was no quarreling at home. A long absence of conflict is not evidence of cultivation.56 Relation Theory puts it exactly: the direction of colonization can proceed without passing through conflict; whether the path to saying no is made hard to travel or is locked, conflict can fail to appear either way.57 Those years without quarrels can be Qiuyun's having really acknowledged it herself, and can also be her path to saying no having been made hard to travel by year after year of black looks. Conversely, a long absence of conflict is not read as someone's necessarily being under a lock either. From outside it looks the same; whether the grounds of those years lay in her herself needs material from her own end.
One cell of stability can also become another. Maintaining with grounds can be surreptitiously swapped out within habit, and staying on only by conditions can also grow grounds.58 As dealings pile up time after time, direction can turn: care can grow into clinging, and discipline can also grow into something that lifts a person up.59 In reading a marriage over the long years, it is given no overall direction; what is read is positions: which are open, which are sealed, in which period.60
Diagnosing This Occasion, Not This Person
On the night of their worst quarrel, Shoucheng said: "You're just a selfish person."
The marriage principles write: one may say "what you did was wrong," one may not say "you are just like that."61 The principle contained in this item the Conflict Treatise states more firmly: "what admits of diagnosis is this operation on this occasion, not this person".62 "You signed up without talking it over with me, and that hurt" speaks of this occasion; "You're just a selfish person" fixes for her who she is. The latter has the same form as MA23: taking one occasion to fix a person.
Old accounts are read here too. The marriage principles write "No digging up old accounts": bringing out something from three years ago as ammunition; if what happened three years ago was not genuinely resolved, that is the business of that matter.63 The principle contained in this item is this: a conflict has its own identifiable boundary; this one incompatibility is not this relation, still less this person.64 That night Shoucheng dug out the matter of ten years before, when Qiuyun had lent money to her younger brother without discussing it with him. If that matter of ten years ago is still unsettled, it is that matter, to be handled separately; to use it to fix the person of tonight is to take the past as a reason for the present, fixing for her who she is.
Consensus does not ratify the past.65 The agreement on odd and even years settles the present incompatibility of this one matter, whose family to go to for New Year; it does not rewrite who did what over the ten-odd years before: the black looks of those twelfth months, and her "Let's go to your family's again this year" in those years, are read as they stood in those years.
After a Violation
The last item of the marriage principles is the remainder: "Every one of the above principles will be violated in practice"; and it also writes: "Violating a principle is not the end of the relationship. Whether you can come back afterward, whether you can acknowledge it, whether you can repair".66 The original sentence goes on to say that this "is what determines the relationship's fate," which carries a layer of evaluation; this paper does not take it; what it takes is the structure: violation, coming back, acknowledgment, repair.
Repair keeps two ledgers, in parallel. The Conflict Treatise writes: "An apology does not dissolve the incompatibility of two laws," nor may it be run backwards.67 The next day Shoucheng apologized for "You're just a selfish person," and Qiuyun accepted it. On the ledger of harm, what is entered is how this occasion was taken in. But whether she goes to the provincial capital, and who does the cooking at home, is not settled by this one apology. Conversely, that matter's being still unsettled does not leave the ledger of harm hanging either: one cannot say, "Let's sort out the cooking first, and then we'll talk about what you said." Making up does not settle the conflict, nor does an unresolved conflict leave the harm hanging.68
§5 Interfacing with Tradition
Several have asked, one after another, about the things this paper reads. For each, this paper writes faithfully why he looks and what he sees; where the original text presses on this paper, it writes the pressure, and then where they meet and where they part; the figures need not take the same number of steps, and a counter-thesis the original text does not contain is not fabricated for it. Other traditions appear in their own words. Kierkegaard's Judge William says that marriage is the way romantic love endures in time; Paper 1 has already picked this up, and it is not rewritten here.69
Remarriage (Cavell). In Pursuits of Happiness, Cavell reads several Hollywood comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, which he calls comedies of remarriage. What follows relies on Michael Wood's review, as quoted and reported there:70 the comedy of remarriage, as Cavell sees it, depends on the threat and legitimacy of divorce; what the films have to do is to hold off divorce and bring the two back together. Cavell writes: "only those can genuinely marry who are already married"; "It is as though you know you are married when you come to see that you cannot divorce, that is, when you find that your lives simply will not disentangle." Wood's report says that marriage in these films becomes an image of freedom, equality and shared impulse, sanctioned neither by the law nor by progeny, but only by a "mutual willingness" to do the thing again; he also says that what these comedies touch is this: we do not know whether human beings can really change. He reads these comedies as texts for thinking about marriage. What he sees: marriage has to be entered again and again; two people, after they have changed, have to choose each other once more; two people's lives grow together. He presses on this paper at two points. First, "It is as though you know you are married when you come to see that you cannot divorce": taken literally, this confirms marriage by being unable to exit, which stands against commitment's not locking tomorrow. But he at once glosses this sentence as two lives that will not disentangle, and the films themselves rest on the legitimacy of divorce; this pressure is lighter than the letter. Second, marriage in these films is sanctioned not by the law but only by mutual willingness; this paper reads endorsement as one of the things in marriage, which for him seems dispensable. They meet in: the comedy of remarriage puts renewed willingness at the center, which runs the same way as choosing again together (MA22); whether, after change, two people can choose again is the same thing this paper asks and he asks. They part at three points. First, lives that "will not disentangle" cannot be judged directly as exit having been sealed off in running; this can also speak of the history of a shared life, which cannot be erased, and this paper reads that as the effects already left, which exit does not settle.71 Whether the arrangement in a given film has become a lock has to go back to the actual conditions of revision and exit in that film, and the review this paper relies on does not supply all the facts for that judgment. Second, "mutual willingness" this paper reads as something the two each acknowledge and do together, each one's share passing through each one's own law, and neither side can declare agreement in the other's place;72 not one shared will. That endorsement remains, and that endorsement cannot stand in for each person's own willingness, are two things: endorsement is still one of the things in marriage; it does not stand in for this willingness, and this willingness does not stand in for it (Paper 1). Third, Wood asks whether returning to a marriage is a new start or an old cage painted with wishes; this paper does not judge; what it reads is the structure: whether revising that arrangement, and exiting it, are actually within reach.73
The married woman (Beauvoir). The second volume of Beauvoir's The Second Sex has a chapter on the married woman. What follows relies on an English excerpt:74 "The drama of marriage is not that it does not guarantee the wife the promised happiness ... it is that it mutilates her; it dooms her to repetition and routine"; the male's vocation is action, to produce, to create, to go beyond himself, while "traditional marriage does not invite woman to transcend herself with him; it confines her in immanence"; of the housewife's tasks, few are more like the torment of Sisyphus. She also writes what marriage should be: "Marriage must combine two autonomous existences, not be a withdrawal, an annexation, an escape, a remedy," a bond founded on the recognition of two freedoms. She looks in order to show how woman is made the Other; the second volume writes woman's lived experience in her various situations. What she sees: in the traditional marriage she analyzes, division of labor is fixed into status, one party's being to go beyond himself, the other's to repeat; this division of labor is hung on her being a woman. She presses on this paper at two points. First, by her analysis, what confines her in immanence is the very configuration of the traditional marriage she analyzes, not only the moment at which division of labor slides into a fixed requirement; MA24's "there is a tendency toward colonization" would look light beside her. Second, she says such a marriage dooms her to repetition and routine; this paper reads the long years as long-term growth, and before her sentence it has to state what it is reading. They meet in: division of labor hung on who she is has the same form as MA24's being hung on who the other is; housework repeated year after year is where a swap within habit may come to rest; "two autonomous existences" runs the same way as "You are you, I am I," which is read in Paper 2; the recognition of two freedoms runs the same way as her saying, in "The Woman in Love," that authentic love is founded on the mutual recognition of two freedoms, a sentence Love Theory Paper 5 has already picked up.75 They part at three points. First, what she judges is a configuration of marriage, and the word she uses, mutilates, carries evaluation; this paper acknowledges but does not judge the division of labor given by a construct, and reads only the stretch at which it enters what lies between the two and becomes a fixed requirement aimed at the other, read by the effect of this one occasion. Second, repetition in itself is not colonization: a law is held in place by habit, and habit can be maintaining with grounds; only where its grounds have been swapped out and it has become a fixed requirement aimed at her is there a tendency toward colonization (MA24). The long-term growth MA22 speaks of reads each of the two people's changes landing in one stretch of dealings, and gives these years no overall evaluation: this paper does not read the years as necessarily growth, nor as mutilation; it reads only positions. Third, "Marriage must ..." is an ought; this paper issues no ought.
Rule between husband and wife (Aristotle). Book I of Aristotle's Politics treats household management; the first parts of the household are master and slave, husband and wife, father and children. Chapter 12: the husband and father rules over wife and children, both free, but the rule differs, the rule over the children being royal, over the wife constitutional; although there may be exceptions to the order of nature, "the male is by nature fitter for command than the female." Constitutional rule is properly rule in turn: citizens rule and are ruled by turns, because a constitutional state presupposes that the natures of the citizens are equal; "The relation of the male to the female is of this kind, but there the inequality is permanent." Chapter 13: the courage of a man is shown in commanding, of a woman in obeying; and he quotes the poet: "Silence is a woman's glory."76 He looks in order to separate the several kinds of rule within household management from rule in the city. What he sees: between husband and wife there are two free persons, and this relation is not that of master and slave; its form is the kind that goes by turns. He presses on this paper: if commanding and obeying come from nature, division of labor is not a present arrangement the two have acknowledged; it is who the two are; it cannot be avowed anew, because "the inequality is permanent." When MA24 says division of labor can be changed, for him, changing division of labor is going against nature. They meet in: he places husband and wife among free persons, in the form that properly goes by turns; the form that can rotate, he saw. They part at: he uses nature to cancel the rotation; this paper reads this as division of labor hung on who the other is: "You're naturally fit to obey" attaches a qualifying condition to an arrangement, fixing for the other who he is (MA24). The customs of city and household are given by constructs, and this paper acknowledges but does not judge them; what it reads is the occasion on which one party, between the two, uses "naturally" to fix the other.
Men and women differ in conduct (Ban Zhao). Ban Zhao's Admonitions for Women, in seven sections, is recorded in full in the "Biographies of Exemplary Women" of the Book of the Later Han; she says in her preface that she wrote these seven sections because her daughters were about to marry.77 "Husband and Wife" says: "If the husband is not worthy, he has nothing by which to direct his wife; if the wife is not worthy, she has nothing by which to serve her husband." "Respect and Caution" opens: "Yin and yang differ in nature; men and women differ in conduct. Yang takes firmness as its virtue, yin takes softness as its use; a man is prized for strength, a woman is beautiful in weakness"; the respect of the same section is the wife's respect and compliance toward her husband: "Therefore it is said: the way of respect and compliance is the great rite of a wife"; the same section also says, "The bond of husband and wife: for life, no parting." "Womanly Conduct" says: "A woman has four kinds of conduct: the first is womanly virtue, the second womanly speech, the third womanly bearing, the fourth womanly work."78 She writes in order to teach her daughters the way of being a wife. What she sees: marriage is a matter of a whole life, "for life, no parting." She presses on this paper: she places the conduct of men and women on the natures of yin and yang, so that division of labor is who a person is, a matter of status; womanly work is not an arrangement the two have acknowledged, but what makes a wife a wife. MA24 says that where division of labor is hung on who the other is, there is a tendency toward colonization; for her, division of labor is hung there to begin with, and not hanging it would rather keep a wife from being a wife. They meet at only one place: "for life, no parting": she looks at the long years, and this paper too reads the long years. They part at: rite is given by a construct, and this paper acknowledges but does not judge it, and does not say whether that whole system is right; this paper reads the stretch at which it enters what lies between the two: the sentence "Cooking is naturally women's work," by way of one party's mouth, uses status to fix the other's division of labor, fixing for her who she is (MA24). What she writes is ought; this paper issues no ought.
§6 Drawing Together and Downstream
This paper has laid down six propositions. Taken together, they say: each person's yesterday, today and tomorrow land in one and the same stretch of dealings; people change; change does not prove revision, nor does revision rely on change for proof; after change the two choose again together, either with neither law changing and a new arrangement formed, or with one party, or both, separately revising and the two then confirming together that the new way of doing things fits, and both are done by the person of today; where only one party has revised and there is no shared reading, the original matter exits, and it does not count as choosing again together. To measure the other as he is now by the other as he was then, and to say it out loud, fixing for him who he is, slides in the direction of colonization. Division of labor is a present arrangement the two have acknowledged together; its binding force passes separately through each one's own law; it can be avowed anew, and it can be changed; where it slides into a fixed requirement aimed at the other, by being treated as something the other may not change, by being hung on who the other is, or by being swapped out within habit, there is a tendency toward colonization: characterizing it out loud is sliding, making it unchangeable for the other in running is carrying; one party's own treating it as unchangeable is his self-relation, and is not within this tendency. Division of labor is not exchange; a moment of exchange is falling back, and is not characterized on one occasion; the direction of this occasion is read by this occasion, and whether it became fixed is read separately, as sediment. Expression is read separately by three grounds; expectation alone does not establish duty or accountability in reverse; to hang an expectation on who the other is and judge for him slides in the direction of colonization. Conflict can be an avenue of chiseling, read together with its cost; after it has occurred again and again, stopping points can have become routine, and stalling can have become the normal state; a long absence of conflict is not evidence of cultivation; this occasion is diagnosed, not this person; consensus does not ratify the past; after a violation, two ledgers in parallel.
This paper does not prove that longer is better, does not prove that change means two people ought to part, and does not prescribe how the division of labor ought to be divided.
The question left open. Shoucheng learned to cook for two years, and one day he said that he had always thought cooking was women's work; it was something his mother had said all her life, and he no longer thought so. Suppose he really did revise it: the law he revised had its origin outside, and he revised it on reconsidering it himself; the "naturally your job" he said to Qiuyun by it in those years: was it his own words, or his mother's words running through his mouth? This question lies between his own yesterday and today; reading a person's own swap, Relation Theory has said that from outside one sees that saying, and does not see whether at this moment it is holding anything up.79 Over two people's long years, how one party's self-relation and the dealings between the two are tangled together, this paper reads only as far as the stretch between the two.
Downstream. What this paper has laid down is used by the papers that follow as follows. That change is made by the other himself, and that what I can do is create conditions and question, Paper 3 reads; accommodation is also in Paper 3. How two people share the work when preparing together for someone who has not yet come, and the division of labor and moments of exchange between husband and wife after the child has come, are all read by this paper, and Papers 5 and 6 lay down nothing new where they use them; the two people after the child has grown up and left home are also read over the long years by this paper. Whether, after change, they still want to be together, one party's love being gone, breaking the commitment and leaving, Paper 7 reads. The check on the shared words "law" and "arrangement," "change" and "revision," "exchange" and "division of labor" is listed together in Paper 0.
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
- Paper 1, MA4. The original sentence is from How Is Institution Possible (Foundational Paper 6; cited as F6), Appendix D, item 8(e). Relation Theory's paper on commitment is Relation Theory Paper 3, Commitment; its reading under H29: "whoever stands there on any given day is the person of today; fulfillment must finally be done by the person now. It is not read as a commitment lapsing every day and being made over every day." ↩︎
- Relation Theory H8; under H8: "Read from outside, direction is visible; of whether it took hold, the half that is action is visible, while the half that is understanding needs the first person." ↩︎
- Conflict Treatise §8. ↩︎
- Relation Theory's paper on time is Relation Theory Paper 2, Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. Value Theory P4 V54, as quoted in Relation Theory Paper 2, under H17: "A content fades, another surfaces, the center of gravity shifts — these are rises and falls at the level of running, and they do not prove the revisable position open"; "What does carry proof is something else, namely a first-person revision or exit actually carried through". ↩︎
- Conflict Treatise §1, §2. ↩︎
- Paper 1, Introduction, "Shared words." ↩︎
- Relation Theory H14: "Self-relation is the relation among the yesterday, today and tomorrow of one and the same bearer; a position in time is not another subject; what actually acts is always today alone". ↩︎
- Relation Theory H15, H16; Relation Theory Paper 2, §2. Reading one person's own four directions onto two lines of time that land in one stretch of dealings is an extension, this series' own undertaking. ↩︎
- F6, Appendix D, item 6. ↩︎
- Appendix D, item 6(a): "A person who stops in place for your sake will eventually resent the relationship"; (b): "Becoming a better version of yourself is the best thing you can give this relationship." These two places carry evaluative and quantitative wording, and this paper does not take them. ↩︎
- See note 4. Relation Theory Paper 2, under H21: "Maintaining something unchanged is not evidence that a position is out of reach; revision and change, too, do not by themselves prove that a position is open." ↩︎
- F6, Appendix D, item 6(c). ↩︎
- Conflict Treatise §24; §23: "Where no shared reading between the parties has formed, it is not a terminus; the original object simply exits scope from that point. If the two later jointly confirm a new compatibility, only then is it registered as revision consensus." ↩︎
- Paper 1, MA4. ↩︎
- Relation Theory H28: "Breach of faith is entered apart, as dropping, falsity, non-fulfillment, obstruction and joint revision of the agreement"; the direction of colonization falls only on dropping and falsity. ↩︎
- Conflict Treatise §24: "that rule's binding force must pass separately through each party's own law, or come from a procedure both have acknowledged." ↩︎
- Love Theory L10: "Longing is her still counting with me when she is not before me; the remembered her is not the original, and each time I think of her, I take her up again"; L12: "Rewriting the remembered her in longing is with me, and is not colonization; only when it lands on her by way of words and deeds is direction read." ↩︎
- Love Theory L11, L13. The original sentences speak of the remembering and the first meeting at the layer of longing; carrying them to the years back then, as remembered in marriage over the long years, is an extension, this series' own undertaking. ↩︎
- Relation Theory Paper 4, under H37: "What counts as a qualifying condition, this series draws by function, not by topic". Relation Theory's paper on expectation is Relation Theory Paper 4, Dealings and Expectation. ↩︎
- Relation Theory Paper 2, under H16, on today and yesterday: "The direction of cultivation: looking back loosens an old knot and leaves room for restatement"; "The direction of colonization: fixing the interpretation of yesterday rigidly with an outside script, so that old accounts can no longer be questioned." ↩︎
- Conflict Treatise §8: "Neither law changed at all"; "the arrangement itself neither generates a third law of one's own nor, on its own strength, rewrites either party's law". The Introduction to the Conflict Treatise says only "Two people who live together," and does not say that they are husband and wife. ↩︎
- Conflict Treatise §24. ↩︎
- Relation Theory H32: "A commitment marked as a present arrangement that tomorrow can avow anew, with revising and exit actually reachable, does not fall into locking". The original sentence speaks of commitment; carrying it to a division of labor the two have acknowledged together is an extension, this series' own undertaking. ↩︎
- Division of labor is not exchange because it is not requirements of each other; Paper 3 follows this too, when it reads bringing each other into their own. ↩︎
- Her own kind: the latter half of Relation Theory H32: "one actually used as an irrefutable final ground that seals revision, or one that actually seals revising and exit, falls into locking"; Relation Theory Paper 2, under H18: "Locking speaks of being out of reach, not of something pouring in and occupying, so locking in itself carries no direction of colonization." The two kinds aimed at the other are read by the division of what is done to exit under H26 in Relation Theory Paper 3: a characterization spoken aloud, such as "Leaving is betrayal," is the first kind, and slides in the direction of colonization; what in running makes the other party's path hard to travel, or seals it, carries the direction of colonization; what seals off exit itself is, in addition, a violation at the layer of basic rights. Relation Theory Paper 3 reads exit; carrying it to avowing a division of labor anew is an extension, this series' own undertaking. ↩︎
- Relation Theory H37. ↩︎
- Action Theory Paper 4, D20, as quoted in Relation Theory Paper 2, under H16, and in Relation Theory Paper 3, under H31. ↩︎
- Relation Theory H49: "The cells of stability sediment in time, and one cell can become another: maintaining with grounds can be surreptitiously swapped out within habit, and staying on only by conditions can also grow grounds". ↩︎
- Relation Theory H8. ↩︎
- Relation Theory Paper 2, under H16: "what had its origin outside and was avowed by her after reconsideration is not a swap". ↩︎
- Relation Theory H11: "the relation between persons and constructs is not; the provisions themselves are acknowledged but not judged". ↩︎
- Love Theory Paper 0, §4: "falling back is very likely". ↩︎
- Paper 1, MA9. ↩︎
- Relation Theory Paper 3, under H27. ↩︎
- Love Theory L42: "loving each other is not exchange, and 'I love you, so you ought to love me' writes love as exchange". ↩︎
- Relation Theory H8. ↩︎
- Relation Theory Paper 4, under H37: saying my own situation is "still saying the expectation out loud"; only "treating a meaning as already fixed on his side," or "making whatever he says afterwards be rewritten into this one meaning, is fixing it for him." The original speaks of expectation; carrying it to the sentence that writes one's own giving as an account is an extension, this series' own undertaking. ↩︎
- Value Theory P3 V35, as quoted in Relation Theory Paper 4, under H37. V35 originally speaks of the upper bound on an outsider's audit of external colonization at the value layer; carrying it to readings between two people is an extension, which Relation Theory Paper 4, under H37, has already declared, and this paper uses it as it stands. ↩︎
- Relation Theory H48, H49; the reading is given in positions, per Relation Theory H43; see note 60. The signature and position spoken of in Value Theory V32 and V35 (by way of Relation Theory Paper 4, under H37) are readings at the value layer, and are not used here as the sediment of the relational layer; whether, when the reading reaches the value layer, a position is occupied by an external end is asked separately, per the section under H43 in Relation Theory's paper on sediment; that paper is Relation Theory Paper 5, The Sediment of Dealings. ↩︎
- F6, Appendix D, item 3 and (a)(b)(c). ↩︎
- F6 §3.1(f). ↩︎
- Relation Theory Paper 1, under H10, citing Rights Theory Paper 0, M1: "SAE Rights Theory has no concept of a duty toward others; it has only one inward duty, the subject's answerability to its own law". ↩︎
- Relation Theory Paper 1, under H10: "The second belongs to the institutional part"; Relation Theory Paper 4, under H36: "that is a reading of accountability, and this series does not judge it". ↩︎
- Relation Theory H10: "Expectation is what one party, on the strength of dealings, arranges on his own side and points at the other party's later conduct; it is a construct left behind, does not turn into a duty, and does not certify that the other party has avowed anything". ↩︎
- Relation Theory Paper 1, under H10, citing F6: "expectation alone does not establish either of the first two in reverse". ↩︎
- Relation Theory H36. ↩︎
- Relation Theory H37: "Saying an expectation out loud is a form of questioning; to attach a qualifying condition to an expectation, fixing for the other party what something means to him, for instance by hanging it as a criterion on who he is or what he cares about, is to slide in the direction of colonization, and whether that takes hold depends on the other party's later understanding and action". ↩︎
- F6, Appendix D, item 3(b). ↩︎
- Relation Theory H37; Relation Theory Paper 4, under H37: "if he goes on thinking for himself about what caring is, it has not." ↩︎
- F6, Appendix D, item 5. ↩︎
- Relation Theory H60: "Collision itself, conflict included, can be an avenue of chiseling; the possibility of chiseling is written together with its cost". ↩︎
- Relation Theory H48. ↩︎
- Conflict Treatise §23. ↩︎
- Conflict Treatise §14. ↩︎
- Conflict Treatise §24: "both consensuses are termini." Conflict Treatise §26 also writes that a stopping point may come from an arrangement on one's own side, "he alone changed how he does things, and the other took no part," as quoted in Relation Theory Paper 5, under H48. ↩︎
- Love Theory L40: "A long absence of quarrels is not evidence of cultivation"; Relation Theory H46. ↩︎
- Relation Theory H46: "The direction of colonization can proceed without passing through conflict: whether the path to saying no is made hard to travel or is locked, conflict can fail to appear either way; so a long absence of conflict in a relation is not evidence of cultivation". ↩︎
- Relation Theory H49. ↩︎
- Relation Theory Paper 5, under H44: "Where dealings head as they pile up time after time is not necessarily something one can judge: care can grow into clinging, and discipline can also grow into something that lifts a person up." ↩︎
- Relation Theory H43: "The reading of sediment is given in positions: which are open and which are sealed, written by content-domain and period"; "the relation as a whole is given no overall direction". ↩︎
- F6, Appendix D, item 5(b). ↩︎
- Conflict Treatise §1. ↩︎
- F6, Appendix D, item 5(c); item 2(d): "No digging up old accounts. No weaponizing past mistakes in present conflicts." ↩︎
- Conflict Treatise §23: "What is closed here is this one incompatibility, not this relation and still less this person." ↩︎
- Conflict Treatise §24. ↩︎
- F6, Appendix D, item 8(a)(b). ↩︎
- Conflict Treatise §4. ↩︎
- Relation Theory H54: "repair keeps two ledgers in parallel: making up does not settle the conflict, nor does an unresolved conflict leave the harm hanging". ↩︎
- Paper 1, §6. ↩︎
- Cavell's words as quoted in Wood's review: "only those can genuinely marry who are already married"; "It is as though you know you are married when you come to see that you cannot divorce, that is, when you find that your lives simply will not disentangle". Wood's report: "The comedy of remarriage, as Cavell sees it, depends on the threat and legitimacy of divorce"; marriage "sanctioned neither by the law nor by progeny ... but only by a 'mutual willingness' to do the thing again"; "these comedies speak to our sense that we do not know whether human beings can really change or not". ↩︎
- Relation Theory H55: "unilateral exit does not settle the accounts"; H58. ↩︎
- Action Theory Paper 8, D45: "Consensus is not sameness: a shared direction holds different values, a concrete consensus can form without swallowing differences, and neither side can declare agreement in the other's place"; Conflict Treatise §24. Choosing again together is something the two do together, and is not read as mutuality, two one-way recognitions meeting. ↩︎
- Wood's sentence: "whether a return to a marriage is a new start in life or an old cage painted with wishes". The structural reading follows Relation Theory H32. ↩︎
- Borde and Malovany-Chevallier's translation (2009), from the excerpt in McKay et al., A History of Western Society, 12th ed.: "The drama of marriage is not that it does not guarantee the wife the promised happiness ... it is that it mutilates her; it dooms her to repetition and routine"; "The male's vocation is action; he needs to produce, fight, create, progress, go beyond himself"; "traditional marriage does not invite woman to transcend herself with him; it confines her in immanence"; "Few tasks are more similar to the torment of Sisyphus than those of the housewife"; "Marriage must combine two autonomous existences, not be a withdrawal, an annexation, an escape, a remedy"; "links founded on the recognition of two freedoms". The excerpt is pieced together from several passages, and the page does not note from which chapter each comes; the last sentence has no "mutual" in it, and is given here as it stands; the chapter in which it stands has not been checked against the book. That the chapter "The Woman in Love" says authentic love is founded on the mutual recognition of two freedoms is another place, as quoted in Love Theory Paper 5. ↩︎
- Love Theory Paper 5, §5, "The Woman in Love." ↩︎
- Politics I.3, I.12, I.13. Jowett's translation: "A husband and father, we saw, rules over wife and children, both free, but the rule differs, the rule over his children being a royal, over his wife a constitutional rule"; "the male is by nature fitter for command than the female"; "in most constitutional states the citizens rule and are ruled by turns, for the idea of a constitutional state implies that the natures of the citizens are equal"; "The relation of the male to the female is of this kind, but there the inequality is permanent"; "the courage of a man is shown in commanding, of a woman in obeying"; "Silence is a woman's glory". ↩︎
- Hou Han shu [Book of the Later Han], "Lienü zhuan" [Biographies of Exemplary Women], "Cao Shishu qi" [The Wife of Cao Shishu]: 作女诫七篇，有助内训 (she wrote the Admonitions for Women in seven sections, as an aid to instruction within the household); the preface: 但伤诸女方当适人，而不渐训诲，不闻妇礼，惧失容它门，取耻宗族 (only I grieve that my daughters are about to marry, and, not having been instructed little by little, have not heard the rites of a wife; I fear they will lose face in other households and bring shame on the clan). (English renderings this paper's own) ↩︎
- The sentences from "Husband and Wife," "Respect and Caution" and "Womanly Conduct," from the Admonitions for Women as recorded in the "Biographies of Exemplary Women" of the Book of the Later Han: 夫不贤，则无以御妇；妇不贤，则无以事夫; 阴阳殊性，男女异行。阳以刚为德，阴以柔为用，男以强为贵，女以弱为美; 故曰敬顺之道，妇人之大礼也; 夫妇之好，终身不离; 女有四行，一曰妇德，二曰妇言，三曰妇容，四曰妇功. "Respect and Caution" also has 侮夫不节，谴呵从之；忿怒不止，楚挞从之 (if insult to the husband is not checked, reproach and scolding follow; if anger does not cease, the rod follows), which shows that the respect there is on the wife's side, toward the husband. (English renderings this paper's own) ↩︎
- Relation Theory H17, H21; Value Theory P3 V36, as quoted in Relation Theory Paper 2: "from outside one sees the pronouncement, not that it is holding up this content's qualification". ↩︎
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). How Is Institution Possible: From Inter-Ontological Remainder to Co-Constructive Framework (SAE Foundational Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19328662
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). Finding One Another (SAE Action Theory, Paper 8) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970783
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 3: Commitment [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545023
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 5: The Sediment of Dealings [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545076
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 Relation Theory Paper 7: Why Still Relate [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545097
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 5: Without Waiting for You [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23627779
II · External works
Classical texts are given in simplified characters.
Aristotle. Politics, Book I, chs. 3, 12–13. Trans. Benjamin Jowett. (MIT Internet Classics Archive transcription; the Greek original has not been checked)
Ban Zhao 班昭. Nüjie 女诫 [Admonitions for Women], "Fufu" 夫妇, "Jingshen" 敬慎, "Fuxing" 妇行; in Fan Ye 范晔, Hou Han shu 后汉书, "Lienü zhuan" 列女传, "Cao Shishu qi" 曹世叔妻. (Chinese Text Project transcription; not checked against a standard annotated edition)
Beauvoir, Simone de. Le Deuxième Sexe (1949), t. II, « La femme mariée ». English: The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. New York: Knopf, 2009. (from the excerpt in the McKay et al. textbook; the book has not been checked)
Cavell, Stanley. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. (as quoted and reported in Wood's review; the book has not been checked)
III · Secondary literature
McKay, J. P., et al. A History of Western Society, 12th ed., "Evaluating the Evidence 29.2: Simone de Beauvoir's Feminist Critique of Marriage". Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.
Wood, M. (1982, January 21). One Mo' Time. The New York Review of Books.
Interfaces
- Main upstream: Relation Theory Paper 2 (H14 to H18, H21; the sections under H16, H17, H18 and H21), Paper 4 (H36, H37; the sections under H36 and H37), Paper 5 (H43, H44, H46, H48, H49; the sections under H43, H44 and H48); the Conflict Treatise (§1, §4, §8, §14, §23, §24); F6 (§3.1(f); Appendix D, item 2(d), items 3, 5 and 6, item 8(a)(b)(e)).
- Also used: Relation Theory Paper 1 (H8, H10, H11; the sections under H8 and H10), Paper 3 (H26, H27, H28, H32; the sections under H26, H27, H29 and H31), Paper 6 (H54, H55, H58), Paper 7 (H60); Value Theory P3 (V32 and V35, by way of Relation Theory Paper 4; V36, by way of Relation Theory Paper 2), P4 (V54, by way of Relation Theory Paper 2); Rights Theory Paper 0 (M1, by way of Relation Theory Paper 1, under H10); Action Theory Paper 8 (D45); Action Theory D20 (by way of Relation Theory Papers 2 and 3); Love Theory Paper 0 (§4; L10 to L13, L40, L42), Love Theory Paper 5, §5.
- This series: continues from Paper 1's MA4, MA9 and the shared words of its Introduction, and from Kierkegaard in Paper 1, §6; Paper 2 takes up the two branches of "we" and "You are you, I am I"; Paper 3 takes up change made by the other himself, creating conditions and questioning, and accommodation; Papers 5 and 6, where they use division of labor and moments of exchange, read them by this paper; Paper 7 takes up whether to stay, and breaking the commitment; Paper 0 lists the shared words together.