The Jurisdiction of the Question of Meaning
意义问题的辖域
The four trunk papers of this series have been published. They describe meaning as a relation: one and the same person carries the things under his own name across time; they examine how that person becomes himself on the inward side, how the relation looks toward the other on the outward side, and what stops and what continues at the end. This paper lays down no propositions. It does three things. It first sets the machine out from the beginning, saying at which layer it speaks and why it stops at three places, and what standing each of the three stops has. It then converses with the traditions, at two depths: full conversations with Kant, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Levinas, Wittgenstein, Aristotle, objectivism and the hybrid view, narrative and identity, and the Confucian three immortalities; adjacent placements only for Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Sartre, Camus, Frankl, Nagel, the ethics of care and generativity, and Buddhism and Daoism. Finally, in the manner of the Value Theory interfacing paper, it registers where this series itself stops, settles the two items handed down by Value Theory, and states that this paper hands no new definite work to any successor.
This series does not present the traditions as having filled the empty places while it alone leaves them open. What it writes is this: how a relation of carrying-forward holds, and whether this life is worth living, are two questions; a school may say this life is not worth it, and the relation this series describes can hold all the same — the two sentences can be true at once. To draw the bounds of a jurisdiction is not to declare that nothing remains to be done outside them.
Introduction
Nearly every school has spoken of the meaning of life. This series speaks not of the whole of that question but of the part of it that can be written as a relation: how the things under a person's name come to be carried, continuously, by one and the same life. The four trunk papers established that relation, and each also stopped at one place. A conversation can be had only once one's own object stands — one must first know what one is saying before knowing where another's saying differs — and so this paper is written last.
This paper lays down no propositions, issues no norms, and grades no life. When it cites this series it gives paper and proposition number; when it cites the schools it says only what each holds and where, without commentary on their texts, since this is a conversation between theories, not a commentary on the schools; at the decisive points of division it gives the smallest checkable locus of the other's claim. The schools are interlocutors, not premises of this series; the paper is not written as this series correcting anyone. It writes where the division lies, how far agreement goes, and what this series' narrowing has bought and what it has given up.
Section One · What Kind of Machine This Is
One · A relation, not a quantity
This series does not ask whether life has meaning, nor how much meaning some thing has. It asks how the things under a person's name become a relation that one and the same life carries continuously. The first paper established this relation as one and the same bearer's cross-temporal, first-person carrying-forward. It has two ledgers: the value history takes in constitutive events actually brought off in one's own law — avowals, revisions, exits; the taken-as history takes in entries that once ran as if completed but were not actually completed in the bearer's own law, and that have acquired their event boundary. Influence does not form entries of its own; it can be carried forward with an entry under the conditions for associated material. The relation has two axes: the attribution axis asks who can avow, revise, and exit; the orientation axis asks which contents still organize the future. It has three layers: the relation being present, new events of carrying-forward, and historical description. What is said about the relation is description, and a description is a fallible proposition, not a reading; the third person has no total procedure that, across bearers and in finitely many steps, guarantees the correct attribution of events already entered, while individual cases may still be sufficiently warranted; nor is the first person granted finality in advance. The relation's closure refers only to the closure of its attribution endpoints — all the endpoints lie in this one person — while its outlet is not sealed (Meaning Theory P1 Y2–Y12).
The second paper wrote the inward side of the relation in a finite bearer. Three kinds of incompleteness are each their own and do not merge into one sentence about life never coming round. The relation is necessarily truncated where it holds no final draft, and truncation issues no final draft; final draft has two senses — in the content sense, the absence of a final draft rests on the domain commitment the second paper made explicit; in the closure sense, what is refused is a self-construct's acquiring, by itself, an unrevisable standing. There is no pre-made true self and no completed true self, and the reason is reflexivity, not time. Irrecoverability is the closing of possibilities ahead, not the hardening of history behind. Growth registers the acquisition of real capacities for handling, not approach to a completed self. A stance has no positive criterion, only one negative boundary, non-fabrication (Meaning Theory P2 Y13–Y21). The third paper wrote the outward side: looking-toward is the relation's outward direction, cultivation is that direction in motion; the three forms of orientation toward the other can coexist without a fixed order; support is not substitute constitution; the other is able to unfold without revolving around me; many people's orientations can cross without merging (Meaning Theory P3 Y22–Y27). The fourth paper wrote the end: temporary incapacity is not exit, and finitude and the final bearing boundary are two things; if that boundary has been satisfied there is thereafter no first-person carrying-forward completed by this person, while whether his position has truly exited, his own present activity directly refutes the claim that it has, and no one else can perform that self-attestation in his stead — the departure others can confirm does not of itself attest it, and whether the two correspond the fourth paper did not establish; what continues is conditions and effects, and what those who come after avow is their own; facing the end one can hand over, without possessing the other's constitutive results (Meaning Theory P4 Y28–Y33).
Two · Three stops, each with its own standing
The clearest face of this machine is where it stops — and the three stops are not one kind of stopping. The second paper stops at the self-construct: no self-construct exhausts the relation; the content half of that rests on the domain commitment, the closure half is given by reflexivity, a self-construct does not by itself cancel the position of revision. The third paper stops at the step by which the other becomes himself: the other's own avowal and carrying-forward cannot be performed in his stead by the one who supports him, and this is given by the attribution endpoints — another's avowal can enter only that other's ledgers. The fourth paper stops at the boundary: a subject refutes, by his own occurring, that he has already exited, and after a final exit there is no self-attestation completed by that position, so the asymmetry holds; while the correspondence between the departure others can confirm and the final bearing boundary the fourth paper did not establish and does not use as an existing premise — which does not declare that no possible correspondence can be established. Of the three, the first is a conditional conclusion, the second a non-substitutability, the third a reservation of this series' own. The three positions are precisely those the schools most like to fill when they speak of meaning. In the conversations that follow, the differences mostly fall at these three places, and how they fall must be said according to the standing of each.
Three · Three registers, written apart
The Value Theory interfacing paper established a tool this paper keeps: in conversing, three things are written apart — what a school's claim depends on to be constituted, what its truth-grounding is, and whom it grants epistemic authority to judge. The three can each point the same way or the opposite. Objectivism is the clearest case: it says meaning has objective truth, and this series does not adjudicate at the layer of truth-grounding; objective truth does not of itself yield conclusive certification, and if a school does claim to have obtained such certification it must show it separately; while a particular finite judgment, or a judgment about another kind of evaluative object, is not swept out by this series' denial of a total procedure (Meaning Theory P1 Y9). With the three registers apart, a conversation does not write a disagreement at one layer as a disagreement at three.
Four · This machine, too, is one construct
This series begins from a negation that cannot be pushed further back; that beginning was laid down in Methodology 0, Negativa, and Methodology 00, Via Rho, restates it and writes the conservation of the remainder — this paper cites it through Via Rho, where the beginning is written as a beginning, not a conclusion. It ends at a boundary whose correspondence has not been established; the fourth paper writes that end as a reservation, not a verdict. What fills the beginning is a commitment; what is left at the end is a choice; neither is passed off as proof. This series also makes public what it itself depends on, each item with its own standing: the domain of quantification is an input, the domain commitment is a premise the series bears, the unestablished correspondence is the current state of an argument. In conversing, what is compared is the differing dependencies of each school, not "I lack the dependency he has" rewritten as a ranking of stability.
Section Two · Five Meta-Questions, and the Method of Conversation
One · Five meta-questions
Are the meaning of life, meaning in life, and linguistic meaning one question? They are not. Semantics lies outside this series. What everyday speech asks under meaning in life is two things joined: one belongs to Value Theory — what content becomes my value, how it is discovered, how it develops; the other belongs to this series — how those discoveries, developments, revisions, and misidentifications become a relation that one and the same life carries continuously. So the everyday sentence the meaning in life lies within — it is the discovery and development of one's own values is right in its register; it speaks of the first thing. This series answers how the second carries the first across a life. The two meet; they are not one question. As for the meaning of life as a reading of the whole, this series produces none.
Is meaning understood as source, content, feeling, achievement, direction, narrative, or relation? This series answers: relation, with direction as its orientation axis (Meaning Theory P1 Y12); content belongs to Value Theory; feeling, achievement, and narrative are each material on the descriptive side, or entries in other accounts. The schools differ mostly on this question. Those who take meaning as a source ask where it comes from; as a content, what it is; as a feeling, what it is like; as an achievement, whether it suffices; as a narrative, whether it hangs together. This series asks how it is carried by one and the same person.
Why do the traditions so often speak of value, purpose, happiness, morality, and meaning together? All of them ask how a life should go; whether and how they keep separate accounts differs from author to author, and some keep them very clearly — Wolf, with whom this paper converses, explicitly separates meaning from happiness and from morality. This series' way of separating is this: two ledgers; the attribution axis from the orientation axis; description from attribution; ought from description. So value goes to Value Theory, ought to the Moral Law, no readings are produced, and meaning is left as the relation.
Why must this series separate relation from description, and attribution from direction? Without the first separation, a verdict flows back into the definition of the object (Meaning Theory P1 Y8); without the second, a content's still being avowed stands in for its still organizing the future (Meaning Theory P3 Y22); without separating first-person from third-person authority, a conclusive procedure is counterfeited (Meaning Theory P1 Y9). Every hardest passage in the four papers is one of these three separations.
How does one refuse both sheer subjective arbitrariness and an external table for grading lives? The attribution endpoints are closed in one person, so nothing is arbitrarily rewritten from outside; descriptions are fallible and correctable, so nothing is arbitrarily declared from within; no readings are produced, so this series itself issues no grading table; while there is local truth and falsity, and improvement on the same concrete question can be compared — only not converted into higher and lower (Meaning Theory P1 Y8, Y10).
Two · Different layers, and what the narrowing has bought
The schools mostly answer the second question; this series answers the second half of the first. Before conversing, the layers are set apart: if a school says meaning lies in achievement, this series does not dispute whether achievement matters, but says only in which account it belongs; if a school says meaning comes from the other, this series does not dispute whether the other matters, but says only how the other enters the relation. Not competing on one layer is the posture of the whole paper.
What this narrowing has bought, and what it has given up, must be stated, and not replaced by the single sentence this series issues no grading table. Given up: this series does not answer which kind of life is more worth living, does not answer whether an investment is worthwhile, and gives no evaluation of the whole. Bought: how the things under a person's name are avowed, misidentified, revised, and carried has local truth and falsity, can be corrected, and admits of improvement on the same concrete question; the relation can hold in a person who spends his life counting blades of grass and in one who spends it on others alike — the difference between the two this series does not evaluate, while whether each one's carrying-forward is real this series can ask. The evaluative question of meaning still has its own grounds; this series does not deny it, it only does not do it here. A school may say this life is not worth it, and the relation this series describes can hold all the same; the two sentences can be true at once.
Three · The four steps, and two depths
Each conversation takes four steps. First, a checkable common question or point of contact is sought; where the two share a refusal, that is stated, but no school is required to hold the same negation. Second, whether the two are speaking of the same thing — many disputes are two words pointing at two things. Third, how far agreement goes: what is agreed is taken as it stands, and where the two part is said plainly. Fourth, the strongest objection from the other side, with this series' reply; that objection is mostly reconstructed by this paper, since none of these schools addressed a theory that did not yet exist — this paper marks it as reconstructed and lets it touch the other's real strength. Some exchanges only reach why do you not do what I do — because my definition does not include it; that states a division of labor, not a completed objection and reply, and at such places this paper writes the division of labor and does not write it as settled. To fail to produce the other's strongest objection is to show one has not yet understood the other; that measure applies to the schools this paper claims to have conversed with, not to those given adjacent placement only.
The conversations have two depths. Sections Three and Four take all four steps with nine units — Kant in Section Three, eight in Section Four. Section Five reaches only the division for eight further units; these are adjacent placements, not full conversations, and this paper does not claim to have conversed with them — not because they matter less, but because this series' surface of contact with them is not yet wide enough to write the fourth step.
Section Three · Kant's Postulate and This Series' Reservation
In the Dialectic of practical reason Kant lays down the immortality of the soul as a postulate. The reason is not that theoretical reason has proved it; it is that the highest good requires the complete conformity of the will to the moral law, which a finite rational being can only approach in an endless progress, so that practical reason needs to assume the endless duration of the same rational being. This is a postulate, not a proof — Kant's own word — and it has a practical standing: it is an affirmative assumption.
This series shares one limit with Kant: theoretical proof has not, here, yielded knowledge of continuation. When the fourth paper comes to whether the position has exited, it says nothing either way — it does not prove a stop, nor a continuation; at this step Kant likewise gives no theoretical proof. The sharing ends here: he then gives an affirmative postulate with a practical standing, and this series here reserves judgment — that is the difference between the two, not a point in common.
Whether the two speak of the same thing requires four objects to be separated: the continuation of reason, the highest good, the moral law, and this series' relation of meaning. Kant's postulate serves the highest good; the half of it that is the completion of virtue requires endless progress, and so continuation is required; the other half, the proportion of happiness to virtue, is handed to another postulate this paper does not touch. This series does not take the conditions of realizing the highest good as its object and issues no moral law; its relation of meaning requires nothing to be attainable; so it does not need to adopt the same postulate to complete that task, nor does it need to deny it. This is a division of labor. Taking on one task fewer is not completing the other's task better; this series does not on this account call itself more stable than Kant; it says only that it does not bear that one task.
At the same position this series has a word: stance — a way of relating to what cannot be controlled, cannot be recovered, cannot be completed; this series lays down no positive criterion for it, only one negative boundary, non-fabrication (Meaning Theory P2 Y21). A person may take the belief that reason continues as a stance facing the boundary. This series registers such a stance; it does not treat it as a ground that continuation has been shown, nor does it infer from its own reservation that anyone must adopt it; this series has issued neither prohibition nor requirement; adopting it does not add some meaning-reading to this life, and not adopting it does not subtract one; and the reasons for such a belief, its truth or falsity, and its consequences in action are not settled by this registration. A postulate becomes a stance: what is removed is the necessity; what is left is the choice.
Kant's strongest objection, reconstructed by this paper: without assuming continuation, a practical reason that has laid down the demand of completeness cannot be consistent, since it demands something it itself knows to be unattainable. This series replies in two steps. First, this series issues no ought, so it has no law of its own demanding attainable completeness, and this inconsistency does not arise in it. Second, if a person has himself laid down such a demand, whether that demand is compatible with not adopting the postulate is a matter for his own law and his action; this series does not resolve it for him and does not announce that consistency has been preserved; what it can do is leave that place open so that his stance has a place. Nor does this paper use lacking theoretical proof to dismiss a postulate that itself admits that absence; what could be questioned is its practical premises and transitions, and that is not this paper's subject.
Section Four · Eight Conversations
One · Kierkegaard's relational self
At the opening of Part One of The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard writes the self as a relation: the self is a relation that relates itself to itself, and this relation is established — it did not establish itself — and rests upon the power that established it; despair is a misrelation in it, and when despair is rooted out, the self, in willing to be itself, rests transparently in the power that established it — this is his formula for faith, with which the book closes, not a state of psychological health. He writes of that power; in the Christian setting it points to God, but the sentence uses the word power.
The point of contact is here: both write the side of the self as something relating itself to itself. This series lays down a relational object, a relation of carrying-forward; it does not thereby obtain the conclusion that the self is only a relation — the same bearer is the first paper's input, and the second paper does not exhaust the bearer by this relation.
Whether the two speak of the same thing: what is connected differs — he connects the self with itself, this series connects the bearer with the constitutive events under its own name, with the two ledgers between. The mode of closure differs: he completes the self's final resting in the power that established it; this series does not complete a terminal grounding through an external establisher, but goes on bearing in its own law and keeps the remainder. These two divergences the paper marks; it adds no contrast of time scale. One further thing must be kept apart: the resting he speaks of and the unrevisable final draft of self-description the second paper refuses are not the same object; that he has the former does not mean he has filled in the latter.
The contact reaches the structure of relating-to-oneself, and no further; this series lays down its cross-temporal carrying-forward there, and does not equate itself with him on a complete ontology of the self. His strongest objection, reconstructed: without an establisher, the relation that relates itself to itself has no footing and can only be one of despair's two forms — not willing to be oneself, or willing to be oneself as one's own ground. This series' reply: its footing is one's own law, not a higher relational term; it does not close, and the second paper wrote that what stands permanently is a position, not a pre-made or completed self (Meaning Theory P2 Y15). That reply says where this series puts its footing; it does not show that his higher term fails — that belongs to the transcendental line, and this paper does not judge it.
Two · Heidegger's being-toward-death
In Division Two of Being and Time, Heidegger writes Dasein's being-toward-death. Death is the ownmost, non-relational, not-to-be-outstripped possibility — non-relational saying that death cannot be borne by another in my stead. Running ahead to death is not seeking death; it is taking up this unsurpassable possibility as a possibility; it individualizes Dasein and makes its authentic ability-to-be possible, without Dasein thereby leaving everydayness — authentic and inauthentic are two modes of one and the same Dasein, not two stages.
The point of contact: finitude is not something outside life; it is in the structure.
Whether the two speak of the same thing requires three things to be separated: authentic ability-to-be, the confirmation of actual departure from the world, and the correspondence with the final bearing boundary. He writes the first, an ontological analysis. This series says, of the second, that departure can be confirmed by others, and of the third, that the correspondence has not been established; neither of these answers the first. This series issues no norms and so opens no way of life, but issuing no norms is not a refutation of an ontological analysis; this series' individuation is obtained from the attribution endpoints, and that does not by itself complete an argument for individuation synonymous with his — the two do two different things here. At the same place this series has one sentence that must be written: being under a deadline is a structural condition, not a stance; it yields no ought, including no ought to live urgently (Meaning Theory P2 Y14). That sentence carries the second paper's limit into this place.
Agreement reaches as far as finitude entering the structure. From there onward he opens an authentic ability-to-be, and this series opens no way of life; he writes death as a possibility one can run ahead to; this series leaves unestablished the correspondence between externally confirmable departure and its final bearing boundary.
His strongest objection, reconstructed: without running ahead to death, Dasein cannot grasp itself as a whole and is scattered in the they, never individualized. This series' reply: it never demanded a grasp of the whole — that there is no final draft is the first limit it laid down; as for individuation, what this series gives through the attribution endpoints is the structure that the endpoints lie in one person; it gives no grasp of the whole, and it does not refute the path of running ahead to death — at this place each has its own grounds.
Three · Levinas's face
Levinas writes the face of the other: the way the other presents himself, exceeding the idea of him in me — this he calls the face; the face calls into question the spontaneity of the self, and is the infinite the self cannot take into a totality.
The point of contact: the other is not derived from the self, not a projection of it. The Value Theory interfacing paper has already conversed with him once; this paper takes up only the layer of Meaning Theory.
Whether the two speak of the same thing: his other precedes the self; this series' the other as an end is a content whose entry into this meaning relation requires the bearer's own avowal, and a position that can stand empty, the formal other-position (Value Theory P1 V14; Meaning Theory P3 Y23). The sentence the other precedes me this series has too — the fact precedes my recognition (Value Theory P6 V73); but whether I avow it is a first-person occurrence on my side.
Agreement reaches as far as the other not being derived from the self. From there the two part: he writes the face calling the self's spontaneity into question; this series writes the other entering the relation by way of avowal, and after avowal the other still does not settle his account with me — the step by which he becomes himself is not completed by me (Meaning Theory P3 Y26).
His strongest objection, reconstructed, is not is the other my making — that question this series has answered: the fact of the other as an end holds prior to my avowal. The stronger question is: if the other's ethical claim precedes my avowal, how does this series treat that antecedent claim? This series' reply: the precedence of the fact and the force of the claim are two questions, and this series has answered only the first; the second — the force of the claim, and ought — this series does not adopt in his ethical structure but hands to its own Moral Law; it is not a subject for Meaning Theory. So this paper does not announce that the problem of totalization is solved here; it says which question this series has answered and to which address it hands the other.
Four · Wittgenstein's limit
At the close of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein says the sense of the world must lie outside the world; and that death is not an event of life — death is not lived through; and then asks whether, even supposing the temporal immortality of the soul, a riddle is solved by the fact that I survive for ever — is this eternal life not as enigmatic as our present one?
The point of contact between the two is the relation between the question of meaning and statements of fact. First a distinction: what he calls the sense of the world and the relation of carrying-forward this series defines technically are not directly the same referent; this series' relation can be registered, and it neither violates his limit thereby nor refutes it. Fact and reading are not the same thing either; when this series says it produces no readings, it is not saying meaning is not a fact.
Death is not an event of life runs in the same direction as the fourth paper's asymmetry of self-attestation: a subject refutes by his own occurring that he has already exited, and after an exit there is no present self-attestation completed by him (Meaning Theory P4 Y30). The grounds differ: he speaks from the structure of experience, this series from the position of judgment. Agreement reaches to here.
His strongest objection, reconstructed, is his own question: what does supposing continuation solve? This series' reply: a person who chooses to believe reason can continue holds a stance; what it changes is his way of relating to the boundary; taking it does not of itself answer whether the final bearing boundary has been satisfied, and whether and how it actually takes part in organizing his future and his reasons is still described under this series' existing conditions for presence; nor does it solve the riddle he names. This series writes that place as a reservation, not as silence — to register that this correspondence remains undecided here is itself a sayable sentence — and his question is the reminder that even were the reservation filled, the riddle would not thereby be solved.
Five · Aristotle's whole life
Aristotle speaks of happiness with a whole life as the unit: happiness is the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, in a complete life; in Book X he places the highest happiness in contemplation. He discusses Solon's saying that one must look to the end before calling a man happy — discusses it and qualifies it; it is not his own assertion. What this paper takes from him is that he treats a whole life as the measure.
The point of contact: the goodness or badness of a life is not decided by momentary feeling.
Whether the two speak of the same thing: he discusses how to live well — the activity of a life, and activity is not external achievement; he himself distinguishes the possession of virtue from its exercise. This series discusses how an already delimited object is carried forward across time. On the whole life as the unit the two are close in shape; the division is at the end: he discusses whether one must see the end to pass judgment, and this series issues no final draft even at the end of a life — a truncated relation does not at any point become a closed one (Meaning Theory P2 Y14); and a complete life is not for him an unquestionable final draft of the self either, so the difference at this point is smaller than it looks.
Agreement reaches as far as the whole life as unit, and the refusal of momentary feeling. His strongest objection, reconstructed: without a whole life as the measure of judgment, one cannot tell living well from living badly. This series' reply: this series does not make that distinction; it distinguishes local truth from falsity and improvement on the same concrete question; living well and living badly is an evaluative question with grounds of its own, which this series does not do here — and does not, because it does not do it, say it cannot be done.
Six · Objectivism and the hybrid view
Objectivism says meaning has objective criteria. Metz's fundamentality theory says that the degree of a life's meaning depends on a person's positively exercising his rational nature so as to orient it toward the fundamental conditions of human existence. Wolf's hybrid view says meaning arises where subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness, and where the subject can actively engage with it; in her lectures she says plainly that she is not there offering a complete theory of objective value, still less an infallible procedure for deciding what has it, and she separates meaning from happiness and from morality.
The point of contact: meaning is not sheer subjective arbitrariness.
Whether the two speak of the same thing must be said at two layers. At the layer of truth-grounding: whether some content is objectively valuable, this series leaves unadjudicated in the Value Theory interfacing paper, and Meaning Theory does not reopen it. At the layer of authority: objective truth does not of itself yield conclusive certification; this sentence is not aimed at Wolf, who has not committed herself to an infallible procedure; it is aimed at anyone who would infer directly from objective truth to the availability of conclusive third-person certification of a life's meaning — a step is missing in between (Meaning Theory P1 Y9).
Wolf discusses what kind of engagement makes a life meaningful in the evaluative sense; this series discusses how a certain constitutive history is carried forward by the person himself across time. Feeling attracted, avowing a content, and actually continuing to carry it are not one event; and whether a content is objectively worthwhile is not whether it organizes the future. The two can describe the same life at different layers without directly denying each other.
Agreement reaches as far as the refusal of the sheerly subjective. Her strongest objection, reconstructed: if investing in a worthless project and investing in a worthwhile one can both bear the relation this series describes, what of the everyday question is it meaningful does this concept keep, and what does it give up? This series' reply was written in Section Two: it gives up evaluation and keeps the truth and correctability of carrying-forward; the gain of this narrowing is that whether an avowal was actually completed, whether the description of its attribution and carrying-forward is accurate, whether it is carried, whether it was misidentified — these can be asked of both investments, and corrected; as for which investment is worthwhile, the evaluative question has grounds of its own, which this series does not deny and does not do here.
Seven · Narrative and identity
The narrative and identity line is not one thesis. MacIntyre says a life is the narrative unity of a quest, in which practices and a life become intelligible; Taylor says the self acquires orientation in a moral space constituted by strong evaluation, and narrative gives that space its temporality; Ricoeur holds that narrative identity mediates between identity as sameness (idem) and identity as selfhood (ipse). What the three share is the cross-temporal unity of a life — and all three argue that narrative has a constitutive role in practical identity and the organization of time, not merely the role of retelling.
The point of contact: a life has a cross-temporal unity; it is not scattered points.
Whether the two speak of the same thing: this series places narrative on the descriptive side, and unity on the side of attribution — in the endpoints, not in the plot. That is this series' classification; it says how it places narrative, and is not yet an answer to their claim about narrative's constitutive role. The same bearer is this series' input, proved neither by narrative nor by this series; that states only a division of labor and cannot be used to show that the question of identity the three treat is unnecessary. What this series can say here: a narrative of one's own life is fallible, correctable, and does not enter the two ledgers (Meaning Theory P1 Y8); the coherence of a narrative and the remainder-free final draft the second paper refuses are not the same thing — a person's narrative may be very coherent while his relation still holds no final draft; and later-acquired meaning does not of itself supply retroactive justification to the past, which is the thing narrative most easily does, and which the second paper blocked (Meaning Theory P2 Y18).
Agreement reaches as far as cross-temporal unity. Their strongest objection, reconstructed: without narrative, cross-temporal unity is only a string of events, in which one cannot see the same person, nor acquire a direction. This series' reply: given the same bearer, this series can register cross-temporal carrying-forward and direction without making narrative plot a defining condition of the relation — the endpoints lying in one person is structure, not plot, given by one's own law; direction is registered on the orientation axis, which asks whether a content is organizing the future. These two sentences show how this series erects unity and direction under a given bearer; they do not explain how practical identity forms in actual life, and do not show that narrative has no constitutive role in identity — the strength of the three lies in how a person comes to recognize himself as one person in time, and this series has not taken that road, nor denies it.
Eight · The Confucian three immortalities
The Zuozhuan, in the twenty-fourth year of Duke Xiang, records Mushu answering Fan Xuanzi: highest is to establish virtue, next to establish deeds, next to establish words; what does not perish though long ages pass — this is called not dying. These are Mushu's words, not Confucius's.
The point of contact: this passage explains immortality by the enduring, unperishing effect of virtue, deeds, and words; it does not use the first-person continuation of the original bearer as its argument, and none of the three says the person himself remains. What the fourth paper cuts off is exactly that model — that what those who come after obtain could prolong the departed bearer's first-person relation (Meaning Theory P4 Y31). On this the two run in the same direction.
Whether the two speak of the same thing: the three immortalities have a ranking — highest, next, next — an evaluation and ordering of virtue, deeds, and words; this series does not evaluate them, and how to evaluate virtue, deeds, and words is another task this series has not completed here. The fourth paper speaks of the survival of works, public memory, narrative influence, and institutional legacy each keeping its own account, which this series does not cut; that is not a three-column table matched one to one with virtue, deeds, and words, and this paper draws no such mapping.
This series meets the passage in this limited sense: immortality, in these words, is not explained by the person's own continuing. The line's strongest objection, reconstructed: if what does not perish is all on the side of others, what did the one who established virtue, deeds, and words obtain for himself? This series' reply: he obtained the constitutive events of his relation before departure — his two ledgers, real, having run, not erased by departure (Meaning Theory P4 Y31); what this passage calls not perishing refers to how virtue, deeds, and words go on taking effect, and does not judge whether the original bearer's position continues; at that place this series reserves judgment.
Section Five · Adjacent Placements for Eight Further Schools
For these eight, this paper reaches the division and no further, writing no fourth step; it does not claim to have conversed with them.
One · Nietzsche's eternal recurrence
In §341 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche presses, through a thought experiment, a person's attitude toward this life: this life, in every detail, innumerable times over, exactly the same — would you want it? This paper reads it as a test of the capacity to affirm the whole; test is this paper's word, not his. Both refuse an external grading table. The division is here: this paper reads the experiment as a question about the capacity for affirming the whole, which is not automatically a reading but an attitude; this series' stance proposition also registers attitudes toward the whole, but it lays down only a negative boundary, does not derive from its own structure the same demand for affirmation, and makes no overall evaluation of a life (Meaning Theory P2 Y21).
Two · Tolstoy's confession
Tolstoy's Confession poses the question of meaning most directly: estate, fame, literature, family — of each he asks what will come of it in the end under death, and so turns to faith, first the faith lived out by ordinary laboring people. Both look back over a life from the end. The division is here: he asks after results, an evaluative question that does not become measurement just because of the word result; this series at the end does not ask after results — it answers with nothing either way (Meaning Theory P4 Y30); the turn to faith this series leaves to the person's own choice.
Three · Sartre's freedom and bad faith
Sartre says existence precedes essence, that the self has no pre-made essence — the slogan comes from his 1945 lecture; Being and Nothingness writes bad faith as consciousness's strategic misplacing of its own facticity and transcendence, fleeing what it is and failing to escape. Both refuse a pre-made self. The division requires three subjects to be told apart: no pre-made content, no completed self-construct, no substantial essence are three sentences. What this series proves by reflexivity is the second — a self-construct does not by itself acquire unrevisable standing; the first is in this series a refusal by definition; the third this series has not proved, and does not prove by reflexivity (Meaning Theory P2 Y15). Bad faith neighbors non-fabrication; this series judges only that a description of oneself is untrue, not whether making it was permissible (Meaning Theory P2 Y21).
Four · Camus's absurd
Camus's absurd lies between the human appeal and the silence of the world; the appeal is for meaning, and also for unity and reasons; the absurd is not a property of the world but that collision. Both refuse meaning conferred from outside. The division is here: this series does not define its object of meaning by this collision, nor does it judge the relation of carrying-forward to have vanished because the collision occurs; that the attribution endpoints lie in one person does not show that this person makes no appeal to the world, nor that the world can answer — so this series has not shown here that the tension cannot occur. The two descriptions can partly coexist.
Five · Frankl's will to meaning
Frankl lays down a will to meaning and says meaning is discovered in concrete situations, not invented — the latter said more fully in his later The Will to Meaning. Both write meaning as directed toward something. The division is here: his therapeutic standing does not exhaust his account of the discovery of meaning, and this paper does not sum him up by the therapy; discovery has different objects for the two — he speaks of meaning discovered in situations, while this series fixed the bound of discovery in the Value Theory colonization paper: a content that appeared as a candidate in one's own running, not the finding of something already lying there (Value Theory P3 V36); this series lays down no will and issues no therapy.
Six · Nagel's absurd
Nagel's absurd is not that a life is insignificant on the cosmic scale — he says plainly that argument fails. The absurd lies in our being unable not to take life seriously while being able to step back and place the grounds of that seriousness in doubt, neither stance canceling the other. Both grant that the external standpoint obtains no final adjudication. The division is here: this series does not define its object of meaning by this tension, nor does it judge the relation of carrying-forward to have vanished because the tension occurs; what stepping back yields is, in this series, a fallible description (Meaning Theory P1 Y8), which obtains no final adjudication — but the tension does not occur on condition of obtaining external adjudication, so this series has not shown it will not occur.
Seven · The ethics of care, and generativity
Noddings writes the caring relation as the starting point of ethics, the response of the cared-for completing the relation. Erikson writes generativity as the central conflict of middle age, with production, creation, and the guiding of the next generation within it. Both place the other within meaning. The division is here: the ethics of care issues an ought, while this series in its third paper gives only the negative boundaries of support (Meaning Theory P3 Y25); the transmission of education, culture, and practice is real, and it does not itself claim that the same first-person constitution changes hands — this series adds only one sentence here: what those who come after avow is their own (Meaning Theory P4 Y31, Y33).
Eight · Buddhism and Daoism
Buddhist no-self and continuity, and the Daoist leveling of life and death, each have this series' existing interfaces conversing with them, which this paper does not reopen. Two sentences only. No completed true self is not no-self: what this series proves is that no self-construct acquires unrevisable standing by itself; it does not prove that there is no self (Meaning Theory P2 Y15). The leveling of life and death: this paper takes the reading of two passages of the Zhuangzi, "Discussion on Making All Things Equal" and "Perfect Happiness," as a stance facing life and death rather than a verdict; that is this paper's reading of those two passages and does not sum up the tradition; this series at the boundary neither judges nor levels (Meaning Theory P4 Y30).
Section Six · Where This Series Stops
In the manner of the Value Theory interfacing paper, six slots. The slots distinguish the kinds of not-continuing; they are not six blanks every series must fill; where a slot has no independent new content, this paper says so.
Slot one, a remainder left by this construct. The standing of the three stops was separated in Section One: a conditional conclusion, a non-substitutability, a reservation; they do not all acquire the standing of a remainder by being called stops alike — a conclusion about remainders is not a remainder, a deliberate non-substitution is not something the theory failed to treat, and not yet established is not never establishable. This paper registers one item in this slot. This series takes the final bearing boundary as a structural input, and can say what carrying-forward no longer occurs once the antecedent is satisfied, but has not established a criterion leading from the confirmable state of departure to that antecedent; this correspondence problem is raised by this series' own setting of the boundary, and the present definitions and material have not completed it. This paper registers it as the remainder left by this construct, without prejudging that a correspondence must exist, and without declaring that it still could not be established on other grounds; it is at the same time the entry to Action Theory — how to act in that place where nothing is said either way. The stops of the second and third papers are not set up here as further remainders; each is an established conclusion and an established boundary, and the second subsection of Section One is already their place of registration.
Slot two, objects adjacent within the jurisdiction. Three. Action Theory: this series supplies a field of reasons, not a calculus from reasons to action, and the last section of the fourth paper has handed over the seven questions and that one reserved matter. Semantics: linguistic meaning and meaning in life are not one question; this series does not touch the former. The psychology of the sense of meaning: feeling is material on the descriptive side that can enter the field of reasons; it is not the relation itself; this series does not dispute with the measurement of a sense of meaning — what that measures is not this relation.
Slot three, a limit already established. The asymmetry of self-attestation: a subject refutes by his own occurring that he has already exited, and after an exit there is no self-attestation completed by that position; no one else can perform that self-attestation in his stead, nor substitute a criterion of departure for it without an argument for correspondence (Meaning Theory P4 Y30). This is the farthest this series can speak at the boundary; the correspondence between departure and the final bearing boundary this series has not established, and does not declare unestablishable.
Slot four, research candidates proposed here. Two. Whether a collective first person can stand — reserved by the third paper, registered by the Value Theory interfacing paper as a remainder; if it can, whether its relation of meaning is another relation or an extension of the same one, this series does not prejudge. The history of the preservation, transmission, and encounter of conditions between their being left and their being avowed: in it there are authors, editors, preservers, users, and their respective positions — no first-person constitution performed in another's stead does not mean no action, no attribution, no responsibility; how that history is to be described, this series has no tools for.
Slot five, handovers whose address is already fixed. The seven questions for Action Theory, written word for word in the last section of the fourth paper. The external maintenance of a life-script, to Rights Theory and Power Theory. Whatever involves ought, to the Moral Law. Direction-value, to Power Theory. These have addresses; this paper does not reopen them.
Slot six, a question that came to light only on looking back. Whether external description can become material for one's own carrying-forward. This is not a road wholly untraveled: the first paper allows relevant material to be handled by the person himself; the third allows others' observations and appraisals to enter the present field of reasons as fallible material (Meaning Theory P3 Y25); the fourth sealed one direction on the departed bearer's side — descriptions may still change thereafter, and that does not of itself show that he is still carrying forward (Meaning Theory P4 Y32) — and left the other half open there, whether material can enter some new carrying-forward of his own, together with the question of the position's exit (Meaning Theory P4 Y31). What has not been set out is the mechanism: by what actual process external description becomes material for someone's later carrying-forward, and which of its conditions and changes can be described. That the mechanism is not set out does not mean the trunk papers never allowed the possibility.
Section Seven · The Two Items Handed Down by Value Theory
When a paper points, outside its own range, to a matter and says it belongs elsewhere, that is a forward assignment; a forward assignment is a debt — to be discharged, or to be marked with who will discharge it. The fifth slot of Section Six of the Value Theory interfacing paper registered two items handed to Meaning Theory, from two Value Theory papers: the conflict paper handed down, at its close, the item yielded — how it is thereafter still carried by one and the same life; the paper on the other handed down, at its close, the content the other can have values of his own, and this is not mine to give — how it is thereafter carried by one and the same life. The common shape of the two items: how a content is thereafter carried by one and the same life.
Where they were discharged. The first paper gave the ground both share: one and the same bearer's cross-temporal, first-person carrying-forward, two ledgers, two axes, three layers. The first item the second paper set out: the yielded project is separated by four questions and not merged into one state, judged by the criteria of irrecoverability each on its own, still carried by the same life, and later-acquired meaning does not of itself provide retrospective justification for it. The second item the third paper set out: looking-toward, the negative boundaries of support, the other not settling his account with me; and the fourth paper then delimited how it continues at the boundary. Both items have been discharged; the two items registered in that row of the Value Theory interfacing paper can be settled at the positions above. Whose account is being settled must be said plainly: the Value Theory interfacing paper itself states that it only registers addresses — whether they are discharged is verified elsewhere — and does not complete acceptance there; so the settlement here is the receiving side's own statement, not an acceptance made on upstream's behalf; acceptance is made by whoever reads both papers.
This paper's own account is kept separate. That the two received items have been discharged, and whether the work this series hands out has been completed, are two matters: this series has handed to Action Theory seven questions and one reserved matter — a handover the fourth paper already registered, still awaiting Action Theory. This paper hands no new definite work to any successor; the existing handover to Action Theory is registered as it stands, and the research candidates and open questions of Section Six do not become definite deliveries by being listed here. Adding no propositions does not of itself guarantee no new forward assignment; this paper has checked item by item that there is none, and says so on that basis.
Section Eight · Closing
Four sentences for the whole series. Meaning is personal: one and the same bearer's cross-temporal, first-person carrying-forward, whose endpoints do not pass beyond that one bearer. Conditions can be handed over and those who come after can avow: what is avowed is the later person's own value content, and only when carried into his own carrying-forward is it his own meaning; what passes in between is conditions, not the same meaning. At the boundary there is no final adjudication: the subject's present activity directly refutes the claim that its position has already finally exited, and no one else can perform that self-attestation in its stead; the correspondence has not been established, and nothing is said either way. What fills the beginning is a commitment; what is left at the end is a choice: this series begins from a negation that cannot be pushed further back and ends at a boundary whose correspondence has not been established, and passes neither off as proof.
A school may say this life is not worth living, and the relation this series describes can hold all the same; the two sentences can be true at once. This series has drawn the bounds of its own jurisdiction; the evaluative, normative, and ontological questions outside those bounds each have their own grounds, and this series neither answers them in their stead nor denies them.
Acknowledgments
This paper is the interfacing paper of the Meaning Theory branch of the SAE (Self-as-an-End) philosophical system, and is signed by Han Qin alone. All philosophical argument and all decisions between alternatives were finally adjudicated by the author, who bears sole responsibility for the final text. The paper was produced under a four-party cross-review method: the internal precision audit, ontological-limit and contradiction detection, boundary testing, and structural gatekeeping with pre-publication signature.
Drafting assistance and all four review roles above were carried out with the help of large language models. Drafting and the internal precision audit were undertaken by Claude (Anthropic), ontological-limit and contradiction detection by Gemini (Google DeepMind), boundary testing by Grok (xAI), and structural gatekeeping with pre-publication signature by ChatGPT (OpenAI). The loci of the schools' positions were separately verified against the literature; thanks are due to these systems and to the research and engineering teams behind them. Their comments were adjudicated by the author item by item, and both what was adopted and what was rejected are on record.
This paper continues the standing product of an upstream-paraphrase audit table, comparing item by item what the paper says of this series' own papers against their published wording; the schools are cited at the level of their positions, without commentary, with public-domain originals marked where they were obtained and the loci of the rest marked as awaiting verification. The record of revisions and withdrawals across the rounds of review is kept in the series outline and the review returns, and is not reproduced here. The four-party review markedly improved the precision and consistency of this paper, and thanks are due for it.
References
This system
Qin, H. (2026). What Kind of Relation Meaning Is (SAE Meaning Theory, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22652134
Qin, H. (2026). The Finite Bearer's Carrying-Forward (SAE Meaning Theory, Paper 2) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22713651
Qin, H. (2026). The Half That Is Not Mine to Settle (SAE Meaning Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22731235
Qin, H. (2026). The Carrier's Boundary (SAE Meaning Theory, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22738709
Qin, H. (2026). On the Source of Value (SAE Value Theory, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21405207
Qin, H. (2026). On the Colonization of Value (SAE Value Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21611154
Qin, H. (2026). On the Conflict of Value (SAE Value Theory, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22122819
Qin, H. (2026). On Value and the Other (SAE Value Theory, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22191071
Qin, H. (2026). Interfacing with Existing Traditions, and the Prospect (SAE Value Theory, Paper 0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22265396
Qin, H. (2026). Via Rho: The Way of the Remainder (SAE Methodology, Paper 00) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19657439
External works (cited at the level of positions; standard loci and public-domain entry points are recorded in this paper's transcription audit table)
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I.7, I.10, X.7–8. (Public domain.)
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason, "The Immortality of the Soul as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason," AA 5:122–124. (Public domain.)
Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, Part One. (Original in the public domain; standard translations not.)
Heidegger, Being and Time, Division Two, Chapter One. (Not in the public domain; locus awaiting verification.)
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, Section III. (Not in the public domain; locus awaiting verification.)
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.41, 6.4311, 6.4312. (Public domain.)
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §341. (Public domain.)
Tolstoy, A Confession. (Public domain.)
Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism (1945 lecture); Being and Nothingness, the chapter on bad faith. (Not in the public domain; locus awaiting verification.)
Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus. (Not in the public domain; locus awaiting verification.)
Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning; The Will to Meaning. (Not in the public domain; locus awaiting verification.)
Nagel, "The Absurd" (1971). (Not in the public domain; locus awaiting verification.)
Wolf, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters (2010); the Tanner Lectures text. (Book not in the public domain; lecture text publicly available.)
Metz, Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study (2013). (Not in the public domain; locus awaiting verification.)
MacIntyre, After Virtue; Taylor, Sources of the Self; Ricoeur, Oneself as Another. (Not in the public domain; loci awaiting verification.)
Noddings, Caring; Erikson, Childhood and Society. (Not in the public domain; loci awaiting verification.)
Zuozhuan, Duke Xiang, twenty-fourth year. (Public domain.)
Zhuangzi, "Discussion on Making All Things Equal"; "Perfect Happiness." (Public domain.)