The Place of Relation Theory
关系论的位置
This paper lays down no propositions. It does six things: it makes clear where Relation Theory stands in the SAE system and how it divides the work with upstream; it registers the addresses Relation Theory openly takes up, and those it does not; it lists how words shared with neighboring series are handled; it interfaces with outside traditions; it lists the propositions of the whole series together once; and it lists what is handed downstream.
SAE unfolds into three sides by question and by point of view: the subject side, the relational side and the institutional side. The division is not by the number of people, nor is it a division into stages of life. Relation Theory is the general theory of the relational side: it reads how two subjects collide with each other, and how one person's yesterday, today and tomorrow collide with one another, and what these collisions sediment into in dealings and over time. It does not read the part of them that belongs to institutions; it does not start from power or from recognition-based rights, and it is not coupled to Power Theory or to the recognition-based side of Rights Theory. Two things can be discussed: basic rights, and "no duty toward others" (Rights Theory Paper 0, M1). It is a way of cutting by dealings and by time; it does not occupy a separate piece of ground, nor does it set out to complete anyone's coverage.
Relation Theory in the abstract focuses on what all relations have: the structure that does not vary with the kind of relation. What holds only in one kind of relation is left to be argued in the theory of that kind of relation.
The interfacing with outside traditions comes in two depths. Thirteen conversations, with Aristotle, Buber, Watsuji Tetsurō, Menkiti and Gyekye, Gilbert, Kant, Xunzi, Heidegger, Sartre, Locke and Parfit, Hume and Scanlon, Confucius and Mencius, Mauss, the Book of Rites and Mozi, take four steps, and where one reaches only the division of labor, that is stated on the spot; Aristotle on relatives, Aquinas, Nishida Kitarō, Nāgārjuna, Simmel, Arendt, Ricœur, Baier and Levinas are only placed as neighbors; what the Paper 0s of neighboring series have already engaged is invoked, not rewritten. The differences fall mostly on four lines: the threshold; direction, not kind; a relation is a construct, not a bearer, and does not stand in for a bearer's constitution; where the binding comes from. The most direct normative divergence lies with Gilbert's joint commitment: on doing things together, and on the effects left after exit, the two can be read alongside each other; whether the parties thereby owe one another performance, and who holds the qualification to release, the two explain differently. This series states its choice of normative source, and does not claim to have refuted the other side.
Introduction
SAE has already unfolded the subject side and the institutional side: how a person lays down his own law and how he acts; what an institution is for and what it ought to achieve. Beyond these two, the relational side must also be unfolded: how things work between two subjects, how they cultivate each other, and how they guard against colonizing each other. This is the face Relation Theory reads.
Relation is not counted by the number of people either. What lies between a person and himself, between his yesterday, today and tomorrow, falls within Relation Theory just the same: an earlier self can cultivate or colonize a later self.
With the seven main papers written, this paper looks back and places the series within the system, and also interfaces it, once, with outside traditions. As is the practice in this system, Paper 0 is written last and placed first.
§1 The Three Sides and the Division of Labor
The three sides. The subject side asks how a person lays down his own law, how he acts and how he carries forward what has been left to him. The institutional side asks, of the construct, to whom the ought is addressed, what it ought to protect and what it ought to leave. The relational side asks how effects come across between one person and another, and between a person and himself in time, how they press and how they sediment. The three sides are divided by question and by point of view; one and the same matter can be read by each of the three, each reading one face of it.
The boundary between relation and institution. There is no clear boundary between relation and institution: teacher and student, superior and subordinate, all lie between the two. The discussion of relations here leaves out the part of them that belongs to institutions, so rights and power are not discussed; relations are discussed only in terms of how the parties collide with one another. Within an institution there are still relations between people; those are between people, not between a person and that construct, the institution, and the latter is a matter of power and recognition-based rights. So within an institution, the part of what passes between persons that the institution does not provide for, or that goes beyond its provisions, belongs to Relation Theory; the relation between persons and constructs does not (Paper 1, H11).
The division of labor, in one sentence.
Action Theory reads a single drawing of the line; the Conflict Treatise brings to a close an incompatibility that has passed both gates; Meaning Theory reads what a person carries forward, that is, attribution and orientation; Relation Theory reads what the effects between the parties (between one person and another, or between yesterday, today and tomorrow) sediment into in dealings and over time: whether or not they are carried forward, it reads only the face of the effect.
The boundaries are not wholly clean in a few places, and Relation Theory invokes these places as instances and does not rewrite them: Action Theory Paper 4, D20, and Action Theory Paper 7, §3, a law swapped out within habit and a compromise that over some years slides into something else; the Conflict Treatise's stalling and stopping point, where §14 writes of stalling as "becoming the background hum under everything else in the house", which is already a conflict within a relation sedimenting over time; and the man in Meaning Theory P1 "who read the subject his father settled for him".
Another way of cutting. Power Theory P1, in its Introduction, says of the Moral Law and Power Theory: "Together the two series give SAE's complete coverage of inter-subject structure." Power Theory was written early; seen from now, such complete coverage cannot be achieved. Relation Theory cuts by dealings and by time: it does not occupy a separate piece of ground, nor does it set out to complete anyone's coverage.
Not coupled. Relation Theory does not discuss relations from the standpoint of power or of recognition-based rights, and it is not coupled to them. Accordingly, it does not build arguments on concepts borrowed from Power Theory or from the recognition-based side of Rights Theory (On Rights and Entitlements and On Accountability included), does not map its terms onto theirs and does not judge their readings. Whether an asymmetry has been registered as power, which cell a piece of giving falls into, how a recognition-based right fails, whether a demand amounts to accountability: these are their business. Not being coupled does not mean that there is no power in relations, nor does it strike out the conditions of an effect: the necessary institutional background is still registered as a condition of the effect, and its provisions are acknowledged but not judged.
Two exceptions. Power is not discussed within relations, but the basic rights of Rights Theory can be: that a subject's basic rights are inviolable is derived from the subject itself, so anyone who harms another's basic rights commits a violation. Rights Theory Paper 0, M1, that there is no duty toward others, can also be cited: once there is a duty toward others, exit can no longer be spoken of. Entitlements are not cited, not because they are unimportant, but because they can be handed down to particular series, such as Parent-Child Theory.
How one person is to treat another. Institution Theory Paper 0, §10, hands this point to the Critiques: "The person's side: how one person is to treat another. This series does not take it up, and hands it to the Critiques". Relation Theory speaks of structure and issues no ought, and it does not write this point either.
§2 The Addresses Taken Up, and Those Not Taken Up
Upstream left Relation Theory no forward assignment. The name "Relation Theory" appears nowhere in the eleven papers of Action Theory, the Conflict Treatise, the five papers of Meaning Theory, the nine of Power Theory, the eight of Rights Theory and its two special papers, the eight of Institution Theory, the papers of Value Theory or the Second Critique, nor in several papers of the rays, of Economics and of Laughter. This shows only that they did not use the name to leave Relation Theory a forward assignment; it does not show that upstream has no related work. Action Theory Paper 0, §9.5: "Apart from these three, this paper hands no further definite new work to what comes after"; the three are the Second Critique, the Third Critique and the Theory of Government. Institution Theory Paper 0, §10, lists all its handovers, and Relation Theory is not among them. The forward-pointing debt of Conflict Treatise §29 is booked to Action Theory, and Action Theory has taken it up. So Relation Theory is a project opened in public, not the settling of anyone's forward assignment.
Three addresses marked by Meaning Theory, openly taken up. When Meaning Theory P3 §5 marks the first of them, it states that "no work is handed to any later paper in an assertive voice", and Meaning Theory Paper 0 also states that "the research candidates and open questions of Section Six do not become definite deliveries by being listed here", so these three are not debts of a forward assignment. First, P3, §5: "Whether there exists, between two bearers, some higher-order relational condition, this series does not judge". Second, Paper 0, §6, slot four: "The history of the preservation, transmission, and encounter of conditions between their being left and their being avowed ... this series has no tools for." Third, slot six: by what actual process an outside description becomes material for someone's later carrying-forward; there, "the mechanism is not set out". Relation Theory takes up only that stretch of the three which concerns dealings between bearers; the general history of preservation, transmission and encounter, and the general study of media and of cognitive mechanisms, Relation Theory does not undertake.
A relation is not a third bearer: upstream passages pointing the same way. Paper 1, H3, cites Aesthetics Ray 13, Conflict Treatise §24 and Value Theory P6 V76; the remaining passages are listed here. Action Theory Paper 8, D47: "C is something both of them avow and both are able to do, whose purpose and adjudication neither side holds alone; it is doing something together, not a shared law." D48: "Doing things together does not automatically produce a position that legislates each side's own law for them; institutions can let people find each other, but cannot produce a 'we' on behalf of both." The Second Critique, Chapter Six §5: "What two people agree on is a shared procedure, a thing done together, not a shared law; no third legislating position arises from it." Meaning Theory P3 Y27 writes that crossing is not merging: each person's meaning relation "still has both ends in himself, and it is not fused above them into a collective meaning".
What is not taken up. Relation Theory takes up none of the cells that the Second Critique, Chapter Six §7, lists with no address yet. The two nearest to Relation Theory are the individual and the group (the community as bearer) and community legislation (whether mutual recognition can grow into common legislation). Relation Theory establishes only that "a little circle of two does not form a third bearer" (Paper 1, H12), and does not touch the question of when a community has become a collective subject. Nor does Relation Theory take up 16DD that can hold at any time and in any place, or the change in the individual at 16DD (Paper 4, H39).
The registration of 16DD. The General Methodology §1.7 gives the definition; Moral Law P1 §1.2 writes 16DD as the event layer that emerges in encounter; Moral Law P9 §6.1 writes that layer-matching is event-level (as quoted in Institution Theory Paper 5); Laughter IV §7.1 to §7.2 writes of looking at each other and laughing. Psychoanalysis IV has three passages. §2.4 lists the change in the individual at 16DD as an open question on the subject's side. §2.2 writes that non dubito is "not 'I have no doubts' but 'doubts are present, remainders are present, the construct's gaps are present, yet I do not doubt'": non dubito does not require the absence of doubt. §2.3 lists three postures toward the other, "I understand you", "I do things for you" and "I confirm you are an independent end", and writes of bilateral confirmation that, "involving the structure of the relational layer", it lies "beyond the scope of individual psychoanalysis". This series only registers the three postures; it does not sort people by layer. Of these passages, Paper 4 takes up the stretch that they hand on to the relational layer, and takes up only the moment.
§3 Words Shared with Upstream
Several words in this series are the same words as in neighboring series. Relation Theory states that it takes its own sense of each, and does not map them onto one another.
Several uses of cultivation and colonization.
| Source | Use | How Relation Theory handles it |
|---|---|---|
| How Is the Inter-Ontological Possible (Foundational Paper 5; cited as F5), §4, "Colonization and Nurturing: Negative and Positive Transmission" | Broad sense: cultivation makes space; colonization pours in and occupies | Relation Theory takes this sense and writes it as direction: cultivation goes toward making space, colonization goes toward pouring in and occupying, and whether either takes hold is seen in the other party's later understanding and action. Between one person and another, sealing the other party's channel or making it hard to travel also falls within it; one and the same act can carry both directions, or carry no direction at all; these are directions, not labels; violation is judged separately, at the layer of basic rights only |
| Value Theory P3 V27, V41, V42 | Narrow sense: cultivation is predicated of an action, and its completion lies with the one who receives it, "an incomplete cultivation is not colonization"; colonization is predicated of a state, the constitutive position being occupied by an external end; the opposite of cultivation is locking, not colonization | Each sense holds in its own scope; where Relation Theory's reading reaches the value layer, it uses this sense as it stands and marks the value layer on the spot |
| Aesthetics Rays 12 and 13 | Same direction as the broad sense; Ray 13 §7 states: "This is a looking back after the fact, not a criterion" | Same direction; used as it stands |
| Economics P2 §4.2 | "the direction of colonization", judged by whether the other party's capacity has increased after the intervention | That is a measure of outcomes, and it is not used to judge direction; whether a direction took hold is looked at separately, in the other party's later understanding and action (Paper 1, H8) |
| Power Theory | cultivating power | Not mapped |
| Rights Theory P6 F26 | "a release-oriented act within the limit" and "a boundary-crossing act disguised as cultivation" | Not mapped; the clause in it that judges crossing the encapsulation boundary to be violation is read as a matter of basic rights |
| Institution Theory Paper 1 | cultivation named by the elevation actually achieved | Not mapped |
| Habermas's colonization of the lifeworld, as engaged in Institution Theory Paper 0, §4.1 | The system, by way of money and power, suppresses the domains that depend on reaching understanding | Not mapped; Relation Theory's colonization is the direction of one effect between one person and another |
Direction-value. Value Theory's Prequel, §II: "The error is categorial: the domain of direction-value is the transformation, the domain of end-value is the subject." The same section: "When this series speaks of value, it never means this." Direction-value "belongs to Power Theory"; its two directions are cultivation and severing, and "The two are told apart by T6." Relation Theory follows the precedent of Meaning Theory P1 Y1, "This paper uses that definition and nothing else from Power Theory": it borrows only the cut made by the domain, to explain why Value Theory's cultivation and colonization are the narrow sense; it does not invoke T6, and it does not map colonization onto severing. Nor do its propositions write "Relation Theory's cultivation and colonization are direction-value": Value Theory P5 V68 writes "Direction-value appraises a transformation, and both of its directions require two subjects", so if they were written as direction-value, yesterday's self cultivating today's self in Paper 2 would have no definition.
Relation. Meaning Theory calls its P1 the relation paper and its object this relation, and titles its Y4 "The minimal structure"; wherever Relation Theory refers to that relation of Meaning Theory, it writes meaning relation, and in its own first item it writes "the minimal condition of relation". Power Theory has the phrase cultivating relation, Rights Theory speaks of relational slots and relational positions, and Institution Theory speaks of being in that relation, meaning the relation between construct and person: none of these is mapped.
Commitment. The body of How Is Institution Possible (Foundational Paper 6; cited as F6) has framework commitment; Meaning Theory has object-level commitment and unsettled commitment; the Second Critique writes of a commitment already made to others; Rights Theory and Institution Theory also use the word. Relation Theory's commitment is a promise between one person and another, or between today and tomorrow, explicit or implicit.
Stand. Used as in the Second Critique, Chapter Five: the position one stands in once non dubito has been adopted. It is carried over to where one has promised, and the carrying-over is registered in two halves (Paper 3, H23). Aesthetics Ray 12's "standing" (holding one's ground, as in its "standing and leaving") shares its root but not its office; the two are not interchanged.
Acknowledgment. In the Chinese, this series and the Second Critique use one word here. In the Second Critique's glossary it is concession, and what is conceded is a capacity, not a standing. In Relation Theory it is acknowledgment, and what is acknowledged is standing as an end, by default; it is written out in full as "acknowledgment that requires no qualification" (Paper 1, H13).
Entanglement. F5 §5.4's "entangled situations", Institution Theory Paper 1, Z4's "The interior is drawn by entanglement", and Institution Theory Paper 5's "'The same institution' means a shared entanglement and does not require being in the same place": all of these are senses on the institutional side, different from Relation Theory's entanglement (Paper 5, H44).
Dependency. Two upstream places each divide it into two senses. Conflict Treatise §20: "People depend on each other in any case", as against the kind of which it says "it was made, and it locked the channel of refusal". Action Theory Paper 0, §6.2: "The dependency there means leaning on the giver in one's judgment", which is the sense of the phrase in Economics P2 §4.2, "dependency is the gentle form of colonization"; set against it is "the dependency and care that human life necessarily involves", which is not called colonization. Relation Theory follows the division made in these two places and does not mix the senses (Paper 5, H47).
Stability, "routine" and "the normal state". The stability of institutions in F6, Meaning Theory P1 Y12, Conflict Treatise §26, the evaluative use in F6 Appendix D, item 6(b), and Value Theory P4 V54 each have their own sense; Relation Theory's stability carries no evaluation. Aesthetics Ray 13's "such dealings have become ordinary" and Conflict Treatise §14's "the substitution of a standing condition for conflict" (in this series' English, "routine" and "the normal state") are two uses within the contexts quoted; they are not fixed as signs of value, and they are not interchanged.
Inward, outward. Meaning Theory P1 to P3's "the inward side" and "the outward side" refer to two kinds of content on the orientation axis of a meaning relation; Action Theory Paper 5, D26, has "proving outwardly that one is useful". Relation Theory's inward and outward refer to whether a thing withdraws my own side or is directed at the other party (Paper 6, H56); they are not mapped.
The exit right. The exit right of Rights Theory P4 F18 straddles the basic and the recognition sides, and an exit right in the strict sense presupposes a registered or recognized relational position. Relation Theory takes only its basic component, the self-determining floor of not being trapped; where it first appears in each paper's own text it is written "the exit right (its basic component)", and thereafter "the exit right" (Paper 3, H26). When Relation Theory speaks of exit, it follows the usage of the Conflict Treatise, Action Theory and the Second Critique: exit is the act of withdrawing one's own side, and is not treated as a right; in dealings with no registered position, it falls, in F18's division, at the level of flight, refusal or slipping free. The exit right (its basic component) appears only where violation is discussed. The position of exit is written in Meaning Theory's sense of position.
Lock. Conflict Treatise §20, "it locked the channel of refusal": by the original sentence, this means that the other cannot say no to the intervener, at the level of whether one can. Where structurally he can no longer say no, that is, where refusal itself has been sealed off, this is separately a violation at the layer of basic rights; what heads that way, making the path to saying no hard to travel, carries the direction of colonization; that he no longer says no afterward does not by itself show that this direction has taken hold, nor that the path has been locked. When Paper 3, H26, says that locking violates the exit right, it means sealing off exit itself in running, by whatever means. For the distinction between sealing, sealing off and making hard to travel, see Paper 1, H8. The two places use the same word but govern different channels: the Conflict Treatise's governs the path to saying no, and Paper 3's governs only exit itself; both are at the level of whether one can (Paper 5, H46; Paper 3, H26).
Seeking. Institution Theory Paper 5, Z29, "People in the same institution do not have to seek one another out", refers to being together in one entanglement (in Institution Theory's sense); Relation Theory's seeking is looking-toward (Paper 7, H61).
Guarding, carrying-forward, persisting. "Guarding" is a core term of Action Theory Paper 9, and "carrying-forward" a core term of Meaning Theory; Relation Theory does not use them as terms of its own. Relation Theory uses "maintain" as its term, not "persist".
§4 The Method of Interfacing
The seven main papers name no outside theorist, and leave the traditions to this paper. This paper is exempt from that one rule; the rest of the discipline holds as before: it lays down no propositions, and it changes no sentence of the seven papers. This series is cited by paper and proposition number; each school is cited only for what it holds and where, with the smallest checkable source. The schools are interlocutors, not premises of this series; this paper does not write that this series corrects anyone, nor that anyone anticipated this series.
§4.1 The Four Steps
Each conversation takes four steps, following Action Theory Paper 0, §2.1 and Institution Theory Paper 0, §2.1:
first, a checkable common question, or a surface of contact, is sought;
next, whether the two speak of the same thing;
next, how far agreement goes, and where the two part;
last, the strongest objection from the other side, with this series' reply.
This objection is drafted by this paper; it is marked as drafted, and this paper tries as far as it can to let it touch the other side's strength. Some exchanges reach only "that is not among the objects of this series"; that states a division of labor, not a completed objection and reply. At such places this paper writes only the division of labor, and states what has been left unanswered.
§4.2 Two Depths
§§5 to 13 hold thirteen conversations in all, laid out by the four steps:
the threshold of relation: Aristotle (I); Buber;
subject and relation, which comes first: Watsuji Tetsurō; Menkiti and Gyekye;
a relation is not a third bearer: Gilbert;
direction, not kind: Kant; Xunzi; Heidegger;
conflict: Sartre;
the self in time: Locke and Parfit;
commitment: Hume, Kant and Scanlon; Confucius and Mencius on good faith;
dealings: Mauss, the Book of Rites and Mozi;
asymmetry, ending and need: Aristotle (II).
The thirteen follow roughly the order of the seven papers. Aristotle's account of friendship touches more than one paper, and is divided between §5 and §13. §6 is written only as far as is needed: that question is one this series expressly declines to answer, and what can be written is why it does not answer, and at which point it still parts from the other side. Taking the four steps does not mean that every conversation completes a rebuttal; where a conversation reaches only the division of labor, that is stated on the spot.
§14 goes only as far as the boundary: in one part it places neighbors, in the other it invokes. The neighbors' surface of contact with this series is not yet wide enough to write the fourth step; the invoked traditions have already been engaged in a neighboring series' Paper 0, and this paper points there without rewriting.
§4.3 The Differences Fall on Four Lines
Once the thirteen conversations are written out, the differences fall mostly on four lines. They are set up here first; the later sections state which line a difference falls on, where it falls on one.
The first line: the threshold. This series lowers relation to a moment and to an identifiable effect from one side, and requires neither response, nor recognition, nor knowing (Paper 1, H1, H5).
The second line: direction, not kind. Cultivation and colonization are directions, not labels, nor kinds of relation (Paper 1, H8); mutual chiseling is judged by process, not by identity (Paper 1, H6). Relation Theory in the abstract lays down only the structure that does not vary with the kind of relation: under the same object conditions, the criterion does not change with closeness, identity or the name of the relation. Names and positions enter the effect all the same, and are registered as conditions of the effect (Paper 1, H11).
The third line: a relation is a construct; it is not a bearer, nor does it stand in for a bearer's constitution. A relation does not legislate, bears nothing, and does not pass final judgment on either party's own law on their behalf (Paper 1, H3); a little circle of two does not form a third bearer (Paper 1, H12). Constitution here means, following the second bar on back-flow in Value Theory Paper 0, Section One, first-person constitution, not the formation of a bearer. The line says "does not stand in for," not "does not come before": upstream expressly declines to judge how a bearer comes to be formed (Value Theory Paper 0, Section Six, slot one), and this series does not judge it either.
The fourth line: where the binding comes from. Commitment and expectation do not turn into a duty to the other party (Paper 3, H27; Paper 4, H36); commitment binds a person by where I stand on my side and by the effects already left, not by locking tomorrow (Paper 3, H23); the other party's response is material, not a settling of the account (Paper 4, H33). This is this series' choice of normative source, and its ground lies upstream: once there is a duty toward others, exit can no longer be spoken of (Rights Theory Paper 0, M1; Paper 3, H27). Wherever a conversation falls on this line, this paper writes that the two part over the source of normativity, and does not claim to have proved that every directed duty is incompatible with exit.
The four lines are this paper's generalization, not any school's own division, nor an exhaustive classification of the differences in the thirteen conversations. The first three are the three choices this series has to make explicit first within the system; the fourth came clear only once the conversations were written out: on the question of where the binding comes from, more schools part from this series than on any other. Differences that do not fall on the four lines are written down on the spot.
§4.4 Sources
Outside works are cited in four tiers, following Action Theory Paper 0, §2.4:
tier A, the sentence and its location have been confirmed in a reliable original: quoted, with the original and its location;
tier B, the original is in hand, but the exact location or the exact wording has not been confirmed: quoted, with what is unconfirmed noted;
tier C, confirmed only through reliable secondary literature: only paraphrased, with the source stated, and without quotation marks;
tier D, could not be confirmed: not cited.
This paper cites the schools as follows.
Aristotle (the Nicomachean Ethics, the Categories, the Metaphysics), Aquinas, Kant, Hume, Locke, Simmel, Mauss, Buber's I and Thou, Heidegger's Being and Time, the Analects, the Mencius, the Xunzi, the Book of Rites, the Mozi, He Yan's Collected Explanations of the Analects, Huang Kan's Subcommentary on the Meaning of the Analects, Zhu Xi, Kumārajīva's translation of Nāgārjuna's Middle Treatise, and Nishida Kitarō's An Inquiry into the Good, Part I, have public-domain originals, and are cited at tier A. Buber and Heidegger are in the public domain by the reckoning of the United States but still under protection in Germany; the excerpts from them go no further than the few sentences needed.
One sentence of Fei Xiaotong's From the Soil is taken from a full-text transcription of an unannotated edition, with its page number taken from a citation in the scholarly literature, and is cited at tier B.
Gilbert, Darwall, Scheffler, Scanlon, Parfit, Elster, Sartre, Arendt, Ricœur, Baier, Levinas, Watsuji Tetsurō, Menkiti and Gyekye reach only tier C in this round: they rest on the corresponding entries of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (hereafter SEP) and on scholarly secondary accounts, and are paraphrased without quotation marks.
This paper has not been able to read these authors' own books against its text one by one; every paraphrase goes only as far as the secondary source it rests on says.
The tier of each item is registered in the external-source table that accompanies this paper (in Chinese). English renderings of texts in other languages are this paper's own; the original follows in parentheses, and it is the original in parentheses that has been checked. Classical Chinese follows the edition used, with the characters converted to simplified forms and the wording unchanged.
§5 The Threshold of Relation
§5.1 Aristotle (I): The Threshold of Friendship, and Its Three Kinds
The common question. In Book VIII of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle asks what it takes for two people to have friendship (philia) between them. He first rules out goodwill on one side. To wish another person good for that person's own sake, if the other does not return it, can only be called goodwill (εὔνοια); goodwill returned is friendship, and one more condition has to be added: that it is not unknown to them. His conclusion: "they must bear goodwill to each other and wish each other good, not unknown to each other, for one of the reasons stated" (δεῖ ἄρα εὐνοεῖν ἀλλήλοις καὶ βούλεσθαι τἀγαθὰ μὴ λανθάνοντας δι᾽ ἕν τι τῶν εἰρημένων; VIII.2, 1155b–1156a). Paper 1 asks a lower question: when there comes to be a relation between two bearer positions. Both ask where "between" begins.
Is it the same thing? No, at two points.
First, the layer differs. He asks about friendship; this series asks about relation. Goodwill borne to each other and known to each other belongs to the thick kind within relation; Paper 1 lowers the threshold to an identifiable effect from one side, and requires neither response, nor recognition, nor knowing (H1, H5). Goodwill that is not returned he gives a name of its own; if it has never entered the other's conditions of occurrence through word or deed, then in this series it is not yet even a relation; if it has, it is a relation from one side, and still not friendship. At this point the two are not asking at the same layer. This falls on the first line.
Second, the division differs. He divides friendship into three kinds by the ground for which one loves: because of usefulness, because of pleasure, because the other is good in himself; the first two are incidental (κατὰ συμβεβηκός) and easily dissolved: once the ground on which they became friends is gone, the friendship dissolves too (VIII.3, 1156a). This series does not sort relations into kinds. Cultivation and colonization are read on one effect; within the same relation the two directions can be entangled, and direction can turn (H8; Paper 5, H44). This falls on the second line.
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as two points: goodwill that is one-sided and unknown is not yet friendship; and knowing each other also takes time and familiarity: as the saying goes, they must have "eaten enough salt together" (VIII.3, 1156b), which points the same way as Paper 5's reading of what dealings sediment into over time (H42). The two part ways at the threshold and at the division.
The strongest objection from the other side (drafted by this paper). That one-sided effects deserve analysis of their own can be granted. But knowing each other and returning goodwill are not merely more material: they make certain kinds of shared life and shared activity possible. Your low threshold explains why one-sided effects have to be recorded; how does it preserve what friendship comes to have because of them?
Reply. This series agrees that that layer matters; the minimal threshold does not take on the work of exhausting friendship. It first says which effects come within range, and then thickness, direction, sediment and the series on particular kinds of relation go on to draw the distinctions.
First, if the threshold required that the two know each other, many effects that have actually entered another person's conditions of occurrence would have nowhere to be entered on the books: help that goes unknown, harm from one side, an expectation never said out loud that has weighed on the other all along. The direction of colonization often takes place precisely where the other party does not know, or cannot put it into words; when the path to saying no is made hard to travel, conflict need not appear at all (Paper 5, H46).
Second, a low threshold does not mean that wherever there is causal influence there is a relation. The other side must be a bearer (H2); the effect must be identifiable, that is, this effect or this run of effects itself determines which side it comes from and at which point of the other side's conditions of occurrence it lands; diffuse aggregate effects are not entered between two persons (Paper 1, H1). Paper 1 writes: "With a threshold this low, whether there is a relation at all distinguishes little, and this series does not ask it to; the distinctions are placed in thickness, direction and sediment." Aristotle has another asymmetry that can serve as a side-light: the knowable is called relative because knowledge is related to it (Metaphysics Δ15, see §14). What is spoken of there is the ground on which something is called relative, not the effect from one side of which this paper speaks.
Third, in this series, knowing each other remains content of the thick layer. Whether, and how, it makes particular relations stable is handed to the particular series to argue (§16).
§5.2 Buber: I and You
The common question. In I and Thou (1923), Martin Buber opens by setting apart two primary words: I–You and I–It. I–You is relation: "In the beginning is relation" (Im Anfang ist die Beziehung; Part One); "All actual life is encounter" (Alles wirkliche Leben ist Begegnung; Part One). He also writes that this is the sublime melancholy of our lot: in our world every You must become an It (Part One). Paper 4 likewise reads the moment in which two people confirm each other as something that happens: 16DD is something that happens on an occasion, not a grade that a person or a relation is in (H39); that moment does not make later dealings mutual automatically (H41). Both ask whether encounter can be stored.
Is it the same thing? Not wholly; there are three differences.
First, reciprocity. Buber writes: "Relation is reciprocity" (Beziehung ist Gegenseitigkeit); "My You acts on me as I act on You" (Mein Du wirkt an mir, wie ich an ihm wirke; Part One). This reciprocity does not mean that both sides perceive it in their experience: "Relation can exist even if the human being to whom I say You does not perceive it in his experience" (Beziehung kann bestehn, auch wenn der Mensch, zu dem ich Du sage, in seiner Erfahrung es nicht vernimmt; Part One). On this paper's reading, Buber's I–You between persons comes close to the moment Paper 4 takes up at one point only: it happens once, and cannot be stored. "Between I and You there is no purpose, no greed and no anticipation" (Zwischen Ich und Du steht kein Zweck, keine Gier und keine Vorwegnahme; Part One), which answers to Paper 4, H40: "neither side, by its own anticipation, avows that jolt on the other's behalf". This is only a limited comparison: Buber's reciprocity is not mutual non dubito, and his I–You is not confined to persons; trees and works fall within it too. Relation in Paper 1 requires only an identifiable effect from one side, and its range differs from that of Buber's I–You; part of what it reads falls on Buber's I–It side, but I–It in itself is not colonization. This falls on the first line.
Second, the other side. Buber writes that when I contemplate a tree, it can also happen, through will and grace together, that in contemplating it I am drawn into relation with it, and then the tree is no longer an It (kein Es mehr); the sentence "Relation is reciprocity" first appears precisely in the passage on the tree (Part One). This series: the other side of a relation must be a bearer; between a subject and a stone there is no relation (Paper 1, H2). Here the two differ head-on.
Third, which comes first. "In the beginning is relation" puts relation first of all. This series takes already established bearers as its input. That question is taken up in §6; it touches the third line, and this paper does not judge it.
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as encounter being something that happens once and cannot be stored: every You must return to It, which points the same way as Paper 4, H41: "it does not make later dealings mutual automatically". The two part ways at the threshold and at the other side.
The strongest objection from the other side (drafted by this paper). If an effect from one side is enough to be called relation, what you have written is really the world of I–It: causation, influence and use. You have used the word "relation" and left out precisely the one thing that makes relation relation: reciprocity. As for the tree, to require first that what stands over against you be a bearer before relation is allowed to happen is itself the attitude of I–It.
Reply.
First, this series handles the moment of encounter elsewhere, in Paper 4, taking it up as something that happens (H39 to H41), and taking up only the moment; it does not thereby claim that Buber's reciprocity has been absorbed into these propositions. It does not make reciprocity the threshold of relation, because below that threshold there is a great deal of effect that has to be entered on the books, and both directions, cultivation and colonization, take place there.
Second, toward persons, acknowledgment is acknowledgment that requires no qualification (Paper 1, H13), and no examination is set. "The other side must be a bearer" marks the boundary of what this series reads; it is not an attitude this series takes toward a tree: where there is no bearer at that side, the effect lands, but it does not make a construct between two bearer positions, and this series does not read it. A person may have a very deep experience of a tree; this series does not say that it falls short of what passes between persons, nor does it prove that the kind of encounter Buber writes of cannot hold. The relation between humans and animals is left for a future special paper on that boundary (§16). This is a statement of jurisdiction, not a full rebuttal of Buber on this point.
§6 Subject and Relation: Which Comes First
The common question. In Ethics as the Study of Ningen (1934), Watsuji Tetsurō writes the human being as ningen: a person is at once the public world itself and a person within that world; the structure that lies between persons he calls aidagara. In Ethics (Rinrigaku), the individual and the whole come to be through a movement of negation (per SEP, "Watsuji Tetsurō," §§3 to 5, and Hamauzu Shinji 2012's citations of the original, tier C). Ifeanyi Menkiti writes of traditional African thought: as far as Africans are concerned, the reality of the communal world takes precedence over the reality of the individual life history; personhood is acquired step by step through taking part in the life of the community, depends on how far one takes part, and may also fail to be acquired (Menkiti 1984, per SEP, "African Ethics," §4, and as cited in Gyekye 2002, tier C). Kwame Gyekye revised this strong version, calling his own view moderate communitarianism: a person is by nature social, and living with others brings roles and obligations, while individual autonomy, rights and the capacity to make the choices of one's own life are still to be kept (per Majeed 2019 and Adeate 2023 on Gyekye 1997, Chapter 2, tier C). The three ask about the individual and the community in different senses: Watsuji asks how the individual and the whole constitute each other; Menkiti both holds the priority of the community and writes personhood as a standing to be achieved in social and ethical life; Gyekye keeps individual autonomy and rights. This paper neither merges their questions into the single question of which comes first in time, nor renders their "personhood" as this series' bearer without first sorting out the sense. The line of relational autonomy has been engaged in Value Theory Paper 0, Four.7; the view recorded there does not deny self-determination, but holds that the capacity for self-determination depends on social relations and institutional conditions. Here this series only points the same way as that view; the claim that relations partly constitute autonomy is not within what is recorded there.
Is it the same thing? No. To the question of which comes first this series gives no answer, and says expressly that it gives none. Value Theory Paper 0, Section Six, slot one registers this: every source-position, constitutive and operational predicate of Value Theory takes an already established bearer as its subject; whether a relation can be a cause or a condition in the formation of a bearer is expressly left unjudged. Relation Theory carries this over: it takes bearers as its input (Paper 1, H2), and reads, between two bearer positions already present, how effects come across and how they sediment. The formation of which Watsuji and Menkiti write, this series does not dispute with them.
If the two part, it is at another point: the conditions of formation are not the same as standing in for constitution. Value Theory Paper 0, Section One, writes the second bar on back-flow: "External conditions may shape appearance, reachability, and the channels of action and relation, yet do not, of themselves, stand in for a first-person constitution." Relation Theory keeps the same bar at the layer of relation: a relation does not legislate, bears nothing, and does not pass final judgment on either party's own law on their behalf (Paper 1, H3); a little circle of two does not form a third bearer (Paper 1, H12). This point touches the third line; whether Watsuji or Menkiti holds such a standing-in, this paper does not judge on their behalf (see the reply).
In Menkiti there is one further point, more direct than which comes first. His personhood is something to be acquired, depends on how far one takes part, and may fail to be acquired; this speaks not only of how a person is formed but also of whether a person counts, and how far. If such personhood were read as standing as an end, it would differ head-on from this series: acknowledgment is acknowledgment that requires no qualification, meaning standing as an end by default (Paper 1, H13), and it does not rise or fall with taking part. This paper does not make that reading on Menkiti's behalf; the personhood he speaks of may also be an achievement in the social and ethical sense. This point does not fall on the four lines, and is written down on the spot.
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as relations taking a deep part in what kind of person someone becomes: both cultivation and colonization can come in from outside (Paper 1, H4, H8), and relations with others sediment into self-relation (Paper 2, H22). Agreement also goes with Gyekye this far: to recognize that people actually stand within roles and commitments does not require cancelling individual rights; this series' exit right (its basic component) is close to that floor (Paper 3, H26).
The strongest objection from the other side (drafted by this paper). In taking bearers as your input, you have taken a late result as a starting point. First there is what lies between persons; only then are there people who can say "I".
Reply. Taking bearers as input is the input form spoken of in Value Theory Paper 0, Section Six, slot one, and this series uses it as it stands; it is not an assertion about what happens first: once one is to read the direction of an effect between two persons, there must first be, at both sides, bearer positions that effects can act on. The history of formation can be described in the third person; describing the conditions of formation and standing in for constitution are two different things (ibid.). The social conditions at work in formation do not automatically acquire the qualification to pass final judgment on the law of a bearer already established, in its place. Only if some communitarian account went further and claimed such a standing-in would it part from Paper 1, H3 and H12; to say only that relations take part in formation is not yet enough to show that the other side has gone that far. Gyekye's position, which keeps individual rights, can be read alongside at this point.
§7 A Relation Is Not a Third Bearer: Gilbert
The common question. Margaret Gilbert asks what "we" is once two people have agreed to do something together. Her answer is joint commitment: several people commit together to do something as a body, as it were; the "we" constituted by a joint commitment she calls a plural subject, a view set out systematically in On Social Facts (1989) (per SEP, "Collective Intentionality," §3.3, tier C). Joint commitment has three features: it can be made only by the parties together; it gives each party a duty to act as the commitment requires, and the qualification to demand the corresponding actions of the others, actions that are owed to them; and, absent some further joint arrangement, it can be rescinded only by the parties together, not unilaterally (per SEP, "Collective Intentionality," §3.3, and SEP, "Shared Agency," §4, tier C; the entries cite Gilbert 2006 and 2009). Paper 1 asks the same thing: what the thing left between two people is (H3), and, when one says "we", which branch one is in.
Is it the same thing? It is the same thing. This conversation is the most direct in the whole paper; the divergence falls mainly on the fourth line, and on the third line the senses must first be sorted out.
First, the plural subject and a third legislating position must first be told apart. Gilbert allows intentions to be ascribed to the body constituted by a joint commitment; this does not, by the name alone, amount to the position that Paper 1, H3 and H12 exclude, namely a third first person raised above the two laws who passes final judgment on each party's own law on their behalf. Where the two really collide is in where the binding comes from: for her, the binding comes from the joint commitment itself; in this series, a rule once agreed upon remains valid as usual, and "The binding force of these sediments passes separately through each party's own law, or comes from a procedure both parties have already recognized" (Paper 1, H3). So this point falls on the fourth line; whether the plural subject is the position the third line excludes, this paper does not judge by the name alone.
Second, duty. For her, taking part in a joint commitment by itself puts the parties under a duty to one another to act as it requires (ibid.). This series: commitment does not turn into a duty to the other party (Paper 3, H27). The upstream ground is 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". This falls on the fourth line.
Third, rescission. For her, that one cannot rescind unilaterally is normative: one party can fail to act accordingly, but cannot release himself unilaterally. At the layer of qualification this series says the opposite: commitment cannot lock tomorrow, and that it cannot lock lies in the layer of qualification, and is necessary (Paper 3, H26); when a party withdraws his own side, it is withdrawn, only it does not clear the books on the other party's side (Paper 3, H25).
Stephen Darwall comes at the same place from another side: moral obligation presupposes an authority we have to make claims and demands on one another, and the force of second-personal reasons depends on such relations of authority and accountability (Darwall 2006, per Lavin 2008's review and Harvard University Press's description of the book, tier C). In this series, the other party's saying an expectation out loud is a form of questioning (Paper 4, H37); the questioning enters my conditions of occurrence, as material, not as a qualification (Paper 4, H33); nor is the account Paper 3 keeps what he calls accountability. Samuel Scheffler says that a person who has reason to value a relationship non-instrumentally also has reason to see himself as having special responsibilities arising from it; this does not depend on his actually valuing it, and the responsibilities that arise are presumptive (Scheffler 1997, per SEP, "Special Obligations," §4, tier C). This series agrees that effects left behind are to be counted into later judgment (Paper 3, H23, H24); it does not agree that they thereby turn into responsibilities to the other party (H27). Both views place part of normativity "between," on the same side as Gilbert. Here too the parting is over the source of normativity (§4.3, the fourth line), not a rebuttal of the two.
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as this: doing things together is not a set of unrelated private plans, nor the sum of two private plans (doing things together in Action Theory Paper 8, D47); and what was promised, in word and deed, and the effects already left do not vanish because one party leaves. What she says beyond this, that the parties owe one another performance and hold the qualification to demand it and to take part in release, this series does not take in beforehand as a phenomenon already agreed. From here the two part.
The strongest objection from the other side (drafted by this paper). If everything is only my side and your side, why can one party not cancel all the consequences by changing his own attitude? Why does someone who breaks an agreement have to explain himself to the other in particular, apologize, ask to be released? The most economical explanation is that the two have made together something that is not the sum of two private commitments, and that it is this which gives the other his qualification.
Reply. This series can register separately doing things together; what was promised, in word and deed, and the effects left; and exit not clearing the books; this shows what it keeps, and does not amount to having already explained all of Gilbert's normative features.
First, made together. Doing things together is something both of them avow and both are able to do, whose purpose and adjudication neither side holds alone (Action Theory Paper 8, D47); "Doing things together does not automatically produce a position that legislates each side's own law for them" (D48). "We" in this branch is doing things together, not a third legislator.
Second, the effects left. A commitment is my placing an expectation with the other party (Paper 3, H29); the other's arranging his shifts on it is an effect already left. Leaving is entered on the books, and revising keeps the books on the change; a commitment already made to others is not cleared from the books by one act of leaving (H23); where the promise has been made to another, one's own change or leaving does not clear the books on the other party's side (H25). What the other can say is what Lao Xu says in the example of Paper 3: "you promised to take my father his meals every day, and I arranged my shifts on it"; what he speaks of is what was promised, in word and deed, and the effects left, not a duty I owe him (Paper 3, the section on H27). He can question me; the questioning enters my conditions of occurrence, as material (Paper 4, H33). Whether a further qualification to demand an answer, performance or release can be derived from these facts, this series has not proved here.
Third, release and leaving. When one party goes, what he withdraws is his own side; he cannot withdraw the effects already left, and he does not clear the books on the other party's side (H25). So "I can go" and "I have gone, and the matter is not closed" both hold in this series.
Neither of the two takes "having gone" for "nothing ever happened"; the parting lies in the layer of qualification, not in the layer of running. She does not say that "we" holds people fast in fact; it is locking exit in running that violates the exit right (Paper 3, H26), and that is another matter; the exit right (its basic component) cannot be taken away (the Introduction to Paper 3). For her, the one who has gone is still under a joint commitment that has not been rescinded, and still owes the other; in this series, the one who has gone owes no duty, and yet the account is still there: the effects already left, and what is entered on his own books. What binding remains, and who can demand what, is where the two part over the source of normativity (§4.3, the fourth line); this paper does not claim to have proved that her directed duties are incompatible with exit.
§8 Direction, Not Kind
§8.1 Kant: Love and Respect
The common question. In the Doctrine of Virtue Kant divides the duties of virtue toward others into love and respect. The two can be considered separately, and each can exist on its own; but by the law they are always joined at bottom in one duty, only sometimes the one and sometimes the other makes up the principle in the subject, with the other attached to it (§23, AA 6:448). He compares them with attraction and repulsion in nature: by the principle of mutual love, people are directed constantly to come closer to one another; by the respect they owe one another, they are directed to keep themselves at a distance from one another (§24, AA 6:449). Friendship in its perfection is the union of two persons through equal mutual love and respect; it is only an idea, unattainable in practice. One of the reasons is that no one can be sure whether the love and respect on the two sides are equal, and whether the one who loves more warmly may not lose something in the other's respect because of it; the same section again uses the image of attraction and repulsion: love bids people come closer, respect requires them to keep a fitting distance from one another (§46, AA 6:469–470). This series' cultivation and colonization are also two directions: cultivation goes toward making space, colonization toward pouring in and occupying (Paper 1, H8). Both see that coming closer has its dangers. Kant's nearest point to cultivation, that the perfection of others is something only they themselves can bring about, has been engaged in Action Theory Paper 0, §3.2, and is not rewritten here.
Is it the same thing? No, at two points.
First, the axis. Kant's two forces act along one line of near and far, and friendship needs them to balance there; love and respect are duties of virtue that ought to be united. This series' two directions do not lie on near and far: they are readings of the structure of one effect, each read on one effect; the same act can carry both directions, and can also carry no direction at all; the two do not cancel each other out, nor do they combine into a net value (H8). Cultivation is not a little more respect, nor is colonization a little more love. Direction is read on the structure of one effect: for cultivation one looks at whether it actually made space at the time, for colonization at whether it goes toward pouring in and occupying; whether either took hold is seen separately, in the other party's later understanding and action (H8). This falls on the second line.
Second, the sentence form. What Kant speaks of here are duties of virtue: oughts. This series speaks of structure and issues no ought; how one person is to treat another is handed to the Critiques (§1).
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as two points: coming closer has its dangers, and warmth can overstep the other's share; perfect friendship cannot be attained in practice. From here the two part: Kant goes on to say that striving toward this idea is a duty set by reason, and an honorable one (§46, AA 6:469); this series says that mutuality is not a state a relation is meant to reach (Paper 4, H38), and sets up no such pursuit.
The strongest objection from the other side (drafted by this paper). To pick out only making space and pouring in and occupying is not yet to explain why one person ought to care about another's ends, nor why he ought to respect him. Handing these elsewhere does not mean that you have explained how the readings of direction connect with those duties.
Reply. This series gives no measure for how to treat others in the first place: what to do this time is decided by the one who judges, on the strength of what is before him (Action Theory Paper 1, D5 to D7); how one person is to treat another belongs to the Critiques. What it gives is a way of reading: cultivation looks at whether this effect actually made space at the time; colonization looks at whether its structure goes toward pouring in and occupying; whether either took hold is seen separately, in the other party's later understanding and action (H8). Read this way, no scale measuring near and far is needed. This says which kind of analysis this series provides; how love and respect hold as duties is handed to the Critiques, and this paper does not write it up as a refutation of Kant's normative argument.
§8.2 Xunzi: Division and Ritual
The common question. Xunzi says: "Of distinguishing, none is greater than division; of division, none is greater than ritual" (辨莫大于分，分莫大于礼; "Feixiang"); "How is it that humans can form communities? I say: by division" (人何以能群？曰：分; "Wangzhi"); ritual is "noble and base having their grades, elder and younger their differences, and poor and rich, light and heavy, each having its fitting measure" (贵贱有等，长幼有差，贫富轻重皆有称者也; "Fuguo"). Division arises from the community: "The former kings hated that disorder, and so they instituted ritual and rightness to divide them" (先王恶其乱也，故制礼义以分之; "Wangzhi"; the same sentence opens "Lilun"). Mencius lists the five relationships: "between father and son, affection; between ruler and minister, rightness; between husband and wife, distinction; between elder and younger, precedence; between friends, good faith" (父子有亲，君臣有义，夫妇有别，长幼有叙，朋友有信; "Teng Wen Gong I"). Fei Xiaotong, in From the Soil, writes of the differential mode of association in rural society: social relations push outward with the self at the center; "our pattern is not bundles of firewood, each tied up clearly, but like the ripples that push outward ring after ring when a stone is thrown onto the surface of water" (我们的格局不是一捆一捆扎清楚的柴，而是好像把一块石头丢在水面上所发生的一圈圈推出去的波纹; the essay "Chaxu geju"; taken from a full-text transcription of an unannotated edition, with the character forms and page as cited from the Peking University Press 1998 edition of Xiangtu Zhongguo, Shengyu zhidu, p. 26, tier B). In the passages quoted, Xunzi and Mencius speak of ritual and rightness, and of the virtues, under names and stations, while Fei Xiaotong describes how closeness and distance organize social relations; the three lie at different levels. What this series asks is how a particular effect that occurs carrying these conditions is to be read. The side of Xunzi concerned with governing law and governing persons has been engaged in Institution Theory Paper 0, §8; here only the side of division and ritual that lies between person and person is taken up.
Is it the same thing? No, at two points.
First, whether name and station are a criterion or a condition. In Xunzi, division is not a label stuck onto a relation; ritual and rightness take part in explaining what an action is and why it is fitting. This series acknowledges that name and station enter the effect, but places them among the conditions. What a position demands is taken as a fact and used to draw the range; the institutional background is registered as a condition of the effect, its provisions acknowledged but not judged (Paper 1, H11; §1, "Not coupled"). Direction is read on the effect that carries these conditions; under the same object conditions, the criterion does not change with name and station, or with closeness and distance. This falls on the second line.
Second, the ought. The five relationships assign each relationship a virtue, and ritual lays down how things are to be done: this is the ought. This series issues no ought (§1).
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as this: in a particular effect, the conditions of name and station, closeness and distance, cannot be wiped out. The five relationships are listed one by one as pairs of persons, and the differential mode pushes outward from the self; both count from one particular person and another, and do not take a group as the unit, and so they can be set beside Paper 1, H12 (where three or more are involved, dealings that do not pass through an institution are broken down into effects between pairs and entered on separate accounts), though the differential mode of association is not a theory that means the same as entering accounts pair by pair. Xunzi is not among these: his division arises from the community and runs from the top down; that side lies on the institutional side, and by Paper 1, H11 it is acknowledged but not judged. The two part ways at the place given to name and station.
The strongest objection from the other side (from Xunzi's side, drafted by this paper). Ritual and rightness do not merely add a layer of background to an action that is already complete; they take part in explaining what the action is and why it is fitting. In entering name and station as conditions, and then reading them separately by the direction of the effect, have you not left out the constitutive and normative work of ritual and rightness?
Reply. This series does not wipe out name and station, nor does it read Xunzi's ritual and rightness as "the father's command, or the ruler's, is always right"; Xunzi himself says, "Follow the Way, not the ruler; follow rightness, not the father" (从道不从君，从义不从父; "Zidao"). What effects name and station, and institutional arrangements, actually enter is registered by Paper 1, H11: when a father says something to his son, the sentence lands on the son's conditions of occurrence carrying the layer of father and son, and when its direction is read, that layer is inside it. On such a particular effect, direction is read separately by H8: cultivation looks at whether it actually made space at the time, colonization at whether its structure goes toward pouring in and occupying; whether either took hold is read separately, and is not certified by name and station alone. Where a name stands surety for an effect that goes toward pouring in and occupying, that effect carries the direction of colonization all the same (H8). How the norms of ritual and rightness hold, and how character is formed, this paper does not answer here.
§8.3 Heidegger: The Two Extremes of Solicitude
The common question. In Being and Time, §26, Heidegger writes of solicitude (Fürsorge) toward others in being-with: "With regard to its positive modes, solicitude has two extreme possibilities" (Die Fürsorge hat hinsichtlich ihrer positiven Modi zwei extreme Möglichkeiten; SZ 122). In the one, solicitude leaps in for him (für ihn einspringen) and takes his "care" over from him, and he is thereby thrown out of his own place; "in such solicitude the other can become one who is dependent and dominated, even if this domination is a tacit one and remains hidden from the one dominated" (In solcher Fürsorge kann der Andere zum Abhängigen und Beherrschten werden, mag diese Herrschaft auch eine stillschweigende sein und dem Beherrschten verborgen bleiben; same page). In the other, it leaps ahead of him, "not in order to take the 'care' away from him, but to give it back to him properly, as care" (nicht um ihm die »Sorge« abzunehmen, sondern erst eigentlich als solche zurückzugeben); such solicitude helps him "to become transparent to himself in his care and free for it" (in seiner Sorge sich durchsichtig und für sie frei zu werden; same page). The two extremes he calls the one that leaps in and dominates, and the one that leaps ahead and frees (der einspringend-beherrschenden und der vorspringend-befreienden); everyday being-with lies between the two extremes, in manifold mixed forms, and describing and classifying these lies outside the bounds of the book (same page). This series' cultivation goes toward making space, and colonization toward pouring in and occupying (Paper 1, H8); within the same stretch of dealings the two directions are entangled (Paper 5, H44). Among the thirteen conversations, this one has the widest surface of contact with the second line. His being-toward-death has been engaged in Meaning Theory Paper 0, Section Four · Two; here only §26 is taken up.
Is it the same thing? The two can be set side by side; they are not the same thing. First the two extremes and the two directions, then the layer that is read.
First, the two extremes and the two directions: more alike than unlike. What Heidegger writes here are the two extremes of the positive modes of solicitude, and he says that there are manifold mixed forms between them; mixing is the two modes being present together, and in this passage he does not specify mixing as degrees on one scale. This is close to H8, "the same act can carry both directions," and to the entanglement of H44. He also says that modes of deficiency and indifference characterize everyday, average being-with-one-another (Modi der Defizienz und Indifferenz charakterisieren das alltägliche und durchschnittliche Miteinandersein; SZ 121), which answers to H8's "can also carry no direction at all". They part at two points. One: leaping in takes over what is to be concerned with (das, was zu besorgen ist); leaping ahead bears on his existence, not on some matter he is concerned with (SZ 122): the two extremes are tied to what it is that is being done. This series does not divide directions by what it is that is being done; direction is read on the structure of this one effect (H8). Two: he leaves the description and classification of the mixed forms outside his book, whereas this series reads them one effect after another, and gives its readings by position, content-domain and period (Paper 5, H43). From the way the two extremes are written alone, one cannot conclude that the two readings are opposed. This falls on the second line.
Second, the layer differs. What he writes is being-with as a way of being, how Dasein is in the world together with others; what this series reads is the direction of one effect, and what dealings sediment into over time (§1).
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as these points: leaping in for someone and giving him back his care are not two relations but two possibilities within the same being-with; leaping in for him is "in concern, putting oneself in his place" (im Besorgen sich an seine Stelle setzen; SZ 122), which points the same way as occupying; domination can be tacit and remain hidden from the one dominated, which points the same way as the direction of colonization proceeding without passing through conflict (Paper 5, H46); giving his own care back to him points the same way as cultivation making space and leaving the other party his share. Heidegger leaves the description and classification of the mixed forms outside his book; this series reads, effect by effect, in H44, how the two directions coexist and turn. The exact difference lies in the layer that is read.
The strongest objection from the other side (drafted by this paper). Being-with is not a state added afterward, once several already independent subjects begin to deal with one another; being with others is an existential structure of Dasein, and a single effect, or a long habit, takes place within it from the start. In taking two bearers as your input and then reading how an effect passes between them, you have already read being-with as a matter between two things present at hand. Registering how dealings sediment does not yet answer how this way of being makes particular effects possible.
Reply. Taking bearers as input is the input form spoken of in Value Theory Paper 0, Section Six, slot one, not an assertion about priority or about ways of being (§6). Reading effects rather than ways of being is a division of labor, and this paper gives no answer at the ontological level. The persisting and inconspicuous effects of everyday dealings are read by this series in Paper 5: as dealings pile up time after time, direction can turn (H44); the direction of colonization can proceed without passing through conflict, and a long absence of conflict in a relation is not evidence of cultivation (H46); maintaining with grounds can also be surreptitiously swapped out within habit (H49). Of the pervasive side, this series reads only the readings it sediments into (Paper 5, H43); whether it is a way of being prior to effects, and whether being-with is the ontological condition of particular effects, this paper does not judge, and leaves the question open.
§9 Conflict and Relation: Sartre
The common question. In Part Three of Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre writes of being-for-others: the other's look makes me an object, and in his gaze I have an outside that I do not control (Part Three, Chapter One, Section Four, per SEP, "Jean-Paul Sartre," §4.3, tier C); he says that conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others (Part Three, Chapter Three, per the same entry and Alves 2007, tier C). Paper 7 starts from the same place: the other party's law is not mine, and is not under my control (H59).
Is it the same thing? One cannot first take the two uses of "conflict" as one word and then compare only necessity and possibility. The two part over the level at which conflict lies, and so over how the possibility of relation is understood.
First, what is original. Sartre writes conflict as the original meaning of being-for-others, and what he means is not only that a quarrel broke out in some dealings; as the secondary source this paper relies on explains it, the account starts from the look: in the other's look I become an object (SEP, "Jean-Paul Sartre," §4.3). What this series records as original is collision, and conflict is only one subclass of collision (Paper 1, H5, H6); conflict in the Conflict Treatise's sense requires two laws demanding incompatible actions in the same situation. Paper 1, H7 says that in such dealings, so long as the relation is not exited, conflict cannot be guaranteed not to occur; this is a matter of not being able to rule it out, not of its being original, nor is it a weaker modal substitute for Sartre's thesis. Resonance and illumination are also collected under collision; conflict does not exhaust the effects within a relation.
Second, what follows. In his analysis of being-for-others Sartre writes of objectification and conflict; this series uses H59 to explain how danger and the possibility of pure cultivation lie together in the relational layer. The premises of the two differ; one cannot, merely because both recognize that the other is not under my control, take what each concludes as two answers reached along one and the same line of inference.
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as the danger being real, and close at hand: the other party's law can occupy my position of revision (H59); from saying an expectation out loud to hanging a qualifying condition on it is only half a sentence, and to manage not to colonize within a relation is very hard (Paper 4, H37). The two part over the level at which conflict lies, and over how an encounter without possession is possible.
The strongest objection from the other side (drafted by this paper). Why is the other's freedom, which is not under my control, a condition of fulfillment rather than a condition of conflict? From "not under my control" you derive "the only setting in which pure cultivation can possibly occur", and a positive step of argument is missing in between.
Reply. This series does not derive fulfillment directly from lack of control. H59 speaks of a setting, not of an outcome: pure cultivation is possible only in the relational layer (F5 §4.2); the sentence says where it is possible, not that every relation has it (Paper 1, H4). The side of necessity rests on one more positive premise, not on lack of control alone: a subject must expose its own structure of non-colonization to questioning, and only so can it not make itself the final judge of recognition (Moral Law P1 §2.2, the fourth item, and §2.8); preventing my monopoly over the adjudication of reasons requires at least one external path of review that I do not wholly control (Conflict Treatise §15). It is precisely because the other party's law is not under my control that it is such an avenue of questioning (H59). The step the objection asks to have supplied is, in this series, this premise. As for Sartre's analysis of objectification, a full rebuttal cannot be had from the modality of H7 or the setting of H59 alone; this conversation leaves the divergence in place, and does not write it up as refuted.
§10 The Self in Time: Locke and Parfit
The common question. In Book II, Chapter 27 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke says that a person is that which can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places; "as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person" (II.xxvii.9); person is "a forensic term, appropriating actions and their merit" (II.xxvii.26), assigning actions and their merit to the one who acts. The same section says that personhood reaches into the past only by consciousness: "whatever past actions it cannot reconcile or appropriate to that present self by consciousness, it can be no more concerned in than if they had never been done" (II.xxvii.26). In Part Three of Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit says that personal identity is not what matters; what matters is psychological continuity and connectedness, which can hold to degrees (per SEP, "Personal Identity," §1, tier C). Paper 2 asks about the same place: what there is between a person's yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Is it the same thing? The three do not answer the same question. Locke discusses personal identity and the attribution of actions; Parfit discusses identity and what matters. Paper 2 provides no criterion of identity: it takes one and the same bearer as its input, "Self-relation is the relation among the yesterday, today and tomorrow of one and the same bearer" (H14), and reads how the construct left by yesterday enters today's judgment, between positions at different times. It neither adopts Locke's criterion of consciousness, nor rules between Locke and Parfit on the theory of identity.
What can be read alongside Locke is attribution across time: there is one identical person, and past actions are attributed to him. The parting lies in Locke's putting identity and avowal together in one place by way of consciousness: what consciousness cannot own back is as though it had never been done. This series enters three things apart: identity is the input; the construct left by yesterday enters today's conditions of occurrence whether or not it is felt (Paper 1, H5; Paper 2 applies H1 as it stands); avowal is today's first-person matter (H18).
Where this series parts from Parfit is in the explanation of concern for the future. He goes one step further: once his view of personal identity is accepted, great imprudence toward one's own future, even if it cannot be judged irrational, still deserves moral criticism; we ought not to do to our future selves what it would be wrong to do to others (Chapter 14, §106; per Wilkinson 2023 and Williams 1984, tier C). This step does not need, as a premise, that the future self be another subject. This series assigns positions at different times to one and the same bearer: a position in time is not another subject, and what actually acts is always today alone (H14); within self-relation, violation is not spoken of (H19), and there is no exiting it (H20). These provisions give this series' way of keeping the accounts; they do not, on that basis, rebut Parfit's normative judgment about great imprudence.
Jon Elster reads Ulysses' having himself bound to the mast as a paradigm of imperfect rationality: foreseeing that his will will weaken, he binds himself beforehand (Elster 1979, per O'Leary 1987, tier C). Paper 2 reads the same event: it is an arrangement made today for tomorrow. Locking is only at the layer of running: the positions of avowal, revision and exit still belong to this person; today cannot sign for tomorrow (H18); a lock that comes wholly from oneself, with no outside provenance behind it, is not called colonization (H17). Ulysses' ropes locked that stretch of the voyage in running; in qualification, they cannot lock the Ulysses of tomorrow.
How far agreement goes. With Locke, what is read alongside is attribution across time; with Parfit, the actual effect of today on tomorrow: today can cultivate tomorrow, and can also put tomorrow out of reach (H18). This series does not, on the strength of these two points of contact, declare an allegiance in the theory of identity. The two part over how the connection across time is to be explained, and why it carries normative weight.
The strongest objection from the other side (from Parfit's side, drafted by this paper). You say that a position in time is not another subject, and that violation is not spoken of within self-relation. Then what it would be wrong to do to another, done to one's own tomorrow, meets not even one boundary? Even if the one harmed in the future is still the same person, why is seriously damaging his future not a moral question?
Reply. Violation is not spoken of because violation lies only at the layer of basic rights and governs what is between two bearers (Paper 1, H9), not because this damage counts for nothing. Where today puts tomorrow out of reach, Paper 2 records a direction all the same (H16, H18); this effect does not presuppose that today has promised anything. Whether one ought to treat one's own tomorrow that way, this series issues no ought, and leaves it to the Critiques (§1). Parfit, by moving the future self closer to others, obtains a moral demand; this series does not take that step. This point reaches only the division of labor, and does not claim to refute his normative claim.
§11 Commitment
§11.1 Hume, Kant and Scanlon: Where the Binding of a Promise Comes From
The common question. In the Treatise, Book III, Part II, Section 5, David Hume asks where the binding of a promise comes from. His first thesis is: "a promise is not intelligible naturally, nor antecedent to human conventions" (T 3.2.5.2). One of his reasons: "a promise always regards some future time, and the will has an influence only on present actions" (T 3.2.5.3). In the Groundwork, Kant takes the false promise as an example: whether a person in distress may make a promise he does not intend to keep; if this maxim became a universal law, there would be no promising at all, and the maxim would destroy itself (AA 4:402–403). T. M. Scanlon's principle of fidelity, in its essentials: if I voluntarily and intentionally lead another to expect that I will do something, knowing that he wants this assurance, and the remaining conditions also hold (that I act with the aim of providing the assurance, have good reason to believe I have done so, and that both of us know these things), then, absent special justification, I must do it unless he consents to my not doing it (Scanlon 1998, p. 304, per SEP, "Promises," §3.1, tier C). Paper 3 asks the same thing: commitment cannot lock tomorrow, so by what does it bind (the Introduction to Paper 3)?
Is it the same thing? All of them ask where the binding of a promise comes from. Hume and this series answer to each other in one denial; from this one cannot say that the whole argument runs along one road.
Where they answer to each other. "The will has an influence only on present actions" answers to "today cannot sign for tomorrow" (Paper 2, H18): from it Hume denies that a promise carries any binding that arises naturally, generated by one act of will; Paper 3 likewise does not derive a control over tomorrow from one act of promising, and that commitment cannot lock tomorrow is necessary, at the layer of qualification (H26). In the same section Hume also says that one who uses this form of words "subjects himself to the penalty of never being trusted again in case of failure" (T 3.2.5.10); this sentence is closest to the effects already left. Scanlon ties the binding to the expectation that has been raised, which is closest to "A commitment is my placing an expectation with the other party" (H29). Kant's false promise is entered in Paper 3 as one kind of breach of faith: falsity is not having stood there at the time of promising (H28).
Where they part. All three derive a duty from this. Hume derives it from convention: "promises are human inventions, founded on the necessities and interests of society" (T 3.2.5.7); once the convention is established, keeping promises becomes a genuine moral demand. Kant derives it from whether the maxim can be universalized. Scanlon derives a duty to the other party from the expectation raised. In this series it does not turn into a duty: commitment binds a person by where I myself stand and by the effects already left, not by my owing the other party something (H27). This falls on the fourth line.
How far agreement goes. With Hume, agreement goes as far as "the will has an influence only on present actions," and as far as the consequences that one who breaks his word leaves with the other; with Scanlon, as far as the binding being tied to the expectation that has been raised; with Kant, as far as the false promise being one kind of breach of faith. The parting begins with the derivation of a duty to the other party.
The strongest objection from the other side (from Hume's side, drafted by this paper). You have shown that today's will cannot control tomorrow, and from there you jump to the conclusion that commitment does not become a duty to others; this step does not hold. Convention does not require today to manipulate tomorrow mysteriously; it requires only that the public event of "I promise" change one's later reasons. You are still free tomorrow; it is only that your situation now contains a reason established by convention.
Reply. This series recognizes that the promise spoken, and the arrangements the other has made on its strength, change the conditions afterward, and that later judgment must count them in (H23, H24); by H27 and the upstream M1, it does not write this change as a duty owed to the other party. It explains the binding of commitment by where one stands and by the effects left, and enters breach of faith on the books (H28). This is this series' choice of normative source (§4.3, the fourth line); "commitment cannot lock tomorrow" does not by itself prove that no directed duty compatible with freedom holds. This conversation leaves the divergence in place, and does not write a restatement of the upstream position as an independent rebuttal of Hume.
On Kant's side there is a stronger question. Returning to the same case under the formula of humanity, the one who means to make a false promise will see at once that he is using another person merely as a means, "for the one whom I mean to use for my purposes through such a promise cannot possibly agree to my way of acting toward him" (Denn der, den ich durch ein solches Versprechen zu meinen Absichten brauchen will, kann unmöglich in meine Art, gegen ihn zu verfahren, einstimmen; AA 4:429–430). What this series records at the same place is: falsity is not having stood there at the time of promising (H28); that promise has already entered his conditions of occurrence as a promise to him, and one's own later change or leaving does not clear the books on his side (H25). Where the wrong in doing so lies belongs to the Critiques; this point reaches only the division of labor. On the other side, though nothing is owed to the other party, commitment is not just a solemn forecast either: so long as I still stand where I promised, there are things I cannot cancel (H23); a forecast has no such layer.
§11.2 Confucius and Mencius on Good Faith
The common question. The Analects says: "If a person lacks good faith, I do not know how he can get on" (人而无信，不知其可也; "Weizheng"); and there are Master You's words: "When good faith is close to rightness, one's word can be made good" (信近于义，言可复也; "Xue'er"). Zigong asked about the shi, and in that exchange Confucius places "their word must be kept, their deeds must be carried through" (言必信，行必果) in the third rank: "stubborn as stones, petty men indeed! Yet they may still count as the grade after that" (硁硁然小人哉！抑亦可以为次矣; "Zilu"). Mencius says: "The great man's word need not be kept, nor his deeds carried through; he goes only where rightness lies" (大人者，言不必信，行不必果，惟义所在; "Li Lou II"). Both ask how far words once spoken bind a person. The side of the Analects concerned with ritual and humaneness has been engaged in Action Theory Paper 0, §6.1; here only the chapters on good faith are taken up.
Is it the same thing? There is a common question, but this paper does not rank who stands nearer to this series by whether keeping one's word is unconditional. Mencius has rightness decide whether a word is to be kept. On "when good faith is close to rightness, one's word can be made good" the commentators read differently: He Yan's Collected Explanations glosses fu as "going back over" (复，犹覆也; Xing Bing's subcommentary follows it), and Huang Kan reads it as verifying; this paper reads it along Zhu Xi's line, "fu means carrying out one's word" (复，践言也; Lunyu jizhu): an agreement must first be close to rightness before it can be carried out. Zhu Xi in particular places the work before the promise is made: "first weigh whether the matter accords with rightness or not" (先度其事之合义与不合义; Zhuzi yulei, juan 22). This line does not take keeping any given word, in itself, as the whole of the measure. What this series reads is revising, dropping and the effects left; it does not pass judgment on rightness here.
The sentence of Mencius quoted does not unfold how, once a word is not kept, the effects already left are to be handled; one cannot infer from it that the Confucians allow the books to be cleared. What this series says at this point is: revising keeps the books on the change, leaving is entered on the books, and a commitment already made to others is not cleared from the books by one act of leaving (H23, H25); breach of faith is entered apart, and a revision with the books kept, dropping and falsity are three things (H28). If someone used "he goes only where rightness lies" to set down a promise quietly when it suits, without keeping the books on it, this series would register it as dropping; this criticizes such a use, and does not read Mencius's sentence as a doctrine of dropping. This falls on the fourth line.
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as keeping one's word not being reducible to mechanical compliance. Why something accords with rightness, normatively, and what was revised and what was left, structurally, can be discussed apart; this division of labor is not to be written as one side having rightness and only the other having accounts.
The strongest objection from the other side (drafted by this paper). You say that revising keeps the books on the change, but keeping the books always needs a measure: which revision was fitting, and which was dropping? The Confucians say the measure lies in rightness. Since you issue no ought, you cannot say whether one ought to keep one's word.
Reply. This series indeed does not say whether one ought to keep one's word; whether a person revises, and on what ground, is a matter within his own law, and whether it is fitting belongs to the Critiques. What it says is that the difference between revising and dropping lies not in a measure but in the books: "Revising keeps the books: what the old law was and why it changed, he says plainly himself. Dropping is quietly setting it down when it suits, with no account kept" (Second Critique, Chapter Five §2, as quoted in Paper 3, H23). Dropping and falsity are first-person matters; from outside, only non-fulfillment, obstruction and joint revision of the agreement are reported, together with traces (H28).
§12 Dealings: Mauss, the Book of Rites and Mozi
The common question. In The Gift, Marcel Mauss writes that in many societies a gift is not given for nothing: there is the obligation to give, the obligation to receive, the obligation to return (Chapter One, Section Three; Chapter Two, Section Three); the title of the introduction is itself "On the gift, and in particular on the obligation to return presents" (Du don, et en particulier de l'obligation à rendre les présents). The Book of Rites, "Quli I": "Ritual values going and coming. To go and have nothing come back is not ritual; to have something come and not go back is not ritual either" (礼尚往来。往而不来，非礼也；来而不往，亦非礼也). Mozi says: "Whoever loves others, others in turn love; whoever benefits others, others in turn benefit" (夫爱人者，人亦从而爱之；利人者，人亦从而利之), and takes "inclusive love for one another, exchange of benefit with one another" (兼相爱，交相利) as the standard ("Jian'ai II"). The Mohists' standard has been engaged in Value Theory Paper 0, Four.8; here only the one sentence on returning in "Jian'ai II" is taken. Paper 4 asks what dealings sediment into.
Is it the same thing? There is a common question, asked in different ways. Mauss explains practices that carry obligation in total prestation; the Book of Rites, at the passage quoted, lays down the ritual of going and coming; Mozi argues for inclusive love for one another and exchange of benefit with one another, and for its feasibility. All three bring into view persisting practices beyond one-sided acts; one cannot, on these sentences alone, take them as one and the same theory of a duty to return. This series reads the response as material, not as a settling of the account (Paper 4, H33); expectation grows out of repeated dealings (H34), and is for now classed neither as duty nor as accountability (H36); mutuality is two one-way recognitions meeting, not exchange (H38). The divergence is over whether returning carries a duty, and it falls on the fourth line.
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as dealings sedimenting into expectation, and expectation really changing the conditions of what can later be said and done (H34, H35): going and having nothing come back does leave something with the other party. The two part over whether returning is a norm.
The strongest objection from the other side (from Mauss's side, drafted by this paper). You say expectation is not duty, yet duty can perfectly well grow out of dealings. A norm need not be written into a single act; it grows out of a whole practice of giving, receiving and returning. You grant that expectation grows out of dealings, yet you forbid duty to grow in the same way; this is arbitrary.
Reply. This series has not said that expectation never leaves that slot. Paper 4 writes two exits: the person of whom it is expected takes it on in his own law, or it becomes a role requirement explicitly arranged by both parties and maintained by relational power (H36). The first is a matter of his own with himself; the second is a reading of accountability, and this series acknowledges that it has become accountability without judging that accountability. Mauss himself writes that in what he calls total prestation, "first, it is not individuals but collectivities that place one another under obligation, exchange and contract" (D'abord, ce ne sont pas des individus, ce sont des collectivités qui s'obligent mutuellement, échangent et contractent; Introduction): clans, tribes, families. That part lies between collectivities and is laid down by the rules of collectivities; by Paper 1, H11, the provisions themselves are acknowledged but not judged, and are registered as conditions of the effect. Within such rules, a return gift between two persons that the institution does not provide for, or that goes beyond its provisions, is split into accounts item by item by H36, and is not filed under expectation across the board merely because the people number two. This series holds down only one thing: expectation alone does not establish, in reverse, that either of the first two holds (H36). The mere fact that a return gift has occurred settles nothing, and does not certify that the other party has avowed anything (H33); where a checkable promise is made in a return gift, it is read separately by Paper 3, H24. A single failure to return does not by itself show that anyone owes anyone. This says how this series handles the matter; it is not a refutation, by drawing boundaries alone, of Mauss's explanation of practices that carry obligation.
§13 Asymmetry, Ending and Need: Aristotle (II)
The common question. In Books VIII and IX Aristotle writes of three more things. Asymmetry: in friendships in which one party is superior to the other, love too must be proportional, the better being loved more than he loves; it is when love answers to the worth of each that there is a kind of equality (VIII.7, 1158b); complaints and reproaches arise only, or chiefly, in friendship for the sake of usefulness (VIII.13, 1162b). Ending: he first raises the puzzle whether friendships with those who do not remain as they were should be dissolved; then he asks, tentatively, what is strange in dissolving a friendship formed for usefulness or for pleasure once they no longer have those things (ὅταν μηκέτι ταῦτ᾽ ἔχωσιν, οὐδὲν ἄτοπον διαλύεσθαι;). If one party has become bad, should the friendship be dissolved at once? Not with everyone, only with those incurably bad; those who can be set right one should rather help in their character than in their property (ἐπανόρθωσιν δ᾽ ἔχουσι μᾶλλον βοηθητέον εἰς τὸ ἦθος ἢ τὴν οὐσίαν); only when they cannot be saved is it not strange to leave. Whether two can still be friends when one far surpasses the other in virtue he raises as a question, and explains that where the gap is great, the two no longer share the same likes, joys and griefs, and cannot live together; some regard should be kept for the former friendship, so long as the parting was not caused by an excess of badness (IX.3, 1165b). Need: "no one would choose to live without friends, even if he had all the other goods" (VIII.1, 1155a); the happy person too needs friends, since a human being is a political animal and by nature lives with others (IX.9, 1169b). There is one more sentence: friendly relations with one's neighbors, and the marks by which friendship is defined, seem to come from a person's relation to himself; a friend is another self (IX.4, 1166a). Papers 6 and 7 ask the same things.
Is it the same thing? At each of the three points there is both correspondence and parting.
Asymmetry. Proportion is a measure of return: the better is loved more than he loves, and only so is there a kind of equality (VIII.7). This series sets up no measure of return for relations; the response is material, not a settling of the account (Paper 4, H33); what it reads is what asymmetry is used for: asymmetry used to cross the two boundaries of basic rights is violation, and asymmetry used outward to seal the other party's channels carries the direction of colonization (Paper 6, H53). This falls on the fourth line.
Ending. That some regard should be kept for the former friendship answers to "What continues after parting can be the conditions and effects that still exist" (Paper 6, H58). Aristotle discusses, by the ground of the friendship, when it may be dissolved: friendships of usefulness and of pleasure may be dissolved once their ground is gone (he says this by way of a tentative question); those for the sake of the good are dissolved only when one party has become incurably bad, and those who can be saved should be helped; where the gap is too great, living together cannot go on. This series does not require exit to have reasons, and issues no ought: the act of exit is the leaver's own choice (H57); ending does not presuppose that every relation ought to be repaired or to endure, nor can one on that account pass final judgment on this person (H55).
Need. Aristotle argues for need from happiness as activity, and from living together with friends; this series explains need from an avenue of questioning I cannot monopolize, and from the conditional of looking toward the other (Paper 7, H59, H61). What Paper 7, H62 refuses is the reading of an absence of relation as a lack in standing as an end, or as value missing a piece; it does not deny that actual life can lack response, lack avenues of questioning, lack certain opportunities (Paper 7, §4). The two part first over the grounds of need; one cannot write "the activity of happiness needs friends" and "standing as an end is not diminished by solitude" as denials of each other.
"Another self" and Paper 2, H22 explain in different directions; they can be read together, and do not exclude each other: the former explains certain features of friendship from a person's relation to himself; the latter reads how others' effects sediment into self-relation, and states that self-relation's not being able to do without relations with others is a functional bound, not a precondition of self-relation's existence.
How far agreement goes. Agreement goes as far as relations offering activities and avenues that solitude does not have, and as far as ending not erasing former effects. The divergences are to be stated one by one: how proportion holds, when a friendship may be dissolved, and the grounds of need.
The strongest objection from the other side (drafted by this paper). Even if the solitary person's standing as an end is complete, if happiness lies in activity, and living together with friends lets noble activity unfold and persist, how is the lack of friends not a real lack in the good life?
Reply. Paper 7 does not deny that some activities and opportunities depend on relations; what it refuses is to infer from these particular lacks that a person's standing as an end falls short (H62, H64; Paper 7, §4). The other question of H61 is why, wherever the remainder "the other too is an end" is at work in a subject, looking toward the other becomes its cannot-not; it does not explain this by the fulfillment of happiness. This shows that the two senses of need differ, and so do their grounds; it does not deny the part friends play in certain activities of happiness.
§14 Placing the Neighbors, and Invoking
§14.1 Neighbors
The schools below are taken only as far as the boundary.
Aristotle on relatives, and Aquinas. The classical tradition also discusses the asymmetry of relatives. Chapter 7 of the Categories says that relatives are thought to be simultaneous by nature, and in most cases this is true; but the knowable and knowledge seem to be an exception: the knowable seems to be prior to knowledge; to do away with the knowable does away with knowledge too, but doing away with knowledge does not do away with the knowable; perception and the perceptible likewise (7b). What is spoken of here is priority and dependence in being, and it does not cancel what the chapter says of relatives, that each is spoken of in relation to the other. Metaphysics Δ15 says that the measurable, the knowable and the thinkable "are called relative because something else is said in relation to them" (τῷ ἄλλο πρὸς αὐτὸ λέγεσθαι πρός τι λέγονται; 1021a29–30). Aquinas cites this place as his ground, and says that a relation is sometimes "in one of the extremes a thing of nature, and in the other a thing of reason only" (in uno extremorum est res naturae, et in altero est res rationis tantum), as happens when the two extremes are not of one order; the creature is really related to God, while God has no real relation to creatures, but one according to reason only (Summa Theologiae I, q. 13, a. 7). The later scholastic tradition called this kind mixed relations. These places can serve as neighboring references for the first line, but the asymmetries they speak of differ: the Categories speaks of priority and dependence in being, Δ15 of the ground on which something is called relative, Aquinas of the reality of relation. Where they part from this series: their asymmetry is that the other extreme is not thereby related to this one: the knowable is not changed by knowledge, and God's relation to creatures is according to reason only; what they ask is at which extreme relation holds as a category. In this series both sides are bearers (Paper 1, H2); what is one-sided here is which side the effect comes from, and on which side the construct is left (H1, H3); the side that acts is acting, not existing in reason only. This series does not set up a theory of relation as a category.
Nishida Kitarō. An Inquiry into the Good (1911) takes pure experience as its starting point: when one experiences one's own state of consciousness directly, "there is as yet neither subject nor object" (未だ主もなく客もない; Part I, Chapter 1). What he asks is where the subject differentiates from; this series takes bearers as its input, and the question of formation lies at the slot cited in §6, not taken up here.
Nāgārjuna. Middle Treatise, "Examination of the Four Noble Truths": "Whatever arises from causes and conditions, I say is nothing; it is also a provisional name, and it is also the meaning of the middle way" (众因缘生法，我说即是无，亦为是假名，亦是中道义; Kumārajīva's translation, Taishō vol. 30, no. 1564, p. 33, middle register; in the Sanskrit text, chapter 24, verse 18, where "nothing" answers to śūnyatā, that is, emptiness). What arises dependently has no own-being, and both the relata and relation itself are among such things. In not setting up relation as a bearer, this points the same way as the third line; this series takes bearers as its input and does not analyze bearers in terms of dependent arising, so here the two do not ask about the same thing.
Georg Simmel. To an outside third party a dyad can look like a superindividual unity; to its two members it is not one: each faces only the other, not a collectivity that goes beyond himself; if either withdraws, the whole is destroyed, whereas in a union of three, if one withdraws, the group can still endure (Sociology, Chapter 2, 1908). This is on the same side as "a little circle of two does not form a third bearer" (Paper 1, H12).
Hannah Arendt. The Human Condition, §§33 and 34: forgiving is the remedy for the irreversibility of action, and promising the remedy for its unpredictability; promises set up islands of reliability in an uncertain future (per SEP, "Hannah Arendt," §4.7, tier C). This is commitment binding the future; at this point she parts from Paper 3: commitment faces tomorrow, but does not sign for tomorrow (H23). The side of forgiveness answers to Paper 6: making up does not settle the conflict, and repair keeps two ledgers in parallel (H54).
Paul Ricœur. A promise kept expresses self-constancy, which is inscribed not in the dimension of what, as character is, but only in the dimension of who (per SEP, "Paul Ricoeur," §5, and Dartigues 1997, tier C). This is closest to where one stands in Paper 3. The parting is that Ricœur links the permanence of character with self-constancy by way of narrative identity; Meaning Theory Paper 0, Section Four has already engaged the narrative line, and this series does not take up narrative.
Annette Baier. Trust is reliance on others' goodwill: the one who trusts gives something he cares about into the other's keeping, and so trust can be betrayed, not merely disappointed (Baier 1986, per SEP, "Trust," §1, tier C). This answers to Paper 4: expectation is what one party, on the strength of dealings, arranges on his own side and points at the other party's later conduct (Paper 1, H10). The trust Baier speaks of also involves relying on the other's goodwill and bearing the vulnerability of the other's breach of faith or betrayal, and does not require, as a necessary condition, that a handing-over has already been completed; that this series can register the effects left in it does not mean it has thereby explained the difference between trust and ordinary reliance.
Emmanuel Levinas. The relation between subjects is asymmetrical: I am responsible for the other without waiting for reciprocity (Ethics and Infinity, per Mansur 2025 and Filipovic 2011, citing p. 98 of the English translation, tier C). This answers to the one-way structure of "Mutuality is two one-way recognitions meeting" (Paper 4, H38); on the line of where the binding comes from, the two are opposed: his responsibility is a responsibility toward the other, while this series sets up no duty toward others (Paper 3, H27). The question of responsibility coming before avowal has been handed by Meaning Theory Paper 0, Section Four · Three to the Moral Law, and this series does not take it up.
§14.2 Invoking
What neighboring series have already engaged, this series invokes and does not rewrite.
| Tradition | Where it has been engaged | How this series uses it |
|---|---|---|
| The ethics of care (Gilligan, Noddings, Tronto, Narayan, Kittay) | Action Theory Paper 0, §6.2; Value Theory Paper 0, Four.7; Meaning Theory Paper 0, Section Five · Seven | "the other person's response is material, not a settling of the account" comes out of that conversation in Action Theory (already invoked in Paper 1, H1 and Paper 4, H33); the two senses of dependency follow Action Theory Paper 0, §6.2 (Paper 5, H47) |
| Relational autonomy | Value Theory Paper 0, Four.7 | The conditions of formation are not the same as standing in for constitution (§6) |
| Kierkegaard's relational self | Meaning Theory Paper 0, Section Four · One | The self is a relation that relates itself to itself; the self-relation of Paper 2 connects positions of one and the same bearer at different times |
| Hegel, Honneth and recognition | Value Theory Paper 0, Four.5; Institution Theory Paper 0, §6.1 | Acknowledgment that requires no qualification and the realization of recognition are kept on separate books (Paper 1, H13) |
| Habermas: the colonization of the lifeworld | Institution Theory Paper 0, §4.1 | Same word, not mapped (§3) |
| Hirschman: exit, voice and loyalty | Action Theory Paper 0, §7; Institution Theory Paper 0, §7.1 | This series' exit lies mostly in dealings with no registered position (§3, "The exit right") |
| Bratman's planning theory | Action Theory Paper 0, §8 | Paper 3 gives no norms of planning rationality |
| Foucault: discipline and power | Power Theory Paper 0, §IV.3 | This series does not start from power, and is not coupled to Power Theory (§1) |
| Kant on the perfection of others | Action Theory Paper 0, §3.2 | §8.1 takes up only love and respect |
| The Analects: ritual as the action theory of humaneness | Action Theory Paper 0, §6.1 | §11.2 takes up only the chapters on good faith |
| Xunzi and Huang Zongxi: governing law and governing persons | Institution Theory Paper 0, §8 | §8.2 takes up only the side of division and ritual that lies between person and person |
| The Mohists: standards, and the benefit of all under heaven | Value Theory Paper 0, Four.8 | §12 takes only the one sentence on returning in "Jian'ai II" |
| Heidegger: being-toward-death | Meaning Theory Paper 0, Section Four · Two | §8.3 takes up only solicitude in §26 |
| Levinas | Value Theory Paper 0, Four.6; Meaning Theory Paper 0, Section Four · Three | See §14.1 |
§14.3 Distribution on the Four Lines
The four lines register this series' coordinates of comparison; they do not record every point of contact as an opposition already proved. The differences in the thirteen conversations are distributed over the four lines as follows.
The first line, the threshold: Aristotle (I); Buber.
The second line, direction, not kind: Aristotle (I); Kant; Xunzi; Heidegger. They concern, respectively, the kinds of relation, the demands of virtue, the conditions of name and station, and the two extremes of being-with, and the four are not equivalent to one another.
The third line, a relation is a construct: Paper 1, H3 and H12 draw this series' boundary; the question of formation in Buber, Watsuji and Menkiti meets it here and is left unjudged; Gilbert's plural subject needs its sense sorted out first, and is not placed in the excluded position by its name alone.
The fourth line, where the binding comes from: Gilbert; Hume, Kant and Scanlon; Confucius and Mencius; Mauss, the Book of Rites and Mozi; and the proportion in Aristotle (II). The normative question of each still has to be sorted out. On this line, what this series writes is that the two part over the source of normativity, not that the other side has been refuted.
Not on the four lines: Buber's other side (§5.2); Menkiti's personhood (§6); the layer Heidegger reads (§8.3); the level at which Sartre's conflict lies; Locke and Parfit on identity and on concern for the future; and, in Aristotle (II), ending and the need that lies in the activity of happiness.
One more difference recurs without being set up as a line: sentence form. This series issues no ought (§1); Kant (at two places), Xunzi, Confucius and Mencius, Parfit and Aristotle (II) all part from it here; that is the division of labor of §1.
Gilbert's joint commitment is the most direct normative divergence in the whole paper: on doing things together, and on the effects left after exit, the two can be read alongside each other; whether the parties thereby owe one another performance, and who holds the qualification to release, the two explain differently.
§15 The Propositions of the Whole Series
The seven main papers lay down sixty-four propositions in all, with H numbers running continuously through the series. They are listed together below for reference; the argument for each, and the way each is narrowed, are in the papers themselves.
Paper 1, What a Relation Is, and What It Is Not
- H1 A relation exists as soon as an act at one bearer position, or a construct it leaves behind, identifiably and actually enters the conditions of occurrence at another bearer position; a moment is enough
- H2 The other side of a relation must be a bearer; between a subject and a stone there is no relation
- H3 A relation is a construct: the construct left when the effect of one side enters the conditions of occurrence of the other side; it does not legislate, bears nothing, and does not pass final judgment on either party's own law on their behalf
- H4 A relation is the setting in which cultivation happens, not the source of cultivation
- H5 Collision: an act of one party, or a construct it leaves behind, actually entering the conditions of occurrence of another bearer position, whether or not it is felt, whether or not there is incompatibility, and whether or not the parties know
- H6 Collision has two subclasses: conflict, and mutual chiseling; mutual chiseling is judged by process, not by identity
- H7 In dealings in which a requirement appears on the other side that he bears in the first person and by which he goes on organizing his action in the same situation, conflict cannot be guaranteed not to occur so long as the relation is not exited; in a relation in which no such requirement appears, at least collision cannot be guaranteed not to occur
- H8 Cultivation and colonization are two directions: cultivation goes toward making space, colonization toward pouring in and occupying; 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 two are not the two extremes of one scale, and the same act can carry both directions, and can also carry no direction at all; they are directions, not labels
- H9 Violation is judged separately, and only at the layer of basic rights; it and the direction of colonization are two lines
- 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
- H11 Relation Theory reads only the collisions between one another: within an institution, the part of what passes between persons that the institution does not provide for, or that goes beyond its provisions, is within range; the relation between persons and constructs is not; the provisions themselves are acknowledged but not judged
- H12 Where three or more are involved, dealings that do not pass through an institution are broken down into effects between pairs and entered on separate accounts; passing through a third person does not release the instigator from his part; a little circle of two does not form a third bearer
- H13 Acknowledgment that requires no qualification and the realization of recognition are kept on separate books: wherever the former is used, it borrows none of the latter's conditions; wherever the latter is used, it borrows none of the former's conclusions
Paper 2, Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
- 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
- H15 Three positions, two pairs of relations, four reading directions; the four directions are not four causal edges of one kind, and each cell is written in three items: the present operation, the temporal object it refers to, and where the effect actually lands
- H16 In all four reading directions, both directions, cultivation and colonization, can show; one and the same arrangement can carry both directions toward tomorrow; where the reading reaches the value layer, the value layer's narrow sense is used instead and marked on the spot
- H17 A lock that comes wholly from oneself, with no outside provenance of any kind behind it, is not called colonization; all that can be said is that the subject has since changed
- H18 Locking is only at the layer of running: the positions of avowal, revision and exit still belong to this person, and an earlier position cannot seal off a later one; today cannot sign for tomorrow; tomorrow may revise, and revising keeps the books on the change
- H19 Within self-relation, violation is not spoken of; self-colonization still exists: in the broad sense it falls on the swap that runs from yesterday to today; read at the value layer, it is that yesterday's self avowed a content on the strength of an external warrant, and today still maintains it at the constitutive position
- H20 There is no exiting a self-relation; what can be exited is only a particular avowal
- H21 Self-colonization at the value layer has no third-person criterion; from outside one sees the pronouncement, not that it is holding up this content's qualification; neither a person's changing nor his not changing is used to judge the state of this branch in him
- H22 Relations with others sediment into self-relation; self-relation cannot do without relations with others: questioning from outside cannot be replaced by looking back on oneself; this is a functional bound, not a precondition of self-relation's existence
Paper 3, Commitment
- H23 Commitment does not bind exit, and it does not sign for tomorrow. It binds a person in two places, and neither rests on locking tomorrow: on my side, it rests on where I stand; on the other party's side, on the effects already left. Leaving is entered on the books, and revising keeps the books on the change; a commitment already made to others is not cleared from the books by one act of leaving
- H24 Commitment is entered as three things: what was promised, in word and deed; where one stands, and revising; the effects left
- H25 A commitment that concerns only oneself and a commitment to others are kept apart: for one that concerns only oneself, a change made tomorrow with the books kept on it completes a revision or an exit; where the promise has been made to another, or has entered his conditions of occurrence as a promise to him, one's own change or leaving does not clear the books on the other party's side
- H26 Commitment cannot lock tomorrow: that it cannot lock lies in the layer of qualification, and is necessary; locking lies in the layer of running, and is possible; where tomorrow is locked in running, what is violated is the exit right, which is a person's basic right; it is precisely the layer of running that Relation Theory has to read
- H27 Commitment does not turn into a duty to the other party; it binds a person by where I myself stand and by the effects already left, not by my owing the other party something
- H28 Breach of faith is entered apart, as dropping, falsity, non-fulfillment, obstruction and joint revision of the agreement; dropping and falsity are first-person matters, and from outside only non-fulfillment, obstruction and joint revision of the agreement are reported, together with traces
- H29 A commitment is my placing an expectation with the other party; expectation can also grow without passing through me. An implicit commitment is still avowal on my side and where I stand, only not said out loud: it cannot be inferred from duration or habit alone, nor decided on my behalf by someone else; a tacit understanding can be spoken of, fallibly
- H30 Stability means only that a stretch of dealings is maintained over time, and carries no evaluation; it is read party by party: the question is not whether this relation has grounds, but, for each side, whether his staying in these dealings has grounds in his own law
- H31 Structural instability: for a given party, his staying in these dealings has no grounds in his own law and is maintained only by such conditions as lock, cost, stalling or habit that has been surreptitiously swapped, while what has not been settled underneath is still there; it falls on the side that stays only by conditions
- H32 A commitment marked as a present arrangement that tomorrow can avow anew, with revising and exit actually reachable, does not fall into locking; one actually used as an irrefutable final ground that seals revision, or one that actually seals revising and exit, falls into locking
Paper 4, Dealings and Expectation
- H33 The other party's response is material, not a settling of the account: it enters my conditions of occurrence and becomes material for the next expectation; the mere fact that a response has occurred settles nothing, and does not certify that the other party has avowed anything
- H34 Expectation grows out of repeated dealings: response and non-response, on time and not on time, all become material, and sediment into that construct which one party arranges on his own side, directed at the other party's later conduct
- H35 Expectation changes the conditions of what can later be said and done: it enters the conditions of occurrence of the one who expects, and can also enter the other party's conditions of occurrence by way of the words and deeds of the one who expects; the person of whom it is expected has not thereby avowed anything
- H36 Expectation is for now classed neither as duty nor as accountability; it has two exits from that slot: the person of whom it is expected takes it on in his own law, or it becomes a role requirement explicitly arranged by both parties and maintained by relational power; expectation alone does not establish, in reverse, that either of the first two holds
- 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; only where the qualifying condition has become a position, such that no response of the other party can be registered as a refutation, is there at that position a value-layer signature of introjection; the third person speaks only of direction, position and signature, not of what the other party really cares about
- H38 Mutuality is two one-way recognitions meeting; if they do not meet, each one's share is still there as before. Mutuality is not exchange, nor a state a relation is meant to reach
- H39 16DD is something that happens on an occasion, not a grade that a person or a relation is in; this series takes up its moment, not a 16DD that can hold at any time and in any place, nor the change in the individual at 16DD
- H40 That moment: neither side, by its own anticipation, avows that jolt on the other's behalf; so that moment does not fall on one party by way of the other's expectation. An outward laugh obtained by demand or by prior agreement alone cannot constitute this moment and cannot certify it; what can hold only by treating a third person as material does not count
- H41 From outside, only clues can be seen: mutual knowledge does not yield mutual non dubito, and one instance of looking at each other and laughing is not a criterion; what that moment sediments into in the dealings afterward belongs to Paper 5; it does not make later dealings mutual automatically, nor does it let one party afterward demand mutuality of the other
Paper 5, The Sediment of Dealings
- H42 What dealings sediment into is read in three things: how one effect changes the conditions for what can next be said, heard and revised; how it is in turn changed by the other side's later action; how the sediments on the two sides meet
- H43 The reading of sediment is given in positions: which are open and which are sealed, written by content-domain and period; where the reading reaches the value layer, one asks further whether a position is occupied by an external end; the relation as a whole is given no overall direction
- H44 Cultivation and colonization are entangled in the same stretch of dealings: the two directions coexist, and as dealings pile up time after time, direction can turn; that they are hard to tell apart does not mean they need not be told apart
- H45 The completion of cultivation is not in the enactor's hands; incomplete cultivation is not colonization. These two sentences belong to the value layer; for the two directions in the broad sense, direction is read off that one effect alone, and whether it took hold rests on the other party's later understanding and action
- 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
- H47 Dependency has two senses: the dependency people have on one another in any case carries no direction of colonization; the kind that was made, and that has locked the path to saying no, carries the direction of colonization; where one first monopolizes, or first induces dependency, and then withdraws, violation is checked at the layer of basic rights by F20
- H48 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
- 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
- H50 This paper's main material lies within the limit: influence, teaching and persuasion that stay within the limit can carry the direction of colonization without being violation, and it is here that entanglement is hardest to sort out; effects that cross the line are identified following Paper 1, H9, and are not taken as main material
- H51 The relational layer is one of the channels through which institutions co-opt individuals; this series reads only the relational side of it, not the institutional side
Paper 6, Asymmetry, Divergence and Ending
- H52 This paper reads only how asymmetries of capacity, knowledge and expression enter collision; the authority that comes with a position is acknowledged but not judged; asymmetry between a person and a construct is not read
- H53 Asymmetry in itself is not crossing the line; asymmetry used to cross the two boundaries of basic rights is violation; asymmetry used outward to seal the other party's channels, or to make them hard to travel, carries the direction of colonization; operations that substantively compress the other party's channels are handed over as Conflict Treatise §5 directs, and the two grades are not jumped
- H54 A conflict is handled as the Conflict Treatise handles it, and this paper does not rewrite that; repair keeps two ledgers in parallel: making up does not settle the conflict, nor does an unresolved conflict leave the harm hanging; a reconciliation cannot accomplish either party's exit
- H55 Ending does not presuppose that every relation ought to be repaired or to endure; unilateral exit does not settle the accounts; a relation may be terminated and a channel closed, but one cannot on that account pass final judgment on this person
- H56 Withdrawing one's own side is exit and does not carry the direction of colonization, even if the other party's cost rises as a result; when one party exits, whichever party acts outward, adding consequences, using the occasion to apply pressure and calling on others to isolate him all carry the direction of colonization
- H57 Exit does not delete recognition; the act of exit is the leaver's own choice, and thoughts of his that he has not expressed in word or deed do not enter the other party's conditions of occurrence; saying, on exiting, something like "Nothing is lost by walking away like this" says for the other party what this exit amounts to, moves to occupy the other party's own step of understanding, and slides in the direction of colonization
- H58 What continues after parting can be the conditions and effects that still exist; shared matters that remain after parting are not settled by unilateral exit; leaving the shared matters room for natural development when one exits points in the direction of cultivation; neither staying nor leaving certifies cultivation
Paper 7, Why Still Relate
- H59 The danger of relation and the necessity of relation come from the same place: the other party's law is not mine, and is not under my control. Because it is not under my control, it can occupy my position of revision; and because it is not under my control, it is an avenue of questioning I cannot monopolize; and the relational layer, where such a law is met, is for that reason the only setting in which pure cultivation can possibly occur
- H60 Collision itself, conflict included, can be an avenue of chiseling; the possibility of chiseling is written together with its cost
- H61 Seeking relation is the cannot-not of looking toward the other; this sentence is written as a conditional: wherever the remainder "the other too is an end" is at work in a subject, looking toward the other is its cannot-not
- H62 Need is not lack, and someone who finds no one is not thereby short of anything; need is not duty, nor does it mean that relation is always beneficial, and it does not judge on anyone's behalf whether a particular relation should be open or should continue
- H63 Questioning from outside cannot be replaced by looking back on oneself; this is a functional bound, not a precondition of self-relation's existence; carried over to long-term dealings, openness at the topological layer means not declaring immunity to all questioning from outside, and is not the same as keeping contact with any one particular person permanently
- H64 Exiting a relation can avoid some of its dangers, and one then also no longer has the possibilities that come only if these dealings continue; what is exited is a relation, not relation itself
§16 Downstream
Once Relation Theory is written, Love Theory, Marriage Theory, Parent-Child Theory and Cooperation Theory are to be unfolded. Friendship is not given a series of its own but serves as a running example (Paper 3). The relation between humans and animals is left for a future special paper on that boundary.
Ready-made upstream pieces each branch can invoke directly, and what Relation Theory must give first. Of the upstream pieces listed below, this paper gives only the names; how they are invoked is for each branch to argue.
Parent-Child Theory: Value Theory P3 V38's three signals of pre-occupation (Paper 3, H32, borrows only their shape; their main use is in Parent-Child Theory); V42, "an incomplete cultivation is not colonization"; Value Theory P1 V14, "the subject-to-be included"; Meaning Theory P3 Y26, which itself already writes of infants and small children; Conflict Treatise §20, "People depend on each other in any case: a child on care", and how dependency is told apart there, and §2, that shared child-rearing is not settled by one party's exit; Rights Theory P2, station and exercise-bandwidth; On Rights and Entitlements F34, the infant holding its basic rights of its own. What Relation Theory gives first: acknowledgment that requires no qualification and the realization of recognition, kept on separate books (Paper 1, H13); the two senses of dependency (Paper 5, H47); today's arrangements for tomorrow (Paper 2); effects that carry the direction of colonization without passing through conflict (Paper 5, H46). The layer of guardianship belongs to institutions; it is between person and construct. Entitlements are handed down to Parent-Child Theory, and whether and how to take them up is for Parent-Child Theory to decide.
Love Theory: Aesthetics Rays 12 and 13; Value Theory P6 V76, and V77 on mutual recognition; F5 §4.1, romantic partners as transmission nodes; Laughter IV §7.2; the General Methodology §1.7; Psychoanalysis IV §2.2 to §2.4. What Relation Theory gives first: the minimal condition of a one-way relation; the moment of 16DD (Paper 4, H39 to H41); expectation and attribution; the third-person upper bound; that a long absence of conflict is not evidence of cultivation; implicit commitment; the two branches of "we", which branch occurs being checked case by case. The interfacing at the layer of relation is in §§5 to 14 of this paper; each paper of Love Theory takes up only the layer of love, and points back to this paper where the two meet, without rewriting.
Marriage Theory: F6 §3.1(f), the three grounds of expression; F6 Appendix D, SAE Marriage Principles (a working demonstration, not evidentiary); the Conflict Treatise's two people who live together, §8's three-way sort, and §24. What Relation Theory gives first: commitment; the four cells of stability, read party by party; expectation; what conflict sediments into after it recurs again and again; the two branches of "we". The institutional part of marriage belongs to the institutional side; it is between person and construct.
Cooperation Theory: F6 §3.1(d)(e); Action Theory Paper 8, D47, D48 and the first half of D49, and Action Theory Paper 9, D56; Value Theory P5 V71; Conflict Treatise §20, §21 and §27. What Relation Theory gives first: no third bearer is generated; a shared goal is not a shared ultimate value; what doing things together sediments into over time. The organizational part belongs to the institutional side; within an organization, the part of what passes between persons that the institution does not provide for, or that goes beyond its provisions, belongs to Relation Theory.
Handed downstream to be argued. Relation Theory in the abstract establishes only what all relations have; a proposition that holds only in one kind of relation is handed to the series on that kind of relation to argue. Registered so far: that a relation in which both know is of course more stable, which each branch, if it wants to use it, argues for itself; whether and how 16DD that can hold at any time and in any place appears in a given kind of relation, which that branch argues for itself; entitlements, handed down to Parent-Child Theory; whether an infant's crying and resistance can be read as a boundary signal that cannot be overwritten, and lateral cross-checking among several caregivers (Conflict Treatise §15), handed to Parent-Child Theory as questions awaiting proof.
Acknowledgments
This paper is signed by Han Qin alone, and the author bears sole responsibility for its text. Drafting and review were assisted by models from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google DeepMind, and thanks are due to all three. The English edition of this series is an independent rewrite of the Chinese text, not a translation; where the two differ, the Chinese governs.
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 · Works directly cited in this paper
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). How Is the Inter-Ontological Possible: The Subjective Conditions and Emergent Structure of Freedom (SAE Foundational Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19297847
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). The Place of Judgment (SAE Action Theory, Paper 0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22974154
Qin, H. (2026). Not Doing and Cannot-Not-Doing (SAE Action Theory, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970752
Qin, H. (2026). Can and Cannot (SAE Action Theory, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970769
Qin, H. (2026). Developing One's Own Value (SAE Action Theory, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970771
Qin, H. (2026). Living by One's Law in Mixed Reality (SAE Action Theory, Paper 7) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970781
Qin, H. (2026). Finding One Another (SAE Action Theory, Paper 8) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970783
Qin, H. (2026). One's Own Share of Strength, and Guarding (SAE Action Theory, Paper 9) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970787
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Conflict Treatise: How Subjecthood Is Not Swallowed by Conflict Itself [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22313628
Qin, H. (2026). The Jurisdiction of the Question of Meaning (SAE Meaning Theory, Paper 0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22802041
Qin, H. (2026). 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). What Value Is Not (SAE Value Theory, Prequel) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21362575
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 Dynamics of Value (SAE Value Theory, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22050204
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 the Origin of Power (SAE Power Theory, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20370224
Qin, H. (2026). On How Rights Presuppose No Duty (SAE Rights Theory, Paper 0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21285136
Qin, H. (2026). The Interface and Transformation between Recognition-Based Rights and Power (SAE Rights Theory, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21093939
Qin, H. (2026). On the Cultivation and Diachronic Unfolding of Rights (SAE Rights Theory, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21252863
Qin, H. (2026). On Rights and Entitlements (SAE Rights Theory, Special Paper) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21314907
Qin, H. (2026). On Accountability · Wei (SAE Rights Theory, Specialist Paper) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22853810
Qin, H. (2026). To Whom the Ought Is Addressed (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23269635
Qin, H. (2026). Between One Another (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23271072
Qin, H. (2026). Institution Theory and the Tradition: The Address of the Ought (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23272468
Qin, H. (2026). Interfacing with Existing Traditions, and the Prospect (SAE Value Theory, Paper 0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22265396
Qin, H. (2026). The Power Machine and Its Shi (SAE Power Theory, Paper 0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20707047
Qin, H. (2026). SAE: The Second Critique [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23250387
Qin, H. (2026). The Other End of the Bridge: Economic Rationality When 15DD Faces a Party Who Does Not Enter 15DD (SAE Economics, Paper 2) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19381666
Qin, H. (2026). The Beauty of Non Dubito (SAE Aesthetics, Ray 12) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22992615
Qin, H. (2026). The Beauty of Mutual Non Dubito (SAE Aesthetics, Ray 13) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23000910
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Psychoanalysis (IV): Cert and Unification — The Self Beyond Doubt and the Four-Layer Framework [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19321534
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Laughter · IV: The Laughter of Despair and the Knowing Smile [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23287669
Qin, H. (2026). Four Foundational Theorems of the Moral Law · Dao (SAE Moral Law, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20011018
Qin, H. (2026). The Institutional Architecture of Mixed Reality: The Phase-Transition Evolution of Cultivation and Colonization (SAE Moral Law, Paper 9) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20262737
Qin, H. (2026). General Methodology: The Chisel-Construct Cycle (SAE Methodology) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18842449
II · Works named in §16 (see also the group above)
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 Value and the Other (SAE Value Theory, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22191071
Qin, H. (2026). On the Thickness and Boundary of Basic Rights (SAE Rights Theory, Paper 2) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20769253
III · External works (§§4 to 14; the tier, the edition used and the location of each item are given in the external-source table that accompanies this paper, in Chinese)
Primary texts
Aristotle. Ethica Nicomachea. Ed. I. Bywater. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894. (English translation consulted: W. D. Ross, 1908)
Aristotle. Categoriae (Bekker, Aristoteles graece, vol. I, Berlin, 1831; English translation consulted: E. M. Edghill); Metaphysica Δ (English translation consulted: W. D. Ross, 1908).
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae I, q. 13, a. 7. (English translation consulted: Fathers of the English Dominican Province)
Heidegger, M. Sein und Zeit. Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung 8. Halle: Niemeyer, 1927, §26 (SZ 122).
Kant, I. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785). AA 4. Die Metaphysik der Sitten, Tugendlehre (1797). AA 6. Kants gesammelte Schriften, Akademie-Ausgabe.
Hume, D. A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), Book III, Part II, Section 5.
Locke, J. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II.xxvii (section numbers as in Nidditch's edition).
Simmel, G. Soziologie: Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1908.
Mauss, M. Essai sur le don. L'Année sociologique, nouvelle série, t. I (1923–1924).
Buber, M. Ich und Du. Leipzig: Insel, 1923.
Lunyu (论语, the Analects); Mengzi (孟子, the Mencius); Xunzi (荀子); Liji (礼记, the Book of Rites); Mozi (墨子). Texts collated between the editions in the Kanseki Repository and the Project Gutenberg editions, with characters converted to simplified forms.
Zhu Xi. Lunyu jizhu (论语集注); Zhuzi yulei (朱子语类), juan 22. (Transcribed from the Wenyuange Siku quanshu edition)
He Yan. Lunyu jijie (论语集解). (Transcribed from the Sibu congkan edition)
Huang Kan. Lunyu yishu (论语义疏). (Transcribed from the Wenyuange Siku quanshu edition)
Nāgārjuna. Zhong lun (中论, Middle Treatise). Trans. Kumārajīva. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, vol. 30, no. 1564.
Nishida Kitarō. Zen no kenkyū (善の研究, An Inquiry into the Good). Tokyo: Kōdōkan, 1911.
Fei Xiaotong. Xiangtu Zhongguo (乡土中国, From the Soil). Shanghai: Guanchashe, 1948; Xiangtu Zhongguo, Shengyu zhidu (乡土中国 生育制度). Beijing: Peking University Press, 1998.
Works paraphrased (tier C)
Arendt, H. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.
Baier, A. Trust and Antitrust. Ethics 96(2), 1986: 231–260.
Darwall, S. The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
Elster, J. Ulysses and the Sirens: Studies in Rationality and Irrationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Gilbert, M. On Social Facts. London: Routledge, 1989; A Theory of Political Obligation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006; Shared Intention and Personal Intentions. Philosophical Studies 144(1), 2009: 167–187.
Gyekye, K. Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Reflections on the African Experience. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Levinas, E. Éthique et infini. Paris: Fayard, 1982. (English translation: Ethics and Infinity, trans. R. A. Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985)
Menkiti, I. A. Person and Community in African Traditional Thought. In R. A. Wright (ed.), African Philosophy: An Introduction, 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984: 171–181.
Parfit, D. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.
Ricœur, P. Soi-même comme un autre. Paris: Seuil, 1990.
Sartre, J.-P. L'Être et le néant. Paris: Gallimard, 1943.
Scanlon, T. M. What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Scheffler, S. Relationships and Responsibilities. Philosophy & Public Affairs 26(3), 1997: 189–209.
Watsuji Tetsurō. Ningen no gaku to shite no rinrigaku (人間の学としての倫理学). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1934; Rinrigaku (倫理学). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1937–1949.
Secondary sources relied on
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) entries: Collective Intentionality (H. B. Schmid); Shared Agency (A. S. Roth); Special Obligations (D. Jeske); Promises (A. Habib); Personal Identity (E. T. Olson); Jean-Paul Sartre (P.-J. Renaudie); Hannah Arendt (M. Passerin d'Entrèves); Paul Ricoeur (S. Davidson); Trust (C. McLeod); African Ethics (K. Gyekye); Watsuji Tetsurō (E. McCarthy).
Adeate, T. Moderate Communitarianism: A Conceptual Interpretation. Phronimon 24, 2023.
Alves, P. M. S. Revista da Abordagem Gestáltica 13(1), 2007: 97–109.
Dartigues, A. Paul Ricoeur et la question de l'identité narrative. Reflexão 69, 1997: 19–34.
Filipovic, Z. Introduction to Emmanuel Levinas: "After you, sir!". Moderna språk 2011(1): 58–73.
Gyekye, K. Person and Community in African Thought. In P. H. Coetzee & A. P. J. Roux (eds.), Philosophy from Africa, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002: 297–312.
Hamauzu Shinji. Watsuji Tetsurō no "Ningengaku to shite no rinrigaku" (和辻哲郎の『人間学としての倫理学』). Rinshō tetsugaku (臨床哲学) 14(1), 2012: 2–15.
Lavin, D. Review of S. Darwall, The Second-Person Standpoint. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2008.01.05.
Majeed, H. M. Diametros 16(61), 2019: 51–71.
Mansur, M. N. Cosmos and History 21(1), 2025.
O'Leary, B. The Odyssey of Jon Elster. Government and Opposition 22(4), 1987: 480–498.
Wilkinson, D. The harm principle, personal identity and identity-relative paternalism. Journal of Medical Ethics 49(6), 2023: 393–402.
Williams, B. Personal Identity. London Review of Books 6(10), 1984.
Interfaces
- Main upstream: F5, How Is the Inter-Ontological Possible. This series takes up the stretch outside its range: what the effects between parties sediment into in dealings and over time, when recognition has not yet occurred and coexistence must proceed regardless (Paper 1, Introduction).
- Also used: Action Theory Paper 0 (§6.2, §9.5; §2, §3, §§6 to 8) and the papers of Action Theory; Value Theory Paper 0 (Section One · Two; Four.5 to Four.8; Section Six, slot one); Power Theory Paper 0 (§IV.3); the Conflict Treatise; Meaning Theory P1, P3 and Paper 0 (Sections Four and Five); Value Theory's Prequel, P1, P3, P4, P5 and P6; Rights Theory Paper 0 (M1), P2, P4 (F18), P6 (F26) and On Rights and Entitlements (F34); Power Theory P1 (Introduction); Institution Theory Paper 1, Paper 5 and Paper 0 (§2, §4, §§6 to 8, §10); F6 (§3.1); the Second Critique; Moral Law P1 and P9; Aesthetics Rays 12 and 13; Laughter IV; Economics P2; Psychoanalysis IV; the General Methodology.
- Adjacent: the Critiques, which take up how one person is to treat another (§1); outside traditions, §§4 to 14.
- This series: Papers 1 to 7; this paper lists the words shared with upstream, interfaces with outside traditions, lists the sixty-four propositions together, and closes the account of what is handed downstream.
- Downstream: Love Theory, Marriage Theory, Parent-Child Theory and Cooperation Theory (§16); the relation between humans and animals is left for a future special paper on that boundary.