What a Relation Is, and What It Is Not
关系是什么，不是什么
Relation Theory reads how two subjects, and one person's yesterday, today and tomorrow, collide with one another, and what these collisions sediment into through dealings and time. This paper lays down the minimum for the series, and only the minimum.
A relation exists as soon as an act at one bearer position, or a construct that act leaves behind, identifiably and actually enters the conditions of occurrence at another bearer position; a moment is enough. Nothing here requires that the two parties know, that there be a response, that there be recognition, or that there be commitment; it requires only that the other side be a bearer. What dealings sediment into is a question to be asked of every relation, not a condition of a relation's existing.
A relation is a construct, not a bearer: it does not legislate, does not pass final judgment on either party's own law on their behalf, and is not the source of cultivation, only the setting in which cultivation happens. Collision is taken in a broad sense and carries no pejorative sense; conflict and mutual chiseling are two of its subclasses; mutual chiseling is judged by process, not by identity. 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, as in reading a book by an author who has died, at least collision cannot be guaranteed not to occur.
Cultivation and colonization are two directions: cultivation goes toward making space; colonization goes toward pouring in and occupying. The direction is read on this one effect; 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: the same act can carry both directions, and it can also carry no direction at all; they are directions, not labels. Closure is not judged separately within a relation: sealing the other party's paths to saying no, to revising and to leaving, or making them hard to travel, carries the direction of colonization. Violation is judged separately, and only at the layer of basic rights; it and direction are two lines. Violation looks at structure, not at how the other party later understands.
This paper also gives the minimal definition of expectation, draws the range (which does not include the relation between persons and constructs), sets up pairwise accounting where three or more are involved, and keeps acknowledgment that requires no qualification on separate books from the realization of recognition. This paper does not prove that any relation is good, nor that any relation ought to occur. Why the subject still needs relation this paper only raises, and hands to Paper 7.
Introduction
SAE has unfolded the subject side and the institutional side; it has still to unfold the relational side: how things run between two subjects, that is, how they cultivate each other, and how they keep from colonizing each other. The relational side is not divided by the number of people. Between a person and himself there is also a relation: the past self can cultivate or colonize the present self, and the present self can also cultivate or colonize the future self.
Upstream has written all around this area and left only the middle empty. How Is the Inter-Ontological Possible (Foundational Paper 5; cited as F5) writes of how recognition is possible (its English page says "acknowledgment" for this), and says expressly that what it explains is "how acknowledgment is possible", not "coexistence in general": "The stretch in which acknowledgment has not occurred and coexistence must proceed regardless lies outside this paper's range, and this paper asserts nothing there" (§2.1). How Is Institution Possible (Foundational Paper 6; cited as F6) takes up another cell: where the reciprocal process is unavailable and exit does not dissolve the shared problem, the arrangement is carried by positions and procedures, and that is institution. Action Theory writes, from one person's side, a single drawing of a line when he faces another. The Conflict Treatise closes out one incompatibility: "What is closed here is this one incompatibility, not this relation and still less this person." (§23) Meaning Theory reads what a person carries forward, that is, attribution and orientation, and expressly draws off what merely weighs on him without having been carried forward by him. Institution Theory's oughts are addressed to the construct; as for the part of what passes between persons within an institution that the institution does not provide for, or that goes beyond its provisions, it writes only what the construct should leave room for, not that part itself.
So there is one thing that each of these has run into and none has made its own topic: what the effects between one another sediment into, over one round of dealings after another, and between yesterday, today and tomorrow. The division of labor between this series and upstream can be put 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.
Once an influence has been carried forward by the person himself, how it is attributed to him, where it points and how he restates it belong to Meaning Theory; how it came to him, how it weighs on him and how it collides with other things still belong here. What the two divide is the question asked: each reads one face of the same material; the case is not transferred, nor struck off.
This paper takes only the first step: to say clearly what a relation is, and what it is not. On form: the conclusions of upstream papers are restated in plain words, with paper and section given in parentheses. Below, every step this series takes on itself, rather than receiving it from upstream, is marked "(own undertaking)"; where a reading of an upstream text is this series' own, it says so where needed. One example runs through the whole paper. A man writes a book; the book is published and scatters into the hands of people he does not know. One reader reads it, never writes to him, never leaves a word, and the author lives out his life without knowing this person exists. Later this reader goes on to read Plato, and Kant; reading Kant, in some places he agrees strongly, and in others he does not. Are these all relations? If they are, what kind of relation is each, and what can Relation Theory say about them, and what can it not? This paper answers one point at a time.
§1 The Minimal Condition of Relation
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
First, the words. A bearer position is the position a bearer is in at a given moment: another person's, or one's own at another time. The conditions of occurrence are the conditions on which whatever afterward occurs at that position depends: what can be seen, what can be thought, what can be done, what is run into. This paper calls what the proposition states the minimal condition of relation.
This condition rests on an identifiable effect, not on atmosphere, on degree of intimacy, or on whether anyone knows. The book the author wrote entered that reader's conditions of occurrence: he read a certain sentence, and that sentence went on working in him afterward, even if only for an afternoon. That is enough. The author's not knowing him does not prevent this from having happened; nor does the reader's never writing. If the reader gives no feedback, is there then no relation? Reading Plato is the same: Plato is long gone, and what he said, did and wrote still enters the conditions of occurrence of a reader today. That is a relation, one-way, across generations.
So there are four things, and the minimal condition requires none of them.
It does not require knowing. Whether the parties know is not part of the definition of a relation; not knowing does not mean there is no relation. The difference between one-way and mutual is read in the papers that follow; knowing or not knowing, in itself, this series does not use to classify relations.
It does not require a response. In this series the other party's response is material, not a settling of accounts (Action Theory Paper 0, §6.2). A side that gives no response is still a side of the relation.
It does not require recognition. F5 has already made clear that what it explains is how recognition is possible, and that the stretch in which recognition has not occurred and coexistence must proceed regardless lies outside its range. What Relation Theory reads is precisely the effects that go on happening in that stretch too.
It does not require commitment. Some relations need no commitment; how commitment binds a person once it enters a relation belongs to Paper 3.
A moment is enough. A chance occurrence at one moment is also a relation: two subjects, and an interaction took place. If an act happens to affect a stranger's mood, then so long as that one effect can be identified, there is a very thin relation; it leaves a very thin sediment, and what happened, happened. A one-off transaction between strangers is also a relation; the force that contracts and institutions give it is not in this paper.
From this, one thing must be held down. What dealings sediment into over time is the question Relation Theory asks of every relation; it is not a condition of entry for a relation's existing. A relation need not first sediment into something thick before it counts as a relation; a relation of one moment may leave a very thin sediment. Conversely, the sentence that a chance occurrence at one moment is also a relation is not to be read as saying that wherever there is causal influence there is a relation: that requires that the other side be a bearer (H2), and that an identifiable effect land on that side's conditions of occurrence. Identifiable means that 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; what is meant is that the effect itself is determinate, not that someone can produce the material at this moment; where the material cannot be produced, the matter stays undetermined (H8). Diffuse aggregate effects, an emission, a shift in prices, of which one cannot say between which two bearer positions they run, this series does not enter between two persons; what arrives by way of an institution's provisions, of which one cannot say whose effect it is, belongs to the relation between persons and constructs (H11). A construct left behind, a book or a sentence, still lies, by H1, between two persons. 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. H1 sets the threshold of relation; H5 names the effect that lands on the threshold.
Two everyday words should be made clear in passing. When this series speaks of dealings, one-way dealings count too: there need not be both a going and a coming. When it speaks of what passes between one another, it means between two bearer positions, and it does not require that both respond. Between the reader and the author there is only a going and no coming, and these are dealings all the same; the effect between them runs in one direction only, and it is still a matter between one another.
There are several cases at the boundary, read by this proposition:
Loving someone who does not know one exists is a one-way relation. Two things must be kept apart here: how the actual words and deeds of the one loved, or what that person has left, have entered this side; and a merely imagined image. In the second, one does not claim to have received that person's response.
A relation with the dead, as in reading Plato, is a relation. The actual effect of the words, deeds and works the dead have left is read apart from today's imagination and reconstruction from memory; no response is required of the dead. Whether there is another side after death, and what it is like, this series does not judge; to say that nothing happens any more where he is would already be a judgment, so it does not say that either. That he is no longer in this world and cannot respond is common sense; what this series reads is the construct he left entering the conditions of occurrence of the living.
Coming upon a sentence left by someone who lived before is a one-way relation across generations. Action Theory Paper 8 has written of this kind of finding: "This kind of finding runs one way: the earlier person does not know he has been found, and cannot answer." That I gain understanding does not mean that the earlier person has promised me anything.
Infants and subjects-to-be are within the domain of bearers (H2).
H2 The other side of a relation must be a bearer; between a subject and a stone there is no relation
A subject and a stone cannot establish a relation. A stone can block a path, can injure someone, can be carved into a work; it enters people's conditions of occurrence, but on its side there is no bearer. A relation needs both sides to be bearer positions.
The range of bearers follows Value Theory P1 V14: "Being an end is fundamental; having one's own ends is its corollary", and this holds for every other in the domain of bearers, "the subject-to-be included." So infants and subjects-to-be are within Relation Theory's domain of bearers: having a bearer position does not take as its threshold whether one can at present express a complete law of one's own. This is wider than Meaning Theory's domain of quantification. Meaning Theory P1 Y3: "This series treats bearers that have acquired the fourteenth-level self-as-end source-position and that have a boundary of departure." An infant is within Relation Theory's range, not within Meaning Theory's domain of quantification; when Relation Theory calls on a proposition of Meaning Theory, it stays within that domain, and where it uses one outside the domain, it says that the use is carried over.
A medium does not replace the bearer. Paper, stone, the inscription on a stele are what an effect is carried across by; the side of the relation is the person who carved the inscription, not the stele.
Animals stand at the edge of this proposition. Value Theory P1 V14 writes: "A gateless object, say an animal, has its experience, can be an end that is cared for, but does not, as a bearer of end-value, fill the fact-position here." ("End" there means the side that is cared for, not an end in itself.) What passes between people and animals the main line of this series does not treat; it is left for a dedicated paper in the future.
§2 A Relation Is a Construct
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
A relation is a construct. This must be said precisely, because it is the sentence most easily read as something else: a thing set up above the two people, with a will of its own, able to speak for both of them.
Upstream is consistent on this point. Aesthetics Ray 13 writes that the one who chisels does not "set up between the two a construct that would judge each one's law for him"; when it speaks there of the construct coming into place, "it does not mean that something has been set up between the two; it means that such dealings have become ordinary". Conflict Treatise §24: "Consensus does not automatically generate a third first-person legislator. The two may perfectly well have a standing rule from then on, sorting household matters into three kinds. But that rule's binding force must pass separately through each party's own law, or come from a procedure both have acknowledged. It is not a third law above the two." Value Theory P6 V76: "relational crossing, resonance, joint decision and joint arrangement are not by themselves enough to merge existing sources of value into one". The passages in Action Theory, the Second Critique and Meaning Theory that run the same way are listed in Paper 0, §2.
So when this paper says that a relation is a construct, it means a construct of this kind: when the effect of one side enters the other side's conditions of occurrence, it leaves the construct there. Dealings sediment into arrangements, rules, expectations and habits, which go on working afterward; these are what Relation Theory has to read, not conditions of a relation's existing (H1). The binding force of these sediments passes separately through each party's own law, or comes from a procedure both parties have already recognized. A relation has dealings as its carrier; it does not take "the relation itself" or "the relation as a whole" as a bearer.
What is not set up here is a third first person who legislates for both parties and passes final judgment on their own laws. A procedure both have accepted remains valid as usual, and so does a third party's explanation; what is not set up is only that position raised above the two laws. Between the author and the reader this holds all the more: the book's working in the reader does not make the author the reader's legislator, nor does it make "this relation" a third person who judges anything for them.
"We" is read in two branches. Whenever Relation Theory says "we," it must state which branch it means.
One branch is doing things together, per Action Theory Paper 8, D47, D48 and §5. Moral Law P1 §1.2 speaks from this side: "16DD is the event-layer that emerges when subjects encounter one another—the synergistic emergence of multiple legislative subjects: 'We cannot-not do C.'"
The other branch is mutual recognition, per Value Theory P6 V77: resonance is a mutual recognition between the two, "and what is recognised is that the other has values of his own. It does not constitute a third value, a third source or a third bearer".
What both branches give is only the minimal bound past which "we" does not stand in for anyone; neither is a sufficient theory of any kind of relation. In analyzing cooperation, love or marriage, one may meet questions of each of these two kinds; which branch is actually in play is checked case by case, and is not assigned in advance by the kind of relation. One borrowing must be guarded against: using the "we" of mutual recognition to back a ruling on something done together. "We love each other, so you have to agree": this sentence borrows mutual recognition to pass final judgment on a matter done together. Mutual recognition generates no third bearer; the binding force of doing things together still passes separately through each party's own law.
Institution Theory says the same thing from another side. Institution Theory Paper 5, Z31: "An institution cannot produce a 'we.' The framework's commitment and actual mutual recognition between persons are two things; the former does not achieve the latter on persons' behalf."
H4 A relation is the setting in which cultivation happens, not the source of cultivation
Action Theory Paper 0, §6.2: "relationships are the occasions in which cultivation happens, not its source." F5 §4.2 says it from the other side: "ontological autonomy support, strictly speaking, exists only at the relational layer." Of the institutional layer it says: "It can manage to not colonize, but it cannot achieve pure nurturing."
Taken together, the two sentences are set up as one hard constraint: one may say that relation is the only possible setting of pure cultivation; one may not say that cultivation comes from relation, nor that norms come from relation. When a person is cultivated in a relation, what grows is his own; what the relation gives is the setting and the avenue, not the source of what grows. Institution Theory cites the same passage to set its own boundary: Institution Theory Paper 5, Z28, writes that "The pure kind of cultivation exists only in relations", and it too speaks of the setting.
This proposition also fixes how Paper 7 is to be read. The subject needs relation; what it needs is the setting and the avenue, not a source.
§3 Collision
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
This series calls the effects between one another collision. The word is taken here in a broad sense: it reads structure and carries no pejorative sense; its weight falls on "between one another," not on friction. Where the other party already has a law of his own in operation, one goes on to read how this effect meets that law; where the other party does not yet have a law he can fully express, an infant for instance, collision occurs all the same, because having a bearer position does not take that as its threshold (H2).
Upstream has the same usage. F5 §5.1: "two entirely legitimate, non-universalizable individual cannot-nots do collide. SAE acknowledges the incommensurability of individual cannot-nots. Precisely because they are incommensurable, mutual chiseling, walk-away, and ultimately external arbitration are needed to handle conflict". Collision is the underlying fact; mutual chiseling, walking away and external arbitration are ways of handling it.
Relation Theory's collision is wider than the Conflict Treatise's. The Conflict Treatise §1 says of the kind that carries some incompatibility without passing the gates that it "may be trouble, may be loss, may be a thing that hurts badly, but it is not conflict in the sense used here". Relation Theory's collision takes this kind in, and takes in as well resonance, illumination, and effects that carry the direction of colonization without passing through conflict. The reader comes upon a sentence of the author's and his eyes light up: that is collision. He reads another and thinks it wrong: that is collision too. He reads Kant, agrees strongly in some places and disagrees in others; agreement and disagreement are both collision.
This proposition does not say that collision is a good thing, nor that it is a bad one. It says only this: once there is an actual effect between two bearer positions, that effect is what Relation Theory reads.
H6 Collision has two subclasses: conflict, and mutual chiseling; mutual chiseling is judged by process, not by identity
Conflict is the kind that has passed the Conflict Treatise's two gates. The first gate, in the Conflict Treatise §2, reads: "Two independently formed laws, each its bearer's own and each already formed, require actions that cannot be jointly realized in the same situation, and three things hold at once: they cannot certify each other's arrival, neither may legislate for the other, and no single party's withdrawal can complete the settlement." Its operation layer reads: "The other end enters as a requirement that the other bears in the first person and by which the other goes on organizing their action." Relation Theory uses both layers as they stand and sets up nothing of its own here.
Mutual chiseling is the route of F5 §5.4: "Mutual chiseling presupposes that both parties enter the same process." Entering the same process is the precondition of mutual chiseling, not the whole of it: two people who have entered the same process must also, within that process, actually chisel open each other's judgments before there is mutual chiseling. Aesthetics Ray 13 writes of it that "what is chiseled is a judgment, not a person". One sentence too on how mutual chiseling stands to collision: mutual chiseling is itself a run of collisions, and at the same time it is handling the earlier one. Both points are this series' own undertaking.
Identity is not mutual chiseling; identity is a label that classifies relations. So mutual chiseling is judged by process, not by identity. Parents and an adult child can, in some particular matter, enter the same reciprocal process, and in that matter there may be mutual chiseling; the same goes for teacher and student. Conversely, unrequited love, a relation to the dead and a one-way finding across generations, wherever the two have not entered the same process, are called only collision. Between the reader and the author, the author does not know the reader, and they have not entered the same process; however deep the illumination the reader gains from the book, it is collision, not mutual chiseling.
In the self-relation it is not called mutual chiseling: a position in time is not another subject. Nor does the word "conflict" enter the self-relation. Both points are developed in Paper 2.
There is a sentence from a working demonstration that can be read alongside. F6 Appendix D, item 5: "Conflict is not the enemy of the relationship. Conflict is the relationship's chisel." This paper takes from it only its shape: conflict can be an avenue of chiseling. Whether it is one depends on what actually happened that time; it is not obtained in one step from the word "conflict."
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
Conflict cannot be guaranteed not to occur. The upstream of this sentence is in the Conflict Treatise. Its §6 is titled "Conflict cannot be exempted": "Two laws are each internally generated, each separately arrived at, and are not produced by one and the same procedure. That being so, there is no reason whatever to guarantee that their action requirements are compatible in every concrete situation." §29 writes again: "incompatibility cannot be excluded in advance".
Why it holds within a relation can be said more concretely. While both parties are still in dealings of action and the relation is not exited, the other party's actions and the constructs they leave keep entering my conditions of occurrence, and my position of revision is always facing another law that I do not control; between the two laws there is no shared procedure that guarantees they are compatible. So this sentence is written as "cannot be guaranteed not to occur," not as "necessarily occurs." "Necessarily occurs" says too much: two laws may very well go through a long stretch of dealings without ever requiring incompatible actions in the same situation. "Cannot be guaranteed" says that no procedure can exclude it in advance.
In a relation in which no such requirement appears on the other side, this sentence has to be written another way. The reader reads Kant and disagrees at one point. This disagreement carries an incompatibility, yet it is not on that account conflict in the Conflict Treatise's sense: Kant is no longer in this world, no requirement appears that he bears in the first person and by which he goes on organizing his action in the same situation, and so the operation layer of the first gate has no object. So in relations that are one-way, across generations, or in which one party does not know, this series writes: at least collision cannot be guaranteed not to occur. Agreement and disagreement both lie within this collision.
What divides the two cases must be stated precisely: they are divided by whether such a requirement appears on the other side in the same situation, not by whether the parties know. If one party does not know, while the other is still in dealings of action, and such a requirement actually appears, whether it passes the Conflict Treatise's gates is checked separately under the Conflict Treatise, and is not ruled out in one step by "not knowing."
"The same situation" follows the object layer of the Conflict Treatise §2: "What is under discussion here is, ontologically, two independently formed laws, each its bearer's own, requiring actions that cannot be jointly realized in the same situation." Seen from outside, the same situation comes down to two things: whether the two requirements bear on one and the same thing to be done; and whether one party's acting on his requirement would change whether the other party can at this moment act on his own. Only where both are present is it the same situation; this criterion is this series' own reading. It is a structural judgment about the two requirements: it does not wait to be read until one party has acted and actually blocked the other; nor is the same situation the same as incompatibility already present, which is checked separately under the Conflict Treatise. It requires neither being in the same place nor knowing about each other. Three cases follow that must be spelled out. Rousseau and Kant were contemporaries who never met and never corresponded; Kant read Rousseau's books, was shaken by them, and changed his own thinking. Rousseau's requirement arrived by way of the book, and what the book changed was how Kant thought, not whether he could act on his own requirement; Kant's going on to think and write along the changed lines did not change whether Rousseau could at that moment act on his own requirement either; it is not the same situation, and it is read as collision, and however heavy this one blow, it is collision (H6). Suppose Kant had not only read but had also demanded that the book be banned, and Rousseau never knew it was he: the two requirements would then bear on the same thing; whether Kant's step would change whether Rousseau could let the book circulate is a further question; only if both are present is the case checked under the Conflict Treatise, and it is not ruled out in one step by Rousseau's not knowing. Where it cannot yet be confirmed whether the other side already has a formed law, then if a requirement appears that he bears in the first person and by which he goes on organizing his action, one may enter by the Conflict Treatise's operation layer, which reads: "I do not certify whether it has attained the standing of a law of its own, and I do not cancel it on the other's behalf for want of such certification" (its "standing" is what this series calls qualification); where it has been confirmed that the object type does not obtain, one does not enter; where this is confirmed only after entering, the Conflict Treatise §2 applies, "If it is later confirmed that the object type never obtained, one exits — one does not turn and judge the other", and the exit spoken of there means that the case does not belong to the Conflict Treatise. In both cases the relation and the collision hold as before (H5), and an infant's bearer position is not affected by the Conflict Treatise's gates either (H2). A last wish across generations: when a living person reads it, it is the construct the wish leaves entering his conditions of occurrence, and at least collision cannot be guaranteed not to occur; how matters stand between him and a living executor is checked separately, and may belong to the relation between persons and constructs.
In the self-relation the corresponding sentence is also that collision cannot be guaranteed not to occur, with the reason changed to the Conflict Treatise §17: "One's own law may be revised by oneself." Once the law has been revised, it may run into what was left before the revision. Paper 2 develops this.
One reading of this proposition slides easily and must be blocked. That conflict cannot be guaranteed not to occur does not say that conflict is the mark of a good relation, nor that conflict ought to be created. The same section, Conflict Treatise §6, also says: "Better no conflict where none is needed."
§4 Two Directions
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
In Relation Theory, cultivation and colonization are directions, taken in a broad sense.
The broad sense comes from F5 §4, a section titled "Colonization and Nurturing: Negative and Positive Transmission". §4.1 treats transmission at the relational layer: "Relational transmission nodes — parents, mentors, romantic partners, closest friends — influence individuals without passing through rational review, entering the subject's construct directly." This sentence speaks of the transmission nodes in close relations; Relation Theory takes it only as the source for the relational layer's being a layer of transmission, not as grounds for saying that the effects in every relation bypass rational review. §4.2 gives the positive account of cultivation: "Nurturing is not the opposite of colonization — it is not installing a 'better' cannot-not to replace a 'worse' one. Nurturing is making space for cannot-not to grow from within."
From this each direction has its own characterization. Cultivation is making space; colonization is pouring in and occupying. Aesthetics Ray 13 writes of the same pair: "Cultivation is the other's blow helping you grow your own eyes; colonization is a ruler that is not your own taking the place of your own law." Aesthetics Ray 12 writes of the side that leaves space: "He can point things out to you; the one who sees has to be you."
Direction, and whether it took hold. Direction is where an effect is headed; whether that direction took hold lies on the other party's side. In a relation, cultivation and colonization are both directions; whether one has really cultivated, or really colonized, depends further on the other party's later understanding and action. So this series reads two things separately: direction is read on this one effect, by its structure, and can be read at the time; whether it took hold is seen in how the other party afterward understands and acts. Neither looks at motive. The value layer already has this shape. Value Theory P3 V27: "cultivation is complete only when the receiving end's own step actually occurs, and the enactor holds no share in it"; of the colonization half, the same proposition writes: "It is not a class of action but a state; what brings it about and whether it holds are two questions." For the two directions in the broad sense too, whether either takes hold or not falls on the receiving side. Where the other party's side has been occupied but this effect was not headed there, the occupation is not entered on this effect's account. V27: "A work evokes a candidate in the normal way; another relation subsequently arranges that candidate as an irrefutable attribution. The work supplied material; it was not a colonizing action." Read from outside, direction is visible; of whether it took hold, the half that is action is visible, while the half that is understanding needs the first person.
What colonization that has taken hold looks like must be stated precisely. F5 §3.1 writes that introjected colonization is "an externally installed 'must' that has turned around to define the subject." Relation Theory reads the other party's side by this: it looks at what maintains things at the time, not at their first origin; that is, at whether what was poured in has occupied the position that should have been made by the person's own law. Value Theory P3 V28 has a sentence running the same way at the value layer: "Provenance as a measure therefore fails entirely: colonization cannot be inferred from an external source, nor immunity from an internal one." A method learned from a teacher, reconsidered and avowed by the person himself, does not count as colonization taken hold because it first came from outside.
What cultivation looks at must also be stated precisely. Whether a work, an arrangement or a piece of guidance counts as cultivation depends on whether it left space at the time: only if it did does it point in the direction of cultivation; plain instilling that leaves no space is, on the contrary, not. The author hopes the book will be understood; this hope does not in itself necessarily point in the direction of cultivation. Where the book takes for the reader a step the reader should take himself, at that point it does not point in the direction of cultivation; if it also fixes for him how he ought to judge, it slides in the direction of colonization; whether it took hold is seen in how the reader afterward understands and acts. Meaning Theory P3 Y24 has a sentence that can be used as it stands: "what anticipatory enactment leaves behind is conditions, not an orientation deposited elsewhere".
The two directions are not on one scale. Cultivation is not the opposite of colonization, so the same act can carry both directions: making space at one position, and pouring in and occupying at another. A teacher explains a way of looking at problems thoroughly, and from then on the student can see for himself: that is making space. In the same explanation he presents his own preference for a certain conclusion as the only possible conclusion: at that point the effect heads toward pouring in and occupying; if the student afterward lets it do his judging in place of his own, that direction has taken hold. The two directions coexist; they do not cancel each other, nor do they combine into one overall net value. The two directions may also be hard to tell apart. F5 §4.3: "A person with strong autonomous motivation and a person deeply under introjected colonization can look exactly the same from outside: both work hard, both persist, both produce results." Care can grow into clinging, and discipline can also grow into support that lifts a person up.
Or it can carry no direction at all. In a simple interaction, the substance may constitute no direction at all: asking a passerby the way once, handing over change at a counter. It changes the other party's situation: the passerby now knows where a stranger is going, and the one who takes the change has one more bill in hand; yet it heads neither toward making space nor toward pouring in and occupying; the point that was changed is taken up or set down by his own law, and is not made for him by me. Carrying no direction is not having no effect: the effect is entered as usual; it is only that neither direction is constituted. If, in asking the way, one says "You have to take me there, or you're not a good person," a criterion has been hung on it, and it slides in the direction of colonization (Paper 4, H37). For the same content domain, period and position, an effect can be reported as carrying one direction, both directions, or neither; where the material is insufficient, it is reported separately as undetermined. Undetermined is a state of the evidence, not a fourth kind of effect. Undetermined, both directions and no direction: none of the three may pass for another. The two directions in the broad sense do not exhaust all effects (own undertaking). A sentence of the same form at the value layer serves only as corroboration. Value Theory P3 V33: "The three classes cannot be pressed back into two"; "what it means in practice for the criterion to be narrow rather than wide is, in good part, that the third class is not swallowed".
Directions, not labels. To say that an effect carries the direction of colonization is to say that it heads toward pouring in and occupying, not that it has already occupied; it is not to attach the label "colonization" to this effect, to the person who did it, or to this relation. So this series does not write "This is colonization," "He is a colonizer," or "This is a colonizing relation"; it writes that an effect carries the direction of colonization, or points in the direction of cultivation. Still less may onlookers use these two words to pass judgment on other people's relations.
The Grounds of Direction Lie at the Time
Which direction an effect heads in has its grounds at the time that effect occurred; it is not judged backward from what grew later. What grew later is read for whether it took hold, and does not reverse the judgment of the direction at the time. Cues and traces are read by the Conflict Treatise's three tiers: there are cues; there is no closure-guaranteeing criterion; and there are, besides, traces visible from outside; "None may pass for another: cues are not criteria, and traces are not verdicts" (Conflict Treatise §3, §26). F5 §4.2 gives a present-tense criterion of distinction: "The distinguishing criterion: instrumental autonomy support carries an implicit output expectation ('I give you freedom, but you'd better use that freedom to produce what I want'); ontological autonomy support carries no such condition ('I give you space; whatever grows is yours')." This criterion has its class of application: before giving it, §4.2 first says, "But a trap that must be confronted: not all 'autonomy support' constitutes nurturing." What it divides is two kinds within autonomy support. Outside this class, as with a chance influence, a piece of persuasion or a word of criticism, each direction is looked at on its own terms: cultivation looks at whether that effect actually made space at the time; colonization looks at whether that effect was headed toward pouring in and occupying. The absence of an output expectation does not by itself certify cultivation; the presence of a hope does not by itself certify occupation. Whether an expectation is present, and whether space was made, can be inferred fallibly from arrangements, from words and deeds, and from reactions to deviation; it does not rest on a party's own claim, "I want nothing in return." Every reading that reports a direction states toward whom, in which content domain, over which period, at which position and on what material; where the material is insufficient, it stays undetermined.
Closure Is Not Judged within a Relation
Between persons there is no further class of effect called "closure" to be judged separately: an effect heads toward cultivation, or toward colonization, and a simple interaction can also carry neither direction, which is not closure either; closure is suited to discussion only where an institution faces an individual. Sealing the other party's channels of refusal, revocation, exit, revision, change of direction and expression, or his path to third parties (dealing with others, seeking confirmation and help from outside), carries, between persons, the direction of colonization: to seal his paths to saying no, to revising and to leaving is to head toward occupying, with my will, the step that should have been made by his own law. Two passages upstream run the same way. Meaning Theory P3 Y25 writes that if a relation seals the other's "channels of refusal, revision, exit and change of direction", then "at those positions it is no longer support but the occupation of the office of constitution". The Conflict Treatise §20 calls the kind of dependency that leaves the other unable to say no to the intervener "the gentle form of colonization", and the same section at once qualifies this: "But not all dependency is colonization. People depend on each other in any case: a child on care, a patient on treatment, an apprentice on a master. Judged colonization is that kind alone: it was made, and it locked the channel of refusal." What these two passages originally speak of is, in Y25, a relation that goes by the name of support, and in §20, intervention on the unilateral path; here they are extended to persons in general, and only as far as the channels they themselves list (own undertaking). Expression is already in Y25's first item; see its original sense, quoted below. What §20 lists is the other's "authority, channels or practical possibility of refusing, interrupting, revising, exiting and restating themselves"; of these, interrupting and restating are not listed separately here, and fall under exit, refusal, revision and expression. Revocation and the path to third parties are not extended from these two passages: they carry this direction because sealing his paths to saying no, to revising and to leaving is in itself headed toward occupying his own step (own undertaking). The path to third parties this series lists separately as a channel; where revocation itself is sealed, that falls at the layer of basic rights under Rights Theory P5 F21; see below. Between persons, when this series says sealed, it follows the original sense of Meaning Theory P3 Y25, whose English writes "sealed off" here: "what is sealed off is the channel of actual expression, revision, exit or change of direction, not those positions themselves, which cannot be taken"; that is, the channel cannot be reached in running, while the position is still there. This sense of the word is also used for revocation and for the path to third parties; what is borrowed is only Y25's sense of the word, not an extension of its conclusion to these two. Where the path can still be walked, and has only been blocked once or made hard to travel, it is not called sealed, and it still carries the direction of colonization (Paper 3, H26, the second case); where one particular exercise is blocked, that is checked separately under Rights Theory P5 F20 (H9). If what is sealed is exit, refusal and revocation themselves, that is what this series calls sealing off, the case Rights Theory P5 F21 rules out: "a constraint may set the conditions of a standing bond, but it may not seal exit, refusal, and revocation themselves", and at the layer of basic rights it is, in addition, violation (H9); whether the sealing of other channels is violation is checked separately against F21's two boundaries. In the self-relation the word is used in the same sense: a person who, in running, makes his own step of revision unreachable has sealed his own revision, and this is read as locking; where the step is only hard to travel and can still be reached, it is pressure and does not amount to locking (Paper 3, H32); in neither case is violation spoken of (Paper 2, H18, H19).
Three things about barring a path must be kept apart. First, when this paper speaks of barring a path, that is this series' usage: it means the step that is blocked; whether that channel thereby becomes unreachable in running, that is, whether it is sealed in the sense above, is a further question. Second, Action Theory Paper 6's "not closing the new hire's ways" says that not one of those doors is shut; the closing there, by Meaning Theory P3 Y25, is sealing in the sense above, and the same paper's §3 sentence quoted in §6 below, "this is not closing a way", has the same sense. If he means to go and pester someone who has already refused him, and I do not pass on his messages or give him the address, what I bar is his step across another person's boundary. That step is not within what his own law can accomplish on its own; blocking it does not occupy a step he should have made himself; of others the basic layer asks only forbearance (H9), and this carries no such direction. Something he asked me in advance to keep for him: while the request stands, he can still take it back in person, and if I act by his law, this carries no such direction; if he takes it back in person and I still hold on to it, what I am acting against is his taking-back at this moment, and it carries the direction of colonization. If he has sealed in advance even his taking-back at this moment, "When the time comes, don't give it to me even if I beg you," that is yesterday's self-binding in advance of today, read according to Paper 2, §6; how that stretch is checked at the layer of basic rights is also found there. Third, in the barring of a path, what is poured into him is not a content; what occupies the step is my will. The pouring-in half can be without content; what is occupied is the decision of his own step.
Inward and Outward
Inward and outward must be told apart here. Withdrawing my own side, no longer discussing a matter, no longer cooperating, no longer keeping in touch, ending contact: this is my exit; as far as this withdrawal goes, it carries no direction of colonization, even if the other party's cost rises as a result. Second Critique, Chapter Six §6: "To exit is to stop lending one's own strength"; Conflict Treatise §14: "Actual relations and channels of contact may be terminated permanently." The kind directed at the other party is different: when the other party has said no, proposed a revision, wants to leave, has said it out loud or has turned to others for help, and I therefore add consequences for him, use the occasion to apply pressure, or go and tell others not to deal with him, these carry the direction of colonization. Second Critique, Chapter Two §5: "when he says no to me, I add no consequence to him for it." Reporting truthfully and the work of one's own post are not counted here; that is ordinary giving of feedback; Action Theory Paper 6, §3 and D35 have an example running the same way. The details of this division are developed in Paper 6.
The Narrow Sense at the Value Layer
Value Theory has in addition a narrow sense of cultivation and colonization, which appears at the value layer: whether a content has become someone's value content, and whether the constitutive position is occupied by an external end. That sense is used as in Value Theory P3 V42, and is written on the spot as "cultivation at the value layer" and "colonization at the value layer," or with the proposition number attached. Wherever this series writes cultivation and colonization without such a mark, they are in the broad sense given here.
H9 Violation is judged separately, and only at the layer of basic rights; it and the direction of colonization are two lines
Basic rights pass through neither power nor recognition; they are derived from the subject itself. Rights Theory P2: "basic rights are derived independently from one's own law, presuppose no external recognition ontologically, and in inter-subject operation require only restraint-type recognition". They are already there when a relation is entered. So anyone who harms another person's basic rights commits violation.
The criterion of violation follows the two boundaries of Rights Theory P5 F21. In plain words: the dimensions a person has already encapsulated as his own, those outside can neither exclude, nor ghostwrite, nor redraw; where two people share a space, there can be constraints, but they must stay within the limit. The original runs as follows. The encapsulation boundary is not constituted by others: "for an encapsulated dimension that has passed P2 F6's two criteria, exclusion, ghostwriting, or redrawing by an outside force is violation without exception". The encounter boundary is concretized in shared fields, and for a constraint to stay within the limit it must meet all of the following: it holds exercise within the concretization of the encounter boundary; it closes no dimension already incorporated into the thick layer; it does not compress the life-substrate to the point of threatening the bearer; it does not seal off the channels of exit, refusal and revocation. Whatever crosses any one of them is violation. The item on exit can be put most directly: the exit right is a basic right of the person. What this series calls the exit right (its basic component) is what Rights Theory P4 F18 calls the self-determining floor of not being trapped; when Relation Theory speaks of exit, it means the act of withdrawing one's own side, not a right, and this floor appears only where violation is under discussion (developed in Paper 3, H26). One particular exercise being blocked can also be violation: Rights Theory P5 F20's axis of the stratum of exercise lists "A single exercise: one concrete exercise is blocked — a gathering dispersed, a text confiscated — while the practice and the capacity remain." Collision and violation are not matched one-to-one onto the two boundaries: "of two constraints falling alike on the encounter boundary, one is a limit and one a violation" (Rights Theory P5, end of §II). The criterion is fixed by structure: "decided by structure, not by motive"; "a constraint indignantly rejected can stay within the limit, and an action gladly received can already have crossed the line". So there is an asymmetry between violation and the direction of colonization: violation looks at structure, and once the line is crossed it is violation, whatever the other party later understands; whether the direction of colonization took hold depends on the other party's later course (H8).
The direction of colonization looks at whether an effect heads toward pouring in and occupying; violation looks at whether these two boundaries are crossed. Each of the two lines is judged by its original definition, and neither is inferred from the other. Second Critique, Chapter Three §3: "Whether something is colonization, and whether it is violation, is judged in each case by the original definition, and neither is inferred from the other." With the two lines judged apart, there are three combinations to be distinguished; the cell in which neither line falls also exists, carrying no direction of colonization and crossing no boundary, as in asking the way once (H8). Carrying only the direction of colonization, without crossing a boundary: influence that stays within the limit, teaching and persuasion, as well as making a path hard to travel, or blocking a path without crossing these two boundaries, all fall here, and whether it took hold is seen separately in the other party's later course. Crossing a boundary without carrying the direction of colonization: compressing the other party's life-substrate need not carry the direction of colonization. Both together: indoctrination. Rights Theory P5 F21: "Indoctrination is the clearest case: an educator who instils too much — the motive is transmission, and the instructed even feels the benefit — has still committed violation and not limitation", the reason being that "it writes in the educated party's stead from the educator's position and crowds out the party's own unfolding". Teaching and indoctrination are separated by this: where the effect itself already writes in his stead from a position and crowds out his own unfolding, it is violation; where it only pushes in that direction, and he can still take it up and can also set it down, it carries only the direction of colonization and is not violation. An effect that both parties take for cultivation can cross the line and at the same time carry the direction of colonization.
Relation Theory can identify violation; it does not handle violation. It can say, "This time the line was crossed; this is violation," and state which item of which boundary was crossed; protection and disposition after the violation pass by handover under the Conflict Treatise §5: "Once asymmetric operations begin to substantively compress my capacity to interrupt, to exit, to speak, or my basic conditions, this treatise no longer hears the case alone" (rendered from the Chinese page). What those effects have left in the dealings Relation Theory reads as usual, and does not erase from the history of the dealings. Nor does violation pass final judgment on the person, or automatically end a relation.
Of others, the basic layer asks only forbearance. Rights Theory P2: "What the basic layer demands of others is forbearance, not bestowal". So what basic rights yield within a relation is only the other party's forbearance; care, company, commitment and response are none of them things that basic rights demand of the other party.
Violation is not spoken of in the self-relation. Violation needs an external position. Second Critique, Chapter Three §3: "Value Theory's self-colonization — 'the source remains outside, while the running need not be' — needs no external position, while violation has to ghostwrite from an external position." When a person, in running, makes the step of his own revision tomorrow actually unreachable, this is read as locking, and Paper 2 treats it.
§5 Expectation
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
As dealings accumulate, one party arranges something in his mind that points at how the other party will act afterward: he will probably come again next week; she will understand when she sees this sentence; he won't leave. This series calls this kind of thing expectation, and here gives it only its minimal definition; how it grows out of dealings, and how it changes the conditions of what can afterward be said and done, Paper 4 develops.
Expectation is a construct left behind. It is on the side of the one who expects, formed as a sediment of dealings; afterward it enters his own conditions of occurrence, and it can also enter the other party's conditions of occurrence by way of his words and deeds. The reader has read three of the author's books and has an expectation of the fourth; this expectation is on the reader's side, and the author knows nothing of it.
Expectation does not turn into a duty. F6 §3.1(f) divides "expression" at the marriage tier into three grounds: "First, where it is a requirement established within the bearer's own law, set for themselves so as not to let silence stand in for self-bearing, it is handled under one's own law, as a duty. Second, where it is an explicit arrangement between the two parties, sustained by the power of the relation, it is handled as accountability." Third, where it is only an expectation of the relation, it is "for now not forced into either" (rendered from the Chinese page). The second belongs to the institutional part; the first belongs to each person himself; the third is the object of Relation Theory. The same passage also writes: "expectation alone does not establish either of the first two in reverse". Expectation can leave the third slot: if the person of whom something is expected takes it on within his own law, it enters the first; if it becomes a role requirement explicitly arranged by both parties and maintained by relational power, it enters the second, and that is a matter of accountability, which this series does not judge. Relation Theory does not declare that expectation never falls under those two; it holds down only one thing: from expectation alone, neither duty nor accountability can be derived.
This proposition has a harder root on the side of basic rights. 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". Once there is a duty toward others, exit can no longer be spoken of. So this series does not write that one party "owes" the other a duty; expectation does not turn into a duty, nor does commitment, and how commitment binds a person is for Paper 3 to say.
Expectation does not certify avowal. My expecting him to stay does not mean he has promised to stay; my having understood him does not mean that he agrees with my understanding either. Conflict Treatise §22: "That I have understood why they are like this does not mean they have agreed to my understanding, still less that the matter is thereby settled." Expectation is a construct on my side; whether the other party has avowed anything on his side, expectation cannot tell.
Expectation and commitment are kept apart. A commitment is my placing an expectation with the other party; expectation can also grow without passing through me. My causing someone to form an expectation does not mean I have promised him anything.
§6 Range
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
There is no clear line between relation and institution: teacher and student, superior and subordinate, all stand between the two. In the relations this series discusses, it does not discuss the part that belongs to institution, and so it does not discuss rights and power; it discusses them only by how people collide with one another.
This line has to land somewhere operable. Within an institution, there are still relations between persons: what the institution does not provide for, or what goes beyond its provisions. This part lies between persons and belongs to Relation Theory. The relation between persons and that construct, the institution, is a matter of power and recognition-based rights, and does not belong to Relation Theory. Nor does Relation Theory set out from the standpoint of power and recognition-based rights: it does not borrow their concepts to build its argument, does not map its terms onto theirs, and does not judge their readings. Basic rights and "no duty toward others" are two exceptions: they pass through neither power nor recognition (H9, H10).
The Conflict Treatise has already handled a case of superior and subordinate in this way. §21: "Other authorities of role, of law, or of procedure settle separately within their own domains and have nothing to do with this path." §5 gives the way out: when asymmetric operations begin substantively to compress the other party's capacity to interrupt, to exit, to speak, or his basic conditions, "this treatise no longer hears the case alone"; what is handed over is protection and disposition; the effects those operations leave in the dealings Relation Theory reads as usual.
To pick out the part that "goes beyond the provisions," one must first know what the provisions are. So Relation Theory acknowledges the provisions and does not judge them: what a position requires is taken as fact and used to draw the range; the institutional background is registered as a condition of the effects; it does not assess whether that background is legitimate, does not read its power readings, and does not write oughts for the construct. Where the provision cannot be obtained, it records that this part of the background is unchecked, and does not declare by feel that the purely private part has been found. Action Theory Paper 6, §3 has already given the way to divide: "When the manager asks how the new hire is doing, he answers by the facts, and from his place in the group; this is not closing a way." Nor does he trade a line in the year-end review for the new hire's doing things his way. A position and its authority are existing facts, and Relation Theory acknowledges them; what Relation Theory reads is what a person adds beyond his position: whether he uses the position to buy agreement, and how the two take up each other's words.
The range has two further edges. A person's synchronic internal contradictions Relation Theory does not develop; the Conflict Treatise §1, in the passage that begins "One last cell is drawn off," has already handed them to Value Theory P5 and to Action Theory. Animals are left for a future dedicated paper (H2).
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
The minimal condition of relation is a matter between two bearer positions (H1). When three people are together, the effects still occur pair by pair: A on C, C on B, A on B. Relation Theory records them this way, and does not merge the three into a "little circle" to keep one combined account. Dealings between two of them that enter the third person's conditions of occurrence as a construct left behind are entered on each of those two's accounts with the third: parents quarreling in front of their child are entered in two relations, father to child and mother to child. Pairwise accounting does not leave this share out, nor does it set up for it a third bearer called "this family of ours" (H3).
Passing through a third person does not release the instigator from his part of the account. If A has C tell B something, and the words reach B, A's effect on B remains on A's account, and C's passing it on is on C's account; both entries stand. Two people joining hands do not form a third bearer either: Action Theory Paper 8, D47 and D48, have already established that doing things together does not produce a position that legislates for both, still less a position that bears for both.
One case needs to be looked at on its own. Laughter IV §7.2 (which reads it there by Psychoanalysis IV §1.2) writes of two children exchanging a glance over the one they are bullying: "a 'non dubito' that can be maintained only by denying the other's independence is not non dubito but forced construct-closure". Read by pairwise accounting, there are three relations here: the glance between the two children is one collision, and Relation Theory records only this collision, without assigning it a level (Second Critique, Rules of the House, Eleven: "A level records one operation, by moment and by domain; it does not record a person"); each of the two children has his own effect on the third child, and each is read separately for the direction of colonization and for violation. Calling on others to isolate someone is broken down the same way: toward the one isolated, it is aimed at his path to third parties and carries the direction of colonization; toward those who are told not to deal with him, a separate entry is made (Paper 6, H56).
§7 Two Kinds of Acknowledging
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
F5 left a separate case in its version note: "The tension between the main theorem and the default of acknowledgment — the same matter given two routes, one requiring no qualification and one requiring a capacity — is held over as a separate case and is not settled here." Relation Theory does not settle this separate case; it only keeps separate books.
One book is acknowledgment that requires no qualification. What it acknowledges is the other party's standing as an end; the default is there already, and does not wait for the other party first to display anything. It has two grounds: F6's Premise V, under which non dubito is "not withdrawn on account of that subject's conduct"; and Value Theory P1 V14, "Being an end is fundamental".
The other book is the realization of recognition: a particular person, in a particular round of dealings, actually treating the other party as someone who has a law of his own; and cultivation. This book falls in the individual case: it has conditions, it has differences of capacity, and it can come to nothing.
Only with the two books kept apart can several things be said clearly. A child does not yet have a law he can fully express, and his standing as an end is not discounted on that account: that is the first book. How the parents actually recognize him, matter by matter, and make space for him, they will sometimes manage and sometimes not: that is the second book. The asymmetry of capacity between the two parties in care does not leave the one cared for with any less standing as an end. Love can go unanswered: to go unanswered is for the layer of mutuality in the second book not to be realized, not for the first book to be cancelled; the recognition and the effects that have already occurred one way are entered as usual. Both ways of mixing the books must be blocked: requiring a child first to have capacity before being acknowledged; or, for the sake of acknowledging the child, cancelling the parents' own position as subjects.
Basic rights stand on the side of the first book. Rights Theory P2: "Physiological or cognitive damage can lower exercise-bandwidth without lowering station-thickness." On Rights and Entitlements, F34, writes of the infant: "Basic rights: the host of standing is in itself, the infant holds them of its own, an end already, not to be violated." (F34's "standing" is the station of Rights Theory P2, not standing as an end.)
The acknowledging here and the Second Critique's concession are the same word in the Chinese, and hold different offices. Concession, in the Second Critique's glossary, is "what an act aimed at another's will hands over in its performance — it concedes that he can say no. What is conceded is a capacity — not a standing, and not the result of a test". The acknowledging in this paper's first book has as its object the default of standing as an end, not a capacity. To avoid confusion, wherever this series uses this sense, it writes out in full "acknowledgment that requires no qualification."
§8 Why Still Relate: Raised Only
So long as a relation is not exited, conflict cannot be guaranteed not to occur (H7); cultivation and colonization are entangled in dealings (Paper 5, H44). Yet it is precisely because of this that a subject needs relation, cannot-not seek relation, and is in relation. Seeking relation is the cannot-not of looking toward the other; between a subject and a stone no relation can be established (H2). The need and the seeking spoken of here are written, in the propositions, 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.
This paper only raises this question; it does not argue it. Nor do this paper's definitions rest on "need": H1 to H13 cite no sentence of Paper 7, and it is rather Paper 7 that has to use them. Why the subject still needs relation, what it needs and what it does not, what someone who finds no one lacks and what he does not lack: these are handed to Paper 7.
Two things are held down here first, so that the reader does not carry them forward with him. Need is not lack: someone who cannot find anyone able to respond to him is an end all the same, and is not thereby short of anything. Nor is need a duty: the cannot-not of looking toward the other is a conditional constitutive form, not an ought.
§9 Drawing Together and Downstream
This paper has established thirteen propositions. Taken together they say: the threshold of relation is very low; a moment, an act on one side, a bearer on the other side, and there is a relation. A relation is a construct, not a bearer; it is the setting of cultivation, not its source. The effects within a relation are all collision, and conflict and mutual chiseling are only two kinds of it. Cultivation and colonization are two directions, not labels; direction is read on this one effect, and whether it took hold is seen in the other party's later course. Violation is judged separately, at the layer of basic rights, by structure. Expectation is a construct left behind and does not turn into a duty. The range lies between persons, and between one person's yesterday, today and tomorrow, and does not include the relation between persons and constructs. Where three or more are involved, accounts are kept pair by pair. The two kinds of acknowledging are kept on separate books.
This paper does not prove that any relation is good, nor that any relation ought to occur, and it issues no ought on how one person is to treat another; that belongs to the Critiques.
Rectification of names. Several words here are shared with upstream; they are explained where they stand, and upstream is not revised.
This series says "minimal condition of relation," not "minimal structure," because the heading of Meaning Theory P1 Y4 already uses that phrase, for the structure of the meaning relation. Meaning Theory also calls its P1 the relation paper, and its object this relation; wherever this series refers to that relation of Meaning Theory's, it writes the meaning relation.
Power Theory has the phrase "cultivating relation," meaning a power relation with a positional difference; Rights Theory speaks of relational slots and relational positions; Institution Theory says "in that relation," meaning between a construct and persons. In this series "relation" means what lies between persons, and between one person's yesterday, today and tomorrow, by the minimal condition of H1, and it is not to be equated with these.
"Entanglement": F5 §5.4 has "entangled situations," meaning the cell in which exit does not dissolve the shared problem and the matter must be handed to institutions; Institution Theory Paper 1, Z4 writes "The interior is drawn by entanglement". When this series speaks of the entanglement of cultivation and colonization, it means the two directions tangled together in one stretch of dealings, even in one act, and this is not the same sense as either of those two.
Downstream. What this paper establishes, the papers that follow use as follows. How the relation, collision, direction and locking between one person's yesterday, today and tomorrow are read belongs to Paper 2. How what has been promised binds a person, and how it does not lock tomorrow, belongs to Paper 3. How expectation grows out of dealings, and how the moment of 16DD comes about, belongs to Paper 4. What dealings sediment into over time, how the two directions become entangled, and how dependency is divided, belong to Paper 5. Asymmetry, divergence, repair and ending belong to Paper 6. Why the subject still needs relation belongs to Paper 7. The division of labor between this series and upstream, its meeting with outside traditions, and the general table of words shared with upstream belong to Paper 0.
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 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). 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). SAE Conflict Treatise: How Subjecthood Is Not Swallowed by Conflict Itself [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22313628
Qin, H. (2026). SAE: The Second Critique [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23250387
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 Legislating for Others (SAE Action Theory, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970777
Qin, H. (2026). Finding One Another (SAE Action Theory, Paper 8) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970783
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 Half That Is Not Mine to Settle (SAE Meaning Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22731235
Qin, H. (2026). On the Source of Value (SAE Value Theory, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21405207
Qin, H. (2026). On the Colonization of Value (SAE Value Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21611154
Qin, H. (2026). On 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
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 Limitation and Violation of Basic Rights (SAE Rights Theory, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21212595
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). On Rights and Entitlements (SAE Rights Theory, Special Paper) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21314907
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). 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 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 Laughter · IV: The Laughter of Despair and the Knowing Smile [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23287669
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
II · Background works in the system
Qin, H. (2026). On the Conflict of Value (SAE Value Theory, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22122819
Interfaces
- Main upstream: F5, How Is the Inter-Ontological Possible (the range of §2.1; the broad sense of cultivation and colonization in §4; §5.1, §5.4). This series takes up the stretch beyond its range: the effects between one another while recognition has not occurred and coexistence must proceed regardless (the Introduction).
- Also used: the Conflict Treatise; Meaning Theory P1 (Y3, Y4), P3 (Y24, Y25); Value Theory P1 (V14), P3 (V27, V28, V33, V42), P6 (V76, V77); Rights Theory Paper 0 (M1), P2, P4 (F18), P5 (F20, F21), On Rights and Entitlements (F34); Action Theory Paper 0 (§6.2), Paper 6, Paper 8 (D47, D48); F6 (§3.1(f), Appendix D); the Second Critique (Chapters Two, Three and Six; Rules of the House, Eleven); Institution Theory Paper 1 (Z4), Paper 5 (Z28, Z31); Aesthetics Rays 12 and 13; Moral Law P1 (§1.2); Laughter IV (§7.2); Psychoanalysis IV.
- Adjacent: the Critiques, which take up how one person is to treat another (§9).
- This series: Papers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 each take up one point of this paper (§9, "Downstream"); Paper 0 lists the propositions together, with the words shared with upstream.