Why Still Relate
为什么仍要关系
So long as a relation is not exited, conflict cannot be guaranteed not to occur; 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. This paper argues how far that sentence can stand in propositions.
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. Collision itself, conflict included, can be an avenue of chiseling; its cost is written together with it.
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. Need is not lack, and someone who finds no one is not thereby short of anything; nor is need a duty, and it does not mean that relation is always beneficial. Questioning from outside cannot be replaced by looking back on oneself; yet openness at the topological layer is not the same as keeping contact with any one particular person permanently. 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.
Introduction
Paper 1, §8 only raised this question and did not argue it. Papers 1 through 6 read the minimal condition of relation, time, commitment, expectation, sediment and ending. Read through, they have already set down the dangers in relation in several places: pouring in and occupying; the path to saying no being locked; stalling becoming the normal state. The reader has reason to ask: if so, why not simply do without relation?
This paper answers that question. The answer is already in the second half of the sentence this paper opened with: it is precisely because of this that a subject needs relation, cannot-not seek relation and is in relation. What this paper has to do is make clear what the words "precisely because of this" refer to, and what "need" means here and what it does not mean.
The whole paper starts from the first subject in the universe. The second layer of Value Theory P1 V14 writes: "a solitary subject, the first and only subject in a universe, comes to the fourteenth level; its inward sources are full, its value self-sufficient." It is the only one. Does it still need relation?
§1 The Same Place
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
Back to the first subject. Its value is self-sufficient; if one day it meets someone who comes later, that one's law is not under its control. Both the danger and the necessity begin from this sentence.
Papers 1 and 5 have written the side of danger. The other party's law is not under my control; it enters my conditions of occurrence, and can pour in and occupy the step that my own law should take (Paper 1, H8); it can lock my path to saying no, so that not even conflict appears (Paper 5, H46). At the close of H37, Paper 4 said that in a relation, managing not to colonize is very hard. So the danger is not far off: from saying an expectation out loud to attaching a qualifying condition to it is only half a sentence.
The side of necessity comes from the same place. Upstream there are four passages.
An avenue of questioning. Moral Law P1 §2.2 lists the fourth theorem: "cannot-not let one's own non-colonization structure be exposed to interrogation (prevent self-colonization)". §2.8 says that it is there "so that the subject cannot make itself the final adjudicator of recognition". The Conflict Treatise, in the second step of §15, says that preventing me from monopolizing the selection, interpretation and adjudication of reasons "requires at least one route of external review not wholly under my control"; and in the same place: "a channel in which I decide entirely which reasons count is no channel at all". The other party's law is not under my control, and it is precisely for this reason that it is an avenue of questioning I cannot monopolize.
The setting of pure cultivation. How Is the Inter-Ontological Possible (Foundational Paper 5; cited as F5) §4.2: "ontological autonomy support, strictly speaking, exists only at the relational layer." This sentence says at which layer pure cultivation can possibly occur; it does not say that every relation has pure cultivation (Paper 1, H4).
Same cell, different type. Value Theory P3 V40 writes that resonance and colonization at the value layer both require "at least two" subjects, and that for both the modality is "triggering"; "Colonization shares the cell with resonance", while "Sharing a cell is not sharing a type": the material of an external end is a necessary relational component for colonization at the value layer to hold, whereas the structure that resonates is complete without waiting on a second subject. Danger and possibility are in the same cell, with different shapes.
Danger and necessity within one section. Moral Law P1 §2.8 itself writes both sides. The same section says that if the fourth theorem is read as openness, without distinction, to any questioning at all, "It would make the fourth theorem self-colonization", and that "The Self's right to filter is the entry point for self-colonization." The avenue of questioning can itself also be an avenue of danger.
H60 Collision itself, conflict included, can be an avenue of chiseling; the possibility of chiseling is written together with its cost
"Precisely because of this" refers to collision and entanglement themselves, not only to danger and necessity having one origin. So a sentence must be added: collision itself, conflict included, can be an avenue of chiseling.
Upstream, three passages. 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". How Is Institution Possible (Foundational Paper 6; cited as F6), Appendix D, item 5, is a working demonstration: "Conflict is not the enemy of the relationship. Conflict is the relationship's chisel." The Conflict Treatise §18 writes that mutual chiseling "can make both parties' legislating more active", and the same section follows at once with "exhaustion, harm, and newly exposed incompatibilities".
The two are written together. The possibility of chiseling is a may, not a will; its cost is real. That conflict cannot be guaranteed not to occur (Paper 1, H7) is not read as saying that conflict is the mark of a good relation, nor as saying that conflict ought to be produced.
§2 The Cannot-Not of Looking Toward
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
Between a subject and a stone no relation can be built: on the stone's side there is no bearer (Paper 1, H2).
Back to the first subject. V14 writes that the remainder it throws off is, in its case, a formal other-position; it can perform anticipatory enactment, "writing a book, spreading a thought, leaving a work or an arrangement". Meaning Theory P3 Y22 names this orientation looking-toward; Y24 establishes: "What anticipatory enactment leaves behind is conditions, not an orientation deposited elsewhere". Three things here must be written apart, and each is conditional: if that remainder is at work in it; if it therefore looks toward someone who may come later; if it goes on to write that book. If it does write it, the book is left for someone who comes later, whom it may never see. At that point it is seeking, and there is as yet no realized relation with another; it has its self-relation between today and yesterday all the same (Paper 2, H22). Only when someone who comes later meets what it left does a relation with another stand, and that relation is one-way, across generations. Action Theory Paper 8: "This kind of finding runs one way: the earlier person does not know he has been found, and cannot answer."
The modal blank must be kept. Of this remainder, V14's first layer "does not claim it inevitable to every fourteenth-level running"; Meaning Theory P1 Y11 says the same. So the proposition 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. It is not written as "every subject necessarily looks toward the other."
The cannot-not here is conditional-constitutive (Conflict Treatise §11) and issues no normative force. It and the Moral Law's first theorem, "Cannot-not recognize the specific other as End", are of one source and one reference; this way of putting it, "of one source, of one reference", comes from the last paragraph of Value Theory P1 V14, where it is said of V14's remainder and its response; carrying it over to the cannot-not of looking toward is this series' own reading. It is not written as people having a duty to enter relations; Meaning Theory P3 Y22: "Nor is looking-toward an ought."
Three verbs. Being in means that effects left behind have actually entered the situation of another bearer; that is the condition of Paper 1, H1. Need means the cannot-not of looking toward the other, not a piece missing from value. Seeking is looking-toward, and can come before any realized relation with another.
Meaning Theory P3 Y22 keeps apart the avowal of a content, looking-toward and enactment. They are kept apart in the same way here: that the remainder is at work; that looking-toward, as an effective reference, organizes what comes after; whether any action of seeking is taken. These three are not obtained in one step from the word "conditional". For the first subject, if the remainder is at work, it can look toward someone who may come later; whether it writes that book is another matter.
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
Need is not lack. V14: "It stands empty. And standing empty, the solitary subject is still self-sufficient"; "the formal other-position is no deficit of value". Value Theory P3 V40's reading of the prequel: "a subject's position as an end stands just as well in a solitary universe". The first subject needs relation, and its value is not thereby a piece short.
Someone who finds no one is not thereby short of anything. Action Theory Paper 8: "In some times, a person who lives by his own law goes his whole life without finding a single person who can answer him"; D44 adds, of the person whom the seeker has not found: "those not found are ends all the same". Meaning Theory P1 Y10 blocks a further inference that comes easily to hand: from the closure of the attribution endpoints in one person, it does not follow that he is "self-contained, self-sufficient, in no need of an outside". Someone who finds no one is not thereby short of anything; but neither is he thereby without need.
Need is not duty. Looking-toward is not an ought (H61). No one has a duty to enter relations. 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"; on this basis Paper 1 established in H10 that expectation does not turn into a duty, and Paper 3 established that commitment does not turn into a duty either; still less does entering a relation.
Need does not mean that relation is always beneficial. The mutual chiseling of Conflict Treatise §18 is written as a possibility, and the same section follows it at once with its cost (H60). A general necessity does not judge, on anyone's behalf, whether a particular relation is to be open or is to continue. Needing relation is not the same as needing this relation.
No switching between looking-toward and actual seeking. In this paper seeking is looking-toward, and at its close it does not slide back into the everyday senses of making contact, finding a companion or staying in some particular relation. Institution Theory Paper 5, Z29, writes "People in the same institution do not have to seek one another out; they are already in it together"; what is spoken of there is being together in one entanglement (in Institution Theory's sense). In this paper seeking is looking-toward, and people in the same institution can, all the same, never have looked toward one another.
§3 The Path of Questioning
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
Conflict Treatise §15: "The me of that time and the me of later are supplementary sources. Self-questioning cannot substitute for an external avenue of questioning". This is a functional bound (Paper 2, H22): questioning from outside cannot be replaced by looking back on oneself. It is not a precondition of self-relation's existence; the first subject has a self-relation all the same.
Moral Law P1 §2.8's way of defusing the danger begins with a division into layers: "The structural layer carries the burden of filtering. The community procedure, as structure, can distinguish genuine interrogation, noise, manipulation, harm". The same section then takes up the structural vacuum: "If two 15DD subjects encounter one another in a structural vacuum", which is exactly the case in which there is no community procedure between two people. Its way out is to divide openness into two layers: "What the fourth theorem requires is openness at the topological layer, not unbounded response at the physical layer"; "Not responding does not equal closing the interface—it is only deferring processing." So within its original domain §2.8 has already separated not declaring immunity from a finite actual response, and this series takes that over as it stands; using it beyond 15DD, on risks that change again and again in long-term dealings, is a step of this series' own (own undertaking; see the Introduction to Paper 1).
Carried over to long-term dealings, openness at the topological layer means not declaring immunity to all questioning from outside, and keeping a route of external review that is not under my control; it is not the same as having to keep contact with any one particular person permanently. Conflict Treatise §14: "Actual relations and channels of contact may be terminated permanently." §15 says the same: "What is needed is not necessarily the channel running from the original other party directly to me."
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
Exiting a relation can avoid some of its dangers, and one then also no longer has those possibilities that come only if these dealings continue. Both are there: what one avoids are certain dangers within these dealings; what one loses are the possibilities that come only if both parties go on dealing with each other; the conditions and effects already left are recorded separately (Paper 6, H58).
What is exited is a relation, not relation itself. Leaving a particular relation is not the same as losing the general possibility of relation; nor need the after-effects of a danger vanish at once when contact is cut (Paper 6, H58). When someone leaves a relation in which his path to saying no was locked for a long time, the general possibility of his relations with others is still there; and what that relation left is also still there with him.
§4 Counterexamples and Boundaries
Each case must make clear what he lacks and what he does not lack.
A whole life without finding anyone who can respond to him. Action Theory Paper 8 has written of such times. What he may lack is an actual meeting, an external avenue of questioning; he does not lack standing as an end, does not lack a self-relation, does not lack looking-toward.
Someone who finds an earlier person one-way, across generations, only through reading a sentence that person wrote. Between him and that earlier person there is a one-way relation (Paper 1, H1). What he lacks is a response; he does not lack relation.
Someone who, after leaving a relation in which the path to saying no was long locked, no longer enters close relations. He has avoided that kind of danger in close relations, and he also no longer has that kind of possibility which comes only through such dealings (H64). He does not lack standing as an end; whether he still looks toward others is a matter on his own side, and others do not judge it for him.
The recluse. What he exits is one particular relation after another, not relation itself: the books he reads, and the conditions earlier people left in the land he farms, still enter his conditions of occurrence. What he may lack is an external avenue of questioning borne by others; he does not lack a self-relation.
Someone who has only institutional dealings and no close relations. Between persons in an institution, the part that the institution does not provide for, or that goes beyond its provisions, is still relation (Paper 1, H11). The only setting in which pure cultivation can possibly occur is the relational layer (H59), and this part of his dealings with people within an institution is at the relational layer too: he does not lack that setting itself. Being in an institution is not the problem; people in an institution are still persons, and still ends; when a person acts on the institution's behalf, as its executor, that belongs to Institution Theory. What he lacks are certain opportunities that are hard to come by in institutional dealings; which ones they are is handed to the series on particular kinds of relation to argue. To read what he lacks in this way is this series' own reading.
§5 Drawing Together
This paper has established six propositions (H59 to H64). Taken together, they say: danger and necessity come from the same place, that the other party's law is not under my control; collision itself can be an avenue of chiseling, and its cost is written together with it; seeking relation is the cannot-not of looking toward the other, written as a conditional; need is not lack and not duty, and does not mean that relation is always beneficial; questioning from outside cannot be replaced by looking back on oneself, and openness at the topological layer is not permanent contact; exiting a relation avoids some dangers and also loses the possibilities that come only if these dealings continue, and what is exited is a relation, not relation itself.
This paper does not prove that relation is always beneficial; it does not prove that every relation has pure cultivation; it does not prove that any particular relation must not be lost or must be maintained; it does not prove that without relation one is not a subject, or that the position as an end cannot stand; it does not prove that someone who finds no one is short of anything; it does not prove that relation is the source of cultivation or of norms; it does not prove that anyone has a duty to enter relations.
Handoff for the whole series. With this, the seven main papers of this series have all been written. Each particular kind of relation, whether love, marriage, the parent-child relation or cooperation, is argued in its own series; propositions that hold only within one kind of relation are established there, not here. This series' place in the system, its division of labor with upstream and its connection with outside traditions 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 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). 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). 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). SAE Conflict Treatise: How Subjecthood Is Not Swallowed by Conflict Itself [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22313628
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). 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). Finding One Another (SAE Action Theory, Paper 8) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970783
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). Between One Another (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23271072
Interfaces
- Main upstream: Value Theory P1 (V14: the remainder "the other too is an end" and its modal blank); Meaning Theory P3 (Y22, looking-toward).
- Also used: Conflict Treatise (§11, §14, §15, §18); Meaning Theory P1 (Y10, Y11), P3 (Y24); Value Theory P3 (V40); Moral Law P1 (§2.2, §2.3, §2.8); Action Theory Paper 8; Institution Theory Paper 5 (Z29); F5 (§4.2, §5.1); F6 (Appendix D); Rights Theory Paper 0 (M1).
- This series: the close. Paper 0 takes up this series' place in the system, its division of labor with upstream and its outward connections.
- Downstream: love, marriage, the parent-child relation and cooperation, each in its own series.