Relational Understanding in Intimate Relations - The Generative Relational Epistemology in the Domain of Intimacy
ENGLISH
Philosophy of Intimacy and the Theory of Justice · Paper XXVII
Relational Understanding in Intimate Relations
The Generative Relational Epistemology in the Domain of Intimacy
Wanhong Huang
相视而笑，莫逆于心。
They looked at one another and smiled, with no resistance in their hearts.
Zhuangzi, The Great and Venerable Teacher
Dedication. 致她：For her:
那个属于森林的女孩，the girl who belongs to the forest,
我学着走进你的语言，that I may learn to enter your language,
也把我的，留一扇门给你。and leave a door in mine open to you.致我最爱的人。To the one I love most.
Abstract
A companion work developed a generative relational epistemology, on which a concept becomes observable through the relations among the several symbolic systems that render it, and knowing takes the form of a generative observation that is historically and dialectically produced. That work observed, near its end, that a person is the bearer of a symbolic system, so that the meeting of two persons is a crossing of symbolic worlds. This paper takes up that observation in the domain of intimacy, where the crossing is deepest and its stakes are highest. It asks what relational understanding, so conceived, does in an intimate bond, whether it is good, and how the capacities it requires might be cultivated. The paper builds two cases and then a practice. The functional case sets the potential work of relational understanding, in the generation of trust, the recognition of shared value, the easing of a certain class of conflict, and the quality of a shared life, beside the established theories and findings that treat these same matters, and it locates the distinctive contribution in two characters of the account, the relational and the generative, showing what each supplies that the received theories leave unsupplied. The normative case then argues that a functional defense is not sufficient, since an efficient possession of the other can counterfeit the functions of understanding, and it grounds a normative distinction in ethical legitimacy, observed across several ethical traditions and not rested on a single one. Consequentialist, Kantian, care-ethical, and Aristotelian renderings each supply an aspect that the others leave, and non-possession, with generative justice, stands among them as one aspect, so that the normative ground is drawn in the same relational manner as the epistemology, an instance of the very understanding the paper concerns. Consistent with the dialectical and materialist conception of truth the companion work develops, the paper does not claim the correctness of a given understanding, and holds instead that understanding, like truth, is generated in historical and contradictory movement, while what can be asked of it is that it be ethically legitimate, a legitimacy whose own criteria are themselves historically generated and set as no final guarantee. The paper then states the special problem of intimacy, that the bond is a site where these capacities are wagered and not rehearsed, since the value of what is given may return only after a long passage of time and cannot be tried again, so that the field in which a capacity is cultivated and the field in which it is exercised come apart. From this it proposes a model, a set of capacities and not a procedure, divided into those that admit near practice and those that can only be cultivated as a standing disposition, among the latter the throwing of a generative thing into the other’s own generative repertoire, the non-intervention that lets a shared dynamic unfold, and the preservation of a relational experience against the day its value is recognized. Non-possession runs throughout as the condition without which the capacities decline into a refined extraction. The paper then turns dialectically upon its own argument, and holds, on a ground drawn from the psychoanalytic account of desire and from its own account of generation, that a full crossing of the other’s world would end the bond it was meant to perfect, since the other’s unsymbolizable remainder is the core around which desire moves and the reservoir from which the bond’s further generation is drawn, so that understanding rightly aimed seeks the other and honors, in the same motion, what in the other it will not reach. The paper offers no final synthesis, and its form keeps the openness its account of understanding requires.
Keywords: relational understanding; generative relational epistemology; the other’s language world; translation; the throwing of a generative thing; non-possession; ethical legitimacy across traditions; the unsymbolizable remainder; desire and generation; generative justice; the wager of intimacy.
AI usage statement: The ideas, claims, and theoretical framework of this paper originate with the author. AI tools were used as an aid in drafting and revision. The origin of each idea has been verified by the author, who takes full responsibility for the content.
Part One: Background: The Generative Relational Epistemology
§1 Understanding as a Crossing of Worlds
There is a way of speaking about understanding another person that treats it as the accurate reception of a message. On this way of speaking, the other has thoughts and feelings, encodes them in words, and sends them across, and to understand is to decode what was sent and to recover the meaning intact. The measure of a good bond, on this picture, is the transparency of the channel, the degree to which what one person means arrives in the other without loss. Misunderstanding is noise on the line, and the ideal at the horizon is a communication so complete that two people would be present to one another without remainder.
This paper proceeds from a different account of what understanding is. A companion work developed a generative relational epistemology, on which no single symbolic system carries a concept without remainder, and a concept becomes observable only through the relations among the several symbolic systems that render it. Knowing, on that account, is a generative observation and not the reception of a message, produced in the movement between renderings and enriched across history. The companion work observed, near its close, that a person is the bearer of a symbolic system, a rendering of the world shaped by an experience, a history, a language, a form of life that no other person exactly shares. From this it follows that the meeting of two persons is a crossing of symbolic worlds, of the same kind as the crossing of disciplines, and that understanding another is the generative observation of a matter that neither world holds alone, and not the decoding of a message.
The present paper takes this account into the domain of intimacy. Intimacy is the place where the crossing of two symbolic worlds is at once deepest and most consequential, where the worlds are most entangled and the cost of failing to cross them is most severe. It is also the place where the received picture of transparent communication does its greatest damage, since it sets as the goal of the bond a fusion that the relational account holds to be neither possible nor desirable. What a good intimate bond asks is that each learn to enter the other and to generate, in the relation between them, what neither held before, and not that two worlds become one, an understanding and a value that neither held before.
The paper has a plain structure. Part One recalls the epistemology on which it stands and draws the bridge from concepts to persons. Part Two builds a functional case, setting the work that relational understanding does in an intimate bond beside the established theories and findings that treat trust, shared value, conflict, and the quality of a shared life, and locating the contribution in two characters of the account, the relational and the generative. Part Three then argues that a functional case is not sufficient, since an efficient possession of another can counterfeit the functions of understanding, and it grounds a normative distinction in the ethics of non-possession. Part Four states the problem that sets intimacy apart from other domains of understanding, that its capacities are wagered and not rehearsed. Part Five proposes a model, a set of capacities and their cultivation. Part Six closes without a synthesis, in keeping with the account of understanding the paper develops.
A word on stance belongs here, since it governs what follows. This paper does not claim that a given understanding of one’s partner is correct, and the reader who looks for such a claim will not find it. The epistemology on which the paper stands holds that truth is generated in a historical and contradictory movement and is never possessed as a finished correctness, and understanding between persons is subject to the same condition. What the paper asks of an understanding is that it be legitimate, ethically, and not that it be correct, and it holds even this legitimacy to be a historically generated measure and no final guarantee. The distinction between the correctness the paper declines to claim and the legitimacy it does defend runs through the whole of what follows, and it is drawn out in Part Three.
§2 The Epistemology Recalled
The account this paper applies can be recalled in its essentials, so that what follows stands on its own for a reader who has not the companion work to hand. The starting point is a limitation that traditional epistemology leaves unexamined, the supposition that a concept can be adequately carried by a single symbolic system, so that to know is to find the correct expression and the work of knowing is finished once that expression is secured. Against this supposition the epistemology holds that no symbolic system completes a concept. Every symbolization selects, compresses, and situates, and so renders a partial and situated aspect and leaves a remainder. A concept becomes observable through the relations among several such partial renderings, as a form is inferred from several projections none of which is the form.
From this the epistemology draws a term to stand in the place of representation. Knowing is generative observation. What is known is observed in the movement between symbolic expressions, the observation is an achievement that stands short of identity with the matter observed, and because the relations among expressions increase and change through history the observation is never final and the knowing continues. Three features of the account bear on what follows, and each is recalled here in turn.
The first is that observation is relational. The matter observed appears in no single rendering and comes into view only in the relations among several. The epistemic yield is located in the relations themselves, which are held to be productive of observation and not a mere connection of findings already secured. A relation, on this account, generates an observation that neither of its terms contained, and this generativity of relation is the deepest commitment of the account.
The second is that observation is generative in time as well as in structure. The field of relations through which a matter is observed is not a standing inventory awaiting discovery. It comes into being in history. New renderings arrive as the conditions of a form of life bring them forth, and each arrival opens relations that were unavailable before it, so that the observation of a matter develops as its field of relations grows. The account renders this historicity in the terms of a dialectical and materialist conception, on which the expressions and relations through which anything is observed arise from the conditions of a form of life and develop through the contradictions those conditions generate. Truth, so understood, is a becoming, generated in a historical and contradictory movement, and it holds none of the fixity of a possession.
The third is that observation is incomplete, and its incompleteness is not a defect a fuller state of knowledge would repair. It follows from the structure of the account, since the renderings of any matter are always finite in number and partial in reach, and there is always a further rendering, a further relation, a further aspect not yet brought into view. This incompleteness carries an epistemic humility that follows as a consequence of the account and forms no rhetorical modesty, and it will govern the treatment of understanding between persons, where the temptation to take one’s observation of the other for the other’s whole reality is the standing danger.
These three features, that observation is relational, that it is generative in time, and that it is incomplete, are the whole of what the following parts require. The reader who holds them can follow the application to intimacy without the companion work, and the reader who wishes the full argument will find it there.
§3 From Concepts to Persons
The step from the epistemology to the present subject is short, and the companion work took it in a sentence that the present work will unfold. A discipline is a symbolic system, and the crossing of disciplines affords the observation of a concept that several disciplines concern. A person is also the bearer of a symbolic system. Each person renders the world in a way shaped by an experience, a history, a native language, a family, a culture, a body, that no other person exactly shares, so that two people who use what appears to be the same word may render beneath it two aspects that do not coincide. The dialogue between persons is therefore a crossing of symbolic worlds in the same sense that interdisciplinary inquiry is, differing in that the worlds crossed are borne by living persons where the systems of inquiry are codified in fields, and carried with the whole weight of a life where a literature sets them down.
What the crossing affords is the same in both cases. It is observation, won through the relations among partial renderings of a matter that exceeds them all. When two persons bring their renderings of a shared matter, a memory, a fear, a hope, the meaning of a word like home or freedom or love, into relation, the matter becomes observable in a way that neither rendering held alone. The understanding they reach is not the recovery of what one of them already meant, transported intact to the other. It is a generative observation, produced in the relation between two worlds, and belonging to neither.
The relational form of understanding another. To understand another person is not to decode a message the other has sent, recovering intact a meaning the other already possessed. It is to bring the renderings of two symbolic worlds into relation and to observe, in that relation, a matter that neither world held alone. Understanding another is a generative observation, produced between two worlds and belonging to neither.
Intimacy is the domain in which this crossing is carried furthest. Two people who share a life bring their symbolic worlds into a relation more sustained, more entangled, and more consequential than any other bond affords. They render to one another the whole texture of a shared existence and not isolated concepts, and they do so over years, so that the crossing is a long history through which each world is altered by its relation to the other, and not a single act. The depth of intimacy is the depth of this crossing, and its difficulty is the difficulty of the crossing carried out where the stakes are a shared life.
This depth carries a corresponding danger, and naming it here prepares the whole of what follows. Because the two worlds in an intimate bond are so entangled, and because the partners so often use the same words, there arises a powerful illusion that they inhabit a single symbolic world, that no crossing is required, that to understand the other is simply to consult oneself. This illusion is the source of a characteristic and painful form of failure, the discovery, often late, that what one took for a shared meaning was two divergent renderings all along, and that a bond one believed transparent was crossed by an unrecognized difference of worlds. The account developed here holds that the recognition of the other as the bearer of a distinct symbolic world, so easily lost in the very closeness of intimacy, is the first condition of understanding within it, and that much of what passes for the failure of love is in truth the failure of this recognition.
The unsymbolizable core
There is a feature of the other’s symbolic world that must be introduced here, in the background, since a later part of the paper turns upon it. The account has said that a symbolic world is never exhausted by another’s observation of it, and this holds with a particular force for a person. Psychoanalysis, in the work of Lacan, gives this a precise shape. The subject who enters language does so at the cost of a remainder that language does not carry, a core that the signifier cannot reach, and around this core the subject’s desire is organized. Lacan marks the remainder in several registers, as the object-cause of desire that no possessed object supplies, as the lack in the subject that the entry into speech installs, as a real that resists symbolization. The details of the doctrine are not required here, and the series has developed them elsewhere. What the present paper takes from it is a single structural point, that at the center of the other’s symbolic world there is a core that no crossing reaches, not through a want of skill or a shortage of time, but because the core is of a kind that the signifier cannot render.
This structural point sharpens the epistemology’s claim of incompleteness in the case of a person. When the paper says that the observation of the other is always incomplete, it does not mean only that there is always more of the other to observe, a further region that a longer acquaintance would reach. It means, in addition, that at the heart of the other there is a core of another kind, no further region to be reached at all, an unsymbolizable center around which the other’s desire moves and which the other does not possess as a content to be conveyed. The incompleteness of understanding another is therefore structural as well as extensive, a matter of a core that observation approaches and does not close, and not only a matter of how much remains to be observed. This core, introduced here, returns as the pivot of the paper’s dialectical turn, where it is shown that the persistence of the bond depends upon it.
Part Two: The Functional Case: What Understanding Does in Intimacy
§4 Trust
The first work that relational understanding may do in an intimate bond is the generation of trust, and trust has been theorized with care in several traditions, each of which reaches toward it from its own side. It is worth passing through them, to locate what each reaches and not to survey them, and what each leaves for the account developed here to supply.
A sociological tradition, following Luhmann, treats trust as a mechanism for the reduction of social complexity, a way of absorbing the uncertainty of another’s future conduct so that action becomes possible where complete knowledge is not. Trust, on this account, is a wager on the other under conditions of irreducible uncertainty, and it is functional because it permits coordinated life that suspicion would paralyze. A tradition in economics and game theory renders trust in the vocabulary of repeated interaction, reputation, and credible commitment, as in Axelrod, on which trust is the rational expectation that another will not defect, sustained by the shadow of future dealings and the cost of a ruined name. A tradition in the psychology of attachment, following Bowlby and Ainsworth, renders trust as a felt security in the availability of a caregiver, laid down early and carried into the bonds of later life as a working model of whether others can be relied upon.
Each of these renders an aspect of trust, and each leaves an aspect for another to render. The Luhmannian account is precise about the function trust serves and passes over the interior process by which a particular trust is built between two particular people. The game-theoretic account is precise about the conditions under which trust is rational and treats trust as the assessment of a property the other already has, a disposition to cooperate or defect, which the trusting party estimates. The attachment account is precise about the early formation of a capacity for trust and locates its ground in the history of one party and not in the relation between two. Across the three, trust tends to appear as an assessment, by one party, of a property or a probability that belongs to the other or to their circumstances.
Here the two characters of the present account supply what the received theories leave unsupplied, and it is worth marking each in turn. The relational character relocates trust. On the present account trust is not, at its root, an assessment by one party of a property the other already possesses. It is a matter generated between two parties, observable only in the relation between their symbolic worlds, of the same form as any other relational matter. What two people trust, when they trust one another deeply, is something that comes into being in the relation and not a set of estimated dispositions itself and is borne by neither alone. This is why a trust of the deepest kind can be extended before the evidence that a game-theoretic account would require, and why its betrayal wounds in a way the loss of a favorable estimate would not. The trust was not an estimate. It was a shared reality, and its breaking is the breaking of something that was jointly held.
The generative character sets trust in time. On the received accounts trust tends to appear as a state, reached when the conditions are met and maintained while they hold. On the present account trust is generated, deepened, and, where it fails, allowed to wither, through the continued crossing of the two worlds. Each act of understanding, each entry into the other’s world that the other recognizes as a true entry, generates a further increment of the shared reality that trust consists in, and a bond in which the partners go on understanding one another is a bond in which trust is continually regenerated and not merely preserved. This sets the account apart from a picture on which trust, once established, is a standing asset that depreciates only under betrayal. Trust that is not regenerated in continued understanding does not hold steady; it thins, as the two worlds drift and the shared reality that trust consisted in is no longer renewed.
The relation of the present account to the received theories is one of location and not of refutation. The Luhmannian function, the game-theoretic conditions, and the attachment history are all real, and the present account does not deny them. It holds that they describe the circumstances, the rationality, and the readiness that surround trust, and that they leave for a relational and generative account the interior matter of what trust is and how it comes to be between two people, which is a shared reality generated in the crossing of their worlds and sustained only as that crossing continues.
§5 The Recognition of Shared Value
A second work of relational understanding is the recognition of shared value, the coming into view, between two people, of what they hold in common and can hold together. Here too there are established accounts, and they reach toward shared value from two directions.
One direction treats shared value as a similarity to be discovered. A body of research on close relationships finds that partners who share values report greater satisfaction and stability, and models the matter as a matching, on which two people bring antecedent value profiles and the relationship prospers to the degree that these profiles coincide, as in Byrne. Shared value, on this rendering, is a pre-existing overlap that the partners find in one another. A second direction treats shared value as a consensus to be reached. In the theory of communicative action, Habermas sets out an account on which participants in dialogue, oriented to mutual understanding, advance and redeem validity claims and move, under the unforced force of the better argument, toward a rationally motivated consensus. Shared value, on this rendering, is an agreement produced in communication oriented to agreement, and the ideal at its horizon is a consensus in which the participants have come to hold the same.
Each direction reaches something and leaves something. The similarity account is precise about the correlation between antecedent overlap and satisfaction, and it treats shared value as found and not as generated, so that it has little to say to two people whose worlds differ and who must nonetheless build something common. The consensus account is precise about the procedure by which agreement may be rationally reached, and its regulative ideal is a convergence in which difference is overcome, the participants arriving at the same view. This ideal of convergence is exactly the point at which the present account parts from it.
The relational character supplies a different conception of what shared value is. On the present account shared value is not, at its root, a pre-existing similarity that the partners discover in one another, nor a convergence in which their difference is overcome. It is a matter generated in the relation between two symbolic worlds, observable in that relation, and held in common without the two worlds becoming one. Two people may render what they most value in vocabularies that do not coincide, one in the language of duty and one in the language of care, one through a religious inheritance and one through a secular one, and the shared value they come to recognize is not the reduction of these to a single rendering. It is a matter observed in the relation between their renderings, of the kind the epistemology describes, which each continues to render in a language of their own while both come to hold it together. Shared value on this account is compatible with, and indeed rests upon, a difference the partners do not dissolve.
The generative character sets this recognition in time and marks its productivity. On the consensus picture the work of dialogue is to converge, and its completion is agreement. On the present account the relation between two differing renderings is productive of a shared value that neither party held in advance, so that the crossing generates something new held in common, beyond the mere revealing of an overlap or the negotiating of a compromise. Two people who bring genuinely different worlds into relation may generate, over years, a shared value that was in neither of their worlds at the outset and that could arise only in the relation between them. This is the deepest sense in which relational understanding does the work of building a common life, that it generates value in the relation, where the received accounts discover it in advance or split the difference between antecedent positions.
The parting from Habermas can be stated exactly, since it marks the contribution. The Habermasian ideal is a consensus in which the participants come to hold the same, and difference is a condition to be worked through toward agreement. The present account holds that a shared value can be generated and held in common precisely across a difference that is not overcome, that two worlds can hold something together while remaining two, and that the pressure toward convergence, toward the fusion of the two into one view, is the very thing the relational account warns against, since it is the point at which the recognition of shared value passes over into the effacement of one world by another. What the account keeps, against the ideal of consensus, is the difference of the two who share.
§6 The Easing of a Class of Conflict
A third work of relational understanding is the easing of conflict, and here the established knowledge is empirical and strong. Decades of observational research on couples, associated above all with Gottman, have identified patterns that distinguish bonds that endure from those that dissolve. The research marks certain corrosive modes of exchange, contempt and defensiveness and the rest, and certain reparative ones, and it predicts, from the observed ratio of these, the trajectory of a bond with a reliability that the study of intimate life rarely attains. This is a body of findings the present account has no wish to contest, and it is important to be clear about the relation between the two, since the account offers something of a different kind.
The present account does not compete with this research at the level of evidence, and it advances no observational findings of its own. What it offers is a mechanism, an account of why a large class of intimate conflict arises and why understanding of the kind described here eases it. The offer is complementary. The empirical research establishes what patterns of conflict and repair predict the fate of a bond; the present account proposes, for one important class of conflict, an explanation of what that conflict is at its root.
The proposal follows from the bridge already drawn. If each partner is the bearer of a symbolic world, and if the closeness of intimacy generates the illusion that the two inhabit a single world, then a characteristic form of conflict arises when the partners use the same words to render aspects that do not coincide, and each takes the other’s divergent rendering as a fault, an unreasonableness, a bad will, and not as a difference of worlds. A dispute that presents itself as a disagreement about a matter, about whether one of them acted wrongly, about what was owed, about what a word like respect or space or family requires, is in a large class of cases a collision of two renderings that the partners have not recognized as two, each arguing from within a world the other has not entered and each hearing the other’s words in a world the other does not inhabit. The conflict is real, and its felt content, the sense of being wronged or unheard, is real, and yet its root is not the matter it appears to concern. Its root is an unrecognized difference of symbolic worlds.
Here the relational character does its work. To ease a conflict of this class is not, in the first place, to resolve the matter it appears to concern, to adjudicate who was right about the thing disputed. It is to move the conflict from the level of content to the level of worlds, to recognize that the partners have been rendering a shared matter in divergent ways, and to enter one another’s rendering far enough that each sees how the other’s words, which sounded like unreason from within one’s own world, are the natural speech of another. What eases the conflict is the crossing that the closeness of intimacy had made to seem unnecessary. Once each has entered the other’s rendering, the matter that seemed a contest of right and wrong is observed as a relation between two worlds, and the heat that belonged to the sense of being wronged by an unreasonable other subsides into the different and workable difficulty of two people who render a shared life in different terms.
The generative character marks the further point that this easing is not a return to a prior peace. When two partners cross a conflict of this class, they do not merely remove a disturbance and restore the state before it. They generate, in the crossing, an observation of the difference between their worlds that neither held before, and this observation becomes part of the shared reality of the bond, available to the next collision and lessening the ground from which it springs. A bond in which such crossings are repeatedly made is one in which the partners accumulate a shared understanding of the very structure of their differences, so that the easing of conflict is generative of a resource that the easing of the next conflict draws upon. This is the sense in which understanding eases conflict by generating, across the disputes, a growing observation, and not by settling them, of the two worlds whose unrecognized difference the disputes expressed.
The relation to the empirical research can now be stated. The observed patterns of corrosion and repair that predict the fate of a bond are, on this account, the surface at which the recognition or the non-recognition of the other’s world becomes visible. Contempt is the affective form of a refusal to grant that the other’s rendering has a world behind it; repair is the affective form of a return to the crossing. The research describes what these patterns do to the trajectory of a bond; the present account proposes what they are, and why the practice of relational understanding, which is the practice of crossing, bears on them at their root.
§7 The Quality of a Shared Life
A fourth work of relational understanding concerns the quality of a shared life, what makes a bond good to be within and not merely stable. The established accounts here are several, and one may be taken as representative. Self-determination theory, developed by Deci and Ryan, holds that wellbeing rests on the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs, for autonomy, for competence, and for relatedness, and it treats the quality of a relationship as bound up with the degree to which the bond satisfies the need for relatedness, the sense of being connected to and cared for by others. A large body of work on relationship satisfaction, taking various forms, likewise renders quality as a level of satisfaction, a favorable balance of rewards over costs, or a fulfillment of needs and expectations that the partners bring to the bond.
These accounts reach something and render it in a particular form. They locate the quality of a bond in the satisfaction of needs the individuals bring, and they treat that quality as a level, higher or lower, more or less sustained. Relatedness, on the self-determination account, is a need of the individual that the relationship meets, and quality is the degree of its meeting. This is a rendering of real importance, and it locates quality in the individual and the individual’s needs, treating the relationship as the means by which a need belonging to each is satisfied.
The relational character supplies a different location for the quality of a bond. On the present account the quality of an intimate relationship is not, at its root, the degree to which it satisfies needs that the individuals bring to it. It is the richness of what is generated between them, the depth and the reach of the shared reality that their crossing of worlds produces. A bond is good to be within, on this account, to the degree that it generates, in the relation between two worlds, observations and values and a shared life that neither world could hold alone. This relocates quality from the satisfaction of antecedent individual needs to the generativity of the relation itself, and it accounts for something the need-satisfaction picture renders with difficulty, that the deepest bonds are often those in which the partners are most changed by the relation, most drawn beyond the needs and the selves they brought to it, which is hard to state as the efficient satisfaction of needs given in advance.
The generative character distinguishes a bond that is good in this sense from one that is merely stable and satisfied. A relationship can reach a stable level of need-satisfaction and rest there, and on the need account this is quality achieved. On the present account the quality of a bond is a generativity sustained and not a level reached and maintained, the continued production, in the crossing of the two worlds, of a shared reality that goes on growing. The distinction matters for the understanding of long bonds. A bond may be stable and satisfied and yet cease to generate, the partners settled into a fixed mutual rendering that no longer crosses into new observation, and on the present account such a bond has lost the quality that the need account, registering only its stability and satisfaction, would still record. The good bond is the generative bond, the one whose crossing of worlds continues to produce what neither world held before, and this is a matter of movement and not of a level, of a spiral that returns to the shared life and finds it grown where a circle would return it unchanged.
The relation to the received accounts is again one of location. The satisfaction of needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness is real, and its measurement tracks something that matters. The present account holds that these render the individual conditions and the felt registers of a bond’s quality, and that they leave for a relational and generative account the matter of what that quality consists in, which is the richness and the continued growth of what two worlds generate between them.
§8 The Work of the Two Characters
The four preceding sections passed through trust, shared value, conflict, and the quality of a shared life, and in each the contribution of the present account was carried by two characters, the relational and the generative. It is worth drawing these together, since the functional case rests on them and since it is their conjunction, and not either alone, that gives the account its force. The two characters answer two different questions about any of the matters treated, and the received theories tend to answer each question in a way the account revises.
The relational character answers the question of location, of where the matter is. On the received theories trust is located in the trusting party’s estimate of the other, shared value in an overlap of antecedent profiles or a converged consensus, the root of conflict in the disputed matter itself, and the quality of a bond in the satisfaction of individual needs. In each case the matter is located in an individual, in a property of one party, or in a state to be reached. The relational character relocates each matter into the relation between two symbolic worlds. Trust, shared value, the root of conflict, and the quality of a bond are, on the present account, matters generated between the partners and observable only in the relation between their worlds, borne by neither alone. This relocation is the first half of the contribution, and by itself it would yield a relational structuralism, an account on which the matters of intimate life are relational but fixed, given with the structure of the relation and not themselves in movement.
The generative character answers the question of time, of how the matter stands in history. On the received theories the matters of intimate life tend to appear as states, reached when conditions are met and maintained while they hold, trust established, consensus achieved, satisfaction attained. The generative character sets each matter in time as a process and not as a state. Trust is continually regenerated or allowed to thin, shared value is produced anew across a difference and is neither found nor fixed, the easing of conflict generates a growing observation and does not restore a prior peace, and the quality of a bond is a generativity sustained and not a level maintained. This is the second half of the contribution, and by itself, without the relational character, it would yield an account of individual growth, a story of persons developing in time but developing as separate selves, the bond a setting for a change that remains each person’s own.
The force of the account lies in the conjunction. The relational character without the generative gives a relation that holds the matters of intimate life but does not move, a structure fixed once the bond is formed. The generative character without the relational gives a movement that belongs to individuals and not to the relation between them, a growth that is not shared. Together they give what the account requires, matters that are borne in the relation between two worlds and that are generated, deepened, and transformed in the historical movement of that relation. Trust, shared value, the easing of conflict, and the quality of a bond are, on the full account, relational matters in generative movement, located between the partners and continually produced in the crossing of their worlds.
The division of labor between the two characters. The relational character answers where a matter of intimate life is located, relocating trust, shared value, the root of conflict, and the quality of a bond from an individual property or a state to be reached into the relation between two symbolic worlds. The generative character answers how the matter stands in time, setting each as a process continually produced and not a state once attained. Neither character suffices alone. The relational without the generative yields a fixed relational structure; the generative without the relational yields a merely individual growth. Their conjunction yields the account’s thesis, that the matters of intimate life are relational matters in generative movement, borne between two worlds and produced in the history of their crossing.
| Function | Received rendering | Relational character adds | Generative character adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trust | an estimate, by one party, of a property or probability of the other | a shared reality borne between the two, extended before the evidence a wager would require | continually regenerated in the crossing, thinning where it is no longer renewed |
| Shared value | a pre-existing overlap found, or a consensus in which difference is overcome | a matter held in common across a difference the two do not dissolve | produced anew in the relation, arising where neither world held it before |
| Conflict | a disagreement about the disputed matter, corrosive or reparable in its patterns | a collision of two unrecognized renderings, moved from content to the level of worlds | each crossing generating a growing observation of the difference, a resource for the next |
| Quality of a shared life | a level of satisfaction of the individual’s needs, higher or lower | the richness of what the two worlds generate between them, borne by neither alone | a generativity sustained, a spiral that returns and finds the shared life grown |
Table 1. The functional case in summary. For each of the four functions, the received theories render the matter as an individual property or a state to be reached; the relational character relocates it into the relation between two worlds, and the generative character sets it in historical movement. The account’s thesis is the conjunction of the two additions, that the matters of intimate life are relational matters in generative movement.
This completes the functional case. The account has set the potential work of relational understanding beside the established theories that treat the same matters, and it has located its contribution in two characters whose conjunction supplies what those theories, rendering the matters of intimate life as individual properties or states, leave unsupplied. A reader persuaded to this point might conclude that the case for relational understanding in intimacy is made. The next part argues that it is not, and that a case built on function alone, however strong, leaves open a question that function cannot answer.
Part Three: The Normative Case: Beyond Function
§9 The Insufficiency of the Functional Case
The functional case sets out what relational understanding does, the trust it generates, the shared value it recognizes, the conflict it eases, the quality of a shared life it sustains. A case of this form defends a practice by its effects, and a defense by effects carries a weakness that must be faced directly, since it bears on the whole standing of the account. The weakness is that the effects by which the practice is defended can, in some measure and for some time, be produced by something that is not the practice at all, and that a defense by effects alone has no way to tell the two apart.
Consider what an efficient possession of another can counterfeit. A partner who studies the other to secure a hold upon the other’s world and not to enter it, who learns the other’s needs and fears in order to manage them, who anticipates and arranges so that the other is kept content and compliant, may produce, for a time and by the measures the functional case employs, much of what relational understanding produces. Such a partner may generate a felt trust, since the other, well managed, finds their expectations met. Such a partner may produce an appearance of shared value, having learned to present as common what secures the other’s attachment. Such a partner may ease conflict, having learned which crossings to avoid and which concessions to trade. Such a partner may sustain a certain satisfaction in the bond, meeting the other’s needs with the efficiency that a studied management affords. By the functions alone, this bond and a bond of genuine relational understanding may for a considerable time be difficult to tell apart, and on some measures the managed bond may score higher, since management is directed at the measures in a way that understanding is not.
This is the weakness of the functional case, and it is not a marginal one. It is the same weakness that attends every defense of a practice by its effects, that the effects may be counterfeited by a simulacrum directed at producing them, and that the defense, having appealed only to the effects, cannot distinguish the practice from its simulacrum. In the domain of intimacy the simulacrum has a name in the wider framework within which this paper stands. It is a relational extraction, a taking from the other under the form of a giving, and its refinement is precisely its danger, since the more skillfully the functions of understanding are counterfeited the harder the extraction is to detect and the longer it may run.
The point is not that the functional case is false. The functions are real, and relational understanding does produce them. The point is that the functional case is not sufficient, because it cannot, from within itself, distinguish the understanding that produces these functions as the overflow of a genuine crossing from the management that produces their appearance as the instrument of a hold. To distinguish these is to appeal to something other than the functions, to what the practice is and not only to what it yields, and this is a normative and not a functional distinction. The remainder of this part draws it.
It is worth marking why the distinction cannot be recovered by a longer or a more careful functional analysis. One might propose that the counterfeit will eventually fail on the measures, that management, unlike understanding, cannot sustain the functions indefinitely, so that a sufficiently long functional accounting would tell them apart after all. There is something in this, and the next parts will give it its due, since the temporal structure of intimacy does bear on what can be sustained. Yet it does not rescue the functional case, for two reasons. The counterfeit may run for a very long time, across years in which real harm is done, before any functional shortfall appears, so that a distinction available only in the eventual accounting comes too late to guide a life. And the deeper reason is that even where the counterfeit does eventually fail on the measures, what it lacked was never merely a quantity of function. It lacked something the measures do not capture, for want of which we judge it a wrong done to the other and not merely a bond that underperformed. That something is what the normative case must name.
§10 Legitimacy without Correctness
The distinction the functional case cannot draw is a normative one, and it must be drawn with care, since the obvious way of drawing it is closed to this account. The obvious way would be to say that genuine understanding is correct where the counterfeit is mistaken, that the understanding partner grasps the other as the other truly is while the managing partner works from a false or partial picture, so that the distinction between understanding and extraction is the distinction between a true and a false representation of the other. This way is closed, because the epistemology on which the paper stands does not grant that an understanding of another is ever correct in the sense this would require.
The reason returns to the account of truth recalled in Part One. Understanding another, on this account, is a generative observation, produced in the crossing of two worlds, historically situated, and always incomplete. It is never the possession of the other as the other finally is, for there is no rendering that holds the other without remainder, and the observation of the other is enriched without end as the crossing continues and the two worlds change. Truth, here as everywhere on this account, is generated in a historical and contradictory movement and is never held as a finished correctness. To defend genuine understanding as the correct representation of the other, against the counterfeit as the false one, would be to claim for understanding exactly the finished correctness the epistemology denies to all knowing. The account cannot draw its normative distinction as a distinction in correctness without abandoning its own conception of truth.
The distinction must therefore be drawn on other ground, and the ground is ethical and not epistemic. What separates understanding from its counterfeit is not that the one is correct and the other mistaken. It is that the one is legitimate and the other is not, and the legitimacy in question is a matter of how the other is treated in the crossing, not of whether the crossing arrives at a correct result. The understanding partner enters the other’s world as another world, to be observed with and not possessed, and holds the other as a co-generating subject whose rendering of things is a source and not a resource. The managing partner enters the other’s world as a terrain to be mapped for the sake of a hold, and holds the other as an object of management, a system to be kept in a desired state. The difference is in the standing granted to the other, and it is a difference of legitimacy.
Legitimacy, not correctness. The account does not distinguish genuine understanding from its counterfeit by the correctness of the one and the error of the other, for understanding another is a generative observation, historically produced and always incomplete, and is never held as a finished correctness. The distinction is ethical. Genuine understanding is legitimate in that it enters the other’s world to observe with the other and holds the other as a co-generating subject; its counterfeit is illegitimate in that it enters to secure a hold and holds the other as an object of management. What is asked of an understanding is that it be legitimate and not that it be correct.
The ground of this legitimacy has been carried, in the wider framework, by an ethic of non-possession, and non-possession will remain central to what follows. To understand another legitimately is to observe the other without possessing the other, to let the other’s world be a world one enters and does not annex, and to hold what one observes of the other as a matter generated between the two and belonging to neither, and not as a property of one’s own by which the other is held. The counterfeit fails this at its root, for its whole motion is possessive, a taking of the other into a system of management under the appearance of a giving of attention. This is why the framework names it a relational extraction, and why the wrong it does is legible in the terms of generative justice, as the interruption of the mutual generation that a legitimate bond sustains, the rendering of one party into fuel for the other’s ends under the form of care.
Non-possession states one aspect of the legitimacy in question, and the account should not rest the whole of its normative ground on a single ethical rendering, for a reason internal to its own method. Legitimacy is a concept, a matter to be understood, and the epistemology this paper applies holds that no single symbolic system exhausts a concept and that a concept becomes observable through the relations among several renderings of it. An ethical tradition is such a symbolic system. To render the legitimacy of understanding through non-possession alone would repeat, at the level of ethics, the error the epistemology sets itself against, the mistaking of one rendering for the whole. The next section therefore observes ethical legitimacy across several traditions, of which non-possession names one aspect, so that the normative ground is drawn in the manner the paper’s own method requires.
Two further points hold this normative ground to the conception of truth the paper shares, so that the normative case does not smuggle back, at the level of ethics, the finished correctness it refused at the level of knowing. The first is that legitimacy, as it is used here, makes no claim to have grasped the other correctly. A legitimate understanding may be deeply incomplete, may err, may be revised across the history of the bond, and remains legitimate throughout, since its legitimacy lies in the standing it grants the other and not in the accuracy of its result. One may hold one’s partner as a co-generating subject, enter their world with the intent to observe and not to possess, and still understand them partially and by degrees, as the account holds all understanding to be. Legitimacy is a matter of the ethical form of the crossing, compatible at every point with the incompleteness the epistemology requires.
The second is that the criterion of legitimacy is itself historically generated, and is set here as no final guarantee. The ethic of non-possession, the standing of the other as a co-generating subject, the very conception of a relational extraction, are not timeless moral facts read off from the nature of things. They are themselves generated in the historical and material development of relational life, arising as the conditions of a form of life bring them forth and open to the same dialectical movement as everything else the account treats. What counts as possession and what as legitimate observation of another, where the line falls between entering a world and annexing it, is a matter that has a history and will have a further history, refigured as the conditions of intimate life develop. The account does not install non-possession as a new absolute in the place of the correctness it declined. It offers non-possession as the criterion legitimacy takes in the present development of relational life, held as the best the present affords and answerable to its own further generation, in exactly the manner the framework holds of all its commitments, including this one.
With this the distinction is drawn in principle. Function tells what understanding does and cannot tell understanding from its counterfeit. Legitimacy tells them apart, without claiming the correctness the account denies to all knowing, and holding even its own criterion within the history it theorizes. What remains is to draw the ethical ground of legitimacy more fully than a single rendering allows, by observing it across several ethical traditions, and this is the work of the section that follows.
§11 Ethical Legitimacy Observed across Traditions
The legitimacy that separates understanding from its counterfeit has been stated through non-possession, and the previous section closed by holding that a single ethical rendering should not carry the whole of it. This section draws the ground more fully. It observes the legitimacy of understanding across several ethical traditions, each of which renders an aspect of what it is to treat another rightly and leaves an aspect for the others to render, and it treats non-possession as one such aspect among them. The traditions are taken in their secular and argued forms, as accounts of right conduct that stand on reasons open to examination, and the section passes through them in the manner the epistemology prescribes, to locate in each what it reaches and what it leaves.
The functional case already brought one tradition into play, though it did so to mark its insufficiency. A consequentialist ethic renders the rightness of an act in its results, the good it produces and the harm it forestalls, and on such an ethic the legitimacy of an understanding would lie in the goods it brings to the bond, the trust, the shared value, the eased conflict, the sustained quality of a life. Part Three showed why this rendering, taken alone, cannot draw the distinction the account requires, since a refined possession of the other can produce these goods, for a time, as efficiently as understanding. The consequentialist rendering reaches the real and important truth that a legitimate understanding is fruitful, that it does good in the bond, and it leaves untouched the matter of how the other is treated in the producing of that good, which is the matter on which understanding and its counterfeit divide. Its aspect is the fruitfulness of understanding; its omission is the standing of the other.
A deontological ethic in the tradition of Kant renders right conduct through duty and the moral law, and it supplies, at its center, a principle that speaks directly to the present matter, that one is to treat humanity, in oneself and in others, never merely as a means and always at the same time as an end. This principle gives the standing of the other the consequentialist rendering omits, and it gives it as a requirement that no calculation of goods can override. The counterfeit of understanding, which takes the other into a system of management, treats the other merely as a means, and the Kantian rendering names this the precise wrong that the consequentialist accounting cannot register. Its aspect is the dignity of the other as an end, a standing that the possessive relation violates however favorable its results. What it leaves is the concreteness and the relationality of the bond, for the Kantian ground is a universal law addressed to any rational being as such, and it renders the other as a bearer of a dignity shared by all rather than as this particular other whose singular world is to be entered. It secures that the other is not used, and it says little of what it is to attend to just this person in their difference.
A care ethic, in the work of Noddings and of Gilligan, renders right conduct through the attentive response to a particular other in their need, and it supplies exactly the concreteness the Kantian ground leaves abstract. On this rendering legitimacy is a matter of attentiveness, of receiving the other in their particularity and responding to what they, and not humanity in general, require. It gives the positive and relational content that non-possession, stated as a restraint, does not carry on its own, for non-possession says what a legitimate understanding refrains from, the annexation of the other, and the care ethic says what it actively does, the attentive entry into and response to the other’s world. Its aspect is the responsive attention to the singular other. What it leaves is the matter of limit and of mutuality, for an ethic of care, pressed to its edge, can pass into a self-effacement in which the one who cares is drawn without return, and this is a relational imbalance of its own, a failure of the mutual generation the account requires, which the care rendering is not well placed to mark.
An ethic of virtue in the tradition of Aristotle renders right conduct through the character of the agent and the flourishing it makes possible, and in its account of friendship it reaches the matter of mutuality the care ethic leaves. The friendship of the best kind, on this account, is one in which each wishes the good of the other for the other’s own sake, and in which the two flourish together in a shared activity, each the occasion of the other’s excellence. This renders legitimacy as a mutual and generative matter, a good realized between two who are equally its authors, and it supplies the reciprocity that the asymmetry of care and the universality of duty do not frame. Its aspect is the mutual flourishing of two who wish each other’s good for its own sake, which is close to the account’s own conception of a bond in which two worlds generate what neither held alone. What it leaves is its reliance on a substantive account of flourishing, a settled conception of the human good toward which the friendship tends, which sits in tension with the account’s refusal of a predetermined end, and this tension is itself a matter the observation must hold rather than resolve.
Set these renderings into relation, and the legitimacy of understanding becomes observable in a way no one of them affords. The consequentialist reaches its fruitfulness and omits the standing of the other; the Kantian reaches that standing as dignity and omits the concrete singular; the care ethic reaches the responsive attention to the singular and omits the limit and the mutuality; the virtue ethic reaches the mutual flourishing and relies on a settled good the account cannot grant. Non-possession stands among these as one aspect, nearest to the Kantian refusal of the other as mere means, and it is supplied, by the others, with the positive attention, the reciprocity, and the fruitfulness that a restraint stated alone does not carry. What legitimacy is, in the treatment of the other that separates understanding from extraction, is observed in the relations among these renderings, as the account holds every concept to be observed, and it is exhausted by none of them.
Legitimacy observed across traditions. The ethical legitimacy that separates understanding from its counterfeit is a concept, and by the paper’s own method it is exhausted by no single ethical tradition and becomes observable through the relations among several. A consequentialist rendering reaches the fruitfulness of understanding; a Kantian rendering reaches the standing of the other as an end and not a mere means; a care ethic reaches the attentive response to the singular other; an Aristotelian ethic of friendship reaches the mutual flourishing of two who wish each other’s good for its own sake. Each omits what the others supply. Non-possession is one aspect among these, nearest the Kantian refusal of the other as means, and completed by the positive attention, the reciprocity, and the fruitfulness the others render. Legitimacy is observed in the relation among the traditions and is exhausted by none.
This section has done, at the level of ethics, what the paper argues understanding always does. It has taken a concept, the legitimacy of understanding, that no single symbolic system renders without remainder, and it has brought it into view through the relations among several renderings of it, each partial, none final. The normative ground of the paper is thereby drawn in the same manner as its epistemology, and the earlier reliance on non-possession is corrected by observing non-possession as one aspect within a relation of traditions that together render more of the legitimacy than any renders alone, and not by replacing one sole criterion with another. The normative case is, in its own construction, an instance of the relational understanding it concerns.
Two conditions hold this observation to the paper’s stance, as they held the account of legitimacy in the previous section. The first is that observing legitimacy across traditions does not yield a correct ethical criterion, a formula that would settle, for every case, whether an understanding is legitimate. It yields an observation, partial and open, of what legitimacy involves, in which the traditions check and supplement one another without converging on a single rule. The account claims no more ethical correctness than it claims epistemic correctness, and for the same reason. The second is that the field of traditions is itself historical. These renderings arose in the development of moral life and will be joined by others as that life develops, and the observation of legitimacy they afford is generated in history and open to its further generation, set as no final criterion. The account offers this relation of traditions as the observation of legitimacy that the present development of ethical life affords, held as the best the present yields and answerable to what comes after, in the manner the framework holds of all its commitments.
With this the normative case is complete. Function tells what understanding does; legitimacy, observed across the traditions that render it, tells understanding from its counterfeit, without a correct criterion and within the history that generates it. The paper turns now to the problem that sets the cultivation of these capacities in intimacy apart from their cultivation anywhere else.
Part Four: The Special Problem of Intimacy
§12 The Wager, not the Rehearsal
The parts to this point have set out what relational understanding is, what it does, and why, done legitimately, it is good. A reader might expect the paper now to describe how it is practiced, how one learns and rehearses the capacities it requires until they are secure, in the way one rehearses any skill. This part argues that intimacy resists such a description at its root, and that the resistance is a structural feature and not a practical inconvenience that follows from the framework’s own conception of value and time. The capacities of relational understanding, in the domain of intimacy, are wagered and not rehearsed.
A rehearsal is possible where an action can be tried, its result observed, and the action adjusted and tried again, the feedback returning quickly enough and the trials repeating freely enough that the capacity is shaped by the loop of attempt and correction. Much can be learned in this way, and much of what surrounds relational understanding can be. The recognition of another’s world, the entry into it, the labor of translation, admit of practice in settings where the loop is available, in ordinary conversation, in friendship, in the encounter with a difficult text or an unfamiliar discipline, in the professional formations of teaching and care. There the crossing of worlds can be attempted, its result seen with reasonable speed, and the attempt refined. These capacities are, in a sense the next section will make exact, near-practicable.
Intimacy is different, and the difference follows from what the framework holds about relational value and its time. Value, on this account, is generated in the crossing of worlds, and its generation is historical, so that what is generated at one moment may disclose its value only much later, when the field of relations has grown enough to observe it. The companion work drew this out for the observation of concepts, where a rendering’s significance may become observable only once a later rendering arrives to throw it into relief, and where the field of relations through which a matter is observed is itself generated over time. In an intimate bond this temporal structure is at its most extended. A word given, a room made for the other’s difficulty, a generative thing offered at a hard moment, may disclose its value only after years, when the bond has developed to the point from which what was given can at last be observed for what it was. The feedback on an act of relational understanding, in intimacy, may return only after a passage of time so long that it cannot serve as the correction in a loop of practice.
To this delay is joined a second feature, that the trials do not repeat under the same conditions and often do not repeat at all. An intimate bond is a single history, not a series of independent attempts. A crossing offered at a given moment is offered once, into a bond in the state that its whole prior history has produced, and it cannot be withdrawn and offered again to the same bond in the same state, for the offering has already altered the state. Where a rehearsal requires that the trial be repeatable, the intimate bond is constitutively unrepeatable, a single unfolding in which each act enters once and changes the ground of the next. The partner one addresses today is not the partner one will address tomorrow, for the bond will have moved, carried in part by today’s address.
The delay of the feedback and the unrepeatability of the trial together remove the loop of attempt and correction on which rehearsal depends. One cannot, in the deepest reaches of an intimate bond, try a way of understanding the other, observe promptly whether it succeeded, and adjust and try again under the same conditions, because the observation may be long delayed and the conditions do not return. What one does instead, in offering an act of relational understanding into an intimate bond, is to give something whose value one cannot presently confirm, into a history that will not run again, on the trust that it is the right thing to give. This is the structure of a wager and not of a rehearsal, and it is the structure that sets the cultivation of these capacities in intimacy apart from their cultivation anywhere the loop is available.
The wager of intimacy. In the domain of intimacy the capacities of relational understanding are wagered, not rehearsed. Because relational value is generated historically, the worth of an act of understanding may return only after a long passage of time, and because the bond is a single unrepeatable history, the act cannot be tried again under the same conditions. The loop of attempt and prompt correction on which rehearsal depends is therefore unavailable at the depths of intimacy, and what is offered there is given on trust, into a history that will not run again, before its value can be confirmed.
This structure is not a defect of intimate life to be engineered away, and naming it as a wager is not a counsel of resignation. It is the form that the generativity of relational value takes when the relation is a whole shared life, and it is inseparable from what makes intimacy the deepest of the domains in which worlds are crossed. The task of the following sections is to ask what the cultivation of these capacities can mean, once it is granted that at their depths they cannot be rehearsed, and to distinguish the capacities that can still be practiced in the ordinary way from those that can only be borne as a standing disposition into the wager.
§13 The Field of Cultivation and the Field of Exercise
If the capacities of relational understanding cannot, at the depths of intimacy, be rehearsed in the loop of attempt and correction, and yet they can plainly be developed, since some people bring far more of them to their bonds than others, then their development must occur in part elsewhere than in the bond where they are most consequentially exercised. This section draws the distinction on which the practical proposal of the paper rests, between the field in which a capacity is cultivated and the field in which it is exercised, and it holds that in the case of intimacy these come apart.
The confusion the distinction removes is the expectation that intimacy should serve as its own training ground, that one learns to understand one’s partner by practicing on one’s partner, refining the capacity through the bond itself. For the near-practicable capacities this is partly available, but for the capacities that reach into the wager it is not, and the expectation that it should be is a source of a particular disappointment, the sense that one ought to be getting better at one’s bond through sheer repetition and is somehow failing to. The bond is not a practice ground for its own deepest demands. It is the field of exercise, the place where capacities developed in part elsewhere are wagered, and its unrepeatable and slow-returning history is unsuited to the shaping of a capacity through rapid trial.
The field of cultivation, for much of what relational understanding requires, lies in the wider life in which the loop of attempt and correction is available. The recognition of another’s world, the entry into it, the construction of a mapping between two structures, the labor of translation, can be developed in every setting where one meets a world not one’s own and can see, with reasonable speed, whether one has entered it. They are developed in friendship, in the sustained encounter with a discipline or a tradition foreign to one’s own, in the reading of literature that renders a world one does not inhabit, in the practices of teaching and of care where the entry into another’s world is the daily work and its success or failure is visible. A person who has developed these capacities across such a life brings them to an intimate bond already formed, and exercises there what was cultivated in fields where the exercise was correctable.
This gives the first half of a distinction that the next part will develop into the model. Some of the capacities of relational understanding are near-practicable. They admit of cultivation in the loop of attempt and correction, in fields outside the intimate bond, and they can be brought to the bond as developed skills. The recognition of the other’s world, the entry, the structural mapping, and the translation are of this kind, and the fact that they are cultivable elsewhere is what allows a person to bring understanding to a bond and not only to discover, across the bond’s slow history, whether they had it.
The other half of the distinction concerns the capacities that reach furthest into the wager, and these do not admit of cultivation in the same way, for a reason that must be stated precisely. A capacity whose exercise gives feedback only after long delay, into an unrepeatable history, cannot be shaped by the loop of attempt and correction even in principle, since the loop requires the feedback the wager withholds. The throwing of a generative thing into the other’s unfolding, the non-intervention that lets a shared dynamic develop, the preservation of a relational experience against a value that may return only much later, are capacities of this kind. They cannot be practiced to reliability, because reliability is precisely what the loop confers and the loop is unavailable. What can be developed, in their place, is a standing disposition and not a skill honed by feedback, a formed way of being toward the other that inclines one to give rightly into the wager without the confirmation a rehearsal would supply. The nature of this disposition, and the sense in which it can be cultivated where a skill cannot, is the matter of the model the next part proposes.
Part Five: The Practical Theory and Its Cultivation
§14 The Capacities, not a Procedure
The model this paper proposes is a set of capacities and not a procedure, and the distinction follows as a consequence of the account and is no matter of presentation. A procedure is an ordered sequence of steps, each following the last, the whole completed when the final step is reached. A model of relational understanding cast as a procedure would name a first thing to do, then a second, and so on to a last, and would represent understanding as achieved when the sequence is run. The account developed here forbids this, for the same reason it forbids the rehearsal. The steps of such a procedure would have to follow one another in time, the earlier completed before the later begins, and yet the matters they concern do not order themselves so. The value of a thing given may return only after the later steps have long since passed, the feedback that a procedure would require at each step to confirm its completion before the next is delayed and uncertain, and the whole may span a length of time across which no sequence could be held as a single connected run. A procedure presupposes that its steps are adjacent in time and that each completes before the next begins. The generativity of relational value, which may disclose the worth of an early act only in a late season of the bond, breaks this presupposition, and with it the possibility of a procedure.
What the account permits, in the place of a procedure, is a set of capacities. A capacity is a formed power that can be drawn upon at any moment the relation requires it, in any order, and whose exercise at one moment does not wait upon the completion of another. Capacities can be held together, brought to bear as the unrepeatable and slow-returning history of a bond calls for them, without the temporal adjacency a procedure demands. To cast the model as capacities and not as steps is thus to make it consistent with the framework’s own conception of relational time, on which the acts of understanding are drawn, each in its moment, from powers the person has formed, and do not line up in a sequence, from powers the person has formed and holds in readiness.
The model names seven such capacities. They are not stages and are not ordered, and the numbering that follows is for reference and not for sequence. The first is the recognition of the other’s language world, the acknowledgment that the other renders the world in a symbolic system with its own generative rules and not merely in a different vocabulary. The second is the entry into that world, the capacity to suspend one’s own system far enough to let the other’s renderings become natural, tested by whether one can generate a rendering the other affirms as their own. The third is the construction of a structural mapping, the observation of how the relations that hold in one’s own world correspond, at the level of structure, to the relations that hold in the other’s. The fourth is translation, the rendering of a matter from the other’s world into one’s own with the loss marked and the mapping honored. The fifth is the throwing of a generative thing into the other’s own unfolding, the offering, in the other’s terms, of something from which the other generates what they had not observed, as against the forcing upon the other of a conclusion of one’s own. The sixth is a non-intervention, the capacity to withhold one’s steering and let a shared dynamic develop between the two. The seventh is the joint recognition and preservation of what is generated, the noticing together of a generated matter’s value, the finding of where the two worlds meet, and the keeping of a relational experience against the season in which its value returns.
The model: capacities in two orders of cultivation. Relational understanding in intimacy is proposed as a set of seven capacities and not a procedure, since the generativity of relational value forbids the temporal adjacency a procedure requires. The seven are the recognition of the other’s world, the entry into it, the construction of a structural mapping, translation, the throwing of a generative thing into the other’s unfolding, non-intervention, and the joint recognition and preservation of what is generated. They divide into two orders. The first four are near-practicable, cultivable in the loop of attempt and correction in fields outside the bond, and brought to the bond as developed skills. The last three reach into the wager, give feedback only after delay and into an unrepeatable history, and cannot be honed by a loop; they are cultivated as a standing disposition and not as skills. Non-possession is the condition of all seven, without which they decline into a refined extraction.
Figure 1. The model as capacities, not a procedure. The seven capacities are held in readiness and drawn upon in any order, with no sequence among them. They fall in two orders. The four near-practicable capacities, on the left, admit cultivation in the loop of attempt and correction: (1) recognition of the other’s world, (2) entry into that world, (3) structural mapping, and (4) translation. The three wagered capacities, on the right, reach into the wager and are cultivated only as a standing disposition: (5) the throwing of a generative thing, (6) non-intervention, and (7) joint recognition and preservation. The fifth and the sixth compose a single gesture in two moments. Non-possession is drawn as the field enclosing all seven, the condition under which each is what it is, and not as an eighth capacity.
The first four capacities, the recognition, the entry, the mapping, and the translation, were treated at their root in the companion work and are near-practicable in the sense the previous part gave. They are the crossing of worlds in its cognitive labor, and while intimacy raises them to their highest difficulty, they can be developed in the wider life where the crossing is correctable, and brought to the bond as powers already formed. This paper does not add to their theory beyond what the domain of intimacy requires, and turns instead to the three that reach into the wager, for it is there that intimacy makes its distinctive demand and there that the account has most to add. The next sections take the fifth and the seventh in turn, the throwing of a generative thing and the preservation of relational experience, with the sixth, non-intervention, drawn out alongside the fifth, since the two are a single gesture in two moments. The condition of non-possession, named in the claim as the ground of all seven, is drawn together at the last.
§15 The Throwing of a Generative Thing
The fifth capacity is the most distinctive of the model and the least reducible to a technique, and it is best approached through what it is not. When one has entered another’s world and observed a matter the other has not observed, the impulse is to tell the other what one has seen, to deliver the observation as a conclusion. This delivery, however well meant, forces upon the other a rendering formed in one’s own movement, and it places the other in the position of receiving a finished result and does not generate one. Even when the result is right, in the provisional sense the account allows, its delivery forecloses the other’s own generation and installs one’s own observation in the other’s world from without. The fifth capacity is the alternative to this delivery, and it consists in giving the other the means of their own generation and not a conclusion.
To throw a generative thing into the other’s unfolding is to offer, in the other’s own terms and in keeping with the generative rules of the other’s world, something from which the other will generate an observation they had not reached, an observation that is then theirs and not a transplant of one’s own. The thing thrown may be a question that opens a direction the other’s world contains but has not taken, a juxtaposition that sets two of the other’s own renderings into a relation the other had not drawn, an instance that the other’s own commitments make significant. Its mark is that it is generative and not conclusive, that it occasions the other’s generation of the observation and does not carry it as a payload to be delivered, the other’s generation of it, and that what the other then observes is generated in the other’s own world and belongs to the other.
This is the capacity that a generative pedagogy has practiced under other names, and the theory of generative justice developed by Eglash gives it a wider setting, in which what a generative act returns is returned to those who generate it and is not extracted from them. The bearing of that setting on the present capacity is exact. To throw a generative thing rightly is to act so that the observation generated returns to the other in whom it is generated, remaining the other’s own, where the forcing of a conclusion extracts the generation, installing one’s own result in place of the other’s and taking from the other the generativity that was theirs to exercise. The distinction between the throwing and the forcing is thus a distinction of justice and not of tact, between an act that leaves the other the author of what they come to observe and an act that authors it for them.
Three features distinguish the throwing from its failures, and they can be named though they cannot be reduced to a rule. The first is that the thing thrown must be in the other’s terms and must respect the generative rules of the other’s world, for a thing thrown in one’s own terms is a delivery in disguise, and a thing that violates the other’s rules will only collide with the other’s world and will not generate within it. This is why the throwing depends upon the prior capacities, the recognition and the entry and the mapping, since one cannot offer in the other’s terms what one has not learned to render in them. The second is that the thing thrown must be generative and not conclusive, an opening and not an answer, for a conclusion pressed in the form of a question is a forcing that has borrowed the shape of a throwing, and the other feels the difference as the difference between being drawn out and being led. The third is a matter of moment and measure, of when the thing is offered and how much is offered, for a generative thing thrown before the other’s world is ready to receive it will not generate, and one thrown with too heavy a hand will steer where it should open. This third feature cannot be given as a rule at all, and it is the point at which the capacity passes from a skill into the standing disposition the previous part described, since the sense of the moment is formed and not followed.
The sixth capacity belongs with the fifth, as the withholding that the throwing requires once it is done. To throw a generative thing and then to steer the other’s generation of it, to guide the other toward the observation one had oneself reached, is to take back with the sixth capacity what the fifth had given, converting the occasion of the other’s generation into a managed route to one’s own conclusion. Non-intervention is the capacity to let go of the thing thrown, to allow the shared dynamic between the two worlds to develop without one’s steering, and to bear the uncertainty of not knowing what the other will generate or whether they will generate at all. It is a capacity of restraint, and its difficulty is the difficulty of trusting a process one has set going but does not control. Its characteristic failure is the intervention that cannot wait, the resumption of steering under the anxiety of an open outcome, which returns the exchange to the delivery the fifth capacity was meant to escape.
Together the fifth and the sixth capacities compose a single gesture in two moments, the giving of a generative thing and the letting go of it, the offering into the other’s world and the withholding of one’s hand from what the other then makes. The gesture is a giving in the strong sense, since what it gives is the other’s own generation of an observation and not an observation itself, and its condition is a restraint that wants nothing back from the giving, neither the credit of the result nor its conformity to what one had oneself observed. This restraint is the form that non-possession takes in the fifth and sixth capacities, and it is what holds the throwing apart from the refined management that would use the appearance of a generative gift to install a conclusion of its own. The disposition to give in this way, wanting nothing back, is not a technique that can be rehearsed to reliability. It is a formed generosity, cultivated as a way of being toward the other and carried into the wager, where its rightness cannot be confirmed at the moment of the giving and must be borne on trust.
§16 The Preservation of Relational Experience
The seventh capacity is the one that belongs most properly to intimacy, and it has no close counterpart in the domains where the crossing of worlds is quicker and its returns more prompt. It has two moments, a present one and a temporal one. The present moment is the joint recognition of what a crossing has generated, the noticing together of a generated matter and of its value, and the finding of where the two worlds have met. The temporal moment is the preservation of that recognition, and of the experience in which it arose, against a future in which its full value may be disclosed. The first moment intimacy shares with other domains, and the account of joint recognition given below applies wherever two people observe together what their crossing has produced. The second moment is intimacy’s own, and it follows directly from the wager.
Take the present moment first. What a crossing of worlds generates is observed, on this account, in the relation between the two worlds, and its observation is itself a relational act, most fully carried out by the two together. When two partners notice together what has come into being between them, a shared value generated across their difference, an observation neither held alone, a meeting of their worlds at a point neither had marked, they do more than register a fact. They perform, jointly, the observation in which the generated matter comes fully into view, and they find in it the places where their worlds are, for the moment, one in what they hold while remaining two in how they hold it. This joint recognition is generative in its own right, for the noticing together of what has been generated is itself a crossing, and it may generate, as the companion work observed of such recognitions, an observation that neither partner had reached and that arrives to both at once, a thing seen together that was in neither before the seeing.
The temporal moment is where intimacy makes its distinctive demand, and it rests on the structure named in the wager. Because relational value is generated historically, the full value of what a crossing produces may not be observable at the time of its production. A given moment in a bond, an act of understanding offered, a difficulty borne together, a room made for the other’s core, may generate something whose worth cannot be recognized in the present field of the relation and becomes observable only later, when the bond has developed to the point from which that earlier moment can at last be observed for what it was. The seventh capacity, in its temporal moment, is the capacity to preserve such a moment against that later season, to keep the relational experience, unrecognized or half-recognized in its value now, so that when the field has grown enough to disclose its worth the experience is still there to be observed anew.
This preservation is a capacity and not merely a memory, and the distinction matters. To preserve a relational experience in the sense the account intends is to keep it available for a re-observation, and not to record it as a fact of the past, whose occasion has not yet come, to hold it as a thing whose value is not yet settled and may still be generated. It is an act carried out on trust, for one preserves without knowing whether the value will come, and it is an act of the two, most fully done when the partners keep such experiences together, in the shared holding that a bond maintains through its rituals of return, its recollections, its marking of what it has passed through. A bond that preserves its experiences in this way carries forward a reservoir of what it has generated but not yet fully observed, and it is from this reservoir that the later recognitions are drawn, when a present difficulty discloses the worth of a past forbearance, or a late season of the bond observes at last what an early one had generated without knowing.
The preservation of relational experience. The seventh capacity has a moment proper to intimacy, the preservation of a relational experience against the season in which its value returns. Because relational value is generated historically, what a crossing produces may become observable for what it is only later, when the field of the bond has grown enough to disclose it. To preserve is to keep such an experience available for a re-observation whose occasion has not yet come, holding it on trust as a value not yet settled, most fully done by the two together. The reservoir so kept is that from which the bond’s later recognitions are drawn.
This capacity draws directly on the two forms of historical generation that the companion work set out and that were recalled in Part One, and it is worth marking the connection, since it shows the seventh capacity to be the application of the account to the whole time of a bond, and no addition to it. The first form was the enrichment of an observation within a field of relations, as a later rendering discloses what an earlier one had left unmarked. In a bond, this is the season that discloses the worth of a past act, the later moment from which an earlier one is at last observed for what it was. The second form was the generation of the field of relations itself, the arrival of new relations that open observations unavailable before. In a bond, this is the growth of the relation itself, through which what an early moment generated becomes observable only once the bond has developed the relations that let it be seen. The preservation of relational experience is the capacity that holds the bond’s past open to both, keeping what was generated available to the enrichment and the growth that a long shared history brings.
Here the movement is the spiral the framework has described elsewhere, and not a circle. A bond that preserves and returns to its experiences does not come back to them unchanged, reliving a fixed past. It returns to them from a field grown richer, and observes in them what was generated but not seen, so that the return is to the same experience observed anew, its value disclosed by the distance traveled. The preservation of relational experience is what makes this spiral possible across the length of a life, holding the past available so that the bond, returning, finds it grown. This is the capacity by which a long intimacy becomes, in its best reaches, a deepening and not a mere duration, a continued generation in which what was given early is recognized late, and recognized together, and kept again against a season later still.
§17 Non-Possession as the Condition Throughout
Non-possession has appeared at each turn of the model, in the restraint that lets the thing thrown remain the other’s, in the withholding that is non-intervention, in the trust that preserves without demanding a return. It is time to state its place directly. Non-possession is not an eighth capacity, one more power alongside the seven. It is the condition under which the seven are what they are, and without which each of them declines into a form of the extraction the normative case set against understanding. It runs through the model as a single requirement in seven forms, and the model is completed by naming it as such.
A word on the standing of this condition holds it to the fuller ground drawn in the normative case. The legitimacy of understanding was there observed across several ethical traditions, of which non-possession is one aspect, nearest the refusal of the other as a mere means and completed by the attentive response, the reciprocity, and the fruitfulness the other traditions render. Non-possession serves as the condition of the seven capacities because it is the aspect that governs, most directly, the conduct of the crossing, what one does and refrains from doing in the exercise of each capacity. It carries the fuller legitimacy into the practice of the model without standing in for the whole of it, and the attentiveness, the mutuality, and the fruitfulness that the other traditions render are present in the capacities as the positive content that non-possession, a restraint, leaves for them to supply. The condition named here is thus the practical face, in the exercise of the capacities, of the legitimacy observed across the traditions.
The point can be seen by taking the seven capacities and removing the condition from each, so that what remains is the capacity’s counterfeit. The recognition of the other’s world, without non-possession, becomes the reconnaissance of a territory to be taken, the acknowledgment of the other’s difference as the first move in mapping it for a hold. The entry into the other’s world becomes an infiltration, an entry made to secure a position and not to observe with the other. The structural mapping becomes the diagram by which the other is managed, the translation a means of putting the other’s words to one’s own uses. The throwing of a generative thing becomes the planting of a suggestion the other is led to think their own, the most refined of manipulations, which borrows the very form of the generative gift to install a conclusion by stealth. Non-intervention becomes the calculated withholding that lets the other commit themselves before one moves. And the preservation of relational experience becomes the keeping of an account, a record of what the other owes, held against a future reckoning. Each capacity has its counterfeit, and in every case the counterfeit is the capacity emptied of non-possession and turned to a hold.
This is why non-possession cannot be one capacity among the others, for it is the condition that separates each of the others from its counterfeit, and a model that listed it as a further item would misplace it as one more thing to do, where it is the standing under which all the others are done. The same power that enters the other’s world can enter to observe with the other or to secure a hold upon them, and nothing in the capacity itself decides which, for the capacity is the same power in both cases and its direction is given by the condition under which it is exercised. Non-possession is that condition, the orientation of the whole crossing toward observing with the other and not toward possessing them, and it is present or absent in each capacity as the capacity is exercised, not as a separate act performed before or after.
The wrong that the counterfeits share is the one the normative case named, and it is legible in the terms of generative justice. In each counterfeit the generativity of the relation is turned to the account of one party, the other made into a resource from which value is drawn under the appearance of a bond in which value is shared. The other becomes, in the phrase the wider framework uses, fuel for an end that is not the relation’s own, and the more skillfully the counterfeit imitates the legitimate capacity the more thoroughly the extraction is concealed. Non-possession is the refusal of this turn, the holding of the relation’s generativity as belonging to the relation and to both who generate within it, and the treatment of the other, throughout the crossing, as a co-generating subject whose world is entered to be observed with and never annexed.
It remains only to hold this condition, as the normative case held its criterion, within the history the account theorizes, so that non-possession is not installed as the timeless law the framework elsewhere refuses. What non-possession requires, where the line falls between a legitimate entry and an annexation, between a generative gift and a planted suggestion, between a preservation and an account kept, is not fixed for all times. It is drawn in the historical development of relational life and will be drawn again as that life develops, and the model offers non-possession as the form the condition takes in the present, held as the best the present affords and open to its own further generation. With this the model is complete, seven capacities in two orders of cultivation, under a condition that runs through all seven and that is itself, like everything in the account, generated in the history it belongs to and set as no final guarantee.
§18 The Practical Theory Embodied
The seven capacities have been given as a theory of a practice, and a theory of a practice invites the question of whether the practice it describes can be carried, in a concrete instrument, into the ordinary passage of a bond. The question is worth a brief answer, since an affirmative one shows the account to bear on a life and not on a page alone. The seven capacities can be embodied in a simple instrument, a kept record through which the crossing of two worlds is practiced day by day, and the shape of such an instrument is sketched here in outline, as a demonstration that the practical theory admits of realization, and not as a design to be specified.
The instrument follows the account’s own structure. The near-practicable capacities become occasions of noticing and recording, a place to set down an observed facet of the other, a rendering attempted in the other’s terms, a structural correspondence marked between the two worlds, a translation kept in a private lexicon of the bond. The wagered capacities become occasions of a different kind, since they cannot be drilled, a place to record a generative thing offered and to leave open how the other took it up, a marked restraint held in place of an intervention, and, at the last, a return. The return is the seventh capacity made concrete. What has been recorded and could not yet be valued is kept, and revisited from a later season, so that what an early moment generated and left unread is observed at last for what it was, and preserved again. The instrument is thus a device for holding the bond’s generated matter against the delay in which its value returns, and for carrying it back into a further generation. Its motion is the spiral the account has described, a return that finds the kept moment grown.
Figure 2. A concept sketch of the practical theory embodied. The near-practicable capacities become occasions of noticing and recording: noticing a facet of the other, a rendering tried in the other’s terms, a structural correspondence, and a translation kept in a private lexicon. The wagered capacities become occasions of an offering left open and a restraint held: a generative thing offered and left open, and a restraint held in place of steering. All of these feed a kept record, what is preserved against the delay in which value returns. A later return re-observes what was kept and preserves it again, and this return is the spiral the account describes, carried into a further generation. The sketch shows that the practical theory admits of a concrete instrument, and it specifies no design.
The point of the sketch is modest and it is real. It shows that the seven capacities form a structure that can be embodied and carried into practice, and are no mere redescription of what good partners already do, and that the account’s most distinctive claim, the preservation of relational experience against a delayed value, has a concrete form. The instrument does no more than hold the bond’s generated matter and return it, and it does exactly what the account requires, that the crossing of two worlds be practiced, its generation kept, and its value observed when the season for its observation comes. The realization sketched here is one among the forms the practical theory might take, and the theory is answerable to no single one of them.
Part Six: The Dialectic of Understanding and its Remainder
§19 The Remainder that Sustains the Bond
The paper has argued, across its length, for understanding, for the entry into the other’s world, the crossing that generates a shared reality, the capacities by which the crossing is carried out. A reader who has followed this far might draw from it a conclusion the paper must now refuse, that the aim of relational understanding is a full understanding, a complete crossing in which the other’s world is at last wholly entered and the two renderings brought into a total correspondence. This section argues, dialectically, that such a completion is neither possible nor to be wished, that the persistence of an intimate bond depends upon a remainder in the other that understanding does not close, and it draws from this a corrected conception of what relational understanding, rightly aimed, seeks.
The thesis is the paper’s own argument to this point. Understanding is good, its work in the bond is real, and the capacities that carry it are worth cultivating. Left there, the argument inclines toward a horizon at which understanding would be complete, the other fully known, the two worlds mapped onto one another without remainder. This horizon is the same fusion the paper set out, in its first pages, to refuse, returning now in a subtler dress. It no longer promises the transparent transport of a message, and it promises instead a complete mutual observation, a bond in which each has entered the other so fully that nothing of the other remains unobserved. The subtler form is the more seductive, since it wears the appearance of the very understanding the paper commends, and it must be met on its own ground.
The antithesis meets it there. A full crossing of the other’s world, were it reached, would end the bond it was meant to perfect, and the reason lies in the core introduced in the background. At the center of the other is an unsymbolizable remainder around which, on the psychoanalytic account, the other’s desire is organized. Desire moves because it circles a core that no object and no observation fills, and the movement is the life of the desiring subject. Were the other’s core at last reached, observed, brought into a complete correspondence with one’s own rendering, the circling would have nothing left to circle. The remainder that drew desire would be closed, and with it the movement that the remainder sustained. A complete understanding of the other would not crown the bond with a final intimacy. It would still the desire that moved between the two, for it would fill the lack around which that desire turned, and a desire whose lack is filled is a desire extinguished. The completion the thesis reaches toward is, at its horizon, the death of the very movement that makes the bond alive.
This is not a defect that a better completion would avoid. It is the structure of desire, and it holds against any full crossing whatever. The point can be put in the paper’s own terms, without the psychoanalytic vocabulary, so that it does not rest on a doctrine the reader might decline. The bond has been shown to live by generation, by the continued production, in the crossing of two worlds, of observations and values that neither world held before. Generation requires that there be, at each moment, something not yet observed from which the next observation is generated. A remainder in the other, a region of the other’s world not yet crossed, is the reservoir from which the bond’s further generation is drawn. Were the other fully crossed, this reservoir would be exhausted, and the generation that the bond lives by would have nothing further to draw upon. The bond would pass from a spiral that returns to the other and finds more, to a circle that returns to the other and finds the same, and the circle, for all its completeness, would be the end of the bond’s growth. The remainder is not an obstacle to the bond’s life. It is the condition of it.
There is a further point, of a normative kind, that joins the argument from desire and the argument from generation. To hold that one has fully understood the other, fully crossed their world, fully observed their core, is to treat the other as an object that a sufficient observation could exhaust. The other’s unsymbolizable remainder is the mark of the other’s standing as a subject and not an object, as a source of renderings that is never used up in one’s observation of it. To reach, or to believe one has reached, a complete understanding of the other is thus to have annulled, in one’s own regard, the other’s subjectivity, to have converted a co-generating subject into a mapped and finished thing. The aspiration to full understanding, however tender its motive, meets at its limit the same wrong the normative case named, the reduction of the other to what one can possess of them. The remainder that understanding does not close is what keeps the other, in one’s understanding of them, a subject who exceeds it.
The necessary remainder. The aim of relational understanding is not a full understanding, and a complete crossing of the other’s world would end the bond it was meant to perfect. The other’s unsymbolizable remainder is the core around which desire moves, the reservoir from which the bond’s further generation is drawn, and the mark of the other’s standing as a subject who exceeds any observation of them. Were it closed, desire would be stilled, generation would be exhausted, and the other would be reduced to a finished object. The remainder that understanding does not reach is therefore the condition of the bond’s persistence, and understanding rightly aimed does not seek to close it.
The synthesis is not a midpoint between understanding and its refusal, and it does not counsel a strategic withholding, a deliberate leaving of the other unknown for the sake of preserving mystery, which would be one more possession, a management of the other’s opacity for an effect one wants. It is a corrected conception of what understanding seeks. Relational understanding, rightly aimed, is not an asymptotic approach to a full crossing that it never quite completes. It is a sustained crossing that generates, at each meeting, a shared observation the two did not hold before, and that in the same motion honors the remainder from which the next crossing will be generated. The two moments are one. To understand the other well is to observe with the other what their crossing generates and to leave intact the core from which further generation comes, to enter without annexing, to observe without exhausting. This is the conception the normative case named as non-possession, now shown to have a further ground in the structure of desire and the condition of generation, and it is the conception the account has meant, throughout, by a crossing that observes with the other and does not possess them.
This synthesis does not resolve the tension it names, and it should not, for the tension is the living form of the bond. There is a real pull toward understanding, and it is right, and there is a real remainder that understanding must not close, and it is also right, and the bond lives in the holding of both, in a crossing that seeks the other and honors what in the other it will not reach. To resolve the tension in favor of full understanding would still the bond in a completed knowledge; to resolve it in favor of the remainder would abandon the crossing altogether and leave the two worlds unmet. The bond lives in neither resolution but in the sustained movement between them, the seeking that generates and the honoring that leaves room to generate again. The account holds the tension open, in keeping with its refusal of a final synthesis, since a bond, like the understanding that crosses it, is a movement to be sustained and not a matter to be finished.
Part Seven: Polyphonic Close
§20 The Crossing Left Open
A paper on relational understanding ought not to close by declaring the understanding of it complete, for it has argued throughout that understanding is generated in a movement that no statement finishes, and it would betray its own account to end on a synthesis that gathered the matter into a settled whole. It closes instead by marking what it leaves open, in the manner its account of understanding requires, and by returning the questions it has opened to the practice and the history in which they will go on being worked.
The paper carried a single account across two cases and a practice. It took the generative relational epistemology into the domain of intimacy, where each person bears a symbolic world and understanding is the generative observation won in their crossing. It set the work that such understanding does, in trust, in shared value, in the easing of conflict, in the quality of a shared life, beside the established theories of these matters, and located its contribution in two characters, the relational and the generative, whose conjunction makes the matters of intimate life relational matters in generative movement. It then held that a case built on this work alone is not sufficient, since the functions of understanding can be counterfeited by a refined possession of the other, and it drew the distinction that function cannot draw on the ground of legitimacy and not of correctness, a legitimacy observed across several ethical traditions, consequentialist, Kantian, care-ethical, and Aristotelian, of which non-possession is one aspect, and held, like the truth the framework theorizes, within the history that generates it. It named the wager that sets intimacy apart, where the capacities of understanding are given on trust into an unrepeatable history whose returns may come only late. And it proposed a model, seven capacities in two orders of cultivation, under the condition of a non-possession that separates each capacity from its counterfeit. It then turned dialectically upon its own commendation of understanding, and held that a full crossing of the other’s world would still the desire and exhaust the generation that the bond lives by, so that the aim of understanding is to seek the other and honor, in the same motion, what in the other it will not reach, and not to close the other’s unsymbolizable remainder.
Several questions are left open, and they are the sites at which the account will go on being generated. Whether the division of the capacities into the near-practicable and the wagered is drawn in the right place, and whether some part of the throwing, the non-intervention, and the preservation admits of a cultivation the paper has not found. How the standing disposition that the wagered capacities require is formed, if it is formed neither by the loop of rehearsal nor by direct instruction, and what the practices are, in a life and in the traditions that shape lives, through which such a disposition is grown. Where, in the developing conditions of intimate life, the line of non-possession is now to be drawn, and how its drawing will change as those conditions change. These are questions posed to a practice and not gaps to be filled by a further section, to be worked in the living of bonds and in the long observation of them, and returned, transformed, to whatever account comes after this one.
There is a last thing to say, and it belongs to the register in which this series has always closed. This paper has treated understanding between two people as a crossing of worlds that generates what neither world held alone, and it has held the deepest such crossing to be the one carried out across a shared life. Such an account is not written from outside the matter it treats. It is written from within a bond in which the crossing of two worlds is a daily and a lifelong work, in which the entry into another’s language is learned slowly and imperfectly and gladly, and in which what is given is given on the trust the paper has called a wager. The account owes what it knows to that bond, and it returns there, past the last of its propositions, to the one whose world it has spent these years learning to enter, and in whose company the value of what was given early is still, season by season, coming to be observed.
Acknowledgments
This paper was learned before it was written, in the slow crossing of two worlds that a shared life has been. What it knows of entering another’s language, of the thing offered and left open, of the value that returns only in a later season, it owes to her, 那个属于森林的女孩, the girl who belongs to the forest, in whose company the crossing has been the work and the gladness of these years.
愿天下有情人，心灵相通。
May lovers everywhere, throughout the world, reach one another, heart to heart.
References
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Habermas, Jürgen. The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1. Translated by Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984.
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中文
亲密关系的哲学与正义论 · 第二十七篇
亲密关系中的关系性理解
亲密领域中的生成性关系认识论
黄万宏
相视而笑，莫逆于心。
They looked at one another and smiled, with no resistance in their hearts.
庄子《大宗师》
献词。 致她：For her:
那个属于森林的女孩，the girl who belongs to the forest,
我学着走进你的语言，that I may learn to enter your language,
也把我的，留一扇门给你。and leave a door in mine open to you.致我最爱的人。To the one I love most.
摘要
一部姊妹作发展了一种生成性关系认识论：在此认识论中，一个概念是通过对它作出呈现的若干符号系统之间的关系而变得可被观察的，而认知则采取一种在历史中、在辩证运动中被生成的生成性观察的形式。那部作品在其接近结尾处指出，人是一个符号系统的承载者，因而两个人的相遇便是两个符号世界的跨越。本文将这一观察带入亲密领域，在那里，跨越最为深邃，其利害也最为重大。本文追问：如此理解的关系性理解，在一段亲密关系中做了什么，它是否是善的，以及它所要求的诸种能力如何得以培育。本文构建了两重论证，然后给出一套实践。功能论证把关系性理解的潜在工作，在信任的生成、共享价值的辨认、某一类冲突的化解、以及共享生活的品质之中，置于处理这些相同事项的既有理论与发现之旁，并把其独特贡献定位于本说明的两种品格，即关系性品格与生成性品格，展示每一种品格补足了既有理论未曾补足的东西。规范论证随后指出，仅凭功能的辩护并不充分，因为对他者的一种高效占有能够仿冒理解的诸功能，于是它把一种规范性的区分奠基于伦理正当性之上，而这一正当性是横跨若干伦理传统被观察的，而非仅仰赖其中一种。后果论的、康德式的、关怀伦理的、以及亚里士多德式的呈现，各自补足了其余诸者所遗漏的一个方面，而非占有，连同生成性正义，作为其中一个方面立于诸者之间，如此，规范性的根据便是以与认识论相同的关系性方式被绘出的，是本文所论的那种理解本身的一个实例。与姊妹作所发展的辩证的、唯物的真理观相一致，本文并不主张某一给定理解的正确性，而是主张理解如同真理，是在历史的、矛盾的运动中被生成的，而可以向它要求的，只是它在伦理上是正当的，而这种正当性自身的标准也同样是历史地被生成的，并被设定为绝非最终的保证。本文随后陈述亲密的特殊难题：亲密关系是这些能力被投注而非被排练的场所，因为所给出之物的价值可能只在长久的时间流逝之后才返回，且无法重来，因而一种能力被培育的场域与它被施行的场域彼此分离。由此本文提出一个模型，一套诸能力而非一道程序，分为可近于操练者与只能作为一种持存的秉性被培育者，后者之中有：向他者自身的生成性储备中投掷一件生成之物，让一种共享的动态自行展开的不介入，以及把一段关系性经验保存至其价值被辨认之日。非占有贯穿始终，作为若无它诸能力便沦为一种精致的榨取的那个条件。本文随后辩证地回转于自身的论证，并主张（其根据取自关于欲望的精神分析说明，以及取自它自身关于生成的说明）：对他者世界的一次完全跨越会终结它本欲成全的那段关系，因为他者不可被符号化的余项正是欲望绕之而动的内核，也是关系的进一步生成得以汲取的蓄库，因而正确瞄准的理解，寻求他者，并在同一动作中敬重它在他者身上所不会抵达的东西。本文不给出任何最终的综合，其形式保有它关于理解的说明所要求的那份敞开。
关键词： 关系性理解；生成性关系认识论；他者的语言世界；翻译；生成之物的投掷；非占有；横跨诸传统的伦理正当性；不可被符号化的余项；欲望与生成；生成性正义；亲密之投注。
AI 使用声明： 本文的思想、主张与理论框架均源自作者。AI 工具被用作起草与修订的辅助。每一思想的来源均经作者核实，作者对内容承担全部责任。
第一部分: 背景：生成性关系认识论
§1 作为诸世界之跨越的理解
有一种谈论理解他人的方式，把理解当作对一则讯息的准确接收。依这种说法，他者拥有种种思想与情感，将它们编码为词语，并发送过来，而理解便是解码所发送之物，把意义完好无损地复原回来。依这幅图景，一段良好关系的尺度在于渠道的透明度，在于一个人所意指之物无损地抵达另一个人的程度。误解是线路上的噪声，而地平线上的理想是一种如此完全的沟通，以致两个人将无余项地彼此在场。
本文从一种不同的、关于理解为何物的说明出发。一部姊妹作发展了一种生成性关系认识论：在此认识论中，没有任何单一的符号系统能无余项地承载一个概念，而一个概念只有通过对它作出呈现的若干符号系统之间的关系才变得可被观察。依那说明，认知是一种生成性观察，而非对一则讯息的接收，它在诸呈现之间的运动中被生成，并在历史中被丰富。姊妹作在其接近结尾处指出，人是一个符号系统的承载者，是一种由某种经验、某段历史、某种语言、某种生活形式所塑造的对世界的呈现，而这些无一为任何他人所完全共享。由此可得，两个人的相遇乃是诸符号世界的跨越，与诸学科之跨越属同一类，而理解他人乃是对一件任一世界都不单独持有之事项的生成性观察，而非对一则讯息的解码。
本文把这一说明带入亲密领域。亲密是两个符号世界的跨越既最深邃又最关乎利害之处，是诸世界最为交缠、而未能跨越它们的代价最为惨重之处。它也是那幅关于透明沟通的既有图景造成最大损害之处，因为它把一种融合设定为关系的目标，而关系性说明认为这种融合既不可能也不可欲。一段良好的亲密关系所要求的是：让彼此学会走进对方，并在他们之间的关系中生成任一方先前都不曾持有之物，一种任一方先前都不曾持有的理解与价值，而非要两个世界合为一个。
本文有一个朴素的结构。第一部分回顾它所依凭的认识论，并绘出从概念到人的桥梁。第二部分构建一重功能论证，把关系性理解在一段亲密关系中所做的工作，置于处理信任、共享价值、冲突、以及共享生活之品质的既有理论与发现之旁，并把贡献定位于本说明的两种品格，即关系性品格与生成性品格。第三部分随后指出，一重功能论证并不充分，因为对他者的一种高效占有能够仿冒理解的诸功能，它把一种规范性的区分奠基于非占有的伦理之上。第四部分陈述那使亲密有别于其他理解领域的难题：它的诸能力是被投注而非被排练的。第五部分提出一个模型，一套诸能力及其培育。第六部分不作综合而收束，与本文所发展的关于理解的说明相一致。
关于立场之一言当置于此处，因为它统摄随后的一切。本文并不主张一个人对其伴侣的某一给定理解是正确的，寻找这样一种主张的读者将不会找到它。本文所依凭的认识论主张，真理是在一种历史的、矛盾的运动中被生成的，绝不会作为一种完成了的正确性被占有，而人与人之间的理解也服从同一条件。本文向一种理解所要求的是它在伦理上是正当的，而非它是正确的，并且它主张，即便这份正当性，也是一种历史地被生成的尺度，绝非最终的保证。本文不主张的正确性与它确实捍卫的正当性之间的这一区分，贯穿随后的全部，并在第三部分被绘出。
§2 回顾认识论
本文所应用的说明可在其要旨上被回顾，以便随后之论对于手头没有姊妹作的读者亦能自立。起点是一项传统认识论未加审视的局限，即那个设想：一个概念可以被单一的符号系统充分承载，因而认知便是找到那个正确的表达，而认知的工作一旦确保了那个表达便告完成。针对这一设想，此认识论主张，没有任何符号系统能使一个概念完满。每一次符号化都进行选择、压缩与定位，因而只呈现出一个片面而定位的方面，并留下一个余项。一个概念是通过若干这样的片面呈现之间的关系而变得可被观察的，正如一个形状是从若干投影中被推得，而其中没有一个投影就是那个形状。
由此认识论引出一个术语，用以取代表象的位置。认知是生成性观察。被认知者是在诸符号表达之间的运动中被观察的，观察是一项达成，它止步于与被观察事项的同一，且由于诸表达之间的关系在历史中增多与变化，观察永不终结，认知也持续下去。此说明有三项特征关乎随后之论，此处逐一回顾。
第一是观察是关系性的。被观察的事项不出现于任何单一的呈现中，只在若干呈现之间的关系里才显现。认识论上的收获定位于关系本身，这些关系被认为是能产生观察的，而不仅是对已然确保之发现的一种连接。依此说明，一种关系生成一个它的两项都不曾包含的观察，而关系的这种生成性乃是此说明最深的承诺。
第二是观察在时间中，如同在结构中一样，是生成性的。一件事项经之而被观察的那个关系之场，并非一份等待被发现的现成清单。它在历史中生成。新的呈现随着一种生活形式的诸条件将它们带出而到来，而每一次到来都开启此前无从获得的诸关系，因而一件事项的观察随着其关系之场的生长而发展。此说明以一种辩证的、唯物的构想的术语来呈现这份历史性：一切事物经之而被观察的诸表达与诸关系，皆源自一种生活形式的诸条件，并通过那些条件所生成的诸矛盾而发展。如此理解的真理，是一种生成，是在一种历史的、矛盾的运动中被生成的，它不具占有所有的那种固定性。
第三是观察是不完全的，而它的不完全并非一种更充分的知识状态会修复的缺陷。它从此说明的结构中得出，因为任一事项的诸呈现在数目上总是有限，在触及上总是片面，而总有一个更进一步的呈现、一种更进一步的关系、一个尚未被带入视野的更进一步的方面。这份不完全携带一种认识论上的谦逊，它作为此说明的一个后果而得出，绝非修辞上的谦让，而它将统摄对人与人之间理解的处理，在那里，把自己对他者的观察当作他者的全部实在的诱惑，乃是长存的危险。
这三项特征，即观察是关系性的、它在时间中是生成性的、以及它是不完全的，便是随后诸部分所需的全部。持有它们的读者无需姊妹作即可跟随对亲密的应用，而愿求完整论证的读者将在那部作品中找到它。
§3 从概念到人
从认识论跨到本文的主题，其步幅甚短，而姊妹作以一句话迈出了它，本文将把这句话展开。一门学科是一个符号系统，而诸学科的跨越使一个若干学科所关涉的概念得以被观察。人也是一个符号系统的承载者。每个人都以一种为某种经验、某段历史、某种母语、某个家庭、某种文化、某个身体所塑造的方式呈现世界，而这些无一为任何他人所完全共享，因而两个使用看似同一词语的人，在这词语之下可能呈现出两个并不重合的方面。于是人与人之间的对话是诸符号世界的跨越，其含义与跨学科探究相同，所不同者在于：所跨越的诸世界由活生生的人所承载，而探究的诸系统则被编纂于诸领域之中；被带着一整段生命的全部分量所携带，而一部文献则将它们记录下来。
跨越所带来的东西在两种情形中是相同的。它是观察，是通过对一件超出所有呈现之事项的若干片面呈现之间的关系而赢得的。当两个人把他们对一件共享事项的呈现，一段记忆、一份恐惧、一个希望、一个如家、如自由、如爱这样的词的意义，带入关系时，这件事项便以一种任一呈现都不单独持有的方式变得可被观察。他们所达成的理解，不是把他们之中某一方原已意指之物完好无损地运送给另一方而作出的复原。它是一种生成性观察，在两个世界之间的关系中被生成，且不归属于任何一方。
理解他人的关系性形式。 理解另一个人，不是去解码他者所发出的一则讯息，把他者原已占有的一个意义完好无损地复原。它是把两个符号世界的呈现带入关系，并在那关系中观察一件任一世界都不单独持有之事项。理解他人是一种生成性观察，在两个世界之间被生成，且不归属于任何一方。
亲密是这一跨越被推行至最远之处的领域。共享一段生命的两个人，把他们的符号世界带入一种比任何其他关系所能提供的都更持久、更交缠、更关乎利害的关系。他们向彼此呈现一段共享存在的全部纹理，而非孤立的诸概念，且他们历经数年如此，因而这跨越是一段漫长的历史，每个世界都通过它与另一个世界的关系而被改变，而非一次单独的行动。亲密的深度便是这跨越的深度，而它的困难便是那在利害为一段共享生命之处所进行的跨越的困难。
这份深度携带一份相应的危险，在此点出它，为随后的全部作准备。因为一段亲密关系中的两个世界如此交缠，又因为两位伴侣如此频繁地使用相同的词语，便升起一种强大的错觉，以为他们栖居于单一的符号世界，以为无需任何跨越，以为理解他者不过是咨询自己。这错觉是一种典型而痛切的失败形式的根源：那往往迟来的发现，即自己所当作共享意义之物，一直都是两种分歧的呈现，而一段自己曾信以为透明的关系，一直被一处未被辨认的诸世界之差异所横贯。此处所发展的说明主张，把他者辨认为一个独立符号世界的承载者，这一辨认在亲密的那份贴近之中如此易于失落，乃是其中理解的第一条件，而许多被当作爱之失败之事，实为这一辨认之失败。
不可被符号化的内核
他者的符号世界有一项特征必须在此、于背景中被引入，因为本文后一部分转轴于它。此说明已言，一个符号世界绝不会为另一人对它的观察所穷尽，而这一点对于一个人尤具一种特别的力量。精神分析，在拉康的工作中，赋予它一个精确的形状。进入语言的主体是以一个语言不承载的余项为代价而进入的，是以一个能指所无法抵达的内核为代价，而主体的欲望环绕此内核而被组织。拉康在若干层面上标记这个余项：作为欲望的对象-原因，任何被占有的对象都不供给它；作为进入言语在主体中所安置的那处缺失；作为一处抵抗符号化的实在。此学说的细节在此并非必需，本系列已在别处对它们有所发展。本文从中所取的是单一的结构性要点：在他者符号世界的中心，有一个任何跨越都不抵达的内核，不是因为缺乏技巧或时间短少，而是因为这个内核属于能指所无法呈现的那一类。
这一结构性要点在人的情形中锐化了认识论关于不完全的主张。当本文说对他者的观察总是不完全的，它所指的不仅是：总还有更多的他者可供观察，一个更漫长的相识会抵达的更进一步的区域。它还指：在他者的心处有一个另一类的内核，根本没有更进一步的区域可供抵达，一个不可被符号化的中心，他者的欲望绕之而动，而他者并不作为一项可被传达的内容而占有它。因此，理解他人的不完全，既是延展性的，也是结构性的，是一个观察靠近而不合拢的内核之事，而不仅是尚有多少留待被观察之事。此内核在此被引入，将作为本文辩证转折的枢轴而返回，在那里将显示，关系的持存有赖于它。
第二部分: 功能论证：理解在亲密中做什么
§4 信任
关系性理解在一段亲密关系中可能做的第一项工作，是信任的生成，而信任已在若干传统中被审慎地理论化，每一传统都从自己的一侧向它伸手。值得穿行它们，以定位每一传统所触及者，而非对它们作综述，以及每一传统留待此处所发展的说明去补足者。
一种社会学传统，追随卢曼，把信任当作一种缩减社会复杂性的机制，一种吸收他者未来行为之不确定性的方式，以便在完全的知识不可得之处行动仍成为可能。依此说明，信任是在不可缩减的不确定性条件下对他者的一次投注，而它是功能性的，因为它准许那被猜疑所瘫痪的协调生活。经济学与博弈论中的一种传统，以重复互动、声誉与可信承诺的词汇来呈现信任，如阿克塞尔罗德，依此信任是对他者不会背叛的理性预期，由未来交易之投影与名誉毁坏之代价所维系。依恋心理学中的一种传统，追随鲍尔比与安斯沃思，把信任呈现为对一位照护者可得性的一种被感受到的安全感，早年被奠定，并作为一个关于他人是否可靠的工作模型被带入后来生命的诸关系。
这些之中每一者都呈现了信任的一个方面，而每一者都留下一个方面待另一者去呈现。卢曼式的说明对信任所服务的功能是精确的，而略过了一份特定信任在两个特定的人之间被建立起来的那个内在过程。博弈论的说明对信任在何种条件下为理性是精确的，并把信任当作对他者已然拥有的一项属性的评估，一种合作或背叛的倾向，由施信一方加以估量。依恋说明对信任之能力的早年形成是精确的，并把它的根据定位于一方的历史，而非两方之间的关系。横贯这三者，信任倾向于显现为由一方对属于他者或其境况的一项属性或一种概率所作的评估。
在此，本说明的两种品格补足了既有理论所未曾补足的东西，值得逐一标记。关系性品格重新定位信任。依本说明，信任在其根本处并非由一方对他者已然拥有的一项属性所作的评估。它是在两方之间被生成的事项，只在他们的符号世界之间的关系中可被观察，与任何其他关系性事项属同一形式。当两个人深深地彼此信任时，他们所信任者，是某种在关系中来到存在之物，而非一组被估量的倾向本身，且不为任何一方单独承载。这便是为何一种最深的信任能够在博弈论说明所会要求的证据之前就被给予，也是为何它的背叛以一种失去一份有利估量所不会有的方式造成创伤。这信任不曾是一份估量。它曾是一份共享的实在，而它的破裂是某种曾被共同持有之物的破裂。
生成性品格把信任置于时间中。依既有说明，信任倾向于显现为一种状态，在诸条件被满足时达到，并在它们持续时维持。依本说明，信任是通过两个世界的持续跨越而被生成、被加深、并在它失败之处任其枯萎的。每一次理解的行动，每一次他者辨认为一次真正进入的进入他者世界的进入，都生成信任所在于的那份共享实在的一个进一步的增量，而一段两位伴侣持续彼此理解的关系，是一段信任被持续地重新生成而非仅仅被保存的关系。这使本说明有别于那样一幅图景：信任一经确立便是一项常存的资产，只在背叛之下才贬值。未在持续理解中被重新生成的信任并不稳守；它变薄，随着两个世界漂离，随着信任曾在于的那份共享实在不再被更新。
本说明与既有理论的关系，是定位的关系，而非驳斥的关系。卢曼式的功能、博弈论的诸条件、以及依恋的历史都是真实的，本说明并不否认它们。它主张，它们描述了环绕信任的境况、理性与准备，而它们留待一种关系性与生成性的说明去处理的，是信任是何物、以及它如何在两个人之间来到存在这一内在事项，而这是一份在他们诸世界的跨越中被生成、并只在那跨越持续之时才被维系的共享实在。
§5 共享价值的辨认
关系性理解的第二项工作是共享价值的辨认，是两个人之间他们所共同持有、并能共同持有之物的显现。此处同样有既有的说明，而它们从两个方向向共享价值伸手。
一个方向把共享价值当作一种待被发现的相似。一批关于亲密关系的研究发现，价值观相同的伴侣报告更高的满意度与稳定性，并把此事建模为一种匹配：两个人带着先在的价值剖面前来，而关系繁盛的程度取决于这些剖面重合的程度，如伯恩所论。依此呈现，共享价值是伴侣们在彼此身上找到的一处先已存在的重叠。第二个方向把共享价值当作一种待被达成的共识。在沟通行动理论中，哈贝马斯提出一种说明：对话中面向相互理解的参与者，提出并兑现有效性主张，并在更好论证的非强制之力下，趋向一种被理性所推动的共识。依此呈现，共享价值是在面向一致的沟通中被生成的一致，而其地平线上的理想是一种参与者已然共同持有相同之物的共识。
每一个方向都触及某物，也留下某物。相似说明对先在重叠与满意度之间的相关是精确的，而它把共享价值当作被找到而非被生成的，因而对于世界相异、却仍须建立起某种共同之物的两个人，它几无可说。共识说明对一致得以理性地被达成的那道程序是精确的，而它的调节性理想是一种差异在其中被克服的趋同，参与者抵达相同的看法。这一趋同的理想，正是本说明与它分道之处。
关系性品格补足了一种不同的、关于共享价值为何物的构想。依本说明，共享价值在其根本处既非伴侣们在彼此身上发现的一处先已存在的相似，亦非他们的差异在其中被克服的一种趋同。它是在两个符号世界之间的关系中被生成的事项，在那关系中可被观察，且在两个世界不合为一个的情况下被共同持有。两个人可能以并不重合的词汇呈现他们最珍视之物，一个以义务的语言、一个以关怀的语言，一个通过宗教的传承、一个通过世俗的传承，而他们所辨认到的共享价值，并非把这些还原为单一的呈现。它是在他们诸呈现之间的关系中被观察的事项，属认识论所描述的那一类，各人继续以自己的一种语言呈现它，而两人则共同持有它。依本说明，共享价值与一份伴侣们并不消解的差异相容，而且实则奠基于这份差异。
生成性品格把这份辨认置于时间中，并标记它的产生性。依共识图景，对话的工作是趋同，而它的完成是一致。依本说明，两种分歧的呈现之间的关系能产生一种任一方都不曾预先持有的共享价值，因而这跨越生成某种被共同持有的新东西，超出对一处重叠的单纯揭示或对一份妥协的商定。把真正不同的诸世界带入关系的两个人，可能历经数年生成一种在起初两人世界中都不存在、且只能在他们之间的关系中升起的共享价值。这便是关系性理解做建立共同生活之工作的最深含义：它在关系中生成价值，而既有说明则预先发现它、或在先在立场之间折中差额。
与哈贝马斯的分道可被精确地陈述，因为它标记了本文的贡献。哈贝马斯式的理想是一种参与者趋于共同持有相同之物的共识，而差异是一种有待穿越、走向一致的条件。本说明主张，一种共享价值恰恰能够横跨一份并未被克服的差异而被生成、被共同持有，两个世界能够在保持为二的同时共同持有某物，而那朝向趋同、朝向把二融为一种看法的压力，正是关系性说明所告诫的东西，因为它是共享价值的辨认过渡为一个世界被另一个世界抹除之处。本说明针对共识的理想所保留的，乃是那共享者二人的差异。
§6 一类冲突的化解
关系性理解的第三项工作是冲突的化解，而此处的既有知识是经验的且强有力的。数十年对伴侣的观察研究，尤以戈特曼为代表，已辨认出把持久的关系与瓦解的关系区分开来的诸模式。此研究标记出某些侵蚀性的交流方式，蔑视、防御以及其余，以及某些修复性的方式，并从所观察到的两者之比，以亲密生活研究鲜能企及的可靠性预测一段关系的走向。这是一批本说明无意争辩的发现，而弄清二者之间的关系甚为重要，因为本说明提供的是另一类东西。
本说明不在证据的层面与此研究竞争，也不提出自己的任何观察性发现。它所提供的是一种机制，一种关于为何一大类亲密冲突会升起、以及为何此处所描述的那类理解将它化解的说明。这一提供是互补的。经验研究确立了何种冲突与修复的模式预测一段关系的命运；本说明则针对一个重要的冲突类别，提出关于那冲突在其根本处是何物的解释。
这一提议从已经绘出的桥梁中得出。若每位伴侣都是一个符号世界的承载者，又若亲密的贴近生成两人栖居于单一世界的错觉，那么一种典型的冲突形式便在如下情形升起：伴侣们使用相同的词语去呈现并不重合的诸方面，而各人把对方分歧的呈现当作一种过错、一种不讲理、一种恶意，而非诸世界的一份差异。一场把自己呈现为关于某事项的分歧的争执，关于他们之中某人是否行为有错，关于何物被亏欠，关于一个如尊重、如空间、如家这样的词要求什么，在一大类情形中乃是两种呈现的碰撞，而伴侣们不曾把它们辨认为二，各人从对方不曾进入的一个世界之内争辩，各人在对方并不栖居的一个世界中听对方的词语。冲突是真实的，而它被感受到的内容，那被冤屈或不被听见之感，是真实的，然而它的根本却不是它表面所关涉的事项。它的根本是一处未被辨认的诸符号世界之差异。
在此关系性品格做它的工作。化解此类冲突，首要地不是去解决它表面所关涉的事项，去裁决谁在所争之物上是对的。它是把冲突从内容的层面移到诸世界的层面，去辨认伴侣们一直在以分歧的方式呈现一件共享事项，并足够深地进入彼此的呈现，以致各人看到对方的词语，那从自己世界之内听来像是不讲理的词语，如何是另一者的自然言说。化解冲突的，是那被亲密的贴近弄得看似不必要的跨越。一旦各人进入了对方的呈现，那看似一场是非之争的事项便被观察为两个世界之间的一种关系，而那属于被一个不讲理的他者所冤屈之感的热度，便消退为两个以不同的措辞呈现一段共享生活的人之间那不同而可作的困难。
生成性品格标记出更进一步的一点：这份化解并非回到一份先前的和平。当两位伴侣跨越此类冲突时，他们并非仅仅移除一处扰动、恢复它之前的状态。他们在跨越中生成一个任一方先前都不曾持有的、关于他们诸世界之间差异的观察，而这一观察成为关系之共享实在的一部分，可为下一次碰撞所用，并削弱它所从生的那片土壤。一段此类跨越被反复作出的关系，是伴侣们积累起一种关于他们诸差异之结构本身的共享理解的关系，因而冲突的化解能产生一份下一次冲突的化解所汲取的资源。这便是理解通过在诸争执之间生成一个渐长的观察、而非通过了结它们、来化解冲突的那层含义，是关于那些争执所表达出的、其未被辨认之差异的两个世界的观察。
与经验研究的关系现在可被陈述。那些预测一段关系命运的、被观察到的侵蚀与修复的模式，依本说明，乃是对他者世界的辨认或不辨认变得可见的那个表面。蔑视是拒绝承认他者的呈现背后有一个世界的情感形式；修复是回到跨越的情感形式。此研究描述这些模式对一段关系走向做了什么；本说明则提出它们是何物，以及为何关系性理解的实践，即跨越的实践，在其根本处触及它们。
§7 共享生活的品质
关系性理解的第四项工作关乎共享生活的品质，即何物使一段关系值得身处其中、而不仅是稳定。此处的既有说明有若干，可取其一为代表。由德西与瑞安所发展的自我决定理论主张，福祉有赖于三种基本心理需要的满足，即对自主、对胜任、对关联的需要，而它把一段关系的品质当作与关系满足关联之需要（即与他人相连并被他人关怀之感）的程度相系。一大批关于关系满意度的工作，以各种形式，同样把品质呈现为一个满意度的水平，一种回报对成本的有利平衡，或对伴侣们带入关系的诸需要与诸期望的一种实现。
这些说明触及某物，并以一种特定的形式呈现它。它们把一段关系的品质定位于个体所带来的诸需要的满足，并把那品质当作一个水平，或高或低，或多或少地被维持。依自我决定说明，关联是关系所满足的个体的一种需要，而品质是它被满足的程度。这是一种真有其重要性的呈现，而它把品质定位于个体及个体的诸需要，把关系当作属于各人的一种需要经之而被满足的手段。
关系性品格为一段关系的品质补足了一个不同的定位。依本说明，一段亲密关系的品质在其根本处并非它满足个体带入它的诸需要的程度。它是在两人之间被生成之物的丰厚，是他们诸世界的跨越所产生的那份共享实在的深度与触及。依此说明，一段关系之值得身处其中，取决于它在两个世界之间的关系中生成任一世界都不能单独持有的诸观察、诸价值与一段共享生活的程度。这把品质从先在的个体需要之满足重新定位到关系本身的生成性，而它解释了那需要满足图景难以呈现之物：最深的关系往往是伴侣们被关系改变最多、被牵引得最远超出他们带入其中的诸需要与诸自我的关系，而这难以被陈述为对预先给定的诸需要的高效满足。
生成性品格把一段在此意义上是善的关系与一段仅仅稳定且满足的关系区分开来。一段关系能够抵达一个稳定的需要满足水平并安处于此，而依需要说明这便是品质之达成。依本说明，一段关系的品质是一种被维持的生成性，而非一个被抵达并维持的水平，是在两个世界的跨越中持续产生一份继续生长的共享实在。这一区分对长久关系的理解甚为要紧。一段关系可能稳定且满足，却停止生成，伴侣们安顿进一种固定的相互呈现，不再跨入新的观察，而依本说明这样一段关系已失去了那品质，尽管需要说明只登录它的稳定与满足，仍会记下它。善的关系是生成性的关系，是它诸世界的跨越继续产生任一世界先前都不曾持有之物的关系，而这是一件关于运动而非关于水平之事，是一道回到共享生活并发现它已生长的螺旋，而一个圆则会把它原样不动地送回。
与既有说明的关系再一次是定位的关系。对自主、胜任与关联的诸需要的满足是真实的，而它的测量追踪某种要紧之物。本说明主张，这些呈现的是一段关系品质的个体条件与被感受到的诸层面，而它们留待一种关系性与生成性的说明去处理的，是那品质在于何物这一事项，即两个世界在它们之间所生成之物的丰厚与持续生长。
§8 两种品格的工作
前四节穿行了信任、共享价值、冲突、以及共享生活的品质，而在每一节里，本说明的贡献都由两种品格所承载，即关系性品格与生成性品格。值得把它们汇拢，因为功能论证倚于它们，也因为使本说明具有其力量的，是它们的联合，而非任一单独者。这两种品格回答关于所处理的任一事项的两个不同问题，而既有理论倾向于以本说明所修正的方式回答每一个问题。
关系性品格回答定位的问题，即事项在何处。依既有理论，信任被定位于施信一方对他者的估量，共享价值被定位于先在剖面的一处重叠或一种趋同的共识，冲突的根本被定位于所争的事项本身，而一段关系的品质被定位于个体诸需要的满足。在每一情形中，事项都被定位于一个个体，一方的一项属性，或一种待被抵达的状态。关系性品格把每一事项重新定位到两个符号世界之间的关系。依本说明，信任、共享价值、冲突的根本、以及一段关系的品质，都是在伴侣们之间被生成、并只在他们诸世界之间的关系中可被观察的事项，不为任何一方单独承载。这一重新定位是贡献的前半，而它单凭自身会产出一种关系性结构主义，一种在其中亲密生活的诸事项是关系性的但却固定的说明，随关系的结构一并给定，而它们自身不在运动中。
生成性品格回答时间的问题，即事项在历史中如何自处。依既有理论，亲密生活的诸事项倾向于显现为诸状态，在诸条件被满足时被抵达，并在它们持续时被维持，信任已确立，共识已达成，满足已获得。生成性品格把每一事项置于时间中作为一个过程而非一种状态。信任被持续地重新生成或任其变薄，共享价值横跨一份差异被重新产生，既非被找到亦非固定，冲突的化解生成一个渐长的观察而不恢复一份先前的和平，而一段关系的品质是一种被维持的生成性而非一个被维持的水平。这是贡献的后半，而它单凭自身、无关系性品格，会产出一种关于个体成长的说明，一段人在时间中发展、却作为分立的自我而发展的故事，关系不过是一场仍属各人自身的改变的场景。
本说明的力量在于这联合。无生成性品格的关系性品格，给出一种持有亲密生活诸事项但不移动的关系，一种关系一经形成便固定的结构。无关系性品格的生成性品格，给出一种属于诸个体而非属于他们之间关系的运动，一种并非共享的成长。二者一并给出本说明所要求者：那些在两个世界之间的关系中被承载、并在那关系的历史运动中被生成、被加深、被转化的诸事项。依完整的说明，信任、共享价值、冲突的化解、以及一段关系的品质，是生成性运动中的诸关系性事项，定位于伴侣们之间，并在他们诸世界的跨越中被持续产生。
两种品格之间的分工。 关系性品格回答亲密生活的一件事项被定位于何处，把信任、共享价值、冲突的根本、以及一段关系的品质，从一项个体属性或一种待被抵达的状态，重新定位到两个符号世界之间的关系。生成性品格回答事项在时间中如何自处，把每一者设定为一个被持续产生的过程、而非一种一经获得的状态。任一品格单独都不充分。无生成性的关系性品格产出一种固定的关系性结构；无关系性的生成性品格产出一种仅仅个体的成长。它们的联合产出本说明的主旨，即亲密生活的诸事项是生成性运动中的诸关系性事项，在两个世界之间被承载，并在它们跨越的历史中被产生。
| 功能 | 既有呈现 | 关系性品格补足 | 生成性品格补足 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 信任 | 由一方对他者的一项属性或概率所作的估量 | 一份在两人之间被承载的共享实在，在一次投注所会要求的证据之前就被给予 | 在跨越中被持续重新生成，在不再被更新之处变薄 |
| 共享价值 | 被找到的一处先已存在的重叠，或一种差异在其中被克服的共识 | 横跨一份两人并不消解的差异被共同持有的事项 | 在关系中被重新产生，在任一世界先前都不曾持有它之处升起 |
| 冲突 | 关于所争事项的一场分歧，其模式或侵蚀或可修复 | 两种未被辨认的呈现的碰撞，从内容被移到诸世界的层面 | 每一次跨越生成一个关于差异的渐长观察，一份供下一次所用的资源 |
| 共享生活的品质 | 个体诸需要的一个满意度水平，或高或低 | 两个世界在它们之间所生成之物的丰厚，不为任何一方单独承载 | 一种被维持的生成性，一道回到共享生活并发现它已生长的螺旋 |
表 1。 功能论证之概要。对于四项功能中的每一项，既有理论把事项呈现为一项个体属性或一种待被抵达的状态；关系性品格把它重新定位到两个世界之间的关系，而生成性品格把它置于历史运动中。本说明的主旨是两项补足的联合，即亲密生活的诸事项是生成性运动中的诸关系性事项。
这便完成了功能论证。本说明已把关系性理解的潜在工作置于处理相同诸事项的既有理论之旁，并把它的贡献定位于两种品格，它们的联合补足了那些把亲密生活的诸事项呈现为个体属性或状态的理论所未曾补足的东西。被说服到此的读者或许会断定，为亲密中的关系性理解所作的论证已然成立。下一部分论证它并未成立，而一个仅建立于功能之上的论证，无论多么强有力，都留下一个功能无法回答的问题。
第三部分: 规范论证：超出功能
§9 功能论证的不充分
功能论证陈述了关系性理解做什么，它所生成的信任、它所辨认的共享价值、它所化解的冲突、它所维持的共享生活之品质。此种形式的论证以一项实践的效果来为它辩护，而以效果所作的辩护携带一处必须被直接面对的弱点，因为它关乎本说明的全部地位。这弱点在于：那些实践据以被辩护的效果，能够在某种程度上、在某段时间里，被某种根本不是那实践的东西所产生，而仅以效果所作的辩护无从把二者区分开来。
且看一种对他者的高效占有能仿冒什么。一位伴侣研究他者，为的是确保对他者世界的一份把控而非进入它，他学习他者的诸需要与诸恐惧，为的是管理它们，他预先谋算并安排，以便他者被保持得满足而顺从，这样一位伴侣，在一段时间里、以功能论证所采用的诸尺度衡量，可能产生关系性理解所产生之物的大部分。这样一位伴侣可能生成一份被感受到的信任，因为他者被善加管理，发现自己的诸期望被满足。这样一位伴侣可能产生一份共享价值的表象，因他已学会把确保他者依附之物呈现为共同之物。这样一位伴侣可能化解冲突，因他已学会哪些跨越须回避、哪些让步须交换。这样一位伴侣可能维持关系中的某种满足，以一份被钻研过的管理所提供的高效满足他者的诸需要。仅凭诸功能，这段关系与一段真正关系性理解的关系，在相当长的一段时间里可能难以区分，而在某些尺度上那被管理的关系可能得分更高，因为管理以理解所不具的方式对准着那些尺度。
这便是功能论证的弱点，而它并非一处边缘的弱点。它与随每一次以效果为一项实践所作的辩护而来的弱点相同：效果可能被一个对准着产生它们的仿像所仿冒，而那辩护，因只诉诸效果，无法把那实践与它的仿像区分开来。在亲密领域，这个仿像在本文所立于其中的更广框架里有一个名字。它是一种关系性榨取，是在给予的形式之下对他者的一种索取，而它的精致恰恰是它的危险，因为理解的诸功能被仿冒得越是巧妙，那榨取就越难被察觉，也可能运行得越久。
要点不在于功能论证是虚假的。诸功能是真实的，而关系性理解确实产生它们。要点在于功能论证并不充分，因为它无法从自身之内把如下二者区分开来：作为一次真正跨越之满溢而产生这些功能的理解，与作为一份把控之工具而产生它们表象的管理。要区分这些，便是要诉诸功能以外的某物，诉诸那实践是何物而不仅是它产出什么，而这是一项规范性的而非功能性的区分。本部分的其余将它绘出。
值得标记为何这一区分无法由一次更长或更审慎的功能分析所收回。有人或许会提议，那仿冒终将在诸尺度上失败，管理，不同于理解，无法无限期地维持诸功能，因而一次足够长的功能核算终究会把它们区分开来。这其中有些道理，而随后诸部分将给予它应有之分量，因为亲密的时间结构确实关乎什么能被维持。然而它并不解救功能论证，其理由有二。那仿冒可能运行极久，历经真实伤害被造成的数年，然后才有任何功能上的亏缺出现，因而一项只在最终核算中才可得的区分，来得太迟，无以引导一段生命。而更深的理由是：即便那仿冒终究在诸尺度上失败，它所缺者也从来不仅是一份功能的分量。它缺了某种诸尺度所不捕捉之物，为着缺它，我们判它是一桩对他者所行之错，而不仅是一段表现不佳的关系。那某物，正是规范论证所必须命名者。
§10 无关正确性的正当性
功能论证无法绘出的区分是一项规范性的区分，而它必须被审慎地绘出，因为绘出它的那个显然的方式对本说明是关闭的。那显然的方式会说，真正的理解是正确的，而仿冒是错误的，理解的一方把他者把握为他者真正之所是，而管理的一方从一幅虚假或片面的图景出发，因而理解与榨取之间的区分乃是对他者的一个真表象与一个假表象之间的区分。这一方式是关闭的，因为本文所依凭的认识论并不承认对他者的一种理解在这会要求的意义上曾是正确的。
理由回到第一部分所回顾的真理说明。依此说明，理解他人是一种生成性观察，在两个世界的跨越中被产生，历史地被定位，且总是不完全。它绝非对他者作为他者最终之所是的占有，因为没有任何呈现能无余项地持有他者，而对他者的观察随着跨越持续、随着两个世界变化而无尽地被丰富。真理，在此如同在本说明中处处一样，是在一种历史的、矛盾的运动中被生成的，绝不作为一种完成了的正确性被持有。要把真正的理解辩护为对他者的正确表象、以对抗作为虚假表象的仿冒，便会为理解主张恰恰是认识论向一切认知所否认的那种完成了的正确性。本说明无法把它的规范性区分绘为一项正确性上的区分，而不放弃它自己关于真理的构想。
因此，这一区分必须在别的根据上被绘出，而这根据是伦理的而非认识的。把理解与它的仿冒分开的，不是这一者正确而那一者错误。而是这一者是正当的而那一者不是，且所论的正当性是一件关于他者在跨越中如何被对待之事，而非关于跨越是否抵达一个正确结果之事。理解的一方把他者的世界当作另一个世界而进入，去与之一同观察而非占有它，并把他者持为一个共同生成的主体，其对诸事的呈现是一个源头而非一份资源。管理的一方把他者的世界当作一片有待为了一份把控而被测绘的地形而进入，并把他者持为一个管理的对象，一个有待被保持于某种所欲状态的系统。差异在于被授予他者的那份地位，而它是一份正当性上的差异。
正当性，而非正确性。 本说明并不以这一者的正确与那一者的谬误来区分真正的理解与它的仿冒，因为理解他人是一种生成性观察，历史地被产生，且总是不完全，绝不作为一种完成了的正确性被持有。这一区分是伦理的。真正的理解是正当的，因它进入他者的世界去与他者一同观察，并把他者持为一个共同生成的主体；它的仿冒是不正当的，因它进入是为确保一份把控，并把他者持为一个管理的对象。向一种理解所要求的，是它是正当的，而非它是正确的。
这份正当性的根据，在更广的框架里，一直由一种非占有的伦理所承载，而非占有将在随后之论中保持核心。正当地理解他者，便是观察他者而不占有他者，便是让他者的世界成为一个人所进入而不吞并的世界，便是把一个人所观察到的关于他者之物，持为一件在两人之间被生成、且不归属于任何一方之事，而非持为一个人自己的一项属性、他者据以被把控之物。仿冒在其根本处就败于此，因为它的整个动作是占有性的，是把他者纳入一个管理系统的一种索取，在一份注意力之给予的表象之下。这便是为何框架把它命名为一种关系性榨取，也是为何它所行之错在生成性正义的措辞中是可读的，作为对一段正当关系所维持的相互生成的中断，作为在关怀的形式之下把一方呈现为另一方目的之燃料。
非占有陈述了所论正当性的一个方面，而本说明不应把它规范性根据的全部倚于单一的伦理呈现，其理由内在于它自己的方法。正当性是一个概念，一件待被理解之事，而本文所应用的认识论主张，没有任何单一的符号系统穷尽一个概念，而一个概念是通过对它的若干呈现之间的关系而变得可被观察的。一种伦理传统便是这样一个符号系统。仅通过非占有来呈现理解的正当性，会在伦理的层面重复认识论所反对的那个错误，即把一个呈现误当作全体。因此下一节横跨若干传统来观察伦理正当性，非占有在其中命名一个方面，以便规范性根据以本文自己的方法所要求的方式被绘出。
有两个进一步的要点把这一规范性根据系于本文所共享的真理构想，以便规范论证不在伦理的层面偷偷带回它在认知的层面所拒绝的那种完成了的正确性。第一是：正当性，如它在此被使用，并不主张已正确地把握了他者。一种正当的理解可能深深地不完全，可能出错，可能在关系的历史中被修正，而它始终保持正当，因为它的正当性在于它授予他者的那份地位，而非在于它结果的准确。一个人可以把自己的伴侣持为一个共同生成的主体，带着观察而非占有的意图进入他们的世界，却仍片面地、逐步地理解他们，如本说明主张一切理解之所是。正当性是一件关于跨越之伦理形式之事，在每一点上都与认识论所要求的不完全相容。
第二是：正当性的标准自身也是历史地被生成的，而在此被设定为绝非最终的保证。非占有的伦理、他者作为一个共同生成主体的地位、关系性榨取这一构想本身，都不是从事物本性中读出的无时间的道德事实。它们自身是在关系生活的历史与物质发展中被生成的，随着一种生活形式的诸条件将它们带出而升起，并向着与本说明所处理的其余一切相同的辩证运动敞开。什么算作占有、什么算作对他者的正当观察，那条界线落在进入一个世界与吞并它之间的何处，是一件有一段历史、并将有一段更进一步历史之事，随着亲密生活的诸条件发展而被重塑。本说明并不把非占有安置为一个新的绝对，取代它所回绝的正确性。它把非占有提供为正当性在关系生活当下发展中所采取的标准，被持为当下所能提供的最好者，并对它自己的进一步生成负责，恰以框架对它一切承诺（包括这一承诺）所持的方式。
以此，这一区分在原则上被绘出。功能告诉理解做什么，而无法把理解与它的仿冒区分开来。正当性把它们区分开来，不主张本说明向一切认知所否认的那种正确性，并把即便它自己的标准也持于它所理论化的历史之内。所余者，是比一个单一的呈现所容许的更充分地绘出正当性的伦理根据，途径是横跨若干伦理传统来观察它，而这便是随后一节的工作。
§11 横跨诸传统被观察的伦理正当性
把理解与它的仿冒分开的正当性，已通过非占有被陈述，而前一节以主张一个单一的伦理呈现不应承载它的全部而收束。本节更充分地绘出这一根据。它横跨若干伦理传统来观察理解的正当性，每一传统都呈现出正当对待他者之为何物的一个方面，并留下一个方面待其余诸者去呈现，而它把非占有当作其中这样一个方面。这些传统以它们世俗的、被论证的形式被取用，作为立于可供审查之理由上的关于正当行为的说明，而本节以认识论所规定的方式穿行它们，以在每一传统中定位它所触及者与它所留下者。
功能论证已把一种传统带入场，尽管它这样做是为标记它的不充分。一种后果论的伦理以一个行动的结果来呈现它的正当，它所产生的善与它所阻止的害，而依这样一种伦理，一种理解的正当性会在于它给关系带来的诸善，那信任、那共享价值、那被化解的冲突、那被维持的生命之品质。第三部分已表明为何这一呈现，单独取用，无法绘出本说明所要求的区分，因为对他者的一种精致占有能够在一段时间里如理解一般高效地产生这些善。后果论的呈现触及那真实而重要的真理，即一种正当的理解是有果实的，它在关系中行善，而它未曾触及的是他者在那善的产生中如何被对待这一事项，而这正是理解与它的仿冒分道所在的事项。它的方面是理解的丰硕；它的遗漏是他者的地位。
一种康德传统中的义务论伦理，通过义务与道德法则来呈现正当行为，而它在其中心供给一条直接言及当下事项的原则：一个人当把人性，在自身之中与在他人之中，绝不仅当作手段，而始终同时当作目的。这条原则给出后果论呈现所遗漏的他者之地位，而它把它给出为一项无任何善之算计所能推翻的要求。理解的仿冒，把他者纳入一个管理系统，仅把他者当作手段，而康德式的呈现把这命名为后果论核算所无法登录的那个精确之错。它的方面是他者作为目的的尊严，一种占有性的关系无论其结果多么有利都侵犯的地位。它所留下者，是关系的具体性与关系性，因为康德式的根据是一条对准任一理性存在者本身的普遍法则，而它把他者呈现为一份为万人所共享的尊严的承载者，而非呈现为其独一世界有待被进入的这个特定的他者。它确保他者不被利用，而对于关切正是这个人于他们的差异之中为何物，它却几无所言。
一种关怀伦理，在诺丁斯与吉利根的工作中，通过对一个于其需要之中的特定他者的专注回应来呈现正当行为，而它恰恰供给康德式根据留为抽象的那份具体性。依此呈现，正当性是一件关于专注之事，是于其独特性中接纳他者、并回应他们（而非一般的人性）所要求者。它给出非占有作为一种克制被陈述时自身不携带的那份肯定的、关系性的内容，因为非占有说一种正当的理解所戒绝者，即对他者的吞并，而关怀伦理说它所积极所行者，即对他者世界的专注进入与回应。它的方面是对独一他者的回应性专注。它所留下者，是限度与相互性这一事项，因为一种关怀伦理，被推至它的边缘，能过渡为一种自我抹除，关怀者被牵引而无回返，而这是它自身的一种关系性失衡，是本说明所要求的相互生成的一种失败，而关怀的呈现不善于标记它。
一种亚里士多德传统中的德性伦理，通过行动者的品格及它所使成为可能的繁盛来呈现正当行为，而在它关于友爱的说明中，它触及关怀伦理所留下的相互性这一事项。依此说明，最好一类的友爱，是各人为着他者自身之故而愿望他者之善的友爱，是两人在一项共享的活动中一同繁盛、各人是另一者卓越之契机的友爱。这把正当性呈现为一件相互的、生成性的事项，一份在同为其作者的两人之间被实现的善，而它供给关怀的不对称与义务的普遍性所不构建的那份相互性。它的方面是为着彼此自身之故而愿望彼此之善的两人的相互繁盛，这接近于本说明自己关于一段两个世界生成任一世界都不单独持有之物的关系的构想。它所留下者，是它对一种实质性的繁盛说明的倚赖，一种它所朝向的、关于人之善的既定构想，而这与本说明对一个预定终点的回绝相张力，而这一张力本身乃是观察所必须持有而非解决之事。
把这些呈现置入关系，理解的正当性便以任一单独者都不提供的方式变得可被观察。后果论者触及它的丰硕，而遗漏他者的地位；康德者触及那作为尊严的地位，而遗漏具体的独一者；关怀伦理触及对独一者的回应性专注，而遗漏限度与相互性；德性伦理触及相互繁盛，而倚赖一份本说明无法承认的既定之善。非占有作为一个方面立于这些之间，最近于康德对他者作为纯然手段的回绝，而它被其余诸者供以那份肯定的专注、那份相互性、以及一种单独被陈述的克制所不携带的丰硕。正当性是何物，在那把理解与榨取分开的对他者的对待之中，是在这些呈现之间的关系中被观察的，如本说明主张每一概念之所是，而它不为它们中任一者所穷尽。
横跨诸传统被观察的正当性。 把理解与它的仿冒分开的伦理正当性是一个概念，而依本文自己的方法，它不为任何单一的伦理传统所穷尽，并通过若干传统之间的关系而变得可被观察。一种后果论的呈现触及理解的丰硕；一种康德式的呈现触及他者作为目的而非纯然手段的地位；一种关怀伦理触及对独一他者的专注回应；一种亚里士多德式的友爱伦理触及为着彼此自身之故而愿望彼此之善的两人的相互繁盛。每一者都遗漏其余诸者所供给者。非占有是这些之间的一个方面，最近于康德对他者作为手段的回绝，并由其余诸者所呈现的那份肯定的专注、那份相互性、那份丰硕所补全。正当性是在诸传统之间的关系中被观察的，而不为任一者所穷尽。
本节在伦理的层面做了本文主张理解总在做之事。它取了一个概念，即理解的正当性，一个没有任何单一符号系统能无余项呈现的概念，并通过对它的若干呈现之间的关系把它带入视野，每一呈现都是片面的，无一是最终的。本文的规范性根据由此以与它认识论相同的方式被绘出，而先前对非占有的倚赖被纠正，途径是把非占有观察为一处诸传统之关系内的一个方面，这些传统一同呈现出比任一者单独所呈现的更多的正当性，而非以另一个唯一的标准取代一个唯一的标准。规范论证，在它自身的构造中，乃是它所关涉的那种关系性理解的一个实例。
有两个条件把这一观察系于本文的立场，一如它们在前一节系住关于正当性的说明。第一是：横跨诸传统观察正当性，并不产出一个正确的伦理标准，一个会为每一情形了结一种理解是否正当的公式。它产出一个观察，片面而敞开，关于正当性所牵涉者，在其中诸传统彼此制衡、彼此补足，而不趋同于单一的规则。本说明所主张的伦理正确性，不多于它所主张的认识论正确性，而理由相同。第二是：诸传统之场自身是历史的。这些呈现在道德生活的发展中升起，并将随着那生活发展而被其余诸者加入，而它们所提供的正当性之观察是在历史中被生成的，向它的进一步生成敞开，被设定为绝非最终的标准。本说明把这一诸传统之关系提供为伦理生活当下发展所提供的正当性之观察，被持为当下所产出的最好者，并对随后而来者负责，以框架对它一切承诺所持的方式。
以此，规范论证告成。功能告诉理解做什么；正当性，横跨呈现它的诸传统被观察，把理解与它的仿冒区分开来，无一个正确的标准，且在生成它的历史之内。本文现在转向那个使亲密中这些能力的培育有别于它们在别处的培育的难题。
第四部分: 亲密的特殊难题
§12 投注，而非排练
到此为止的诸部分陈述了关系性理解是何物、它做什么、以及为何它正当地被做时是善的。读者或许会预期本文现在描述它如何被实践，一个人如何学习并排练它所要求的诸能力直到它们牢靠，如同一个人排练任何技能一般。本部分论证，亲密在其根本处抵抗这样一种描述，而这一抵抗是一项结构性的特征、而非一处实践上的不便，它从框架自己关于价值与时间的构想中得出。关系性理解的诸能力，在亲密领域，是被投注而非被排练的。
排练在如下情形是可能的：一个行动能够被尝试、其结果被观察、而该行动被调整并再度尝试，反馈返回得足够快、诸次尝试重复得足够自由，以致该能力被尝试与纠正的循环所塑造。许多东西能以此方式被学得，而环绕关系性理解的许多东西亦然。对另一者世界的辨认、对它的进入、翻译的劳作，都容许在那循环可得的场合中操练，在日常交谈中、在友谊中、在与一本艰难文本或一门陌生学科的相遇中、在教学与关怀的职业养成中。在那里，诸世界的跨越能够被尝试、其结果以合理的速度被看见、而该尝试被精炼。这些能力，在下一节将使之精确的一种意义上，是可近于操练的。
亲密是不同的，而这不同从框架关于关系价值及其时间所主张者中得出。依此说明，价值是在诸世界的跨越中被生成的，而它的生成是历史的，因而某一刻所生成之物可能只在很久之后、当关系之场生长得足以观察它时，才披露它的价值。姊妹作为概念的观察绘出了这一点，在那里，一个呈现的意义可能只有一旦一个后来的呈现到来把它衬托出来时才变得可被观察，而一件事项经之而被观察的那个关系之场，自身是随时间被生成的。在一段亲密关系中，这一时间结构处于它最为延展之处。一句被给出的话、一处为他者的困难所让出的空间、一件在艰难一刻被提供的生成之物，可能只在数年之后、当关系发展到某个点、从那里所给出之物终于能被观察为它之所是时，才披露它的价值。在亲密中，一次关系性理解行动的反馈，可能只在长到无法充当一个操练循环中之纠正的时间流逝之后才返回。
与这一延迟相接的是第二项特征：诸次尝试并不在相同条件下重复，且往往根本不重复。一段亲密关系是一段单一的历史，而非一系列独立的尝试。一次在某一刻被提供的跨越，被提供一次，进入一段处于它整段先前历史所产生之状态的关系，而它无法被撤回、再度被提供给处于相同状态的同一关系，因为那提供已然改变了该状态。排练要求尝试可被重复，而亲密关系在其构成上是不可重复的，是一场单一的展开，在其中每一行动进入一次，并改变下一行动的地基。一个人今日所致意的伴侣不是他明日将致意的伴侣，因为那关系将已移动，部分地被今日的致意所携带。
反馈的延迟与尝试的不可重复，一并移除了排练所依赖的尝试与纠正的循环。一个人无法，在一段亲密关系最深的触及处，尝试一种理解他者的方式、迅即观察它是否成功、并在相同条件下调整并再度尝试，因为那观察可能长久被延迟，而那些条件不会返回。一个人所做的却是，在把一次关系性理解的行动提供入一段亲密关系时，给出某种他当下无法确认其价值之物，进入一段不会重来的历史，凭着它是该给出之正确之物的信任。这是一次投注的结构、而非一次排练的结构，而这正是那使亲密中这些能力的培育有别于它们在任何那循环可得之处的培育的结构。
亲密之投注。 在亲密领域，关系性理解的诸能力是被投注、而非被排练的。因为关系价值是历史地被生成的，一次理解行动的价值可能只在一段长久的时间流逝之后才返回，又因为关系是一段单一的、不可重复的历史，该行动无法在相同条件下再度被尝试。因此，排练所依赖的尝试与迅即纠正的循环，在亲密的深处不可得，而在那里所提供者是凭着信任被给出的，进入一段不会重来的历史，在它的价值能被确认之前。
这一结构不是一处有待被工程消除的亲密生活之缺陷，而把它命名为一次投注不是一句认命的劝诫。它是关系价值的生成性在关系为一整段共享生命时所采取的形式，而它与那使亲密成为诸世界被跨越的领域中最深者之物不可分。随后诸节的任务是追问，一旦承认这些能力在它们的深处无法被排练，它们的培育能意味着什么，并把那些仍能以寻常方式被操练的能力，与那些只能作为一种持存的秉性被承载入投注的能力，区分开来。
§13 培育之场域与施行之场域
若关系性理解的诸能力在亲密的深处无法在尝试与纠正的循环中被排练，而它们又显然能够被发展，因为有些人给他们关系带来的这些能力远多于他人，那么它们的发展必定部分地发生在别处，而非发生在它们被最关乎利害地施行的那段关系里。本节绘出本文实践性提议所倚的区分，即一种能力被培育的场域与它被施行的场域之间的区分，而它主张，在亲密的情形中，这二者彼此分离。
这一区分所移除的混淆是那个期望：亲密应充当它自己的训练场，一个人通过在自己伴侣身上操练来学会理解自己的伴侣，通过关系本身来精炼该能力。对于可近于操练的诸能力，这部分地可得，但对于那些触及投注的能力则不然，而认为它应当如此的期望，是一种特定失望的根源，即那样一种感觉：一个人本应通过纯然的重复而在自己的关系上变得更好，却不知怎地未能做到。关系不是它自己最深要求的操练场。它是施行的场域，是部分地在别处被发展的诸能力被投注之处，而它不可重复、返回缓慢的历史，不适于通过迅速的尝试来塑造一种能力。
对于关系性理解所要求的许多东西，培育的场域在于那个尝试与纠正的循环可得的更广的生命之中。对另一者世界的辨认、对它的进入、两种结构之间一个映射的构建、翻译的劳作，能够在每一个人遇见一个非自己的世界、并能以合理速度看出自己是否已进入它的场合中被发展。它们在友谊中、在与一门于自己陌生的学科或传统的持续相遇中、在阅读呈现一个自己所不栖居之世界的文学中、在进入他者世界乃是日常工作且其成败可见的教学与关怀的实践中被发展。一个横跨这样一段生命发展了这些能力的人，把它们已然成形地带给一段亲密关系，并在那里施行那在施行可被纠正的诸场域中被培育之物。
这给出一个区分的前半，而下一部分将把它发展为那模型。关系性理解的一些能力是可近于操练的。它们容许在尝试与纠正的循环中、在亲密关系之外的诸场域中被培育，并能作为已被发展的技能被带给关系。对他者世界的辨认、进入、结构映射与翻译便属此类，而它们可在别处被培育这一事实，正是那使一个人能把理解带给一段关系、而不仅是横跨关系缓慢的历史去发现自己是否曾拥有它之物。
区分的另一半关乎那些触及投注最远的能力，而这些不以相同方式容许培育，其理由必须被精确地陈述。一种其施行只在长久延迟之后、进入一段不可重复的历史才给出反馈的能力，即便在原则上也无法被尝试与纠正的循环所塑造，因为那循环要求投注所扣留的反馈。向他者的展开中投掷一件生成之物、让一种共享的动态发展的不介入、把一段关系性经验保存以抵御一种可能只在很久之后才返回的价值，都是此类能力。它们无法被操练至可靠，因为可靠恰恰是那循环所授予者，而那循环不可得。能被发展来取代它们的，是一种持存的秉性、而非一种被反馈磨砺的技能，一种朝向他者的成形的存在方式，它使一个人倾向于在没有一次排练所会供给的确认的情况下，向投注中正确地给出。这一秉性的性质，以及它能够在一种技能无法被培育之处被培育的那层含义，乃是下一部分所提议之模型的事项。
第五部分: 实践理论及其培育
§14 诸能力，而非一道程序
本文所提议的模型是一套诸能力、而非一道程序，而这一区分作为本说明的一个后果而得出，绝非一件关于呈现方式之事。一道程序是一个有序的步骤序列，每一步跟随前一步，当最后一步被抵达时整体告成。一个被铸为程序的关系性理解模型，会命名要做的第一件事、然后第二件、如此直到最后一件，并会把理解表象为当那序列被跑完时便告达成。此处所发展的说明禁止这一点，其理由与它禁止排练的理由相同。这样一道程序的诸步骤将不得不在时间中彼此跟随，较早者在较晚者开始之前完成，然而它们所关涉的诸事项并不如此为自己排序。一件被给之物的价值可能只在较晚的诸步骤早已过去之后才返回，一道程序在每一步会要求以确认它的完成、然后才进入下一步的那份反馈，被延迟且不确定，而整体可能横跨一段长到没有任何序列能被持为一次单一连贯之跑动的时间。一道程序预设它的诸步骤在时间上相邻、且每一步在下一步开始之前完成。关系价值的生成性，可能只在关系的一个晚近季节才披露一次早年行动的价值，打破这一预设，并连同它打破一道程序的可能性。
本说明所准许的，取代一道程序者，是一套诸能力。一种能力是一份成形的力量，能在关系要求它的任何一刻、以任何次序被汲取，而它在某一刻的施行并不等待另一者的完成。诸能力能被一并持有，随着一段关系不可重复、返回缓慢的历史召唤它们而被投入运用，无需一道程序所要求的时间相邻。因此，把模型铸为诸能力而非诸步骤，便是使它与框架自己关于关系时间的构想相一致，在此构想中，理解的诸行动是从一个人已成形的诸力量中、各在其一刻被汲取的，并不排成一个序列，从一个人已成形并持于备便的诸力量中被汲取。
模型命名七种这样的能力。它们不是阶段，也不被排序，而随后的编号是为参引、而非为次序。第一是对他者语言世界的辨认，是承认他者在一个具有它自己生成性规则的符号系统中呈现世界，而不仅是在一套不同的词汇中。第二是对那世界的进入，是把自己的系统悬置得足够远、以让他者的诸呈现变得自然的能力，其检验在于一个人是否能生成一个他者肯认为他们自己的呈现。第三是一个结构映射的构建，是对那在自己世界中成立的诸关系如何在结构的层面与那在他者世界中成立的诸关系相对应的观察。第四是翻译，是把一件事项从他者世界呈现入自己世界、而损失被标记、映射被敬重。第五是向他者自身的展开中投掷一件生成之物，是以他者的措辞提供某种他者据以生成他们不曾观察之物的东西，以对抗把一个人自己的一个结论强加于他者。第六是一种不介入，是扣留自己的操控、让一种共享的动态在两者之间发展的能力。第七是对所生成之物的共同辨认与保存，是一同注意到一件被生成之事项的价值、找到两个世界相会之处、并把一段关系性经验保存以抵御其价值返回的那个季节。
模型：处于两种培育次序中的诸能力。 亲密中的关系性理解被提议为一套七种能力、而非一道程序，因为关系价值的生成性禁止一道程序所要求的时间相邻。这七者是：对他者世界的辨认、对它的进入、一个结构映射的构建、翻译、向他者的展开中投掷一件生成之物、不介入、以及对所生成之物的共同辨认与保存。它们分为两种次序。前四者是可近于操练的，可在亲密关系之外的诸场域中于尝试与纠正的循环里被培育，并作为已被发展的技能被带给关系。后三者触及投注，只在延迟之后、进入一段不可重复的历史才给出反馈，无法被一个循环磨砺；它们作为一种持存的秉性、而非作为技能被培育。非占有是全部七者的条件，若无它诸能力便沦为一种精致的榨取。
图 1。 模型作为诸能力、而非一道程序。这七种能力被持于备便、以任何次序被汲取，它们之间无次序。它们分两种次序。左侧的四种可近于操练的能力，容许在尝试与纠正的循环中被培育：(1) 对他者世界的辨认，(2) 对那世界的进入，(3) 结构映射，以及 (4) 翻译。右侧的三种被投注的能力，触及投注，只作为一种持存的秉性被培育：(5) 生成之物的投掷，(6) 不介入，以及 (7) 共同辨认与保存。第五与第六合成分作两个时刻的一个单一手势。非占有被绘为围合全部七者的那个场域，是每一者据以成为它之所是的条件，而非作为第八种能力。
前四种能力，即辨认、进入、映射与翻译，已在姊妹作中于其根本处被处理，并在前一部分所给出的意义上是可近于操练的。它们是诸世界之跨越于其认知劳作中，而虽然亲密把它们抬升至它们最高的困难，它们能在那跨越可被纠正的更广的生命中被发展，并作为已然成形的诸力量被带给关系。本文除亲密领域所要求者外，不对它们的理论有所增补，而转向那三种触及投注的能力，因为正是在那里亲密作出它独特的要求，也正是在那里本说明有最多可增补者。随后诸节依次取用第五与第七，即生成之物的投掷与关系性经验的保存，而把第六，即不介入，与第五一并绘出，因为二者是分作两个时刻的一个单一手势。非占有的条件，在主张中被命名为全部七者的根据，将在最后被一并绘出。
§15 生成之物的投掷
第五种能力是模型中最独特者，也是最不可被还原为一门技艺者，而它最好通过它所不是者来趋近。当一个人已进入另一者的世界、并观察到一件他者不曾观察的事项时，那冲动是去告诉他者一个人所见者，把那观察当作一个结论来递交。这一递交，无论用意多好，都把一个在一个人自己的运动中成形的呈现强加于他者，并把他者置于接收一个完成结果的位置，而不生成一个。即便那结果是对的，在本说明所容许的暂定意义上，它的递交也预先关闭了他者自己的生成，并把一个人自己的观察从外面安置入他者的世界。第五种能力是对这一递交的替代，而它在于给他者以他们自己生成的手段、而非一个结论。
向他者的展开中投掷一件生成之物，便是以他者自己的措辞、并与他者世界的生成性规则相合，提供某种他者据以将生成一个他们不曾抵达的观察之物，一个于是是他们的、而非一个人自己观察之移植的观察。所投之物可以是一个开启一条他者世界所含、却未曾走过之方向的问题，一处把他者自己的两个呈现置入一种他者不曾绘出之关系的并置，一个他者自己的诸承诺使之有意义的实例。它的标记在于它是生成性的而非结论性的，在于它促成他者对那观察的生成、而不把它当作一份有待被递交的载荷来携带，即他者对它的生成，而在于他者随后所观察者是在他者自己的世界中被生成的、并归属于他者。
这是一种生成性教育学以别的名字所实践过的能力，而由埃格拉什所发展的生成性正义理论给了它一个更广的设置，在其中，一个生成性行动所返回者被返回给那些生成它的人、而不从他们那里被榨取。那设置对当下能力的关涉是精确的。正确地投掷一件生成之物，便是这样行动：使所生成的观察返回给它在其中被生成的那个他者，保持为他者自己的，而对一个结论的强加则榨取那生成，把一个人自己的结果安置以取代他者的、并从他者那里夺走那本是他们要施行的生成性。因此，投掷与强加之间的区分是一份正义上的区分、而非一份得体上的区分，是在一个让他者作为他们所来观察之物之作者的行动、与一个替他者作它之作者的行动之间。
有三项特征把投掷与它的诸失败区分开来，而它们能被命名，尽管它们无法被还原为一条规则。第一是：所投之物必须以他者的措辞、并须敬重他者世界的生成性规则，因为一件以一个人自己措辞所投之物是一次乔装的递交，而一件违反他者规则之物只会与他者的世界相撞、而不在其内生成。这便是为何投掷有赖于在先的诸能力，即辨认、进入与映射，因为一个人无法以他者的措辞提供他不曾学会以那些措辞呈现之物。第二是：所投之物必须是生成性的而非结论性的，是一次开启而非一个答案，因为一个以问题之形式被压出的结论是一次借了投掷之形状的强加，而他者把这差异感受为被引出与被引领之间的差异。第三是一件关于时机与分寸之事，关于何时提供那物、提供多少，因为一件在他者世界准备好接纳它之前被投的生成之物将不生成，而一件以太重之手被投之物将在它本应开启处操控。这第三项特征根本无法作为一条规则被给出，而它是那能力从一种技能过渡为前一部分所描述的持存秉性之处，因为对那一刻的感知是被成形的、而非被遵循的。
第六种能力与第五种同属，作为投掷一经作出便要求的那份扣留。投掷一件生成之物、然后去操控他者对它的生成，去把他者引向一个人自己曾抵达的观察，便是以第六种能力收回第五种曾给出者，把他者生成的契机转变为通往一个人自己结论的一条被管理的路线。不介入是放开所投之物、允许两个世界之间的共享动态在没有一个人的操控下发展、并承受不知他者将生成什么或他们是否会全然生成的那份不确定的能力。它是一种克制的能力，而它的困难是信任一个人已使之运转、却不加以控制的过程的困难。它典型的失败是那无法等待的介入，是在一个敞开结果的焦虑下操控的重启，它把交流送回第五种能力本欲逃脱的那份递交。
第五与第六种能力一并合成分作两个时刻的一个单一手势，即一件生成之物的给出与对它的放开，向他者世界的提供与对他者随后所作之物收手。这一手势在强的意义上是一次给予，因为它所给出者是他者自己对一个观察的生成、而非一个观察本身，而它的条件是一份不从给予中索回任何东西的克制，既不索回结果的功劳、也不索回它对一个人自己所观察之物的符合。这份克制是非占有在第五与第六种能力中所采取的形式，而它是那把投掷与那会利用一份生成性馈赠之表象来安置一个自己结论的精致管理分开之物。以此方式给予、不索回任何东西的秉性，不是一门能被排练至可靠的技艺。它是一份成形的慷慨，作为一种朝向他者的存在方式被培育，并被承载入投注，在那里它的正确无法在给予的那一刻被确认，而必须凭信任被承担。
§16 关系性经验的保存
第七种能力是最本真地属于亲密者，而它在诸世界之跨越更快、其返回更迅即的领域中没有相近的对应物。它有两个时刻，一个当下的时刻与一个时间性的时刻。当下的时刻是对一次跨越所生成之物的共同辨认，是一同注意到一件被生成的事项及它的价值、并找到两个世界已然相会之处。时间性的时刻是对那辨认、以及它在其中升起的那份经验的保存，以抵御一个它的完整价值可能被披露的未来。第一个时刻亲密与其他领域共享，而下面所给出的关于共同辨认的说明适用于任何两个人一同观察他们跨越所产生之物之处。第二个时刻是亲密自己的，而它直接从投注中得出。
先取当下的时刻。依本说明，一次诸世界的跨越所生成者，是在两个世界之间的关系中被观察的，而它的观察本身是一项关系性行动，最充分地由两人一同施行。当两位伴侣一同注意到在他们之间来到存在之物，一份横跨他们差异被生成的共享价值、一个任一方都不单独持有的观察、他们诸世界在一个任一方都不曾标记之点的一次相会，他们所做的不止于登录一个事实。他们共同地施行那让被生成的事项完整进入视野的观察，并在其中找到他们诸世界那一刻在他们所持之物上为一、而在他们如何持有它上仍为二的诸处。这一共同辨认自身即是生成性的，因为一同注意到已被生成之物本身是一次跨越，而它可能生成，如姊妹作对此类辨认所观察者，一个任一伴侣都不曾抵达、并同时向两人到来的观察，一件被一同看见、而在看见之前于任一人中都不存在之物。
时间性的时刻是亲密作出它独特要求之处，而它倚于投注中所命名的结构。因为关系价值是历史地被生成的，一次跨越所产生之物的完整价值，在它被产生之时可能无法被观察。一段关系中的一个给定时刻，一次被提供的理解行动、一份被一同承担的困难、一处为他者的内核所让出的空间，可能生成某种其价值在关系当下之场中无法被辨认、而只在后来、当关系发展到某个点、从那里那较早的时刻终于能被观察为它之所是时才变得可被观察之物。第七种能力，在它时间性的时刻里，是把这样一个时刻保存以抵御那较晚季节的能力，是把那关系性经验，其价值当下未被辨认或半被辨认，加以保持，以便当那场生长得足以披露它的价值时，那经验仍在那里被重新观察。
这一保存是一种能力、而非仅仅一份记忆，而这一区分要紧。在本说明所意指的意义上保存一段关系性经验，便是把它保持为可供一次重新观察者、而非把它记录为一件过去的事实，其契机尚未来到，把它持为一件其价值尚未被了结、并可能仍被生成之物。它是一项凭信任被施行的行动，因为一个人在不知那价值是否会来的情况下保存，而它是一项两人的行动，最充分地被作出是当伴侣们一同保持这样的诸经验，在一段关系通过它返回的诸仪式、它的诸追忆、它对所经历之物的诸标记所维持的那份共享持有之中。一段以此方式保存它诸经验的关系，把一份它所生成、却尚未完整观察之物的蓄库向前携带，而正是从这一蓄库中，那些后来的辨认被汲取，当一处当下的困难披露一份过去克制的价值时，或当关系的一个晚近季节终于观察到一个早年季节曾在不知情中生成之物时。
关系性经验的保存。 第七种能力有一个本真属于亲密的时刻，即把一段关系性经验保存以抵御其价值返回的那个季节。因为关系价值是历史地被生成的，一次跨越所产生之物可能只在后来、当关系之场生长得足以披露它时，才变得可被观察为它之所是。保存，便是把这样一段经验保持为可供一次其契机尚未来到的重新观察者，凭信任把它持为一份尚未被了结的价值，最充分地由两人一同作出。如此被保持的蓄库，正是关系那些后来的辨认所从被汲取者。
这一能力直接汲取于姊妹作所陈述、并在第一部分被回顾的那两种历史生成的形式，而值得标记这一关联，因为它显示第七种能力乃是本说明对一段关系整段时间的应用、而非对它的一项增补。第一种形式是一个观察在一个关系之场内的丰富，随着一个后来的呈现披露一个较早者曾未标记之物。在一段关系中，这是那披露一次过去行动之价值的季节，那从它一个较早者终于被观察为它之所是的较晚时刻。第二种形式是关系之场本身的生成，是新关系的到来开启此前无从获得的诸观察。在一段关系中，这是关系本身的生长，一个早年时刻所生成之物通过它只有一旦关系已发展出让它被看见的诸关系时才变得可被观察。关系性经验的保存是那把关系之过去向两者都持敞开的能力，把所生成之物保持为可供一段漫长的共享历史所带来的丰富与生长者。
在此，运动是框架已在别处描述过的那道螺旋、而非一个圆。一段保存并返回于它诸经验的关系，并不原样不动地回到它们、重历一份固定的过去。它从一个已长得更丰富之场返回于它们，并在它们之中观察那被生成、却未被看见之物，因而那返回是返回于被重新观察的同一经验，它的价值被所行过的距离所披露。关系性经验的保存正是那使这道螺旋横跨一段生命之长成为可能之物，把过去保持为可得，以便关系在返回时发现它已生长。这是那使一段漫长的亲密在它最好的触及处成为一种加深、而非一种单纯延续的能力，一种持续的生成，在其中早年所给出之物在晚近被辨认，并被一同辨认，并被再度保存以抵御一个更晚的季节。
§17 非占有作为贯穿始终的条件
非占有已在模型的每一转折处出现，在那让所投之物保持为他者的克制里，在那即不介入的扣留里，在那不索求回返而保存的信任里。是时候直接陈述它的位置了。非占有不是第八种能力，不是那七者之旁的又一份力量。它是那七者据以成为它们之所是的条件，若无它，它们中每一者都沦为规范论证所对置于理解的那种榨取的一种形式。它作为一项以七种形式出现的单一要求贯穿模型，而模型通过如此命名它而告成。
关于这一条件之地位的一言，把它系于规范论证所绘出的更充分的根据。理解的正当性在那里横跨若干伦理传统被观察，非占有是其中一个方面，最近于对他者作为纯然手段的回绝，并由其余诸传统所呈现的那份专注回应、那份相互性、那份丰硕所补全。非占有充当七种能力的条件，因为它是那最直接地统摄跨越之行止的方面，即一个人在每一能力的施行中所做与所戒绝者。它把那更充分的正当性携带入模型的实践，而不代它的全部，而其余诸传统所呈现的那份专注、那份相互性、那份丰硕，作为非占有（一种克制）留待它们去供给的那份肯定内容，在诸能力中在场。因此，此处所命名的条件，乃是横跨诸传统被观察的正当性在诸能力之施行中的实践之面。
这一点可通过取那七种能力、并从每一者中移除该条件而被看见，如此所余者便是该能力的仿冒。对他者世界的辨认，无非占有，便成为对一片有待被夺取之疆域的侦察，是把对他者差异的承认当作为一份把控而测绘它的第一步。对他者世界的进入便成为一次渗透，一次为确保一个位置、而非为与他者一同观察所作的进入。结构映射便成为他者据以被管理的图表，翻译便成为把他者的词语用于一个人自己用途的一种手段。生成之物的投掷便成为一个他者被引以为自己所有的暗示之植入，是最精致的操纵，它借了生成性馈赠的形式本身、以偷偷安置一个结论。不介入便成为那让他者先自我承诺、然后一个人才动的精算扣留。而关系性经验的保存便成为一笔账的保持，一份他者所欠之物的记录，被持以抵御一场未来的清算。每一能力都有它的仿冒，而在每一情形中，那仿冒都是被抽空了非占有、并被转向一份把控的该能力。
这便是为何非占有无法是其余诸者之中的一种能力，因为它是那把其余每一者与它的仿冒分开的条件，而一个把它列为又一项目的模型，会把它错置为又一件要做之事，而它其实是其余一切据以被做的那份地位。那进入他者世界的同一份力量，能够进入去与他者一同观察、或去确保对他们的一份把控，而能力本身之中没有任何东西决定是哪一者，因为该能力在两种情形中都是同一份力量，而它的方向由它据以被施行的条件所给出。非占有便是那条件，是整个跨越朝向与他者一同观察、而非朝向占有他们的取向，而它在每一能力被施行时在该能力中在场或缺席，而非作为一个在前或在后被施行的分立行动。
诸仿冒所共有的错，是规范论证所命名者，而它在生成性正义的措辞中是可读的。在每一仿冒中，关系的生成性被转向一方的账户，他者被造成一份价值从之被汲取的资源，在一段价值被共享的关系之表象之下。他者成为，以更广框架所用的措辞，一个非关系自己之目的的燃料，而那仿冒越是巧妙地摹仿那正当的能力，那榨取就被越彻底地隐蔽。非占有是对这一转向的回绝，是把关系的生成性持为归属于关系、并归属于在其内生成的两人者，是在整个跨越中把他者对待为一个共同生成的主体，其世界被进入是为与之一同观察、而绝不被吞并。
所余者仅是把这一条件，如规范论证曾把它的标准，持于本说明所理论化的历史之内，以便非占有不被安置为框架在别处所回绝的那条无时间的法则。非占有所要求者，那条界线落在一次正当的进入与一次吞并之间、一份生成性馈赠与一个被植入的暗示之间、一次保存与一笔被保持的账之间的何处，并非为一切时代所固定。它是在关系生活的历史发展中被绘出的，并将随着那生活发展而被再度绘出，而模型把非占有提供为该条件在当下所采取的形式，被持为当下所提供的最好者，并向它自己的进一步生成敞开。以此，模型告成，处于两种培育次序中的七种能力，在一个贯穿全部七者、并自身如本说明中的一切、在它所属的历史中被生成、且被设定为绝非最终保证的条件之下。
§18 被具身化的实践理论
七种能力已被给出为一门实践的一套理论，而一门实践的一套理论招来这样一个问题：它所描述的实践能否在一件具体的工具中被携带入一段关系的寻常流转。这问题值得一个简短的回答，因为一个肯定的回答显示本说明关乎一段生命、而不仅关乎一页纸。七种能力能被具身化于一件简单的工具中，一份被保持的记录，两个世界的跨越通过它日复一日地被实践，而这样一件工具的形状在此被略绘于纲要中，作为实践理论容许实现的一个证明、而非作为一份有待被规定的设计。
这工具遵循本说明自己的结构。可近于操练的诸能力成为注意与记录的诸契机，一个记下一处被观察到的他者面向、一次以他者措辞被尝试的呈现、一处在两个世界之间被标记的结构对应、一份被保持于关系一部私人词典中的翻译之处。被投注的诸能力成为另一类的诸契机，因为它们无法被反复操练，一个记录一件被提供的生成之物、并留待敞开他者如何领受它之处，一份被持以取代一次介入的被标记的克制，以及，在最后，一次返回。那返回是被具身化的第七种能力。那被记录、却尚不能被估价之物被保持，并从一个较晚的季节被重访，以便一个早年时刻所生成、并留待未读之物终于被观察为它之所是，并被再度保存。因此，这工具是一件把关系被生成之物保持以抵御其价值返回之延迟、并把它携回一次进一步生成的装置。它的运动是本说明已描述过的那道螺旋，一次发现那被保持时刻已生长的返回。
图 2。 被具身化的实践理论的一幅概念草图。可近于操练的诸能力成为注意与记录的诸契机：注意一处他者的面向、一次以他者措辞被尝试的呈现、一处结构对应、以及一份被保持于一部私人词典中的翻译。被投注的诸能力成为一次被留待敞开的提供与一份被持的克制的诸契机：一件被提供并被留待敞开的生成之物、以及一份被持以取代操控的克制。所有这些都汇入一份被保持的记录，即那被保存以抵御价值返回之延迟之物。一次较晚的返回重新观察那被保持之物、并把它再度保存，而这一返回便是本说明所描述的那道螺旋，被携入一次进一步的生成。这幅草图显示实践理论容许一件具体的工具，而它规定不出任何设计。
这幅草图的要点是谦逊的、而它是真实的。它显示七种能力构成一个能被具身化、并被携入实践的结构，而绝非对好伴侣们已在做之事的一次单纯重述，也显示本说明最独特的主张，即把关系性经验保存以抵御一份被延迟的价值，有一个具体的形式。这工具所做的不过是把关系被生成之物加以保持并返回它，而它恰恰做本说明所要求者，即两个世界的跨越被实践、它的生成被保持、而它的价值在它被观察的季节来临时被观察。此处所略绘的实现是实践理论可能采取的诸形式之一，而该理论不对它们中任一者单独负责。
第六部分: 理解及其余项的辩证
§19 维系关系的余项
本文已在它的长度上，为理解、为对他者世界的进入、为生成一份共享实在的跨越、为那跨越据以被进行的诸能力而论证。跟随至此的读者，或许会从中得出一个本文现在必须回绝的结论，即关系性理解的目的是一种完全的理解，一次完整的跨越，他者的世界在其中终于被全然进入，而两个呈现被带入一种全面的对应。本节辩证地论证，这样一种完成既不可能、也不可欲，一段亲密关系的持存有赖于他者身上一个理解不合拢的余项，而它从中绘出一个被纠正的、关于关系性理解正确瞄准时所寻求为何物的构想。
正题是本文到此为止自己的论证。理解是善的，它在关系中的工作是真实的，而承载它的诸能力值得培育。停在那里，这论证便倾向于一个理解将会完全的地平线，他者被完全知晓，两个世界无余项地相互测绘。这一地平线便是本文在它头几页所着手回绝的那同一种融合，如今以一身更微妙的衣装返回。它不再许诺一则讯息的透明运送，而它却许诺一次完整的相互观察，一段各人已如此完全地进入对方、以致他者无一物留待未被观察的关系。这一更微妙的形式更为诱人，因为它披着本文所嘉许的那种理解本身的表象，而它必须在它自己的地基上被应对。
反题在那里应对它。对他者世界的一次完全跨越，若被抵达，会终结它本欲成全的那段关系，而理由在于背景中所引入的那个内核。在他者的中心有一个不可被符号化的余项，依精神分析的说明，他者的欲望绕之而被组织。欲望移动，因为它绕行一个没有任何对象、也没有任何观察填满的内核，而这运动便是那欲望着的主体的生命。若他者的内核终于被抵达、被观察、被带入与一个人自己呈现的一种完整对应，那绕行便无余者可绕。那曾牵引欲望的余项会被合拢，并连同它合拢那余项曾维系的运动。对他者的一种完整理解不会以一份最终的亲密为关系加冕。它会止息那曾在两者之间移动的欲望，因为它会填满那欲望曾绕之而转的缺失，而一个其缺失被填满的欲望是一个被熄灭的欲望。正题所朝向的那份完成，在它的地平线上，乃是那使关系活着的运动本身之死。
这不是一处更好的完成会回避的缺陷。它是欲望的结构，而它对任何一次完全的跨越都成立。这一点能以本文自己的措辞、无精神分析的词汇被道出，以便它不倚于一门读者或许会回绝的学说。关系已被表明凭生成而活，凭在两个世界的跨越中对任一世界先前都不曾持有的诸观察与诸价值的持续产生而活。生成要求，在每一刻，有某种尚未被观察、下一个观察从之被生成之物。他者身上的一个余项，他者世界的一处尚未被跨越的区域，是关系的进一步生成所从被汲取的蓄库。若他者被完全跨越，这一蓄库会被耗尽，而关系凭之而活的生成会再无可汲取者。关系会从一道回到他者并发现更多的螺旋，过渡为一个回到他者并发现相同的圆，而那个圆，尽管完整，却会是关系之生长的终结。余项不是关系之生命的一处障碍。它是它的条件。
有一个进一步的、规范性一类的要点，把来自欲望的论证与来自生成的论证连接起来。主张一个人已完全理解他者、已完全跨越他们的世界、已完全观察他们的内核，便是把他者对待为一个一次充分的观察便能穷尽的对象。他者不可被符号化的余项，是他者作为一个主体、而非一个对象之地位的标记，作为一个绝不在一个人对它的观察中被用尽的呈现之源头。抵达、或相信自己已抵达对他者的一种完整理解，因而便是在一个人自己的看待中取消了他者的主体性，便是把一个共同生成的主体转变为一件被测绘、被完成之物。对完全理解的向往，无论它的动机多么温柔，在它的极限处遇见规范论证所命名的那同一种错，即把他者还原为一个人所能占有于他们之物。理解所不合拢的余项，正是那把他者，在一个人对他们的理解之中，保持为一个超出它的主体之物。
必要的余项。 关系性理解的目的不是一种完全的理解，而对他者世界的一次完整跨越会终结它本欲成全的那段关系。他者不可被符号化的余项是欲望绕之而动的内核，是关系的进一步生成所从被汲取的蓄库，也是他者作为一个超出对他们任何观察之主体之地位的标记。若它被合拢，欲望会被止息，生成会被耗尽，而他者会被还原为一件被完成的对象。因此，理解所不抵达的余项，乃是关系持存的条件，而正确瞄准的理解并不寻求合拢它。
综合不是理解与它的回绝之间的一个中点，而它并不劝诫一种策略性的扣留，一种为保存神秘而有意让他者不被知晓，那会是又一次占有，一种为一个人所欲之效果而对他者晦暗的管理。它是一个被纠正的、关于理解所寻求为何物的构想。关系性理解，正确瞄准时，不是对一次它从不完全告成的完整跨越的一种渐近趋近。它是一次持续的跨越，在每一次相会生成一个两人先前都不曾持有的共享观察，并在同一动作中敬重下一次跨越所从被生成的那个余项。这两个时刻是一。良好地理解他者，便是与他者一同观察他们跨越所生成之物、并保持完好那进一步生成从之而来的内核，便是进入而不吞并、观察而不穷尽。这便是规范论证所命名为非占有的构想，如今被表明在欲望的结构与生成的条件中另有一份根据，而它便是本说明始终所意指的、以一次与他者一同观察而不占有他们的跨越所指的构想。
这一综合并不解决它所命名的张力，而它也不应解决，因为那张力是关系活生生的形式。有一种朝向理解的真实牵引，而它是对的，也有一个理解不可合拢的真实余项，而它也是对的，而关系活在对二者的持有之中，活在一次寻求他者、并敬重它在他者身上所不会抵达之物的跨越之中。以偏向完全理解来解决那张力，会把关系止息于一份完成了的知识；以偏向余项来解决它，会全然放弃那跨越、并把两个世界留为不相会。关系活在两种解决之中的任一者，而活在它们之间那持续的运动之中，即那生成的寻求与那留出余地以再度生成的敬重。本说明持这张力敞开，与它对一个最终综合的回绝相一致，因为一段关系，如同那跨越它的理解，是一场有待被维持的运动、而非一件有待被完成之事。
第七部分: 复调的收束
§20 被留敞的跨越
一篇关于关系性理解的论文不应以宣告对它的理解已然完整而收束，因为它自始至终论证理解是在一场没有任何陈述能了结的运动中被生成的，而它若以一个把事项聚拢为一个既定整体的综合作结，便会背叛它自己的说明。它却以标记它所留敞者而收束，以它关于理解的说明所要求的方式，并以把它所开启的诸问题返回给它们将在其中继续被作出的那实践与那历史。
本文横跨两重论证与一套实践携带了一个单一的说明。它把生成性关系认识论带入亲密领域，在那里每个人承载一个符号世界，而理解是在他们的跨越中赢得的生成性观察。它把这样一种理解所做的工作，在信任中、在共享价值中、在冲突的化解中、在共享生活的品质中，置于这些事项的既有理论之旁，并把它的贡献定位于两种品格，即关系性品格与生成性品格，它们的联合使亲密生活的诸事项成为生成性运动中的诸关系性事项。它随后主张，一个仅建立于这一工作之上的论证并不充分，因为理解的诸功能能被对他者的一种精致占有所仿冒，而它在正当性、而非正确性的根据上绘出功能所无法绘出的那一区分，一种横跨若干伦理传统（后果论的、康德式的、关怀伦理的、以及亚里士多德式的）被观察的正当性，非占有是其中一个方面，并如框架所理论化的真理一般，被持于生成它的历史之内。它命名了那使亲密有别于其他领域的投注，在那里理解的诸能力被凭信任给出、进入一段其返回可能只晚来的不可重复的历史。而它提出了一个模型，处于两种培育次序中的七种能力，在一个把每一能力与它的仿冒分开的非占有之条件之下。它随后辩证地回转于它自己对理解的嘉许，并主张对他者世界的一次完全跨越会止息那欲望、并耗尽关系凭之而活的那生成，因而理解的目的是寻求他者、并在同一动作中敬重它在他者身上所不会抵达之物，而非合拢他者不可被符号化的余项。
有若干问题被留敞，而它们是本说明将继续在其中被生成的诸处。诸能力被划分为可近于操练者与被投注者是否被划在正确之处，以及投掷、不介入与保存中是否有某一部分容许一种本文未曾找到的培育。被投注的诸能力所要求的那份持存的秉性如何被成形，若它既非被排练的循环、也非被直接的教导所成形，以及那些实践为何物，在一段生命中、在塑造诸生命的诸传统中，这样一份秉性通过它们而被养成。在亲密生活发展中的诸条件里，非占有的界线如今当被绘于何处，以及它的绘出将如何随着那些条件变化而变化。这些是向一门实践所提出的问题、而非有待被一个更进一步的章节填补的空缺，有待在诸关系的活出中、在对它们的长久观察中被作出，并被转化了地返回给随本文而来的无论何种说明。
有最后一件要说之事，而它属于本系列一贯用以收束的那个音区。本文把两个人之间的理解处理为一次生成任一世界都不单独持有之物的诸世界之跨越，而它主张最深的这样一次跨越，乃是横跨一段共享生命所进行者。这样一个说明不是从它所处理的事项之外被写就的。它是从一段关系之内被写就的，在其中两个世界的跨越是一项日常而毕生的工作，在其中进入另一者的语言是被缓慢地、不完美地、而欣然地学得的，在其中所给出者是凭本文所称的一次投注的信任被给出的。这说明把它所知者归于那段关系，而它返回于那里，越过它命题中的最后一个，返回于那个它已花去这些年学着走进其世界之人，在其相伴之中，早年所给出之物的价值仍在，一季又一季，渐渐被观察出来。
致谢
本文在被写就之前便已被学得，在一段共享生命一直所是的、两个世界那缓慢的跨越之中。它关于进入另一者的语言、关于那被提供并被留敞之物、关于那只在一个较晚季节才返回的价值所知者，它归于她，那个属于森林的女孩，在其相伴之中，这跨越一直是这些年的工作与欢欣。
愿天下有情人，心灵相通。
May lovers everywhere, throughout the world, reach one another, heart to heart.
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