Thesis: The meaning of an action depends on the subject’s relation to what they are doing. Actions that appear identical from the outside may differ in meaning.
An activity that looks the same from the outside can be carried out within different relations. A person returns to a conflict, writes a text, or creates a course; an observer sees the topic, the time spent, and the result obtained. But none of this yet makes clear what exactly the subject is doing in the process: investigating, repeating what is already known, fulfilling an obligation, seeking recognition, or opening up a possibility for another person. The subject’s relation to their own activity requires separate examination because it participates in determining the activity’s meaning and can change even when the outward action remains the same.
External Form and the Relation Being Enacted
Two hours spent working on the same conflict may constitute an investigation of the circumstances, preparation for a necessary action, or a return to an episode that has already been examined. The external description “spent two hours dealing with the conflict” is accurate in every case, but it does not distinguish what kind of movement took place. Indignation does not predetermine the answer either: it may accompany the discovery of a new distinction, or it may hold the subject in a repetition of what has already occurred.
The relation here is not the same as a mood or a verbal explanation of one’s motives. It manifests itself in what the subject regards as the object of the work, which questions they return to, which distinctions they are capable of accepting, what result they expect, and what they do after obtaining it. A subject may be mistaken in describing their own relation; another person may notice traces that the subject has overlooked. Thus, the relation must be investigated, not merely proclaimed from within or attributed from outside.
This distinction also applies to actions between people. An offer to replace a damaged item may express acknowledgment of an obligation to compensate for the damage, or a voluntary gesture accompanied by a denial of responsibility. The item being handed over may be the same, but the positions of the participants and the meaning of the offer differ. At the same time, a mere declaration of one’s relation is insufficient to establish facts or obligations: the circumstances of the event and the relations between the parties are essential here.
Activity and Its Result for the Subject
Creating a course can simultaneously be an investigation of the subject matter, work on one’s own understanding, preparation of material for others, and a means of earning income. These relations do not have to exclude one another. What matters is distinguishing which result already arises within the activity itself and which depends on the subsequent response of other people.
If a new distinction has been discovered during the work and the author’s understanding has changed, that result has already occurred. Publication makes it accessible to other subjects. Reading, agreement, criticism, and application belong to the next relation: they also depend on those who encounter the material. The absence of a response does not negate the investigation that has taken place, although it may matter for a different goal, for example, if the course was also created as a source of income.
Dependence on recognition arises when the anticipated reaction of others takes the place of the criterion for the entire activity. The work may then be guided not by a question addressed to the subject matter, but by constant checking: will the result be approved? Yet the desire to be read, to earn income, or to test a text through argument does not in itself make the relation unfree. What matters is whether the ability to distinguish one’s own investigation, the conditions of its communication, and the external response is preserved.
Changing the Relation Without Changing the Subject Matter
A subject may notice that they keep returning to an event without making any new progress, and make that very return an object of distinction. They can ask what still needs to be established, what action is possible, and where repetition no longer leads to understanding. The subject matter remains the same; what changes is how the subject participates in the activity.
Such a transition does not require forgetting the conflict, suppressing emotion, or abandoning a demand for responsibility. Investigation, defense of one’s rights, and creation of materials may continue. However, not every activity can be declared creative merely because the subject has renamed their relation to it. One must identify what actually arose or changed through their actions: understanding, the expression of a distinction, a restored connection, a justified demand, or a new way of acting. Repeated work to preserve something already created may also have its own meaning, even if it yields no new discovery.
The opposition between “dealing with a conflict” and “creating” therefore does not resolve the question. Investigating a conflict may produce new understanding; creating a philosophical text may amount to waiting for approval. The topic of an activity does not determine the subject’s relation to it.
Question for Further Inquiry
The subject’s relation to an activity brings together several distinctions: the subject matter and the goal of the work, intention and actual course of action, one’s own result and the response of others, one’s experienced state and the possibility of investigating it. These can coexist and change over time. Therefore, the question “what am I doing?” should be supplemented by another: “What relation to what is happening am I enacting through this activity, and what becomes possible through that relation?”
Related Materials
- Subjecthood and Relations — on the relation to reality and the possibility of revising one’s form of understanding.
- The Practice of Subjecthood — on interrupting automatic movement and transforming one’s own action.
- Actions Are Not Given in Themselves — on the emergence of a field of actions through distinguishing a situation.
- Self-Knowledge and the Fragmentation of Others’ Opinions — on the difference between the subject’s intention and other people’s explanations of their actions.
- Distinction and History — on the interval between discovering a distinction and its recognition by others.
