Status is what a system tries to maintain.
The Fundamental Distinction
A person’s status is determined not by an isolated property of that person but by a specific relationship in which the person stands: a relationship with another subject or a relationship with reality itself.
Status does not exist above a person as an independent entity or a permanent inscription declaring who that person is. The determination “I am such-and-such” has no meaning outside the question of precisely which relationship, with whom or what, on what grounds, and at what moment this status is established.
Consequently, it is necessary to distinguish:
- The subject: the one who enters relationships, perceives, distinguishes, investigates, acts, and is capable of discovering something new.
- The specific relationship: the actual content of the subject’s connection with another subject or with reality.
- Status: the determination of the subject’s position within that relationship.
- The status category: the concept used to designate that position. Naming a status does not by itself establish the corresponding relationship.
An error arises when the fourth element is mistaken for the second: the presence of a category is declared sufficient grounds for the existence of a relationship, and an attributed status begins to be regarded as a property of the person.
Two Fundamental Directions of Relationship
The Subject and Reality
Reality acts as an independent source of new differences. The subject stands in a direct relationship with it, a relationship that cannot be exhausted by existing descriptions and categories.
Within this relationship, status expresses the subject’s particular position in relation to a particular aspect of reality. For example, a person may know how to solve one task and not know how to solve another; they may have experience working with one system and be encountering another for the first time.
The person’s status in the second relationship cannot be automatically derived from the first. Calling someone “knowledgeable” or “unknowledgeable” cannot replace investigating what exactly they know, in relation to which task, and on the basis of what interaction with reality.
A new distinction may reveal the inadequacy of an earlier status. Therefore, a category has no right to prescribe definitively to reality what the subject’s actual position must be.
The Subject and Another Subject
Specific relationships arise between subjects: cooperation, agreement, teaching, conflict, trust, obligation, refusal, evaluation, and others.
The same person may be a teacher in relation to one subject, a student in relation to another, a candidate in relation to a particular employer, and a party to a contract in relation to a counterparty. None of these statuses automatically transfers to the other relationships.
The status of employer does not exist without the corresponding relationship; the status of debtor does not arise merely because someone else calls a person a debtor. In each case, the specific grounds must be established rather than simply invoking the name of a category.
At the same time, a relationship cannot be reduced to what one participant thinks about the other. One subject’s idea of another’s status, the way they treat that person based on this idea, and the actual content of their relationship are different things.
The Principle That Status Is Not Inherited Across Relationships
A status arising within one specific relationship between a subject and reality or another subject is not automatically inherited by a different relationship. Even when someone else knows about that status, knowledge of another person’s relationship does not itself become that relationship.
This follows from the distinction between the subject, the subject’s activity, and the content of a specific interaction. Status is not attached to a person as a universal role that everyone around them must reproduce at every new encounter. A new relationship has its own grounds, content, and boundaries.
Example: A Person Builds Websites for Clients
Suppose a person develops websites on commission. This characterizes a particular activity of theirs, their relationship to the reality in which they create websites, and their relationships with the specific clients for whom they work.
Now they come to talk to me socially. A communicative relationship arises between us, not a client-contractor relationship. In our interaction, they do not have the status of my contractor, and I do not have the status of their client.
Three statements can be distinguished:
- “This person builds websites for clients.” A statement about their activity and already existing relationships with reality and clients.
- “I know that this person builds websites for clients.” A statement about the content of my knowledge of their activity. The knowledge itself does not create a commissioning relationship between us.
- “This person is building a website commissioned by me.” A statement about another, specific relationship in which the corresponding statuses may arise on their own grounds.
One cannot move from the first or second statement to the third merely by invoking the category “website developer.” At the same time, the person does not cease engaging in their activity simply because they came to socialize: their relationship with reality may continue, but it does not thereby become the content of my relationship with them.
If we subsequently agree that they will develop a website for me, a new relationship will arise between us. The status of contractor will emerge within it on the basis of that agreement, not because their professional characteristic was automatically transferred into our communication in advance.
Knowledge of Someone Else’s Relationship Does Not Mean Participation in It
One may know numerous circumstances about a person: where they work, what tasks they perform, with whom they have entered into contracts, and what they are capable of creating. But this information concerns their relationships, not necessarily our interaction with them.
It is therefore important not to conflate:
- The existence of a relationship in which a particular status has arisen.
- A description of or knowledge about that relationship available to an outside subject.
- The emergence of a new relationship between that subject and the person about whom they have knowledge.
Information about another person’s relationship may become a topic of conversation, but the topic of a conversation does not turn the interlocutors into participants in the relationship being discussed.
Transferring a Category Without Transferring the Relationship
When someone is told, “You are a website developer, so you must advise me on development,” a status associated with one activity is transferred to another interaction. A demand is then derived from the transferred category.
But the ability to perform work, actually performing it for other people, and having an obligation to perform it for me are different positions. The mere name of a profession creates no obligations in our communication.
Transferring status without establishing the corresponding relationship is a transfer of a category, not an inheritance of the relationship itself.
Precisely such a transfer turns a particular determination of a person into a supposedly universal characteristic prescribing how that person must behave toward everyone they encounter. This is one mechanism of objectification: the content of the new relationship is not investigated because it is considered already established by means of a ready-made category.
Boundary of Applicability
The non-inheritance of status does not mean the disappearance of past relationships. An active contract with one client remains a relationship with that client even while the contractor is speaking with someone else. Nor do the facts of the person’s professional activity disappear.
The point is different: neither the existence of an earlier relationship nor knowledge about it automatically creates an analogous status between other subjects. To establish status within a new relationship, it is necessary to investigate the content of that particular relationship.
Status, Attribution, and Imposition
Three situations must be distinguished.
Status established within a relationship. The determination rests on actual circumstances: actions performed, the content of an agreement, obligations that have arisen, and results of interaction with reality.
Attributed status. One subject interprets another through a category, but the interpretation itself does not yet establish that the category corresponds to the actual relationship.
Imposed status. A subject or system does not merely use a category descriptively but begins treating a person as though the category definitively determines their position, without investigating the corresponding relationship or while displacing new differences from it.
Here, a transition occurs from determining a person’s position within a relationship to attempting to define the person through a category. Their words, actions, and possibilities for further distinction begin to be considered not in their own right but through an already imposed classification.
Attributing status is an act performed by the one doing the classifying. The actuality of status is a question about the grounds of a specific relationship. These two events must not be identified with each other.
Status Does Not Exhaust the Subject
The subject is capable of entering into new relationships and discovering differences absent from previous determinations. Therefore, no status that arises in a particular relationship exhausts the subject.
Even a well-founded status remains limited to the relationship within which it was established. Recognizing a person as a candidate does not define them as a human being in general. A refusal in one relationship does not establish their position in all others. Evaluating a particular action does not by itself become a final determination of the subject.
Turning status from a determination of a particular relationship into a determination of the subject themselves is the substitution of a category for a relationship.
This substitution is particularly visible when a classification is used to exclude the subject from discussing the relationship itself. Instead of addressing the person and the actual grounds of their position, the system deals with a ready-made image of that person.
Why the System Maintains Status
The original thesis that a system tries to maintain status acquires additional content here.
Status may be maintained either by preserving a particular relationship or by preserving a representation of that relationship. These are fundamentally different processes.
In the first case, the system preserves or reproduces the actual conditions on which status is based. In the second, it maintains a classification even when the real relationships have changed or a new difference has emerged, placing the need to preserve the definition above the investigation of reality.
This produces a closed mechanism: the category is used to explain the relationship, while the relationship itself is interpreted exclusively so as to confirm the category. Status ceases to be a result of distinction and becomes a means of suppressing differences.
Example: A Test Assignment and the Obligation to Pay
If a candidate agreed to complete a test assignment without payment, a specific relationship with defined conditions arose between the candidate and the other party.
The subsequent claim “all labor must be paid” introduces the general category of labor and attempts to derive an obligation from it without investigating the content of this particular relationship.
Here it is necessary to distinguish a demand to change the rules in the future from the assertion that the corresponding obligation has already arisen under the existing agreement. Merely applying the category “labor” does not establish the fact of an agreement to pay.
Thus, the dispute cannot be resolved merely by referring to a universal name for the activity. It is necessary to investigate the actual grounds and conditions of the relationship that arose.
Method for Investigating Status
Instead of asking “Who is this person?”, one should investigate, in sequence:
- In relation to whom or what has the status been established?
- What specific relationship forms its basis?
- What actions, facts, and agreements determine the content of the relationship?
- Who asserts this status, and is the assertion a description of the relationship or an attempt to establish or impose it?
- Within what boundaries does the determination remain valid?
- Has status been transferred from another relationship merely on the basis of knowledge about the person or their category?
- What new distinction is capable of changing the previously established position?
This method prevents the substitution of a ready-made category for the investigation of an actual relationship.
Final Thesis
The status of a subject is not an independent, unchanging property of that subject. It arises and is determined within a specific relationship between the subject and another subject or reality itself. The category designating a status is not identical to the relationship and cannot replace its grounds. The status of one relationship is not inherited by another: knowledge of someone else’s relationship does not create participation in it. No single status defines the subject as a whole.
Therefore, the investigation of status begins not by classifying the person, but by distinguishing the relationship within which their position is established.
