Ethically Structured Processes

2Pre-determination Figures

2.1. Modes of objective constraint

This is not, of course, an exhaustive list, since that would run counter to the spirit of the project, closing the reflection into a single plane. If the challenge is to go back upstream from the concepts and objects given to us by science (or historical tradition) to their possibility and to a creative possible at work in the situation we are considering, we cannot just use a category that simply orders the different concepts accessible in an exhaustive way. The conditions, downstream, are not “pre-determined”, i.e. do not appear exactly in the same way as beforehand, upstream. Their circumstantial materialization can therefore be taken up in the element of the possible, in this viability where responsibility decides the ability to guide a process upstream.

This does not mean that one is condemned to being rhapsodic. For the purposes of this book, we only need to distinguish two major axes of constraint: (a) the definitorial axis, in which the known is considered necessary by simply giving a set of defined conditions, where the possibility of its impossibility is forgotten; and (b) the necessary formal unambiguous axis. This axis forgets the non-pre-determination of the known, and therefore the conventionality of its necessity. The “objectivity” of the constraint lies in its actively logical character, which translates into concrete effects downstream.

aa) A definitorial perspective makes it possible to reduce the ...