Meta-Genealogical Reflection: 4 Relational Ethics and Collective Construal

Spinoza, Leibniz, and other frameworks foreground relationality as an ontological principle, showing how individuality and interconnection co‑constitute possibility. Here, the relational cut extends beyond cosmic and conceptual order into the domain of ethical and social potential. Construal is not only a matter of understanding the world but of shaping human action within it. Possibility emerges within networks of norms, responsibilities, and collective interactions, which simultaneously constrain and enable action.

Classical and early Hellenistic thought foreground this ethical turn. In Aristotelian ethics, the polis is not merely a backdrop for individual flourishing; it is a relational field in which virtues are instantiated. Potentiality — the good, the just, the flourishing life — emerges only through engagement with structured social relations. Likewise, Confucian thought emphasises li (ritual propriety) and ren (humaneness) as relational principles: ethical possibility is enacted through the careful calibration of one’s position within a network of obligations and interactions. Spinoza’s conatus demonstrates how individual striving is inseparable from the interconnected web of existence, while Leibniz’s monads reveal the relational ordering that structures potential across discrete yet interconnected entities.

Key construal strategies emerge:

• Ethical relationality — moral potential is realised within webs of reciprocal responsibilities rather than in isolation.

• Collective fields of possibility — individual action is intelligible only in the context of broader relational patterns.

• Normative structure as enabling constraint — social and ethical norms shape what is possible, providing both limitations and affordances for action.

Modulatory voices enrich this perspective. Stoic cosmology links ethical life to universal relational order, showing that human potential aligns with larger patterns of existence. Buddhist ethics frames the relationality of self and other as central to the emergence of compassionate action, demonstrating that the actualisation of possibility is inseparable from co‑constitutive relational awareness.

In sum, the ethical turn in relational ontology illustrates that possibility is always embedded within relational networks. Construal is never purely cognitive; it is practical, normative, and collective, emerging from interactions that define both individual and communal horizons of potential. These insights prepare the ground for subsequent developments in process philosophy and modern relational metaphysics, where relation itself becomes the primary ontological category.