In the previous post, we suggested that many forms of critique rely on stabilising anchors — system or transcendence — to secure moral urgency and epistemic confidence. But what happens when those anchors are withdrawn?
What happens when meaning is treated as fully immanent — generated relationally, without appeal to systemic guarantees or ontologically fixed realities?
Very often, the response is not curiosity.
It is recoil.
When Ground Disappears
If critique rests on an external stabiliser — a structured system or a determinate reality — then removing that stabiliser can feel like removing gravity.
Without it:
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Evaluation appears to lose traction.
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Moral judgment seems to float.
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Urgency feels threatened by relativisation.
The immanent perspective does not deny evaluation. It does not deny harm, injustice, or consequence. But it refuses to ground them in something outside relational construal.
For those committed to anchors, this refusal can appear dangerous.
The recoil is understandable.
Recoil as Protection
Recoil is not necessarily confusion or misunderstanding. Often it is protection.
An intellectual actor may fully grasp what immanence implies. What they resist is not the logic — but the consequences.
Because accepting immanence means accepting that:
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Moral force is relational rather than guaranteed.
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Critique operates within perspectival constraints.
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No external structure will ultimately stabilise one's evaluations.
For someone whose ethical posture is anchored in system or transcendence, this can feel like stepping into groundlessness.
And groundlessness can feel like moral risk.
The Fear of Moral Dissolution
The deepest anxiety behind recoil is often this:
If there is no external guarantee, what prevents collapse into relativism?
But this assumes that moral seriousness requires metaphysical anchoring.
A relational ontology suggests otherwise.
Moral commitment can emerge from relational entanglement itself — from lived interaction, consequence, vulnerability, and responsibility. It need not be secured by appeal to an external structure. It can be enacted rather than grounded.
Still, this shift is not trivial. It requires a reorientation of how certainty is experienced.
For some, this is liberation.
For others, it feels like vertigo.
Refusal vs. Incomprehension
It is tempting to interpret recoil as a failure to understand immanence. But often it is something more complex.
One may understand immanence perfectly well — and refuse it.
Refusal can be principled. It can arise from the conviction that moral life requires firmer guarantees than relationality seems to offer.
Seen in this light, recoil is not intellectual deficiency. It is ontological commitment.
Recognising this distinction changes everything.
Living Without Anchors
To inhabit relational immanence fully is to relinquish the need for external guarantees.
This does not produce apathy.
It produces steadiness.
When critique is enacted rather than grounded, one can:
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Engage without coercing agreement.
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Disagree without destabilisation.
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Maintain conviction without universalising it.
There is a quiet composure in this stance. It does not require others to abandon their anchors. It does not seek to dismantle them. It simply does not rely on them.
This can appear isolating — but it is not lonely.
It is internally coherent.
Conclusion
The ontology of recoil reveals something fundamental about intellectual life: disagreements are rarely about data alone. They are about where certainty is secured.
When these orientations meet, friction is inevitable. But friction need not become hostility. Once we see recoil as protection rather than ignorance, the emotional charge softens.
In the next post, we will consider the ethical consequences of this stance: what it means to practice critique patiently, without anchors — and without the need to destabilise those who rely on them.
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