The Ontology That Must Tremble: 1 The Demand for Risk

Any ontology that cannot specify the conditions under which it would fail is not an ontology. It is a preference.

Too often, theories shield themselves from the possibility of fracture. They erect walls of abstraction, defend internal consistency with rhetoric, or absorb counterexamples into metaphorical elasticity. Such systems are elegant and coherent, but inert. They describe, interpret, and narrate, but they do not tremble.

Relational ontology, as we understand it, does not have that luxury. If being is fundamentally relational, if instantiation is a perspectival cut through potential, then the theory itself must be capable of reconfiguration under pressure. To ignore this requirement is to contradict the very principle it seeks to articulate.

The purpose of this series is neither apologetic nor defensive. It is structural. It is experimental. We will locate points of tension, expose latent contradictions, and watch how the system responds. Some points may hold; others may yield. And in that yielding, new movements of possibility will emerge.

1. The Problem of Safe Theories

Most theoretical systems exist in a protective envelope. Their authority rests upon one of two mechanisms:

1. Metaphorical absorption – When counterexamples arise, the system interprets them as illustrative, exceptional, or metaphorical, rather than structural. The theory never risks revision.

2. Conceptual abstraction – By shifting to ever-higher strata of generality, the system avoids empirical or logical friction. It describes patterns without specifying constraints.

Both strategies generate a kind of safety, but they produce an illusion of explanatory power. They do not account for where the system might fail — and a system that cannot fail is not truly testable. It is a lens, a preference, a sophisticated habit of thought.

The demand we place on relational ontology is different. We do not protect it. We expose it.

2. Relational Ontology Under Pressure

At its core, relational ontology rests on a small but powerful set of principles:

• System as structured potential – The system is not the sum of its instances. It is a theoretical schema of possible instantiations.

• Instantiation as perspectival cut – An event or phenomenon is an actualisation of the system’s potential, a slice of possibility drawn into actuality.

• Construal as constitutive – Meaning, experience, and structure are not merely reflected; they emerge through relational construal.

Each of these principles contains its own pressure points. They are the locations where the model risks overextension:

1. The Cut Itself – How is a cut individuated? If instantiation depends on the cut, and the cut presupposes the system, have we created a recursion without grounding? Could the cut collapse if confronted with a construal it cannot reconcile?

2. Constraint vs. Freedom – How structured is structured potential? If too rigid, instantiation becomes mechanical; if too open, the system dissolves into indeterminacy. Where exactly does constraint reside, and is it recoverable without invoking ad hoc mechanisms?

3. Boundary Preservation – Meaning must remain distinct from value systems. But if all phenomena are construed, can non-semiotic coordination avoid being semioticised? The line between value and meaning is subtle but crucial.

4. Empirical Friction – The model elegantly accounts for discursive shifts, micro-observations, and conceptual variations. But can it fail empirically? Can it generate situations that would force reconsideration? If not, it risks becoming a self-sealing interpretive lens.

3. Bravery as Structural Requirement

Here is the crux: bravery is not a stylistic flourish. It is structurally required.

To insist on structural courage is to insist that relational ontology remain true to its own principles. A system that cannot risk fracture is internally inconsistent: it posits relationality as constitutive but protects itself from relational testing. That protection is a contradiction.

The series that follows will not defend the model. It will interrogate it. It will ask:

• Where does it thin?

• Where does it over-generate?

• Where does it quietly smuggle in what it claims to derive?

• Where does it collapse distinctions it must preserve?

In doing so, we perform the ontology. We allow it to respond to pressure. We treat it not as a static schema but as a live relational configuration.

4. The First Pressure Point: The Cut

We begin with the cut.

The cut is the perspectival incision: the act of drawing a boundary between potential and instance. It is the locus where theory meets phenomenon.

But can the cut be grounded? Can we specify its individuation without assuming the very distinctions it is meant to generate? Or is it, in truth, a latent point of circularity?

This is not a rhetorical question. It is a structural probe. In subsequent posts, we will expose the mechanics of the cut, push on its constraints, and observe how relational ontology responds. We will treat the cut as an empirical-structural pressure point, not as a settled abstraction.

5. The Stakes

Why undertake this exercise? Because the integrity of the ontology depends on it.

• If the cut is fragile, the system must adapt.

• If constraint is ill-specified, relational ontology risks indeterminacy.

• If boundaries collapse, meaning becomes conflated with value.

• If empirical friction is absent, the theory becomes interpretive rather than explanatory.

The act of stress-testing is itself a performance of relational principles. By staging the possibility of failure, we enact what the model claims to describe: systems, instances, construals, and pressures co-individuate in relation.

In other words: the trembling is part of the ontology’s life.

6. Closing

We have set the stage.

This is not a post that provides answers. It is a post that frames the experiment. It declares stakes, identifies pressure points, and locates the first site of structural interrogation.

We begin with the cut, and with the demand for risk. In the posts that follow, we will follow each pressure point, push until something yields, and observe what survives.

By the end, we will not simply have explained relational ontology. We will have exposed it to its own criteria. And in that exposure, we will discover where possibility trembles — and where it persists.