Acting together binds us. Law gives that bond a constitution.
This section asks why that is so: why people who do something together form a bond that goes beyond mutual benefit, why this sometimes succeeds all at once, and why it so often fails.
The answer developed here starts from action itself. Whoever cooperates realises their aims not alongside those of others but through them. The aims of others become the form of one’s own: they give them shape and set their limits. Where people act in this way, a shared place emerges, whether or not they are physically close. Online makes this especially clear, because the shared room is missing and yet a bond arises.
The pages are kept short. Each puts forward a thesis and argues for it, with an example and with the question of what follows for the law.
The pages
- What cooperation is: cooperation is more than exchange, because in it the aims of others become the form of one’s own.
- The click and its conditions: the moment when the interplay suddenly runs by itself cannot be produced, but its conditions can be cultivated.
- Recognition: cooperation lives on mutual recognition as free persons; online this recognition shows, for example, in turning up to the agreed session every week.
- Play: joy without a purpose creates trust, and those who play practise rules they give themselves.
- Conflict: where there is no conflict, one side has often stopped having aims of its own; what matters is whether the conflict leaves the participants standing as partners.
- Cooperation between adversaries: adversaries cooperate too, and this is the path from merely not fighting to a common order.
To see how these ideas hold up in practice, turn to Phases, Online and Law.