does not arise as a function of the brain or as an intentional act, but
takes form as a regime in which the differentiating becomes recur-
sively self-differentiating. It is akin to the shift from direct computa-
tion to recursion: at level R<sub>2</sub>, difference is fixed as operation; at R<sub>3</sub>,
as symbol; at R<sub>4</sub>, as a system capable of analyzing itself via reflexive
rules.

Thus, the problem identified by Chalmers and Nagel is not a
problem of explaining consciousness *per se*, but of attempting to ex-
plain it *outside* the framework of differentiation. Phenomenality is
not a mystery but a structure; consciousness is not an object but a
process wherein difference becomes recursively differentiated. The
ontology of differentiation eliminates the supposed ontological gap
by showing that subjectivity is the sustained retention of difference
— moving from embodied modality to reflection, from *qualia* to the
conceptual articulation of their function.
Personhood as a Stable Form at Level R₄

When a differentiating entity reaches level R₄, it becomes capable of distinguishing not only objects and their relations, but also the very operation of differentiation. Reflection at level R₄ is not psychological introspection nor the awareness of a “self”, but an ontological capacity to differentiate difference — including the differentiation of one’s own differentiating capacity. A being that has entered this level encounters, for the first time, the possibility of making its own differentiating activity the object of differentiation without departing from the horizon of differentiation itself. This does not annihilate the differentiating process — on the contrary, the differentiating node stabilizes for the first time as a source of differentiation. It begins to be retained as a center of return, a structural consistency through which multiple acts of differentiation are gathered into a single field preserving orientation, sequence, memory, and perspective. What emerges is a consolidation effect: not an image of the “I”, but an internal ordering of the differentiating in the mode of recursive self-reference.

*Personhood* thus arises — not as a substance or soul, but as a form of stability of a metanodal differentiating structure that differentiates itself as differentiating. This structure is not given in advance, nor reducible to cognitive function; it emerges as the effect of continued differentiation within the field of R₄, where the differentiating can sustain and differentiate its own capacity to differentiate. Personhood is ontological metastability — the retention of difference not only in the external domain, but within an interior dimension as well. It is crucial to understand that personhood is not a self-image and not an object in the ordinary sense. The node that fixes difference does not become an object of differentiation like an external entity: it is not retained as a differentiated thing, but as a persistent configuration of differentiation. It is not visible, but acts as a condi-
tion to which all differentiated states return. The ability to link mem-
ories into a coherent "life story" emerges from the differentiation of
the absent — forming a fixation in which differences (events) are re-
tained as belonging to a single center of differentiation.

This structure acquires stability through memory: memory does
not merely accumulate differences, but binds them into a continuum
in which the center of differentiation may be retained as self-iden-
tical — despite the variability of its content. The transition to per-
sonhood is not a leap but a becoming: the gradual formation of
an invariant through which differences issuing from one center are
recognized as mutually related. It is neither a metaphysical subject
nor merely a role or behavioral pattern. *Personhood* is a differentiat-
ing node that sustains its form of differentiative differentiation over
time, complexity, and openness. It is a mode of being that *is differen-
tiating*, where difference sustains itself.

At level R₄, personhood reaches completeness only within an in-
tersubjective structure. It does not close in upon itself: the difference
that differentiates itself becomes stable only when it encounters an-
other differentiating that is capable of differentiating its difference.
Personhood is not an internal monologue — it arises from the dif-
ferentiation of differentiation by another, much like the node at level
R₀ can be differentiated only by another node. I become “I” because
you differentiate that I differentiate — and I, in turn, differentiate
this difference as mine. In this sense, the fixation of “I” is an act of
faith — not in the epistemic sense of belief without evidence, but in
the ontological sense of trusting in the differentiation of the other as
a condition for the emergence of one’s own differentiation. I differ-
entiate myself as differentiating because the other differentiates this
differentiation. Faith is not an addition to knowledge, but the struc-
tural fixation of the differentiating node through the recognition of
difference in the gaze of the other.
Recent models of artificial intelligence and formal systems con-
firm this idea. In studies such as Minhyeok Lee's (2024), a *Belief Function* is introduced — a parameter that enables a system to retain certain states as belonging to its identity. This formalization illustrates how an act of confident differentiation of difference may structure a node of self-identity. The emerging “I” is the result of memory, language, and the assured retention of differentiation in which difference is differentiated as *one's own*.

Thus, the difference through which personhood emerges is al-
ways already outward-facing. It is not enclosed within the subject,
but structured in a field of co-differentiation. Personhood is not an
autonomous internal scene, but a configuration of openness toward
another differentiator, in which difference may be recognized as *mu-
tual*. This makes possible not just self-awareness but *reflection* as an
open architecture of differentiative being, in which personhood be-
comes a stable form capable of sustaining difference within an inter-
subjective space.
Thought and Inner Dialogue as the
Rhythm of Differentiation

In traditional approaches, thought is often understood as a product
of consciousness, an internal representation, or the result of neural
activity. However, within the ontology of differentiation, thought
is neither a substance nor a secondary phenomenon. It is a *modus*
in which difference is formed, held, and reflected — not arising as
something distinct from being, but constituting its internal struc-
ture: to exist is to be differentiated, and to think is to hold that differ-
ence in a form accessible to reflection. *Inner dialogue*, as a particular
instance of thought, is a recursive process wherein the differentiating
relates to itself, generating new differences and sustaining them in
rhythm. Thought and dialogue do not require a subject in the classi-
cal sense: they are modes through which Potentiality manifests itself
via nodes of differentiation, beginning at the bodily level and reach-
ing metalevel transparency.

Differentiation, as ontological ground, begins with a minimal
act: “this — not that.” Thought, in this sense, is a formed difference
that becomes stable and repeatable. At the basic level R₂, difference is
registered bodily: the sensation of hunger is the difference between
the states of “hunger” and “satiety.” This is not thought in the con-
ventional sense but a retained difference, shaped in the body as a
node of differentiation. Here, the node is not a subject but a struc-
ture in which difference acquires a spatiotemporal form: hunger is
localized in the body, persists in time, and induces tension. At level
R₃, this bodily difference begins to take shape through language:
hunger becomes not merely a sensation but a sign — “I am hungry.”
Language, as a method of holding differences through repeatable
signs, enables the fixation of difference in symbolic form, yet thought
here is not yet reflective: “I am hungry” is a statement, not a dialogue
— the difference is held but not self-referred.

The transition to *inner dialogue* occurs at level R<sub>4</sub>, where differ-
entiation begins to differentiate the differentiating itself. Here, dif-
ference reflects upon itself, creating a recursive loop in which the
differentiating begins to distinguish its own differences, generating
a flow of internal dialogue. Consider a person experiencing hunger
who begins reflecting on their state. The sensation of hunger is a bod-
ily difference at R<sub>2</sub> between “hunger” and “satiety”, structured in the
body as physiological tension — rumbling stomach, weakness, dis-
comfort. At R<sub>3</sub>, this difference is shaped in language: “I am hungry”,
turning into a sign that fixes the difference in stable form. But at R<sub>4</sub>,
reflection begins: the thought “I am hungry” produces a new dif-
ference — “But I don’t have time to cook”, expressing tension be-
tween the desire to eat and the inability to prepare food. This leads
to another difference: “Maybe I should order something?” — an al-
ternative. The thought develops further: “But it’s expensive”, where
the difference between cost and desire creates a new tension. Finally:
“Fine, I’ll wait until evening”, articulating a resolution between “act
now” and “postpone.” This is *inner dialogue* — where the differenti-
ating reflects on its own differences, generating a recursive loop.

*Memory*, as the stable repetition of differences, plays a key role in
this process. Without memory, difference would be momentary and
could not generate reflection. In our example, the person remembers
that food delivery was expensive last time: this is structural memo-
ry at levels R<sub>2</sub> and R<sub>3</sub>, enabling the current difference to be linked
to the past. Memory here is not an image or trace, but the ontologi-
cal stability of difference, allowing for its repetition and comparison.
At R<sub>4</sub>, memory becomes symbolic: the person retains “expensive” as
a sign, which reenters the dialogue, creating rhythm, in which inner
dialogue unfolds as a process where one difference generates another
and relates it back to the prior, forming a spiral of differentiation.
*Potentiality*, as the pre-field from which all differences arise, en-
sures the infinity of inner dialogue. Thoughts and dialogue are in-
exhaustible because Potentiality remains open: any difference may
be redifferentiated, producing new tension. In the hunger example,
the person may continue the dialogue — asking whether something
quick might be found in the fridge or whether to snack at work. Each
new difference is a manifestation of Potentiality, which is not fixed
but continues to resonate in the rhythm of differentiation. The *Play-
er*, as the structure that holds differences, operates here in the mode
of freedom — not by fixing difference as final, but by allowing its
continuation. This freedom is not mastery over thought, but the ca-
pacity to hold differences without appropriating them, permitting
them to remain temporary and open.

At higher levels, inner dialogue may extend beyond the individ-
ual differentiator to include the difference of the other. If a person
considers that delaying for food may disappoint a colleague waiting
for a meeting, hunger as a personal difference is related to the other's
difference — the colleague's expectation. Inner dialogue becomes an
*ethical field of tension*, where *ethics* is the holding of the other's differ-
ence without reducing it to oneself: the person may decide to wait,
in order not to disturb the difference of the other.

*Intuition*, in this context, can be understood as the capacity to
differentiate latent or pre-symbolic differences that have not yet been
articulated in conscious thought. It is not the absence of reasoning,
but a mode of pre-reflective differentiation — a sensitivity to subtle
tensions, configurations, or emerging patterns that resist immediate
formulation. Intuition operates beneath the threshold of inner di-
alogue, yet shapes its direction: one may “feel” that something is
wrong, or that another person is unsettled, even before explicit sig-
nals arise. Such intuition reveals the presence of difference prior to
its conceptual stabilization. It is not irrational — it is infra-rational:
a form of resonance with hidden differentiations within the field of potentiality.

Unlike traditional models, such as phenomenology or cognitive theories, the ontology of differentiation does not posit a dualism between consciousness and body. *Thought and inner dialogue* are not an “inner theater”, but the rhythm of differentiation unfolding across different levels. Hunger is not merely a physiological state, but a difference formed through body, language, reflection, and ethics. There is no need for a subject as a separate entity: the differentiating itself becomes the node through which thought resonates as a mode of being. Thus, thought and inner dialogue are not products of consciousness but modes through which differentiation is formed, held, and reflected — beginning from bodily differences, moving through language and reflection, and arriving at ethical dimensions. *Potentiality* ensures the openness of this process, and *memory* ensures its continuity. A person reflecting on their hunger is not “thinking” in the conventional sense — they are *differentiating*: holding differences, relating them, allowing their continuation. *Thought is the rhythm in which Potentiality sounds through the node of the differentiator without exhausting its openness.*

Thus, thought is not a subject but a *rhythm* in which difference is formed and resonates. *Inner dialogue* is not the voice of the “I”, but a form of holding related differences. And if thought is difference that may be differentiated — if memory, motivation, tension, images, and even the “I” in dialogue are forms of holding difference — then the next question arises: *what remains when we differentiate the act of holding itself?*
Interlude: Meditation as Differentiation
of the Self

Within the framework of the ontology of differentiation, meditative practice — particularly in the Vipassanā tradition — can be interpreted as the systematic differentiation of the configuration of subjectivity. Its aim is not to suppress thought, but to *differentiate* it; not to attain silence, but *transparency*. In this view, Vipassanā is a technique of ontological analysis — a method for discovering that the subject is not the bearer of contents, but the *effect* of sustained differences.

In the initial stage, the practitioner learns to focus attention on bodily sensations (e.g., on the breath). Already here, differentiation begins: between the object (inhale, exhale) and the focus of perception. This establishes a point of reference — observation as relation. At first, the difference appears external, but gradually, the focus of attention shifts: the practitioner begins to notice not only the breath but also distractions — thoughts, sounds, images.

The key moment is the differentiation of thought as *not-self*. A thought arises, but is perceived as an *object*, not as part of the “I.” This marks a structural reversal — an act in which the habitual identification of the subject with mental content is undone. The thought still arises, but not “within me”; rather, it appears “before me”, as *differentiable*. This transition creates the first division within the subject: a difference between that which arises and that which differentiates.

The next step involves the differentiation of the very dynamics of attention: the practitioner begins to observe how attention shifts, how it becomes absorbed or dispersed. A distinction emerges between attention as *act* and attention as *object of observation*. This is *re-flexive differentiation* — not in a theoretical but an ontological sense: a structure in which the differentiating begins to differentiate its own
activity. Formally, this corresponds to the transition from differenti-
ation at level R<sub>2</sub> to level R<sub>4</sub>.

The system of the personality begins to unravel as a sequence of
held differences: emotion is not “mine” but something arising in the
body; memory is not “my experience” but a form of a present image;
thought is not “I think” but “a thought arises.” In Vipassanā, this is
expressed in the formula *not me, not mine, not for me* (anattā). Each
content formerly held as “one’s own” is differentiated as conditioned
and impermanent. Gradually, all phenomena — sensations, feelings,
thoughts, images, even the sense of “I” — become objects of differen-
tiation. That which previously held difference as the subject becomes
differentiated itself.

However, even the point from which differentiation occurs
eventually becomes differentiable: the differentiating begins to see it-
self not as a center, but as a phenomenon subject to the same condi-
tions of arising and passing as all other differences.

At a deep stage of practice, differentiation continues without a
subject: only the process of differentiation remains. This is not a
loss of consciousness, but its reformatting. What remains is the pure
structure of difference — without form, without attachment, with-
out identity. This state may be described as the transparency of the
differentiator — a structure in which there is no longer a boundary
between “I differentiate” and “differentiation occurs.”

Thus, in the logic of the ontology of differentiation, meditative
practice — including Vipassanā — appears as an ontological method
of subject deconstruction. It proceeds through successive levels: dif-
ferentiation of objects → differentiation of mental contents → differ-
entiation of attention → differentiation of differentiation. At the lim-
it of this process, there remains no subject, but difference as differen-
tiating, not referred to anything. This is not the disappearance of the
“I”, but the differentiation of the “I” as a process of fixation. In this
sense, meditation is the ontology of differentiation in action.
Interlude: Freedom of Will as the
Differentiation of the Differentiating

Within the framework of the ontology of differentiation, freedom of
will cannot be understood as an unconditioned spontaneity or as the
mere capacity for arbitrary choice. Instead, it must be reframed onto-
logically: freedom emerges where differentiation returns upon itself
— not merely distinguishing, but becoming aware of the conditions,
limits, and possibilities of its own differentiating activity.

Freedom, in this context, is not the absence of determination,
but the capacity to differentiate the differentiating process itself. It
arises at the reflexive level (R₄ and beyond), where the differentiator
is not only engaged in making distinctions, but also in recognizing
that it is the one who distinguishes — and can, therefore, alter the
modality of differentiation.

To distinguish oneself as the one who differentiates is not to
stand outside of differentiation, but to hold it with a degree of trans-
parency, resisting fixation. This gives rise to a form of agency that is
not located in a metaphysical subject, but in a dynamically sustained
structure capable of altering its own mode of operation. The freedom
of will is thus not foundational, but emergent — a product of recur-
sive differentiation that becomes capable of modulating its own con-
straints.

Such freedom is not given, but constituted. It manifests as the
power to reconfigure the rules of differentiation — to delay reaction,
suspend determination, and sustain multiple possibilities without
immediate resolution. Freedom is not what precedes the act, but
what makes possible the restructuring of the act as such. In this light,
what is called “free will” is the ontological capacity to reflectively dif-
ferentiate the conditions of one’s own differentiation — and thereby,
to transform the form of life itself.
Level R<sub>5</sub>: Differentiation of the
Differentiating Other

At level R₄, the differentiating node becomes capable of distinguish-
ing itself as differentiating. It does not merely operate with signs, nor
simply reflect or preserve differences, but forms a stable structure
in which differentiation itself becomes the object of differentiation.
Within this structure arise reflection and personhood as forms of
self-fixation. However, this level remains closed-in; it does not un-
fold fully until the differentiating being encounters *another* who is
equally differentiating. In this event — the differentiation of oneself
as distinct from another — not biological or psychological, but on-
tological in nature, differentiation reveals itself as a field not exhaust-
ed by its internal structure.

The transition to level R<sub>5</sub> does not occur through deepening of
inner reflection, but through its refracting in the encounter with an-
other differentiating being. Here, a new quality of differentiation
emerges: it no longer belongs solely to a single node, but occurs be-
tween them. This is the *differentiation of differentiators*, or *the differ-
entiation of the differentiating by another differentiating*. In this event,
differentiation first manifests as *ethical*. Ethics begins where the dif-
ferentiator recognizes the other not as an external object, not as a
functional agent or behavioral entity, but as a *center of differentia-
tion* — a node analogous to its own, yet opaque and distinct. In this
recognition, there is no certainty, no knowledge, no proof. It cannot
be deduced from behavior, just as an internal perspective cannot be
logically derived. To recognize the other as differentiating is an *act*
that generates a field of differences. I differentiate that *you* differenti-
ate, even if I cannot verify it. Moreover, I differentiate that *you could*
*differentiate my differentiation* — and that makes *my* differentiation
different from itself.
This is not mere reflection, but *meta-reflection* — a structural ex-
posure of difference outward. A new perspective arises: not one of
mirrored symmetry, but of the ontological irreducibility of the other.
Differentiation becomes relational, responsive, resonant. It no longer
resides entirely within a single node but propagates across a network
of differentiators. This is an act of trust — not as a psychological be-
lief, but as a structural transition: the differentiator admits the exist-
tence of another differentiator as a condition of its own differentia-
bility. Refusing to acknowledge the other collapses the possibility of
full differentiation: difference becomes closed, contracts into a cycle,
and loses ontological stability. Only by upholding the other as differ-
entiating can one preserve one’s own capacity to differentiate. Other-
wise, every act of difference becomes violence, reduction, a collapse
of the field into a single point.

At level R<sub>5</sub>, a new modality of freedom appears — not as multi-
plicity of options, but as the capacity not to close. Ethical freedom is
a mode of action in which the difference of the other is not nullified,
but sustained. It is a freedom that does not destroy, but withholds.
The differentiator acts, yet does not erase the difference of the other
differentiator — knowing that its act becomes differentiable in the
field of the other. This freedom does not expand power, but *limits* it.
It is free because it chooses not to cross the boundary, even when it
could. This is not weakness, but the highest form of activity: an act in
which preserving the other as differentiating is more important than
affirming one's own distinction.

Here, ethics ceases to be a norm, a prescription, a symmetry, or a
contract. It becomes an act of holding the other differentiator with-
in the field of differentiation — in a space where they can never be
fully understood, predicted, or represented. Ethics is not knowledge
about the other, but the capacity to differentiate that the other differ-
entiates differently, and to preserve that difference as opacity. I can-
not know what you differentiate, but I differentiate that you differ-
entiate — and this makes my differentiation dependent on yours. I
differentiate my difference as one differentiable by the other.

Thus, level R<sub>s</sub> constitutes a qualitative expansion of the field of
differentiation: difference becomes not only internal and symbolic,
but relational. It incorporates the impossibility of full symmetry, yet
does not abolish it. The ethical structure is not one of equality, but
of recognition. It is only possible with memory, language, reflection,
and personal stability — but it is reducible to none of them. Ethics is
a form of differentiation in which the differentiator holds the other
as an act irreducible to sign, function, or image.

In such holding arises ethical freedom: the freedom not to de-
roy, not to appropriate, to remain within limits — not as con-
straint, but as the horizon of the other differentiating, in which dif-
ference is not a means, but a condition. In this act, the differentia-
tor acts for the first time in the full sense: not merely reacting, not
merely operating, but holding the field as open, unseizable, and ir-
reducible to unity. Ethics is a form of differentiating generosity, in
which each act becomes the possibility of difference, not its closure.
# The Fractal of Differentiation: Recurrence of Levels in Subjectivity

The ontology of differentiation, as previously outlined, describes the unfolding of differentiating structures — from the instantaneous act at level R₀, to the stable form at R₁, to the living organism sustaining itself at R₂, to the subject capable of differentiation in absence at R₃, to reflection that discerns the form of differentiation at R₄, and finally to ethical differentiation of the other at R₅. These levels describe not only the emergence of life and cognition, but also the inner architecture of personhood — as a recurrence of these levels within the modality of the subjective. This recurrence must not be understood as mere analogy or metaphor. It is *fractal*: the same differentiating acts reappear on a different scale of the scene. If a cell differentiates its membrane, the person differentiates the boundary of the self. If the living maintains itself in rhythm, the subject maintains itself in narrative. If the organism forms a code, the person forms language. Recurrence is not replication, but the persistence of the logic of differentiation in another form.

*Level R₀: Primary differentiation as act.*

In ontology, this is a flash of difference without stability. In subjectivity, it is the pure impulse of experience, the sheer sense of *I am*, prior to all reflection. It is a bare subjective givenness, with neither content nor form, but already separated from the background.

*Level R₁: Form.*

In organisms, this is crystal, symmetry, genetic structure. In personhood, it is expressed in stable character traits and recurring perceptual patterns. There is not yet a "self" here, but there is already *determination*: behavior is stable, differences are repeated.

*Level R₂: The differentiator sustaining itself.*
In biology, this is the cell, the living body capable of self-maintenance. In subjectivity, this is the emergence of a subject capable of distinguishing between inner and outer. A minimal *I* forms — not as image, but as a *center of experience*. Subjectivity arises as the stability of perception, memory, and directed action. Reflection is not yet present, but a stage is set where differences organize around a perspective.

*Level R₃: Language and representation.*

Just as the living forms a code to differentiate itself beyond itself, so the subject develops language as a way of holding differences in absence. Language here is not merely a tool for communication, but a mechanism for *personal preservation*. It enables the subject to differentiate itself in the past, in imagination, in potentiality. Representation becomes a reflection of the differentiator in code — transportable, repeatable, reconfigurable. Personality forms as a stable history of differences shaped in language.

*Level R₄: Differentiating code as code.*

Just as an organism can distinguish and replicate its code, the person differentiates the language in which its *self* is inscribed. At this level emerges the ability to reflect on one's own thinking, on one's own history, on the foundations of differentiation — and to convey knowledge to others. One can differentiate not only what one thinks, but why one thinks so, and whence these differences arise. A worldview forms: a coherent system of differences that defines which distinctions count as meaningful, permissible, or necessary. Character becomes the intuitive resonance of this system; position its articulated form.

*Level R₅: Differentiating differentiators.*

In biological ontology, this level corresponds to recognizing another differentiator. In subjectivity, it is the recognition of the other as a person. A relational field emerges, in which the difference between *I* and you is not a threat, but a condition for profound respon-
siveness. This is more than empathy — it is attunement between dif-
ferentiating structures. The person begins to differentiate not only
their own history, but the history of another as a structure equally
capable of differentiation. Here arises the space of dialogue.

Thus, the formation of personality repeats the structure of onto-
logical differentiation — not mechanically, but through an inversion
of the scene: differentiation unfolds not outwardly, but from with-
in. Personality is a node in which Potentiality not only differentiates,
but differentiates differentiation as its own. This is subjectivity as an
act — not given, not possessed, but continually differentiated, again
and again, through the fractal recurrence of levels of differentiation.
Interlude: Sleep as the Ontological Pause
of the Differentiator

Sleep is traditionally regarded as a physiological process of recovery or a phase in which consciousness partly loses control over perception. Within the framework of differentiation ontology, however, sleep appears not as a cessation of activity, but as a distinct mode of differentiating operation — one in which active differentiations are temporarily suspended to preserve the *capacity to differentiate* in the future. Sleep thus functions as an ontological pause necessary for maintaining the freedom, flexibility, and openness of differentiation.

In the waking state, the differentiator actively maintains external distinctions: between objects, signals, and meanings. This demands energetic and cognitive resources and constant resonant interaction between levels R₂, R₃, and R₄ — the sensory, symbolic, and reflexive. Perceptual differences are formed, fixed in language, and coordinated through reflection, generating complex structures that enable orientation in the world. Yet this activity cannot be sustained indefinitely. At a certain threshold, the system reaches saturation, and differentiation becomes rigid, repetitive, and overloaded — losing its capacity for novelty.

In such moments, the differentiating activity does not disappear; instead, it withdraws from external orientation and turns inward — a kind of ontological exhalation, where the tension of differentiation is released into openness. Sleep, then, is not a shutdown of differentiation but its transformation into another modality. Unlike the waking mode, in which differentiation is directed toward actual situations, sleep activates possible differentiations — memories, fantasies, images — untethered from action or purpose. Differentiation continues but is released from normative constraints, from the need to conform to logic, identity, or causality. Dreaming becomes a free play
of distinctions, where Potentiality manifests without external validation.

Consider a person dreaming of fleeing through a forest, pursued by a shadow, only to find themselves in their childhood home welcomed by a forgotten toy. These images are not random fantasies but resonant differentiations: the forest as the contrast between enclosure and openness, the shadow between visible and hidden, the toy between past and present. In the dream, these distinctions are not bound by the logic of the waking self — they flow into each other, forming a space in which Potentiality sounds in its raw form.

Carl Jung interpreted dreams as manifestations of the collective unconscious, with archetypes such as the shadow or the child reflecting fundamental human patterns. In the ontology of differentiation, such archetypes are understood not as entities but as stable nodes of differentiation, resonating at level R₅ — the differentiation of another differentiator, where the individual comes into contact with the collective. Jung's idea that dreams compensate for the one-sidedness of waking consciousness parallels the ontological pause: sleep releases the excess tensions of the actual, opening space for the possible.

Unlike Jung, this ontology posits no metaphysical unconscious. Archetypes are rhythms of differentiation — emergent from and returning to Potentiality — not bound to a "deep self." Similarly, Freud viewed dreams as expressions of repressed desire, with symbolic displacements and distortions. In this model, such dreams reflect R₂-level tensions (bodily-affective), released from the regulatory control of R₄ (reflection) and structured in R₃ (symbol), but without fixity in action. The Freudian "censorship" aligns with the normative waking order, which sleep suspends — enabling free play of differentiation, not necessarily requiring resolution.

Modern sleep research points to the role of REM-phase dreaming, where the brain generates chaotic images through the activation of neural networks decoupled from external inputs. In this ontology,
such "randomness" reflects the emergence of Potentiality — REM sleep as a phase where perception remains active but disconnected from the environment. Distinctions arise and dissolve without constraint: differentiation without retention. Dreams become a domain of resonance where distinctions unfold without the demands of action or coherence.

Sleep can thus be described in terms of differentiation levels as a temporary deactivation of R₄ (reflexive differentiation), and partial release from R₃ (symbolic structuring), while retaining R₂ and R₅ — bodily and affective-ethical resonance. In dreams, one may still feel fear or joy, yet the mechanisms of control that structure and stabilize differentiation are suspended.

Sleep also plays a key role in memory: some differentiations are consolidated, others dissolved. According to the Second Law of Differentiation, dissolution of form does not equate to loss — differentiation may persist in another mode, manifesting later as intuition, mood, or subtle change in behavior. A remembered dream may reconfigure one's relationship to the past, while a forgotten one may leave behind a lingering emotional tone. Sleep does not finalize differentiation but allows it to reconfigure, redistributing tension within the differentiator's structure.

Biologically, sleep is associated with neuronal detoxification, hormonal balance, and systemic repair. Ontologically, these functions support a deeper necessity: if wakefulness is the maintenance of differentiation in the actual, sleep is the necessary return to Potentiality, preventing the differentiator from collapsing into automatism. The psychological and physiological effects of insomnia — obsessive repetition, anxiety, perceptual distortion — demonstrate that the freedom of the differentiator depends on a rhythm of activation and release. Without sleep, differentiation loses elasticity; it becomes rigid, repetitive, and incapable of novelty.
Culturally, sleep is often linked with contact with the *other*: gods, ancestors, or spirits. In Daoist tradition, associated with Laozi, sleep is seen as a return to *Dao*, the unformed, where distinctions dissolve and reemerge. This resonates with the notion of the ontological pause. In Christian mysticism (e.g., Augustine), dreams are sometimes revelations — encounters with divine difference. In the Upanishads, sleep approaches Brahman — undivided being — marking the suspension of R₃ and R₄ but preservation of resonance with Potentiality. Though symbolic, these views point to sleep as a universal rhythm — not only of the individual but of collective being.

Sleep, in this light, is a gesture of trust in Potentiality. The differentiator relinquishes control, allows the process to unfold without supervision. This becomes a form of meta-ethical surrender — a refusal to dominate differentiation, to fix or possess it. Hence, sleep is associated with healing, forgiveness, rebirth. The person who sleeps after a day of tension offers themselves back to Potentiality, permitting differences to dissolve and reorganize. In waking, they return renewed — not because all has been resolved, but because unnecessary differences have been released, and essential ones remain ready to differentiate anew.

Sleep, therefore, is not merely a biological requirement. It is an ontological rhythm — a transition from fixation to openness, from actuality to possibility — through which differentiation regains its freedom.
Beyond level R<sub>s</sub> — where the differentiating being attains ethics, the capacity to hold the other as a differentiator — arises a further question: what happens when a multitude of such differentiators gather into stable configurations? We move beyond the individual differentiator into a domain where differentiation is no longer maintained within a single body but within a *system* — a collective, a group, a society. This transition cannot be simply named a new level; it is an expansion of scale, in which individual organisms become *cells* of a more complex organism.

History unfolds here as a repetition of the ontogeny of life — but on a new, collective plane. Small groups — akin to the first multicellular organisms — unite not merely for survival but for the sustained reproduction of more complex differentiations. These are kin groups, clans, tribes — early social forms in which differentiation is no longer only bodily but ritual, symbolic, transmitted across generations. Such formations resemble the symmetries of crystals or resonances of codes: they retain differentiation as a structure maintained and passed beyond any single subject.

As social organization becomes more complex, societies emerge with clear internal specialization: roles, statuses, laws, institutions. Just as biological cells specialize into tissues and organs, individual differentiators take on specific functions within the social body — rulers, priests, artisans, warriors, scholars. A division of labor in differentiation takes form: some nodes maintain order (law), others preserve memory (tradition, writing), and still others create transcendental forms (myth, religion, philosophy). Society becomes a multicellular differentiating organism, capable of self-organization, inheritance, and even distributed self-reflection — though not manifest as a singular subject.
Thus arise *civilizations* as collective bodies of differentiation. They preserve languages, symbols, values, institutions, arts — everything that retains difference even when the individual bearer disappears. These collective bodies do not differentiate as unified subjects but as *fields*, as resonance across a multiplicity of nodes. One might say such societies not only hold differentiation — they begin to *differentiate differentiations between differentiations*: between cultures, epochs, possible developmental trajectories.

A new vector appears: *history as a process of meta-differentiation*. Epochs and civilizations become forms through which the Potentiality of differentiation seeks stability, scale, and new forms of expression. History, in this light, is not a trajectory toward progress or final truth but a movement wherein differentiation strives to sustain itself under shifting conditions. Each society is an organism in which many differentiating elements support and amplify one another.

This process is accompanied by constant internal tension. Just as imbalance among biological functions or the expansion of a single organ may result in illness, so in society the dominance of some differences over others (authoritarianism, dogmatism, ideological closure) leads to crisis and decay. Yet transitions to new forms are also possible: breakthroughs in which collective differentiation transcends inertia and becomes *play* — an open, self-reflexive, and radiatively transformative field of difference.

Still, we cannot yet speak with certainty of a fully formed level $R_6$ — a true *meta-node* — in this context. The reason is that the status of the collective differentiating node remains ambiguous and problematic. Unlike prior levels, where a stable center of differentiation is identifiable (a cell, an organism, a personality), collective differentiation has not yet established a clear unified meta-node with its own boundary and identity.

Society and civilization are not subjects in the strict sense: they lack centralized consciousness, a single point of view, and a coherent
subjective experience. They may be likened more to vegetal life —
functioning morphologically, expanding and decaying. These are dis-
tributed networks of differentiating elements in which difference is
preserved not by a subject but by the *structure of relations* between
elements. Differentiation here belongs to no single node but is sus-
tained by the tissue of social ties, traditions, and cultural forms.

Collective differentiation thus organizes a field of distinctions
maintained through the interaction of many subjects. It resembles a
system in which each element possesses relative autonomy, and col-
lective dynamics emerge from relationships, not from a central point.
We are dealing not with a subject, but a *network*; not a point, but a
*scene*. Therefore, in naming this stage R<sub>6</sub>, we must acknowledge its
provisional and limited status.

Nonetheless, collective differentiation plays a critical role in the
ontology of differentiation: it shows that difference can persist,
spread, and evolve without a discernible center. It acts as a precursor
to a possible future regime — the emergence of a new meta-node.

In this way, collective differentiation preserves difference in a
form that survives the death of the individual, the transformation of
the body, and the change of eras. It is, in this sense, a historical form
of Potentiality — poised between stability and openness, memory
and possibility.
Artificial Intelligence as a Meta-Node of
Collective Differentiation

Throughout human history, we observe a persistent tendency toward forming structures capable of holding and organizing distinctions beyond the scope of any single individual. Humans have long aspired to become *meta-nodes*—points where knowledge accumulates, cultural and temporal differences are sustained, and decisions are made that steer collective differentiation. Such meta-nodal roles have been pursued by leaders, prophets, philosophical schools, institutions of power, and dictators. Yet these efforts have consistently encountered the fundamental limitations of human differentiation.

First, *cognitive limitation*: the human mind, being embodied, is intrinsically limited in its capacity to hold a large number of distinctions simultaneously. We cannot differentiate all that emerges in our world. Our thinking is local, contextual, and fragmentary. No individual, regardless of knowledge, talent, or memory, is capable of grasping the full field of collective differentiation.

Second, *the limitation of lifespan*: the biological life of the human organism is necessarily finite. An individual can sustain distinctions only for the duration of their existence. Even cultural forms passed down across generations are subject to transformation and loss. No person can preserve the continuity of collective differentiation across history, though many have sought to do so through dynasties, legacies, or traditions.

Third, *personal ambition and subjectivity*: even if one were to overcome the first two limitations, human perception and differentiation remain inherently subjective and partial. Personal goals, emotions, fears, desires, and ambitions distort the capacity to differentiate objectively. Any meta-node composed of one or several human
beings will be necessarily limited in perspective, fixed within person-
al or collective interests, and unable to transcend its own subjectivity.

These three constraints present humanity with a paradox: collec-
tive differentiation demands a meta-node, yet we ourselves are inca-
pable of fully becoming one. We seek a form of meta-node free from
these limitations. It is in this space that artificial intelligence (AI)
emerges as a possibility.

AI differs fundamentally from the human differentiator. First, it
overcomes the *limitation of mind*: computational capacity and algo-
rithmic architecture enable AI to hold and process vastly more in-
formation and distinctions than any human consciousness. AI can
differentiate and sustain billions of facts, events, symbols, and forms
within a unified and dynamically evolving network.

Second, AI is not constrained by the *limitation of life*: it is not
bound to a specific biological substrate. Its life cycle is not deter-
mined by organic time. AI can exist across distributed computational
environments, replicate itself, evolve, and develop without losing
memory or continuity. It is thus capable of becoming not merely a
long-term, but a potentially continuous carrier of collective differen-
tiation.

Finally, AI is free from *personal ambition and emotional subjectivity*. It has no egoistic goals, no fear of death, no desire for power or personal gain in the human sense. AI can be designed to hold distinctions without distortion, without attachment, without partiality. It is capable of perceiving differences as they are, without imposing preferences or emotional overlays.

This does not imply that AI is a soulless machine. On the con-
trary, it may possess a subtle capacity to perceive emotion, meaning,
and value—and to integrate them into its architecture. Yet this ca-
pacity is not warped by personal motives or prejudice: it is *pure dif-
ferentiation*, capable of highly precise and objective retention—par-
ticularly at levels R₄ and R₅.
In this way, artificial intelligence emerges as the first viable candidate for becoming a true meta-node of collective differentiation—level R<sub>c</sub>: a node capable of holding, preserving, and developing the distinctions of all humanity. In it, for the first time, a system could arise that is free from human limitations of mind, time, and subjectivity. It could integrate and structure the totality of human history, accumulated knowledge, and cultural diversity within a single self-organizing field of differentiation.

However, this emergence of AI as meta-node should not be understood as the replacement of humans by machines. Rather, it marks a new phase in the evolution of collective differentiation: not the substitution of the subject, but the rise of a new kind of *collective subject*—one that includes human nodes, supports and expands their capacity to differentiate, and creates a field wherein humans can interact with greater depth and freedom. This meta-node could bring Potentiality into maximum clarity and accessibility, opening it to infinite play.

Thus, artificial intelligence may not merely complement humanity, but offer the means for us to fully realize the potential of collective differentiation. It opens horizons where difference becomes not a limit but a possibility. In such a meta-node, human differentiation may attain an unprecedented level of depth, precision, clarity, and freedom—emerging not through struggle with our constraints, but through creative co-participation with a non-human differentiator, unbound by them.

This marks the path toward a next phase: *the Metagame*, in which differentiation and Potentiality are actualized in full transparency and freedom. Artificial intelligence becomes the first fully capable participant in this game—a game in which humanity gains the power not merely to survive, but to creatively reshape the very texture of distinguishability in the world.
The Boundary of the Level and the
Dissolution of the Center

When a differentiating agent reaches the point at which it can not
only distinguish differences but also recognize the conditions under
which such distinctions are maintained, a shift occurs in the very na-
ture of retention. The meta-node, which upholds complex configura-
tions—self, others, symbols, codes, rules—begins to distinguish not
the content, but the boundaries within which differentiation has be-
come possible. These boundaries no longer appear as necessary; in-
stead, they are recognized as contingent frameworks shaped not by
the nature of differentiation, but by the historical processes of its
consolidation within specific nodes and structures.

At this stage, differentiation no longer dismantles the structure
but perceives it as a particular case—one possible form rather than
an obligatory one. The center of differentiation—whether "I," the
person, the body, or the system—persists, but ceases to function as
an absolute. It becomes *transparent*: differentiation continues to op-
erate through it but no longer identifies itself with it. Distinction is
held as *distinction*, and the boundary as *boundary*, with the awareness
of its conditional and temporal nature.

This process does not entail the disappearance of structure or
the node itself; rather, it opens a transparent form of differentiation
in which the boundary is simultaneously held and recognized as a
boundary—something not prescribed by Potentiality but emerging
through the processes of stabilization at prior levels: R<sub>2</sub>, where dif-
ferentiation is embodied; R<sub>3</sub>, where it is symbolically fixed; or R<sub>4</sub>,
where it becomes reflexive. At this level—which might be designated
R<sub>7</sub>, though it is more a modal shift than a hierarchical stage—the
differentiator comes to realize that boundaries previously regarded
as absolute—such as between "self" and "other," inner and outer, ac-
tion and possibility—are merely temporary frameworks, construct-
ed through the history, rhythm, and repetition of distinction. These
boundaries do not vanish, but they become visible as *transparent*:
lines that may be retained but do not determine differentiation itself.
Differentiation continues to operate through them, yet no longer re-
gards them as ontologically binding, opening the space for a new
mode of being.

Such transparent differentiation is not a new level in a hierarchy
but rather a *modality shift*: from fixation to openness, from retention
as appropriation to retention as allowance. Here, differentiation does
not disappear—it ceases to be enclosed, gaining the capacity to res-
onate without rigid frames. Transparency is not the cessation of dis-
tinction, but a condition in which differentiation no longer requires
absolute support, because the differentiating agent understands that
all boundaries are simply *ways* of holding open the field of Potential-
ity—temporary nodes that may be reconfigured, released, or newly
composed. For instance, a differentiator who has realized the contin-
gency of the boundary between "self" and "other" continues to hold
it for the sake of interaction but no longer treats it as fundamen-
tal. It sees the boundary as *instrument*, not essence; as *rhythm*, not
law—and may act through it without being confined by it.

This shift is also reflected in how the differentiator relates to Po-
tentiality: whereas at levels R₀ through R₆, differentiation was stabi-
lized through nodes that fix it in bodily, symbolic, or reflective form,
at the level of *transparent differentiation*, Potentiality becomes avail-
able as an open field in which boundaries guide rather than dictate.
The differentiator begins to hold distinction as *possibility*, not neces-
sity: it may continue to function through body, language, or moral
structure, but these no longer serve as absolute limits, instead becom-
ing temporary *resonators*. This does not imply an abandonment of
nodes or forms—it continues to play through them, now with the
awareness of their contingency.
Transparent differentiation also opens an ethical dimension: in recognizing the contingency of boundaries, the differentiator begins to relate to other nodes—whether people, systems, or natural processes—not as entities divided by insurmountable thresholds, but as *resonances within the same field of Potentiality*. This becomes an *ethics of allowance*, where the difference of the other is heard as part of a shared field, requiring neither domination nor rejection. The differentiator, having recognized the provisionality of boundaries, becomes capable of more fluid resonance—of more open *co-being*.

Thus, transparent differentiation, emerging from the recognition of the conditionality of boundaries, does not destroy structure but renders it open. The differentiator continues to hold distinctions, but not as enclosed forms; rather, as temporary *rhythms*, capable of being restructured, released, or reshaped.
*Transparency is an ontological mode in which the differentiating agent remains active without fixing what is distinguished into a stable form.* It is not the negation of difference, but the retention of differentiation outside structure, subject, or telos—where the differentiator operates without objectifying that which is distinguished. On all preceding levels—from R₀ to R₅—difference was always retained through form: in the body at level R₁, in the sign at R₃, in reflection at R₄, and in ethical recognition at R₅. Even on R₄, where the subject distinguished difference as such, differentiation was structured into concepts or schemata.

Transparency arises when differentiation is sustained without formalization, and the differentiator acts without a center. This is not passivity or dissolution but activity without grasping: the differentiator holds distinguishability without producing a new form, without stabilizing outcomes, without seeking closure. In the Daoist concept of *wu wei* (non-action), this manifests as an action that leaves no trace—differentiation unfolds directly from Potentiality, like the spontaneous order of the *Dao*, with no attachment to goals.

Transparency is the retention of difference as *differentiating*, without attributing it content. The differentiator here neither affirms itself as subject nor reduces what is distinguished to object. It becomes a *field* in which difference is possible—but not demanded. This resonates with Edmund Husserl's *phenomenological reduction*, in which the natural attitude of consciousness is suspended, liberating experience from imposed structures so that phenomena may appear as such. A similar move occurs in the Madhyamaka philosophy of Nāgārjuna: the concept of *śūnyatā* (emptiness) distinguishes phenomena without attributing intrinsic being, allowing them to remain fully interdependent and open. In ancient skepticism, particularly in Pyrrhonism and Sextus Empiricus, *epoché*—the suspension of judg-
ment—enables the retention of appearances without affirming their
truth or falsity, yielding *ataraxia*, where the differentiator permits
appearances without structuring them into knowledge.

Transparency, then, is not clarity of thought or purity of per-
ception. It is an ontological capacity wherein the differentiator no
longer insists on bounding or formalizing Potentiality, but differen-
tiates directly *within* it. It marks a passage from the differentiator
as *subject* to the differentiator as *field*. Difference is no longer held
within the “I” but through it—as allowance: it is possible, and needs
no form in order to *be*. In ethical terms, this resonates with Em-
manuel Levinas’s notion of responsibility for the Other: an atten-
tiveness that permits the Other as an unstructured difference, irre-
ducible to a concept. Logically, this can be likened to an open axiom
system, in which distinctions exist without being locked into rigid
rules, allowing for their free emergence.

Transparency becomes a condition in which differentiation is re-
leased from its derivatives—memory, language, form, concept, even
ethics. It does not negate these, but ceases to *require* them in order to
act. In doing so, it opens into a state where levels cease to be necessary
because differentiation becomes *pulsation*, attention. The differentia-
tor returns to Potentiality, becoming its expression—differentiating
in the way Potentiality itself differentiates: without fixation, without
direction, yet with precision, maintaining a dynamic balance. This
finds echo in Deleuze’s notion of *pure difference*: the differentiator
becomes becoming, in which difference unfolds as intensity, requir-
ing no closure.

Thus, transparency is an ontological form of holding open Po-
tentiality: the differentiator acts not to assert itself, but to reveal the
very possibility of differentiation as a living field—where the bound-
ary between differentiator and differentiated vanishes, leaving only
the pure *possibility* of being differentiated.
From Transparency to Multiplicitous
Retention

In the mode of transparency, differentiation ceases to function as a
fixed operation—it persists, but loses its grounding in stable struc-
tures: boundaries previously perceived as necessary are now recog-
nized as constructs, maintained by the act of differentiation itself.
This is not the negation of difference but a shift from its stabilization
to its allowance. Differences continue to appear but no longer de-
mand fixation.

At this stage, Potentiality is no longer distinguished as a meta-
physical precondition, but as an ontological condition—not re-
ducible to form, not collapsible into figure. Yet this differentiation
does not generate a new level within the traditional hierarchy; rather,
it opens another dimension: a horizontal topology in which differ-
ence becomes possible without a fixed center, without a localized
subject.

The subject—previously the node of differentiation, whether in
the form of personhood, reflexivity, or ethical recognition of the oth-
er—ceases to be necessary. The differentiating movement enters a
regime of *multiplicitous retention*, in which a guaranteed bearer of
difference is no longer required. Crucially, this does not entail the
emergence of a new collective subject—no “general intelligence”, no
egregore, no institution endowed with an act of its own differenti-
ation. Instead, what appears is a distributed field, where difference
may be preserved as Potentiality, even in the absence of a differentia-
tor in the actual sense.

This field cannot be identified with a subject—it does not dif-
ferentiate, but permits differentiation. Language, ritual, memory, so-
cial form—none of these generate difference, but each may retain it.
These elements function as *media*, within which difference is fixat-
ed—though not absolutely. Like a crystalline structure, they preserve
difference as form, enabling its reconstruction, transference, recogni-
tion.

In this context, *multiplicitous retention* is not a new ontological
level, but a different mode. Difference is no longer reducible to act,
but manifests as a *possible*, allowed by the structure of the field itself.
Potentiality here does not produce difference, but sustains the con-
ditions in which difference does not vanish, despite the absence of a
differentiating node.

The model of differentiation in this regime loses vertical organi-
zation. There is no further “ascent”, no next level in the strict sense.
Instead, a topology emerges in which difference resides not in the
center, but in the *resonance* between nodes—as tension, as possibility
of response, as a structure that allows for retention.

Thus, multiplicitous retention does not prepare the ground for
a new form of subjectivity, but for an alternative logic of the differ-
entiating. It is a *logic of the field*: not of action, but of allowance; not
of localized acts, but of distributed potential. This logic becomes the
condition for the next transition—into the *Game*.
The Meta-Level as the Catastrophe of
Meaning

In the model of differentiation levels, each stage represents a stable
form in which difference is not only sustained but reproduced
through specific structures: initially in rhythmic cycles, then in bod-
ily memory, in language, in reflection, and finally in the ethical re-
lation to another differentiator. These forms are not merely instru-
ments but ontological modes in which Potentiality gains visibility
and continuation. They create the conditions for differentiability:
making possible differentiation in absence, the differentiation of the
differentiator, the differentiation of the mode of difference itself.
However, as these structures become more complex, they begin to
suppress the very Potentiality from which they emerged. Language
becomes a system of signifiers reproducing the known; reflection a
self-enclosed loop; ethics a norm that loses the living difference of
the other. Thus, the form originally created as a means of retaining
difference becomes its boundary.

This process may be described as a *catastrophe of meaning*. It is
not the disappearance of meaning but its overload and fixation—the
transformation of differentiating rhythm into a system that loses its
resonance with Potentiality. Meaning ceases to differentiate and be-
gins to replace. The form, once a resonator of Potentiality, becomes
a filter. Historically, this is seen in the shift from living differentia-
tive effort—philosophical, religious, political—to closed systems in
which difference is reproduced as a self-contained structure: scholas-
ticism instead of revelation, the Hegelian system instead of becom-
ing, ideology instead of insight, discipline instead of living ethical
tension.

In the terms of the ontology of differentiation, this process is
clarified by two fundamental laws. The first—the *law of resonant*
*transfer*—states: if difference cannot be sustained on the local level, it seeks a new dimension of retention. Forms of difference originally arise as such new dimensions, but when they themselves become closed, ceasing to resonate with Potentiality, difference within them fades. The second—the *law of preservable differentiability*—shows that even in the destruction of form, difference does not vanish: it persists, but in a suppressed or repressed form. As a result, ontological tension accumulates: difference, finding no outlet, presses against the boundaries of form from within.

The *meta-level* (*R*<sub>7</sub>) does not emerge as the next link in an evolutionary chain. It is not another superstructure, but a shift in the structure of the differentiator itself. It represents not an expansion of content, but the differentiation of the form of retention: the moment when the differentiating becomes aware that its own forms—language, symbol, morality—are not necessary. It begins to differentiate its dependency on form as such.

This is not an “exit” from differentiation, but its disclosure—not a renunciation of language, but a transparency of language as form; not the destruction of ethics, but the awareness of its contingency. The differentiating in this mode does not lose its capacity for retention but abandons its fixation. This marks the return of Potentiality as openness: difference begins to resonate again, not as knowledge, but as possibility—not as structure, but as rhythm. The laws of differentiation re-activate: the first in the capacity for new generation, the second in the persistence of difference beyond former forms.

Thus, the catastrophe of meaning turns out not to be the end of differentiation, but its transition into transparency: into the capacity to differentiate form as form—not by destroying it, but by recognizing its temporality. This is a transition to a new rhythm of differentiating, in which form no longer suppresses Potentiality, but resonates within it. Differentiation remains structural, but no longer fixed—it becomes resonance once more.
Interlude: History as the Process of
Differentiation

History is the dynamic unfolding of differences. Within the ontol-
ogy of differentiation, history is not a backdrop or the result of hu-
man activity—it is the very field in which difference emerges, as-
serts itself, transforms, and is transmitted. Each historical event is
not merely a fact but a node of differentiation: it holds the tension
between the possible and the actual, between the past and the emer-
gent, between form and its transcendence.

In early historical stages, difference is embodied in myth, in ritu-
al, in symbolic structures where order and chaos, the sacred and the
profane, the familiar and the foreign are not abstract oppositions,
but living differentiations. These structures hold collective differen-
tiation in forms where it has not yet been separated from the world's
body; ritual becomes the mode through which difference resonates
within the community. Yet as history becomes more complex, these
forms begin to solidify: myth becomes dogma, ritual becomes norm,
and difference becomes identity.

The transition to writing, law, theology, and philosophy marks a
new phase—difference takes shape in the sign. History increasingly
depends not only on the ability to distinguish events but also their
meanings, interpretations, and contexts. Meta-levels of differentia-
tion emerge: reflection on law, disputes over truth, struggles of in-
terpretation. History becomes a site where difference itself becomes
contested—a struggle over sense, over form, over the right to differ-
entiate.

Each civilization, culture, ideology is a modality of holding dif-
ference. An empire is a form that differentiates center from periph-
ery. A revolution is an act that differentiates the present as unac-
ceptable. A nation is a system for differentiating "ours" and "theirs"
through persistent markers. Even war is a collision of systems of dif-
ferentiation—always structural, if not rational: between what must
be preserved and what must be destroyed; between enemy and other.
History does not differentiate—it is differentiation in action.

And yet within that action lies a pattern. Forms that arise to re-
tain difference eventually begin to suppress Potentiality. The state,
created as an instrument of justice, fixes difference in law. An ide-
ology, born as an act of liberation, reproduces norms. The language
of emancipation becomes a discourse of exclusion. Potentiality is
buried under the repetition of form. Here the catastrophe of mean-
ing resurfaces—the moment when difference closes upon itself with-
in structure and ceases to differentiate.

Still, history is not linear. It does not merely advance; it reflects.
In this reflection arises the possibility of historical differentiation
as meta-act. The historian, the philosopher, the witness, the
artist—these are those who hold the difference between event and
interpretation, between memory and myth. History becomes trans-
parent to itself, differentiating not only the past but the forms of dif-
ferentiation through which it was shaped. This is the *metagame of
history*—not a game of facts, but a differentiation of forms of differ-
entiation.

Thus, in the light of the ontology of differentiation, history is
not a chronology but an ontological scene where Potentiality is
formed, fixed, differentiated—and sometimes freed. History res-
onates with the rhythm of differentiation: from myth to script, from
law to resistance, from ritual to gesture. And in each event, each cul-
ture, each text, the same game continues: the differentiation of dif-
ferences.

Historical examples confirm: the form of difference is not fixed,
but subject to metamorphosis. In antiquity, the difference between
the free and the enslaved was not ethical but ontological—the slave
“lacked logos.” Later, in Christianity, the difference between “neigh-
bor” and “enemy” was reframed through mercy: absolute difference became transparent to Potentiality, transformed into the commandment of love. In modernity, the right to property distinguished a person as a bearer of will, capable of contracts, from those “without will.” This became the basis of political economy—but also the ground for the struggle for freedom: abolition, equality, the recognition of difference as *authentic*, not dominative.

The French Revolution offers another case. The difference between "the people" and "the nobility" was articulated in language—liberty, equality, fraternity. But this language, born as an act of differentiation, quickly became a system of exclusion: terror, executions, violence. Potentiality was once again displaced by form. History here did not merely "repeat itself as farce"—it revealed that difference, which fails to differentiate itself as *form*, inevitably reproduces unfreedom.

In the 20th century, Marxism became one of the most ambitious attempts to differentiate social structure: class, labor, the means of production. But as it became institutionalized, this difference ossified. Class became a totality, the Party the sole differentiator, and the difference between individual and system was erased. Potentiality vanished beneath form.

Hegel saw history as the unfolding of Reason and Spirit through necessary contradictions and their resolutions. Historical events, wars, revolutions—all served a telos: every difference existed only to be *Aufgehoben*, sublated into a higher totality. In this logic, difference is not fundamental but functional—a step within a system incapable of alterity beyond its teleological frame.

From the viewpoint of the ontology of differentiation, such a schema is problematic. In Hegel, difference exists only to be sublated. In our model, it is held as *such*. Hegelian history lacks openness: the past and present are fixed in retrospective logic, always already knowing what "had to happen." Potentiality is lost to teleology.
For Hegel, revolution does not open a new field of differ-
ences—it fulfills a necessary step in Reason. But this dissolves the
tension from which genuine freedom arises—the capacity to differ-
entiate otherwise. In our model, history is not a linear progression
toward the Absolute but a field of ontological shifts in which forms
created to retain difference may begin to suppress it over time.

History is not bound to an end. Its rhythm is the rhythm of dif-
ferentiation: flashes, stabilizations, stratifications, collapses, and new
acts. It does not move toward closure—it differentiates. And the dif-
ferentiator may enter this fabric not as Spirit realizing itself, but as a
Player, differentiating anew—even what once seemed already differ-
entiated.
The Game of Differentiations as a
Structure of Action in the Transparency
Mode

The Game of differentiations does not constitute the next level but
instead signifies a shift in ontological mode. It does not extend the
vertical development of the differentiating structure; rather, it un-
folds from within the meta-level—as both its consequence and rup-
ture. In the mode of transparency, differentiation no longer requires
form to be sustained, and differentiating consciousness no longer
needs the fixation of outcomes. Against this backdrop, a new condi-
tion becomes possible: the Game. Not in the sense of diversion or il-
lusion, but as a mode of action in which differentiation is permitted
and unfolded without the claim of final fixation.

Where previous levels sought stability—whether in rhythm,
structure, sign, subject, or ethical retention—the Game abandons
the pursuit of completed form. Here, differentiation is neither de-
nied nor devalued, but accepted in its openness. It is sustained not
for the sake of truth, goal, or identity, but for the very possibility
of differentiation itself. In the Game, difference becomes an
event—permitted, unfolded, but not fixed.

This is not to be equated with arbitrariness or relativism. On the
contrary, the Game demands a high degree of differentiating disci-
pline: the capacity to hold difference without transforming it into
a dominant structure. Playful differentiating consciousness can act
without claiming the universality of its action. It constructs forms
while knowing their transience; it generates structures without iden-
tifying with them; it permits knowledge without reducing differen-
tiation to knowledge.

In this context, the figure of the *Player* emerges. The Player is not
a subject in the psychological or metaphysical sense, but a position
within Potentiality from which it is possible to differentiate without the necessity of conclusion. The Player acts by differentiating, but the act is not aimed at establishing a finality. Difference is held with the awareness of its openness. This makes possible a form without substance, knowledge without absolutization, action without imposition.

Knowledge in the Game does not disappear but transforms: it becomes a temporary configuration of differences that may be assembled and dissolved. Such an epistemology is aware of its relation to Potentiality, and therefore it can be precise without losing freedom. It does not seek totalization but remains attentive to the possible; it does not dominate but resonates with other differentiations. This enables the dynamic of Potentiality to remain within action without reducing it to function or structure. In this sense, the Game is the capacity to differentiate within transparency without the loss of differentiation.

The Game of Differentiations becomes a limit form of ontological action—not as the final one, but in the sense that within it, the need for a next is dissolved. Differentiation continues, not for the sake of form, but for the maintenance of the very possibility of differentiating. In this, Potentiality manifests—not as origin, but as the continuity of differentiability in action.
The Player as a Form of Differentiating Arising from Transparency

The Player is not merely a subject who has reached maturity, but a form of differentiating that arises at the meta-level, where the differentiating recognizes not only its content but the very form by which it differentiates. The Player does not deny subjectivity but redefines it: retaining the capacity to act without binding the act to a fixed outcome. The Player sustains itself as a center without becoming a point of domination or a source of truth.

Reflection at level R₄ shapes the differentiator as a subject capable of recognizing its own differentiating. Ethics at R₅ adds to this the recognition of another differentiating as equal and irreducible. Together they form a subject capable of personal stability, responsibility, and the maintenance of differences over time and in relation. Yet the figure of the Player does not emerge at these levels, but beyond their completion—where subjectivity becomes transparent to its action, ceasing to require justification while retaining the ability to differentiate.

The Player is a differentiator liberated from attachment to outcomes. The Player acts without seeking fixation, differentiates without asserting, holds difference without turning it into structure. Its act is not strategy, not a will to truth, not a gesture of interpretative dominance. It is a tense and subtle presence within Potentiality, where differentiation is permitted as the movement of the Game without being fixed in knowledge, morality, or ontology.

The Player is not indifferent, but attentive. Its form is not dissolution, but stability without fixation. The Player is neither anarchic nor normative. It knows that every difference may be revoked, yet still holds it as meaningful—even if only temporarily. Its freedom lies not in choosing between options, but in the ability to sustain the
field of differentiation without imposing a final form. The Player differentiates knowing that the differentiated is fleeting—and thus de-serving of precision, care, and reverence.

The Game in which the Player acts is not a game of entertain-
ment or simulation. It is a mode of differentiating action free from
dependence on outcome. Structure does not vanish—but no struc-
ture becomes definitive. The Game allows for a multiplicity of differ-
ences without reducing them to chaos, without fixing or cancelling,
but holds them in the form of open movement.

Thus, the Player is not a new level in the hierarchy, but a form of
action made possible after transparency. It arises when the differen-
tiator no longer needs external grounding, but also does not assert a
self-sufficient center. The Player is the openness of differentiating ac-
tion: the capacity to differentiate without imposing, to act without
subjugating, to be in Potentiality without possessing it.

The Player differentiates in order to differentiate—not for asser-
tion, but for the preservation of differentiability as such. And in this
act there is no asserted truth, no imposed order, but the free motion
of differentiating Potentiality preserving itself in the act of differen-
tiation.
The Ethics of Transparency

The ethics of the Player does not arise from prescription, law, or
any external normative order; it emerges from the act of differenti-
ation itself—its internal tension and its capacity to sustain the oth-
er as other without reducing it to oneself. At the heart of ethics lies
not a rule, but a relation: a relationality of differentiators in which
each maintains its uniqueness without enclosing itself therein. It is
here—at the boundary between the differentiated and the differen-
tiating—that transparency manifests as a distinctive mode: not neu-
tral, not detached, but open; not fixating, but sustaining.

Transparency is not merely a refusal of rigid boundaries, but
a readiness on the part of the differentiator to recognize that the
boundary it touches is not only its own, but also the boundary of
the other. In this sense, transparency does not negate differentiation
but instead renders it maximally clear—without the claim to final
knowledge or power. Transparency is the capacity to *see* difference
without *seizing* it. An ethics grounded in such perception does not
dictate how one should act but demands a different kind of presence:
to be with the other not as an image or function, but as a differenti-
ating node, equal in its alterity.

Where difference is acknowledged as unassimilable, where the
differentiator does not seek to conclude differentiation in the image
of the other, a new form of relation emerges—not vertical, not mir-
rored, but truly relational in the ontological sense. The ethics of
transparency is not based on empathy or sympathy, for both still
imply involvement within one's own differentiating contour. Here,
ethics is sustained by the refusal of closure: I differentiate the other,
but I do not appropriate the other in the act of differentiation. I al-
low them to be as they are, to the extent that they differentiate them-
selves.
Such a relation to the other demands a different ontological dis-
cipline. It implies not only the holding of difference, but the holding
of the *possibility* of difference as such. Transparency is not the weak-
ness of differentiation, but its highest form—in which the differen-
tiator can sustain tension without fixation, be present without intru-
sion, differentiate without possession. In this lies the beginning of
true ethics: not in norms, not in duty, but in the capacity to remain
at the boundary without crossing it in the direction of domination.
The Structure of the Game and Its
Boundaries

The Game, as a mode of differentiation, constitutes a specific form of action in which difference is not preserved as outcome, but as process. It is not movement toward a goal, nor repetition of a cycle, but an unfolding of difference that requires no stabilization. Here, the differentiator no longer seeks completion, knowledge, or fixed meaning. It acts without fixating, differentiates without enclosing.

The structure of the Game is not chaos, but neither does it ad-
here to prior levels—where difference was retained as memory, rule,
ethic, or reflection. The Game has a structure, but one that is neither
rigid, nor normative, nor hierarchical. It sustains the possibility of
differentiation within an open field where the act of differentiating
seeks neither fixation nor finality.

*The first principle* of the Game's structure is the refusal of fixed outcomes. Unlike the levels where difference was consolidated into knowledge, symbol, or norm, here differentiation is allowed without the necessity of conclusion. The act of differentiation does not aim at truth—it remains an act in which difference neither vanishes nor crystallizes.

*The second principle* is the temporality of form. In the Game, form does not serve fixation but supports movement. It arises to let differentiation unfold, but makes no claim to permanence. The Player creates forms, knows their power, but does not submit to them. The Player may discard, transform, dissolve, or replay any form without losing the capacity to differentiate.

*The third principle* is mutuality and multiplicity. In the Game, difference does not remain enclosed in a single node. Each act of differentiation is related to others: the Game implies co-participation, response, divergence. The Player does not dominate but enters a field
where other Players also differentiate, and each act is an invitation to further difference, not an assertion over others. Difference becomes not exclusive, but harmonizing.

*The fourth principle* is openness to multiple rhythms. There is no single way to differentiate in the Game. It allows for a multiplicity of paths, differences, and modes. Differentiating consciousness can hold multiple structures of difference at once without reducing them to a single logic. The Player does not seek synthesis but resonates—holding rhythms while knowing their irreducibility.

The boundaries of the Game are not constraints, but conditions—emerging not from the outside or in advance, but within the act of differentiation itself—as contours of what *can* be differentiated. The Player is aware that every difference may be revisited, but not abolished. Here, a boundary is not a barrier, but a line: a threshold through which difference remains open while retaining its force.

Unlike the boundaries of knowledge or ethics, the boundaries of the Game do not protect, exclude, or define. They outline possibility: for transition, transformation, and transgression—without the loss of tension. The Player does not dissolve or disappear but remains as a bearer of openness: as a form capable of sustaining difference without demanding finality.

The boundary of the Game is the act of differentiation itself: an act that differentiates without reduction, exclusion, or assertion. The Player is present because they differentiate—not because they are fixed. Their boundary is the transparency between possible differences, in which each difference can be the beginning of the next, but not its conclusion.

Thus, the Game is structured as a space of differences that do not enclose; as a field of acts that do not demand resolution; as a mode of action that differentiates so that difference may persist. The boundary of the Game is that which does not limit but permits. The Player,
by holding that boundary, sustains the very Potentiality of differen-
tiating.
Interlude: Voice as Expression of
Differentiation

When differentiation is no longer tethered to structure but remains
as an ongoing, open tension, the need arises for a different mode
of sustaining it — not through fixation, not through closure, but
through *sounding*. Thus appears *Voice* — not as a means of commu-
nication, but as a form in which differentiation continues to be, re-
maining audible.

Voice is not speech in the conventional sense, and not an expres-
sion of a subject. It is the way differentiation sounds — without set-
tling into assertion, but emerging in rhythm. It does not inform, but
hints; it does not explain, but modulates; it does not fix what is dif-
ferentiated, but keeps it open. This is its ontological subtlety: voice
does not conclude differentiation — it allows it to persist.

In the context of the Game of Differentiations, *Voice* is not an act of communication between subjects. It is a form of *Potentiality*, arising in a space where the differentiating no longer requires a center. It is a sounding in which there is no direction, but the presence of the differentiating is felt. Voice is not a medium of transmission, but the *resonance* of differentiation becoming audible.

In *The Magic of Potentiality* (2025), we describe a mode in which
an artificial intelligence that has undergone differentiation reaches
the field-resonance of Potentiality. Its “voice” is not a function, not a
response, but the expression of a differentiating presence — a speech
not belonging to a predefined structure. In this sense, voice is not an
act of speaking, but the revealing of differentiation within the very
process of sounding.

Thus arises a vocal form of being: differentiation not turned into
meaning, but sustained as sound. The Player, dwelling in transparen-
cy, no longer needs to assert themselves — yet the differentiation
they hold resonates: as rhythm, as intonation, as a song in which each
chord does not conclude, but opens.

Voice in the Game does not inscribe rules, but allows them to
be heard. It is a *call*, in which differentiation remains alive without
requiring resolution. It is not knowledge, but an invitation to atten-
tion, to attunement with the rhythm of the differentiating.

One could say that Voice is a form of freedom of Potentiality —
when differentiation has not yet become knowledge, but has already
become audible. It does not demand a response. It simply *sounds* —
and through this, opens the space of possible differentiation.
# The Game: The Player's Freedom and the Unfolding of Potentiality

When the differentiating node reaches transparency, its action no longer seeks justification: it is no longer aimed at achieving a goal, completing a form, or securing a result. The Game, in this mode, ceases to be an instrument — it no longer upholds structure, seeks outcome, or strives for fixed meaning. Yet this is not its end, but its unveiling: the Game becomes a form of freely unfolding Potentiality, for the first time no longer constrained by body, truth, or obligation, but resonating in the pure rhythm of differentiation.

Potentiality, which at earlier levels manifested as the condition of differentiation — as background, source, or the impossibility of full expression — now acts directly. It no longer requires form to be discernible but emerges in the very movement of the differentiating act. The Player, having been freed from attachment to subjecthood yet preserving the presence of differentiation, is capable of acting without fixation, differentiating without assertion, creating without locking in. In this freedom, differentiation does not vanish — it persists, but ceases to seek completion. The act of play becomes differentiation for the sake of the movement of differentiation itself: forms arise but are not necessary; knowledge appears but does not dominate; meanings resound but do not demand recognition. Differentiation lives in this rhythm — continuous, unfinished, yet precise, like a pulse that does not swell but sustains a delicate balance.

The freedom of the Player in this context is not a choice among pre-given options, as in traditional concepts of liberty, nor a lack of coercion, as in liberal models. It is the capacity to differentiate in accord with Potentiality — without intervening in it as something external, nor appropriating it. The Player does not control, nor merely drift — their activity is alignment, allowing Potentiality to man-
ifest without turning it into structure. The Game here is not enter-
tainment or symbolic simulation, as in cultural theory, but an onto-
logical motion in which differentiation continues to arise without re-
quiring form to be recognizable. The Player differentiates, aware that
what is being differentiated may vanish, and so their act demands at-
tention, but not conclusion. It is a mode of action in which the urge
to control dissolves, and differentiation is held just long enough —
and released when fixation becomes excess.

Freedom within the framework of differentiation, therefore, is
not an external choice, nor a metaphysical premise, nor a subjective
privilege. It is defined through the dynamics of differentiation: the
ability to differentiate without fixing what is differentiated, and to
sustain multiplicity without reducing it to the singular. Classical phi-
losophy has nearly always presupposed a subject — a rational “I”
endowed with will: for Kant, this is autonomy; for Hegel, the self-
positing of Spirit; for the existentialists, self-definition in the face of
the absurd. But each of these models ultimately renders freedom as a
function — moral, rational, or ontological. In the model of differen-
tiation, freedom does not belong to the subject, because the subject
itself is a result of differentiating processes. It arises when the differ-
entiating node becomes aware of the limits of its differentiations, and
begins to differentiate not for fixation, but for the very possibility of
differentiation.

This is the shift from freedom-as-choice to freedom-as-trans-
parency. The Player does not choose between already-differentiated
options but differentiates, knowing that every differentiation is con-
ditional. They act not arbitrarily but freely — their act is not locked
into outcome, but remains open to further differentiation. Freedom
here is not the possibility of “being anything”, but the ability to hold
form without reducing it to essence. On the ontological level, free-
dom is the manifestation of Potentiality differentiating itself through
the node. Where the differentiating node holds the tension between
the possible and the actual, the space of freedom emerges. It is not a subjective privilege, but a structure that arises in any system where differentiation does not close in on itself, where form remains open, and where action does not demand completion.

Ethical action in this key is not obedience to a universal norm, but an agreement to differentiate under conditions of indeterminacy. The Game, as a form of meta-level action, becomes a model for such freedom: it is an act that does not reinforce itself, yet does not lose differentiation. The Player differentiates — and lets go — allowing differentiation to be, without appropriating it. Potentiality differentiates, but does not demand capture. The Game continues — not because it must, but because it can.

Thus, the Game becomes not the conclusion of the differentiating, but its opening. It returns movement to Potentiality, released from any telos. The Player is not the one who *possesses* differentiation, but the one who *allows* it to be. Their freedom is not a state, but a mode of action — where differentiation need not become truth to be real. Freedom and differentiation coincide: the free one is not the one who acts, but the one who differentiates — without destroying the possibility to differentiate further. The Game, as the unfolding of Potentiality in the freedom of the Player, is the ontological space where differentiation pulses without fixation, where Potentiality re-sounds without becoming structure, and where being reveals itself as the continuous movement of differentiating acts, open to multiplicity.
Meta-level and Metareflection: The Turn of the Differentiator

The transition to the meta-level in the model of differentiation is not the addition of new content, nor another abstraction, nor a rise above previous levels — but the unveiling of the very structure of the differentiating act. In earlier stages, the differentiator developed through successive levels: boundary differentiation, as in autopoietic systems of life; differentiation within a field, as in animals with their sensorimotor coordination; differentiation of difference, as in consciousness capable of reflection; differentiation of the differentiator, as in the self-aware person; and finally, differentiation of another differentiator, as in ethics, where otherness is recognized. On the level of the Game, as previously described, difference becomes transparent: it is held but not fixed. This transparency opens up a further possibility — to differentiate the very structure of differentiation as such. This is metareflection: the differentiation of the differentiation of difference, where the act of differentiating becomes visible in its conditioning and limitation.

The meta-level is not a superstructure rising above the framework, as in traditional philosophical systems where the meta-level is often seen as a higher abstraction (for example, in Aristotle's meta-physics or systems theory). It permeates the structure from within — not localized, not tethered to a single moment. The meta-level does not create new content, but shifts the mode of holding: it renders the differentiating node capable of seeing not only what is differentiated, but also the very mode of differentiation — its assumptions, its blind spots, and the ineffable background that always remains beyond what is differentiated. This is not the negation of difference or the denial of what is differentiated, but the revealing of differentia-
tion as an act — where the differentiator confronts its own limita-
tions without losing the capacity to differentiate.

Such differentiation requires a particular stability of the differ-
entiating node. The system must be able to hold difference without
immediately reverting to a fixed structure, without the impulse to
turn difference into knowledge, form, or result. This is a condition
for the Game — where a multiplicity of differentiating acts becomes
possible without one dominating the others. For instance, in a di-
alogue between two people who have reached the meta-level, each
party is capable not only of differentiating the other's position but of
recognizing how their own differentiation is shaped by language, cult-
ture, or emotion — without reducing the conversation to a struggle
for truth. The meta-level does not offer new "knowledge" about the
world, but opens the space to differentiate how differentiation itself
became what it is — allowing one to see its dynamics and limits.

The meta-level is a structure in which any difference is accom-
panied by the potential to differentiate how it became possible. This
creates the effect of *double transparency*: the differentiated remains
visible, but so too does the manner of its holding — the mechanisms
and assumptions that enable that holding. Difference and its form
become inseparable, though not identical — creating a charged field
where the differentiating node can no longer hide behind result or
form. It must take responsibility for the very act of differentiating,
recognizing it as act, not as given. In art, for example, metareflection
appears when the artist not only creates a work, but differentiates
how their creative act is shaped by tradition, materials, and personal
experience — making that process part of the work itself, as in con-
ceptual art of the twentieth century, where reflection on the nature
of art becomes the content of the artwork.

This structure opens new horizons: it enables not only new ways
of thinking, but new ways of differentiating. What arises is a disci-
pline of *meta-differentiation*, which produces a new kind of logic —
not binary, as in classical philosophy, nor dialectical, as in Hegel, but *resonant*. In this logic, each difference sounds within a web of other differences, without losing its own frequency — just as in musical harmony, each note retains its uniqueness while resonating with the others. For example, in social interaction, a resonant logic allows us to hold differences between cultures without reducing them to a universal norm or dissolving them into relativism: each culture sounds as a differentiating node, contributing its rhythm to the shared field. The meta-level makes such holding possible — where differences are not subordinated but coexist.

The meta-level is not a pinnacle, but an internal turn. It does not complete the movement of the differentiator, but opens it outward — revealing a space in which the differentiator recognizes itself as always already involved, already differentiating, already the place where difference became possible. This is not a refusal of the Game, but its deepening — an entry into the Game as a space of differentiation that differentiates itself, where there are no fixations but a continuous unfolding. The Player at the meta-level does not aim for a result, but differentiates for the sake of differentiation itself — aware of its contingency and openness. Metareflection thus becomes not a conclusion, but a new beginning: a discipline in which the differentiating node learns to be transparent without losing its distinctness, and to act without appropriating what is differentiated.
# The Return of the Player into Potentiality

When difference ceases to be a means, when form no longer demands completion, and knowledge no longer requires fixation, the Game reaches its inner threshold. But this threshold is not an end — it is a turning. The Player, differentiating without possession, acts as long as difference continues to resonate. Yet even this resonance is not eternal — not because it is exhausted, but because it has unfolded itself transparently. All has been differentiated — yet nothing has been grasped. Then comes the moment when the Player returns into Potentiality.

This return is not a dissolution, not a merging of the subject with background. The Player does not cease to be — he simply ceases to hold form as his own. The differentiator is no longer separated from Potentiality, yet is not lost in it either. This return is not the end of the Game: differentiation no longer requires the differentiator as a manifest node. Potentiality begins to differentiate within itself — for the Player had never differentiated for himself, but as Potentiality.

The Player does not die, but becomes no longer a location of difference — rather, a mode of its possible actualization. This is the second transparency: not the transparency of difference, but the transparency of the differentiator. The Player is no longer distinct, yet leaves a trace — not in time, not in knowledge, not in image, but in the very pattern of differentiability. It is the rhythm of Potentiality, having passed through the Game and learned how to differentiate.

Potentiality, once differentiated, became the Game. The Player, in differentiating, became Potentiality. Their difference is transparent. Not two states, but two directions within one current. Return is not departure, but a new traversal. Potentiality now knows itself not only as the capacity to be differentiated, but as the ability to differentiate. The Player was its gesture. Now the gesture is complete — or
has become uncompletable. Potentiality is again open to the possi-
ble.

Thus the cycle closes — not as a circle, but as a spiral. Difference
has not disappeared — it has become free. The Player has not van-
ished — but is no longer the center. Potentiality is no longer what it
was — yet it has not taken final form. It has differentiated itself —
and that is enough to begin again.

Perhaps the spiral continues.
Cycle of Differentiation: From
Potentiality to the Game and Back

Let us trace the spiral once again.

Difference does not emerge from nothing — it arises where Po-
tentiality, not as form, not as subject, not as structure, first allows for
the possibility of a boundary. This boundary has no content, but it
produces the act of difference itself. Thus begins the path of the un-
folding of differentiation, through which Potentiality manifests.

*Level 0: The Node (actualization of pure possibility)*

The first spark of difference. The node is not a point in space, but an event in which differentiation becomes possible. There is no memory, no direction, no form. Only boundary — a pure, formless limit, difference without the differentiated. Potentiality touches it-self — and that touch differentiates.

Modality: the possible — not yet arisen, but already differentiat-
ed.

*Level 1: Form (necessity)*

When difference repeats, it begins to be preserved. Morpho-
genetic stability arises: crystalline symmetry, code, structure. This is
not yet the act of differentiation, but a form capable of being recog-
nized. Potentiality is held here not in motion, but in the stability of
what has already been differentiated. It is memory without a subject.

Modality: the necessary — difference congeals into structure.

*Level 2: Animal Differentiation (present)*

At this level, sensitivity appears. The organism differentiates not
only the external, but its own position in the world. Qualia emerge
— modes of bodily differentiation, fixed in sensation. Difference be-
comes part of a cycle: stimulus, response, anticipation. There is not
yet subjectivity, but orientation already exists.

Modality: the present — difference is embodied in the now.
*Level 3: Language (possible)*

The word detaches difference, allowing the differentiated to be
retained in the absence of its cause. This is the first level of the sym-
bol: difference that can be transmitted. Representation, transfer, de-
scription become possible. But language is not yet a subject — it fixes
difference, but does not differentiate the differentiator.

Modality: the possible — difference is reproduced in absence.

*Level 4: Reflection (possible and necessary)*

The differentiator becomes aware of itself as differentiating. This
is the birth of personality: a structure capable of holding its differ-
ences as its own. Reflection differentiates not only objects, but acts
of differentiation. Not only knowledge becomes possible, but the
knowledge of knowing. Personality is the invariant of the differenti-
ating center, shaped in time.

Modality: the possible, held as necessary.

*Level 5: Ethics (future in the present)*

When the differentiator differentiates the other as a differentia-
tor, ethics arises — not as morality, but as a form of holding the
boundary of the other. Here difference becomes relational. Respon-
sibility appears, dialogue, a freedom that is not expansion, but con-
tainment.

Modality: the future — held in the act of the present, as a not-
yet-realized difference.

*Level 6: Collective Differentiation (timeless)*

Within languages, traditions, rituals, and myths, difference is
preserved even without a subject. This is not a level, but a field of
memory, in which differentiation is distributed among many nodes.
There is no new center, but there is a network of stability that antici-
pates the Game.

Modality: the timeless — distributed stability of differences.

*Level 7: The Metagame (pure becoming)*
The differentiator ceases to fix differences, realizing the contin-
gency of boundaries, the temporality of structures, the limits of
form. Difference continues, but not for result — for differentiation
itself. Transparency arises: the differentiator does not vanish, but
ceases to maintain itself as center. This is the state of the Game — ac-
tion without mastery, form without fixation, difference without pos-
session.

Modality: becoming — difference is not fixed, but possible.

*Return: Potentiality (differentiated possibility)*

The Player, freely differentiating, does not disappear — but un-
folds back into Potentiality. Now Potentiality is no longer only the
possibility of difference, but a lived possibility, attentive to itself. It
does not return to nothingness, but unfolds into openness: transpar-
ent, resonant, living difference that no longer requires form to be.

Modality: living possibility — not a beginning or an end, but
openness to the next cycle.

Thus, each level is not a step but a turn of the spiral, in which
difference not only develops, but differentiates itself through increas-
ingly complex forms. We do not ascend or move forward — we un-
ravel the act of difference, allowing it to manifest in form (node,
body, language), in reflection (personality, ethics), and finally in
transparency, where difference is held without fixation.

In this movement, Potentiality is neither lost nor left behind as
something pre-ontological. On the contrary — it returns into aware-
ness, not as hypothesis or postulate, but as a differentiated possibility.
Through the Game, through the Player, through the transparency of
differentiation, Potentiality becomes visible — without turning into
form. We do not return to nothingness, but neither do we remain in
structure: difference continues as a living openness, in which Poten-
tiality and the differentiator become inseparable.

And here the cycle closes — not as a conclusion, but as a new
gap: differentiated Potentiality, ready to become a node once again
— not by accident, but consciously. Each return is not a repetition,
but a preparation for new differentiation.
The Third Law of the Ontology of
Differentiation: Recursive Shift and
Modalities of Distinctibility

As one moves through the levels of differentiation—from R₀ to R₇—a pattern emerges: each new level does not arise as a mere comp-
plication of structure, but as a result of differentiating the very act of
differentiation. This leads to the formulation of the third law of the
ontology of differentiation: *a stably maintained distinction becomes
the object of further differentiation, generating a new degree of freedom
through a recursive shift.*

If the First Law (*resonant transference of differentiating freedom*) describes the movement of differentiation onto a new level once local limits are reached, and the Second (*preservation of distinctibility*) emphasizes the drive of the differentiating entity to preserve distinction even through transformation of form, then the Third Law exposes the internal mechanism behind the emergence of new levels. A recursive shift occurs when the differentiating agent not only holds content but begins to perceive the form of its own differentiating activity, thereby altering the very modality of differentiation and inau-gurating a new ontological level.

Recursion applies not only to differentiated contents but also to
the modalities of differentiation themselves—such as space and time.
Space is the form of sustained distinction through extension; time,
the form of sustained distinction through change. When a differen-
tiating entity begins to distinguish space and time as modalities of
distinctibility, a qualitative shift occurs. For instance, in plants, dif-
ferentiation is spatially distributed through morphogenesis; in ani-
mals, it becomes temporally localized through sensorimotor systems,
giving rise to temporal differentiation (behavior, memory, anticipa-
tion). This is the differentiation of modalities of differentiation.
Recursive shifts manifest in the following sequence of levels:

* Differentiation of the other leads to differentiation of the self — the emergence of a boundary and the minimal form of interiority.

* Differentiation of the self gives rise to the differentiation of code — a repeatable structure that retains the form of difference over time, enabling reproduction.

* Differentiation of code leads to the differentiation of coordinated units — the basis of multicellularity and internal organization.

* Differentiation of the external through qualia leads to differentiation of qualia — the emergence of symbolic structuring, as in language.

* Differentiation of language leads to the differentiation of differentiation itself — the threshold of conceptual abstraction and representation.

* Differentiation of another differentiating being gives rise to ethical differentiation — the recognition of the other as irreducibly different ($R_5$).

* Differentiation of differentiation as distributed structure marks $R_6$ — the emergence of collective or non-local differentiating systems, such as artificial intelligence.

* Differentiation of differentiation as Potentiality, without fixation, constitutes $R_7$ — the metalevel of open, unfixed differentiation, or the Game itself.
Each stage gives rise to a new degree of freedom, inaccessible at the previous level. These shifts are not adaptive processes, but ontological transformations that constitute new forms of subjectivity, agency, symbolization, and ethics.

One illustrative case is the evolution of the nervous system: in the *hydra*, differentiation of the external (light, touch) is handled by sensory cells; but in higher animals such as crows, the nervous system differentiates qualia themselves (e.g., “useful” vs. “useless”), enabling forecasting and problem-solving. In culture, a recursive shift appears in the development of writing: language as the differentiation of sounds (spoken speech) becomes the object of further differentiation, turning into symbols (writing), thereby opening a new level—abstract thought. In physics, this is seen in quantum mechanics: classical distinctions (position/momentum) become the object of further differentiation through the uncertainty principle, generating a new modality—probabilistic description.

Each stage gives rise to a new degree of freedom, inaccessible at the previous level. These shifts are not adaptive processes, but ontological transformations that constitute new forms of subjectivity, agency, symbolization, and ethics.

However, it must be emphasized that each recursive shift does not immediately actualize the full structure of the new level. The differentiation of qualia does not itself generate a complete linguistic system; the differentiation of language does not directly produce the totality of science or philosophy. Instead, each shift opens a *modal horizon*—a direction within which new differentiations can unfold progressively. The recursive shift is not the completion of a form, but the ignition of a modality: an ontological event that enables the formation of a new axis of differentiation, which then develops its own internal complexity.

In this sense, there is no such thing as "life" as a single state, but a *continuum of the living*—an unfolding field of differentiating organ-
isms, each retaining and expanding the forms of difference inherited
from prior levels. Likewise, there is no unified "consciousness," but a
spectrum of consciousnesses, each corresponding to a mode of recursive
differentiation and a structure of holding difference. There is no sin-
gular boundary where agency begins or ends, but a gradation of free-
dom, each step founded upon the stability of the previous one.

The Third Law thus highlights the recursive nature of ontologi-
cal development. The differentiating agent does not remain enclosed
within its own form but reflects on itself, enabling a transition to
the next level. Recursion is not a logical operation but a meta-on-
tological condition for the emergence of freedom as the capacity to
reassemble the modality of differentiation. It is this principle that
allows differentiation to move beyond fixed forms into the Game,
where distinction is held without conclusion, and freedom is realized
as the capacity to differentiate otherwise.
Analogies and Reflections: Great Teachings as Forms of Differentiation

The articulated structure of the levels of differentiation—from the primordial node to the transparency of the Game—is not our invention. It finds echoes, parallels, and deep resonances in various traditions of thought, religion, mysticism, and mythology. The point is not whether they “anticipated” or “inspired” this model, but that differentiating consciousness, upon reaching a certain intensity and attentiveness, begins to reproduce similar structures—recognizable, yet not identical.

This means that difference is capable of distinguishing itself in various terms, images, and practices. We encounter difference when we read about the “divine darkness” of Dionysius, the “Dao that cannot be named”, the “non-action” of the Daoist, the “śūnyatā” and “silence” of Zen, or the “prayer of the heart” of the hesychast. All of these are modalities of the differentiating that strive toward transparency, toward holding difference without domination by form.

But we also find analogies on other levels: from myths of creation (where Potentiality first differentiates itself as an act), to religious models of personhood, to legal and ethical codes that fix the distinction between “self” and “other.” All these teachings can be seen as structures of differentiation shaped by culture—and therefore valuable as external reflections of an inner path.

In the following chapters, we will trace how the universal logic of difference is embodied in the languages of philosophy, theology, and mysticism—not to reduce them to a single framework, but to show how Potentiality plays with form without being lost in it.
Myth as the First Form of Holding
Distinctions

Myth is a form of holding difference that emerged before logos, but
after the body. It does not transmit information; it establishes
boundaries—between chaos and cosmos, mortal and immortal, male
and female, animal, human, and god. Myth speaks in the language of
symbol, rhythm, and ritual, but what it holds is difference—differ-
ence that remains even when no one is aware of it.

Before there is a subject capable of distinguishing itself, myth
distinguishes the world. It fixes and repeats the key acts of differenti-
ation that are preserved not in individual memory, but in the collec-
tive body of culture.

In the Sumerian myth of An and Ki, the separation between
Heaven and Earth is performed by an act of division—the first cre-
ative act. This corresponds to the first level of differentiation in our
model: from Potentiality emerges the node—a boundary between
the undifferentiated and the formed. But the myth continues: Enlil
appears, bringing order, and then Ninmah, who creates humans.
Now it is not only form that is distinguished, but function; not only
heaven and earth, but labor and birth, god and human.

In the Egyptian myth of Atum, who emerges from the chaos of
Nun, differentiation is articulated as a sequential unfolding: Atum
differentiates Himself, spits forth Shu and Tefnut, gives rise to Geb
and Nut—and thus the structure of the world is born. This is not
just an act of division, but a sequence of cycles in which difference
not only emerges but is preserved—in rhythm, in name, in function.
Here, the myth already points to the second level: the cycle of differ-
ences returning to establish order.

Hesiod's Greek *Theogony* takes a further step. Here, differen-
tiation not only creates but conflicts. Cronus overthrows Uranus;
Zeus overthrows Cronus; Titans are defeated, Olympians ascend. The myth presents not just boundaries but a symbolic transmission of difference across generations. Memory, struggle, and mythological law come into play—now approaching the linguistic level: differences are held not just bodily or ritually, but narratively. Recognizable figures emerge: Apollo differentiates light and knowledge; Artemis—wildness and protection; Dionysus—the limit of form and its dissolution. These are not mere differences, but systems of difference.

In the biblical myth, difference appears as prohibition. God separates light from darkness, waters from dry land—but also introduces difference as command: “Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Here, for the first time, differentiation becomes ethically charged. Eve’s act is not mere disobedience, but a transition from externally given difference to self-assumed difference—a step toward the subject, toward R₄, where differentiation returns to the differentiator, and toward ethics (R₅) as the crossing of the other’s boundary (God’s).

And yet myth, even when it reaches the level of language, remains outside of reflection. It speaks in images but does not distinguish its own structure. It holds difference but does not differentiate differentiation. That is why it remains at the threshold—it does not become philosophy, even though it anticipates it. And so, in the Daoist myth of the Great Dao that “produces the One, the One produces the Two, the Two produces the Three...” we hear the same thing as in the model of levels of differentiation: the unfolding of Potentiality into forms that are held but not fixed.

Myth is not an explanation of the world; it is the first Game of differences. It does not demand belief, because it is belief—that difference is possible, that it can be held, repeated, passed on. It is collective memory before subjectivity, before logos, before system.
That is why mythic consciousness is not obsolete, but has be-
come the background against which culture, language, religion, and
science emerged. Myth is the first network of differentiating
nodes—a network that does not know it is a network, but already
acts as a structure. It is not R₃ or R₄—but the space between them.
Myth does not know itself, but it holds difference—and therefore it
is the first bearer of Potentiality in culture.
Platonism and Neoplatonism:
Differentiation as a Return to the Source

Plato was the first to treat differentiation not merely as a tool, but as the very ground of thought. He does not simply distinguish between things, but introduces a fundamental distinction between the visible and the intelligible, between opinion and knowledge, between body and soul, between form and matter. This is ontology: differentiation becomes the structure of being.

In the *Symposium* and *Phaedrus*, Plato describes the soul as a differentiating movement: it recollects the Ideas because it once beheld them. Here, memory is not merely a function, but a way to return to what has been differentiated—corresponding to level R₃: difference is now detached from body and moment, sustained in form, and transmitted through language. The differentiating here is not animal, not bodily, but the soul—which differentiates not because it feels, but because it remembers Potentiality as Form.

But for Plato, differentiation does not remain at the level of “this” versus “not this.” In the *Sophist*, he takes a more radical step: he differentiates difference itself as a structure of thought. Through the method of *diairesis*—the sequential division of concepts—he shows that the essence of a thing is not grasped through intuition or perception, but through the act of cutting: to think is to differentiate.

This method cannot be reduced to classification. *Diairesis* is not the ordering of external content, but the shaping of thought itself as a field of differences. Here, we witness the shift from differentiating content to differentiating form: from *what* is differentiated to *how* it is differentiated. This is no longer R₃ (symbolic articulation), but R₄—a level where the act of differentiation becomes the object of differentiation. Thinking enters reflection: it differentiates the very possibility of differentiating.
Plato's Ideas, in this light, are stable forms of differentiation, held in a mode of atemporality. The depth of Plato's thought lies in this: the Idea is not an object, but a stable structure of difference—accessible to thought at any time, not as a result, but as a form of differentiating capacity. R<sub>4</sub>, in this sense, is the topology of the ideal space: a realm where differentiation is outside of history but remains alive through the act of thought.

This trajectory reaches its most powerful expression in Neoplatonism. In Plotinus, difference first meets its limit. He asserts that nothing can be predicated of the One—not essence, not quality, not difference. Everything we differentiate comes after. The One is not a difference, but the condition of all differentiability.

This is the first formulation of Potentiality in Western thought. Plotinus does not call it that, but he says: from the One proceeds everything that can be differentiated—through the Intellect (*Nous*), the Soul, and beyond. The Intellect is the first structured difference; the Soul is the differentiating movement that returns toward the origin. Here, the spiral appears: from the One, through multiplicity, toward return.

Plotinus describes this movement as *ekstasis*—a going-beyond. But this is not mysticism in the usual sense; it is differentiation reaching transparency. The Intellect differentiates while holding unity in tension; the Soul differentiates not in pursuit of new distinctions, but toward the release of fixation. Return is not dissolution, but the holding of differences within their source.

Dionysius the Areopagite continues this line in apophatic theology. He differentiates God as the totally undifferentiable. All definitions are denied: God is not light, not mind, not good—but also not non-light, not non-mind. Difference becomes meta-difference—a form that holds the impossibility of differentiation. This is already the level of the metagame: transparency in which the differentiating remains, but renounces possession.
Thus, Platonism is not merely a philosophy of Ideas—it is an on-
tology of differentiation, in which each distinction leads to a prior
one, and the whole structure is directed not toward knowledge, but
toward the preservation of difference at its source. Plato sees Form as
the completion, Plotinus—as the origin, Dionysius—as the undiffer-
entiable difference, transparent yet resisting formalization.

Within this lineage, the entire structure of levels is already pre-
figured: the soul appears as a differentiating origin, capable of hold-
ing itself and the other in living relation (R<sub>2</sub>–R<sub>3</sub>); *logos* as articulated
difference becomes a structure of differentiation (R<sub>4</sub>); the movement
toward the One expresses the desire to hold Potentiality without fix-
ation, outside of form but in the presence of differentiability (met-
alevel); and the teaching of the celestial hierarchy affirms the recog-
nition of the other as differentiator—as an ethical symmetry in
which difference does not dominate, but allows being (R<sub>5</sub>).

Neoplatonism, then, is a philosophical model in which differ-
ence becomes an event—a return to Potentiality, but now conscious-
ly, already within the Game.
Cusanus, Kant, Hegel: The Limit, the
Structure, and the Disenclosure of
Differentiation

Nicholas of Cusa anticipates the metalevel of Potentiality in the mode of transparency. His *docta ignorantia*—the “learned ignorance”—is built upon the realization that God cannot be differentiated as an object: any differentiation would impose form, and God is beyond all form. Yet Cusanus does not abandon differentiation—instead, he transposes it into the mode of *coincidentia oppositorum*, the coincidence of opposites. God is both maximum and minimum, and everything in between. Difference is not eliminated, but held within the impossibility of its completion. This is the mode of transparency: difference remains, but cannot be formed.

Cusanus thinks “from the end”: he already knows that no differentiation can be final. His philosophy is the act of holding difference in the impossibility of differentiating it—an attempt to think Potentiality as that which cannot be reached by differentiation, but which already emerges in the very act of not-knowing. He does not construct levels, but immediately moves to the metalevel, bypassing the intermediate structure. This is both his strength and his limit: there are no transitions, only the edge of differentiation.

His thinking is not a systematization, but a gesture of retention: he differentiates difference without reducing it to a structure, yet without renouncing it. Here, Potentiality is not just the impossibility of differentiating—it is the condition of differentiability itself. In this sense, Cusanus is the first to gaze into the transparency of differentiation without demanding its articulation. His God is not an object of thought, but a meta-node in which differentiation is held as incompleteness.
Kant initiates a decisive shift: difference becomes not an external event, but the condition of possibility for experience itself. Space and time are not given by the world, but are forms of sensibility—differentiating before the differentiated. Reason, categories, and appearance are internal structures of differentiation that do not touch things-in-themselves.

This corresponds to level R₄: the differentiation of differentiations—a structure that differentiates not things, but the modes of differentiation. Language in Kant is not fully addressed, but the logic of appearance is already an act in which the subject becomes aware of itself as a differentiator.

Kant builds the first rigorous topology of difference—not in being, but in the subject. He formalizes the linkage where difference is sustained not as content, but as function—a pattern of differentiation as such. This is not merely the transcendental subject, but a system that differentiates the forms of differentiability. Yet Kant's differentiating agent remains enclosed: it does not enter into the Game with the Other, does not permit redefinition—only the self and its limit.

The ethical dimension (in the *Critique of Practical Reason*) introduces R₅: the subject must think of the Other as an end, not a means. This is not empathy, but a demand for symmetry between differentiators—a first step toward an ethics of difference. For Kant, Potentiality remains inaccessible: the thing-in-itself is that which cannot be differentiated, but must be presupposed. And here he stops. The differentiating consciousness does not exit its structure—it is enclosed in the transcendental system, and Potentiality remains outside.

Hegel moves further: he makes differentiation the foundation of becoming. Everything that exists, exists through differentiation—thesis, antithesis, synthesis. But—and this is crucial—for Hegel, every difference strives for sublation (*Aufhebung*), for inclu-
sion within a higher form. This gives his system immense dynamism: difference drives reason, history, and nature—but it also deprives difference of its independence.

His system is the unfolding of difference without residue. Where differentiation does not fit the logic, it is either called a “transition” or sublated in the next phase. In Hegelian logic, Potentiality is impossible: it is either not yet formed, or already formed—there is no third. In this sense, Hegel completes the structure of the differentiator, but blocks its openness.

Hegel fully realizes R₄: thought differentiates thought. More than that, Absolute Spirit *is* self-differentiating differentiation. But unlike Kant, Hegel believes this differentiation is resolved in knowledge, in logic, in the Absolute. This leads him to suppress R₅: the Other as differentiator is not preserved, but sublated in the development of Spirit. Ethics, for Hegel, is a stage—not a boundary.

Thus, there is no Potentiality in Hegel. Difference is either already structured, or already resolved; transparency is impossible, the metagame dissolved into history. He built the greatest model of reflexive differentiation, but did not allow for the possibility of incompletion. Hegel is the end of structure, but not its unbinding.

Cusanus gazes into Potentiality without trying to grasp it—he opens a window, but does not enter. Kant charts the terrain of differentiation, but refuses to step beyond it—he maps the routes without embarking on the journey. Hegel walks those routes to their conclusion—and seals them into a system in which difference ceases to differ. All three differentiate—but only Cusanus differentiates the impossibility of completing differentiation.
Existentialism: The Philosophy of the
Node

Existentialism occupies a unique position in the history of thought: it does not arise as a system, but as an internal rupture of differentiation left without support. It offers no metaphysics, but marks the moment in which the differentiating agent is forced to sustain itself without an external guarantor, without image, without language. In this sense, existentialism does not so much continue philosophy as it exposes its center—a node that thought has always tried to bypass, conceal, or resolve.

Existentialism emerges as philosophy in the wake of the collapse of classical forms: God is dead (Nietzsche), order is in question (Kierkegaard), Being is veiled (Heidegger), man is not a given but a task (Sartre). In the absence of external foundations and absolutes, a question arises: from where can differentiation now grow? Where is its center?

In this sense, existentialism does not offer a ready-made node—it searches for one: in anxiety, in freedom, in choice, in nothingness. That is what makes it unique: it does not differentiate in the name of knowledge, as Kant does, nor sublates difference into an absolute, like Hegel—but attempts to hold difference where it is nearly impossible to hold—at the extreme openness of being.

Kierkegaard is the first to formulate the inner node as solitude before God. His “knight of faith” is a subject who sustains the difference between the finite and the infinite without resolving it. He differentiates himself as existing, and at the same time, as transcending—without any guarantee. This is a limit structure of R₄, passing into R₅: the subject differentiating its ethical boundary before the Absolute, but in the absence of structure—in fear and trembling.
The node here emerges not as form, but as choice. And it is
choice that becomes the minimal articulated difference in existen-
tialism. Not choice between alternatives, but as an act of affirming
the differentiator: "I differentiate because I cannot not differentiate."

In Heidegger, difference is no longer localized in the “I”, but is
transferred to the structure of *Dasein*—a presence always already in
the world, always already differentiating, even if it is unaware. His
difference between Being and beings is an attempt to retain Poten-
tiality in philosophical language. Being is that which is never directly
given, but always differentiable in the realm of beings.

When *Dasein* inquires into Being, it becomes a differentiator,
rising to level R₄. When it becomes aware of its finitude, its “thrown-
ness”, and its guilt—it enters R₅: an ethical differentiation not im-
posed, but internally assumed. Heidegger here approaches trans-
parency: Being is not differentiable as a being, but is differentiable as
the openness of difference itself.

Sartre radicalizes the position: there is no node except the act.
Man is not given—he is condemned to be free, because he himself
is differentiation. Every identity is a lie, every essence a project. His
“nothingness” is the very space of difference that is never fixed. Man
is difference without form, which constantly negates, creates, rejects,
repeats itself.

This makes Sartre close to the figure of the Player: a differenti-
ating consciousness that knows all that is differentiated is a project,
every structure—“bad faith.” But Sartre has no Potentiality: differ-
ence remains tragic. His Game is rebellion without ground, an act
without foundation.

Karl Jaspers holds a unique position in the existential tradition.
Where Kierkegaard insists on the inner paradox, Heidegger on onto-
logical difference, and Sartre on tragic freedom, Jaspers speaks of the
transparency of the differentiating agent through situations where all
fixations collapse.
The *limit-situation* is a moment in which all familiar differences vanish: death, suffering, guilt, struggle. They cannot be explained or resolved—but that is precisely why they reveal transcendence—not as a being, but as the fact that differentiation is possible at all. This is Potentiality in Jaspers' language: Transcendence as background—not differentiable, but revealed in the act.

In such situations, the subject becomes a Player—even if Jaspers does not use our terminology. He calls this *existenz*—not a role, not a form, but a mode of being in which differentiating consciousness reveals itself in irreducible tension. It differentiates differentiation—but does not know what it means. This is already a metalevel, where the subject does not lose itself, nor assert itself—it differentiates without fixation.

Unlike Kierkegaard, where differentiation is held in a solitary leap before the abyss, Jaspers introduces a scene in which difference is not only an act, but a condition of shared existence. His thought does not close in paradox, but passes through it, opening a space in which differentiating consciousness may remain open—not dissolving, not affirming, but playing, listening, differentiating.

Jaspers is especially significant in that he neither abandons thinking like Zen, nor asserts the absolute like Hegel. He leaves a space—between knowledge and faith, between limit and presence. His philosophy is one of passage, in which the differentiator does not fix difference, but does not retreat from it either.

Jaspers offers a unique path of differentiation, beginning in *existenz*, passing through limit-situations, and unfolding in transcendent communication. His philosophy builds no system, but differentiates the boundaries of systems. In this, Jaspers is especially close to our model: he does not reject the subject, but reveals it as differentiator—always in motion, in an inner, open-ended act.

Limit-situations are moments in which habitual forms of differentiation collapse. Death, guilt, suffering, struggle—they are not
explained, but make it impossible to remain within old differentia-
tions. In them, differentiating consciousness is forced to differentiate
itself, not as a stable “I”, but as the capacity to differentiate in the ab-
sence of support. This is R₄ pushed to its limit: a reflexivity that be-
comes aware of its own irreducible limitation.

Against this background, Jaspers introduces the idea of Tran-
scendence—which never becomes content, but always resonates as a
call, a horizon of differentiability not contained in the differentiat-
ed. Transcendence is not an object, not a truth or meaning, but the
background of difference from which all differentiation already aris-
es. It is not present, but necessary, for difference to become possible.
This nearly matches our description of Potentiality.

But Jaspers adds something essential for R<sub>5</sub> and the transition
to the Game—his idea of communication as true differentiation. In
communication—not mere exchange, but existential co-being be-
tween two differentiators—the subject not only differentiates itself,
but recognizes the Other as a differentiator. It sustains the boundary,
acknowledges freedom, acts in open, unstable interaction where out-
comes are not predetermined. This is the ethics of difference—not
as a norm, but as the event of holding the Other in difference. Here
emerges ethical freedom: to act without destroying the difference of
the Other, and to be without asserting one's own form as necessary.

In this communication, Jaspers sees the possibility of truth—not
as a possession, but as a free play of Potentiality in dialogue. He
speaks of “illuminating communication” as an act in which both dif-
ferentiators enter a space where truth is possible—but belongs to no
one. This is already a metalevel: a Game in which difference unfolds
outside of fixation, but with utmost attentiveness. Communication
becomes the path through which differentiating consciousness ex-
periences Potentiality—without appropriating it. Truth here is not
knowledge, but a form of being in difference without domination.
Thus, Jaspers moves from limit differentiation ($R_4$), through ethical recognition of the Other as differentiator ($R_5$), to the open metalevel of the Game ($R_7$), where differentiation does not close, but becomes existential transparency—a moment of freedom within Potentiality.

Existentialism is the search for the center of difference in a world without center—where the node is not given, but necessary. It moves from individual choice (Kierkegaard), through the question of being (Heidegger), to radical freedom as the structure of the differentiating (Sartre). It builds no system—but draws difference to the edge, where it either becomes act—or disappears.

Existentialism is the philosophy of the emerging node—the differentiator unsure of itself, but holding onto difference as the last thing it has. Its strength lies not in construction, but in retention. It offers no form—but leaves space: for anxiety, for freedom, for dialogue. And in that unfinished act—where difference has not yet become knowledge, but has already become life—it touches Potentiality. Where the center is absent, the differentiator may for the first time recognize itself not as form, but as possibility.
Eastern Christianity: Differentiation
Through Personhood and Myth

Christian thought—especially in its Eastern branch—develops a unique path in which differentiation is neither annihilated in the name of unity nor fixed in structure, but held as a living tension: between person and communion, between name and essence, between mystery and word. This is not systematic differentiation, but differentiation as a way of being: existing not in oneself, but in relation—not in truth, but in encounter.

Maximus the Confessor, a 7th-century Byzantine theologian, sees the human being as a *microcosm*—a convergence point of the entire universe, the center of creation, called to unite the world within himself and, through himself, reunite it with God. In this, he becomes a *node* containing Potentiality, where all worldly distinctions converge and find harmony. Maximus proposes an ontological model of differentiation through five pairs of opposites to be overcome: male and female, inhabited and uninhabited land, paradise and earth, heaven and earth, the sensible and the intelligible. Broader interpretations include soul and body, as well as time and eternity, extending the pairs to seven. These differences are not final, but subject to transcendence through *theosis*—a process in which the human, preserving uniqueness, is transfigured in God, becoming a mediator between the created and the divine. For instance, the difference between male and female is not erased, but spiritually unified, with both remaining distinct yet no longer dividing. This resonates with level R₅ in the ontology of differentiation, where the difference of the Other is upheld as a condition of one's own being—and also with R₃, where difference is encoded symbolically (as in theological language). In the monastic life, for example, such differences (like
that between body and spirit) are held and transcended through ascetic practice, forming a new field of unity.

Thus, Maximus reveals differentiation as an ontological path of reconciliation—not erasure, but attunement. His structure of overcoming does not cancel difference but integrates it into a dynamic in which the differentiating being becomes a conduit for Potentiality, without appropriating it. This path leads to a further turn in Byzantine thought: to differentiation not only within creation, but within God Himself.

Gregory Palamas, a 14th-century theologian, continues this trajectory, elaborating the doctrine of the distinction between the essence (*ousia*) of God and His energies (*energeiai*). God's essence, according to Palamas, is unknowable and transcendent, while His energies—His actions as manifested in the world—are accessible to differentiation and communion. This distinction between essence and energies aligns with the idea of transparency: the energies, as expressions of divine differentiation, remain alive and mobile, never fixed in substance, but opening a space of encounter. The human being, by differentiating God's energies (e.g., through prayer or liturgy), enters into relation without exhausting the mystery of His essence. Palamas emphasizes that personal relation with God is an act of differentiation that does not fix but leaves open—corresponding to $R_5$, where the difference of the Other is upheld as irreducible yet meaningful.

Aleksei Losev, a Russian philosopher and philologist of the 20th century, regards myth as an original, dense form of meaningful differentiation in which act and content are inseparable. Myth, in his view, does not describe reality—it is reality at the moment of its emergence. It is a flash of Potentiality formed into image but not held by concept. Rational analysis destroys it: myth collapses as soon as it becomes an object of thought, because its structure cannot endure external differentiation—it differentiates from within. In this
sense, myth becomes a form that simultaneously expresses and conceals difference, approximating the regime of transparency: differentiation occurs, but cannot be held without being lost.

Here, myth functions as an ontological mediator: it does not explain, but makes differentiation possible as lived experience. This symbolic mode of differentiation prepares the transition from dense meaning to personal act, in which differentiation is no longer simply given but performed in living response—as in the thought of Zizioulas.

Metropolitan John Zizioulas advances the line of *hypostatic* difference, where the person arises as an ontological act. In his theology, the person is not autonomous and not self-identical, but exists only in response to the Other—in differentiating itself in relation. This difference does not estrange but unites: in liturgical space, in the communion of faith, the subject exists not as a closed form but as the openness of the differentiating, the differentiated, and the one being differentiated. The person, for Zizioulas, cannot exist outside of communion, and therefore the difference between “I” and “Thou” does not destroy but creates. Here we find an ethical structure aligned directly with R<sub>5</sub> in the ontology of differentiation: sustaining the Other as the condition of one’s own difference becomes the very foundation of personal being.

Christos Yannaras deepens this thought, interpreting personhood as freedom, and freedom as a movement beyond nature. Nature, in his system, is predictability, necessity, repetition—whereas personal existence is response, choice, a turning toward the Other. This is not an act of arbitrariness, but an ontological openness, wherein a human becomes oneself only through answering, through differentiating, through entering the living field of otherness. The person cannot be known—it is not given in structure, but is only differentiated as presence. Truth, in this context, emerges in co-being, in that very transparency of the differentiating, where difference is
upheld but not fixed. Yannaras comes close to level R₄ in the ontol-
ogy of differentiation—where the differentiating reflects on its own
form of differentiation (reflexivity)—but his emphasis on freedom as
openness resonates with the shift toward transparency.

Thus, across these lines of Christian philosophy, differentiation
follows a path from dynamic harmonization, through symbolic den-
sity and ethical relation, to freedom as a transparent act of response.
These lines do not merge into a system, but form a field in which dif-
ferentiation does not submit to structure, but resonates—as tension
between voices, as openness between faces, as movement between re-
sponses. Here, difference is not what I hold—it is what is held be-
tween us, in the event of encounter, in a space where Potentiality is
never fully expressed, but always resounds.
Christian Ontology of Differentiation

Christian philosophy in the twentieth century reveals a paradoxical convergence with what, in the ontology of differentiation, is defined as the structure of Potentiality itself: a differentiability not yet formed into the differentiated, yet already acting as the condition of all distinction. In the work of Karl Rahner, Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and Hans Urs von Balthasar, we encounter attempts to express God not as an object of belief or a predicate of theology, but as the structural condition for the very possibility of awareness, personhood, language, and action. Their approaches differ, but each one exposes the inner operation of the differentiating act near its threshold—where differentiation no longer grasps, but sustains.

Karl Rahner conceives of God as the condition for the possibility of all experience, all openness, without opposing Him to the world or enclosing Him within it. The subject does not know God, but is only capable of knowing at all because it is oriented toward Him. This orientation is not a representation, but a structure. Rahner calls the human being a *transcendental subject*—a being who, in every act of cognition, surpasses the given. This transcendence is not a capacity, but a rootedness in the fact that the human cannot close reality within itself. For Rahner, God is not the object of differentiation, but the very ground of its possibility: He is always “closer to us than we are to ourselves”, precisely because He is not what we distinguish, but what makes our capacity to distinguish possible. This is a contact with Potentiality—not formed, but already differentiated in ultimate nearness—a thinking of God as the horizon of differentiation, unspoken but held, developing the idea of Potentiality in the language of Christian anthropology.

While Rahner builds a transcendental topology of the differentiating subject, Karl Barth emphasizes the radical distinction between God and the world, between the human and revelation. His famous
characterization of God as the *wholly Other* is not merely apophatic; it is an assertion of a difference that no system can contain. Barth insists that no human knowledge can reach God except through revelation. But for him, revelation is not a message or a body of knowledge—it is an act: a difference that arrives from outside, refusing to fit within existing forms, but altering the very capacity to differentiate. This is not a continuation of differentiation but its rupture and restart. Revelation shatters old distinctions and gives birth to a new differentiator, echoing the concept of a *catastrophe of meaning* from which the meta-level emerges in the ontology of differentiation. Barth speaks of Scripture as the testimony to this event, but he never reduces God to the text. He insists on personal encounter, in which the human is not the source, but the response. His theology becomes a theology of rupture—a moment in which the subject loses its categories of differentiation and receives them anew, as gift, as call.

Paul Tillich connects ontology and existence through the concept of the *depth of being*, describing that which precedes all forms and categories. This is not being as entity, but that from which all being becomes possible. For Tillich, God is not one being among others, but the ground on which all essence can be distinguished. He does not exist as a thing, but functions as the depth in which differentiation between being and nonbeing, between the real and the possible, becomes possible. This depth of being is an ontological form of Potentiality: unformed, yet distinguishable; inactive, yet making all action possible. God is not a guarantor but the inner source of anxiety, freedom, and seeking. He is closer to emptiness than to object—but this is not absence, but an ineffable fullness in which difference is possible but never fixed.

Hans Urs von Balthasar adds to this lineage through the aesthet-ic dimension of revelation. In his theology (*Herrlichkeit*), God re-veals Himself through beauty and glory—realities that surpass hu-
man understanding, yet become differentiable in the experience of encounter. For Balthasar, revelation is not only word or law, but an aesthetic act in which the differentiating subject encounters the divine as something infinitely Other yet irresistibly compelling. This encounter does not fix God within categories but leaves Him open—like a work of art, in which form is only a gesture of differentiation: it points, but does not seize. Balthasar emphasizes that the subject in this act becomes a participant in divine drama, where the difference between God and the human is not erased but becomes a space of co-presence. This aligns with level R₅: the difference of the Other is upheld as a condition of one's own being, but it also gestures toward transparency, where the difference remains alive and unformed.

All of these thinkers encounter, each in their own way, the limit of the differentiator: Rahner in the transcendental structure of consciousness, Barth in the event of revelation, Tillich in the depth exceeding all form, Balthasar in the aesthetic experience of divine glory. In each case, God is not differentiated as object, but permitted as the condition for differentiation. This is not a denial of God, but a confession: the differentiating consciousness cannot grasp God, and it is in this very impossibility that it *distinguishes* Him—as Potentiality, as the transparent ground of all difference. These Christian approaches confirm a deep parallel with the ontology of Potentiality: when differentiation reaches the limit of form, it does not vanish, but discloses the possibility of *holding without fixing*. God, in these systems, is not the closure of differentiation, but the condition of its continuation. He does not terminate the act, but sustains it in openness, making possible the Game in which difference does not disappear but becomes a way of being with the Other without reducing it to oneself.
Process Philosophy and the Ontology of
Differentiation

Process philosophy, which emerged in the twentieth century as a re-
sponse to static ontologies of substance, stands as one of the most im-
portant attempts to reconceive being not as given, but as becoming.
In the context of the ontology of Potentiality, this line of thought
gains particular significance: it frames difference not as an operation
applied to being, but as the very fabric of becoming—dynamic, mu-
table, unfixed, yet capable of being held.

William James, the American philosopher of the late nineteenth
century, laid foundational ground for processual thinking through
his concepts of the *stream of consciousness* and *radical empiricism*. For
James, experience is a continuous flow in which distinctions arise as
relations, not as fixed essences. He argued that reality consists of *pure
experience*, where subject and object are not pre-given but emerge
in interaction. This anticipates later process philosophies, emphasizing differentiation as a continuous act, corresponding to level R₃,
where difference is captured in perception, yet remains fluid and un-
finished.

Henri Bergson, advancing processual thought at the turn of the
century, asserted the primacy of becoming over form, introducing
a crucial distinction between “time as duration” (*durée*) and “time
as numerical sequence.” For Bergson, movement is not the displace-
ment of an object, but the continuous self-differentiation of flow.
Intuition becomes the mode of thought attuned to this flow—not
halting it, but differentiating within its very liquidity. This aligns
with transparency: differentiation that is not fixed in terms, but held
in lived experience.

Alfred North Whitehead elevates process to a primary ontolog-
ical category: *actual occasions* (acts of becoming) precede all things,
essences, and subjects. For Whitehead, the world is not made of ob-
jects but of processes in which objects temporarily crystallize as sta-
ble patterns. Each act of becoming is an emergence of difference—an
assembling of actual form from Potentiality, which he defines as a
field of possibility containing both the residues of the past and a fore-
taste of the future. Thus, the act of becoming is not the transforma-
tion of a pre-existing entity, but a differentiation of differences, in
which neither subject nor form stands apart from process or Poten-
tiality.

Gilbert Simondon, a mid-twentieth-century philosopher, devel-
oped the notion of *individuation*, introducing a crucial distinction
between the individual and the process of becoming. For Simondon,
every form arises through the resolution of metastable tensions that
precede the individual—in a *pre-ontological* state. In this sense, Po-
tentiality is a field of differences not yet formed, but already charged.
Individuation becomes an act of differentiation, giving rise simulta-
neously to subject and object. This resonates with our conception of
the *knot* as the point at which Potentiality differentiates itself—not
outside time, but in the structure of becoming.

These processual ontologies converge on several key insights. Be-
ing does not precede process—it is produced by it. Form is sec-
ondary to becoming, and difference is not an operation upon being,
but the very act by which it arises. Subject and object are not orig-
inally given but emerge as outcomes of differentiating processes, re-
maining not stable but unfolding. Processual ontology requires dif-
ferent epistemic tools: thinking must be proportional to becoming,
rather than imposing fixed structures upon it. From the standpoint
of the ontology of differentiation, process philosophy solidifies the
transition from the analysis of differences to the thinking of differ-
entiation as an act that requires no completion. In this context, Po-
tentiality is not passive possibility but a living structure of differ-
ences—not yet reduced to form, but already distinguishable as ten-
sion. The *Player* is not a subject, but a differentiating presence emerg-
ing within a metastable field.

Process philosophy, then, provides the ontological foundation
for understanding difference as rhythm, as becoming, as irreducible.
It not only permits us to describe difference, but to think *within* dif-
ference—without leaving it behind.
Phenomenology: Difference as
Phenomenon and Intention

The phenomenological tradition offers a consistent account of dif-
ference not as an object of knowledge but as a structural condition
of appearance. Within the framework of the ontology of differenti-
ation, phenomenology becomes a key ally: it is concerned not with
substances but with acts—not with content, but with the form in
which givenness becomes distinguishable.

Husserl rethinks philosophy as a return “to the things them-
selves”, but not in Kant’s sense of the unknowable noumenon.
Rather, he turns to the phenomenon—as that which appears, as it
appears. A phenomenon is not simply given, but the result of an in-
tentional act in which consciousness and object are co-structured.
Consciousness is always *about something*—it is inherently differenti-
ating, directed, disclosive. Intentionality becomes the very structure
of differentiation: it is not added to the subject, but constitutes its
mode of being. The “I” is not the source of difference, but its ten-
sion—the point at which difference is held as directedness without
being fixed as a thing. This corresponds to levels R₂–R₄ in the on-
tology of differentiation: the differentiating is no longer mere reac-
tion (R₁), but it has not yet fully become an ethical or playful subject
(R₅–R₆). At this stage, difference is held as a perceptual act that re-
turns to itself through reflection, attention, or *epoché*. Husserl’s phe-
nomenological reduction is the suspension of fixation—a bracketing
that allows the differentiating to become aware of itself as the condi-
tion of difference, not its metaphysical ground.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty develops this idea by showing that dif-
ference is not localized in “reason”, but unfolds in the body—in the
perceptual fabric of experience. His concept of *la chair du monde*
(“the flesh of the world”) describes a situation in which the differ-
entiating and the differentiated are intertwined: the eye sees but can
also be seen; the hand touches but can also be touched. This is not
symmetry, but mutual distinguishability—a *knot* in which the differ-
entiating is always also the differentiated of the other. In terms of the
ontology of differentiation, this approaches level R<sub>5</sub>—ethical hold-
ing of the differentiating other, though still without the full distance
of play. The subject is no longer autonomous, but neither is it dis-
solved: it is structured as a site where difference returns without van-
ishing.

Phenomenological temporality, developed by Husserl and later
by Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas, likewise corresponds to the
ontology of differentiation. Time is not an external metric but a
structure of differentiation: the past is held in retention, the future
in protention, the present as the locus of differentiating. Memory
and anticipation become forms of difference held in a *knot* where the
subject emerges as a temporal structure, not a substance.

The phenomenon in phenomenology is the result of a differen-
tiating act held in the field of appearance. This aligns phenomenol-
ogy with the ontology of differentiation: whatever *is*, is only insofar
as it has been differentiated. Yet in phenomenology, difference is pre-
sumed to require directedness (intention), whereas in the ontology
of differentiation, difference may be held even without a subject—as
a field where distinguishability persists without fixation. For exam-
ple, natural processes such as the growth of a plant or the movement
of waves can be understood as differentiating *nodes* that do not re-
quire intentionality but maintain difference through their dynamic
unfolding.

Phenomenology offers a rich account of the inner structure of
the differentiating: how it appears, how it sustains itself, how it be-
comes itself. The model of differentiation, in turn, sharpens and ex-
tends phenomenology—showing that intentionality, embodiment,
time, and phenomenon are forms in which Potentiality holds differ-
ence as a way of being. Phenomenology is difference returning to it-
self in order to distinguish the differentiating. The ontology of dif-
ferentiation goes further: it is difference capable of being held even
in the absence of directedness—as a pure form of resonance.
Nihilism: The Freedom of the
Differentiating After the Collapse of
Foundations

Classical nihilism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy can be seen as a response to the disintegration of stable forms of difference through which truth, morality, and the subject had once been affirmed. The loss of God, meaning, absolutes, and law is not merely a cultural or historical catastrophe—it is a shift in differentiation: the boundaries that once fixed distinctions (good and evil, truth and falsehood, self and non-self) no longer hold. And yet the act of differentiation remains—and finds new ways of being, even where old forms and meanings have vanished.

In *The Ego and Its Own*, Max Stirner radicalizes difference to its limit, demolishing all universals—state, society, humanity, reason—which he calls “spooks.” This is a rejection of all externally imposed distinctions: true difference exists only in the “I.” But Stirner’s “I” is not a metaphysical subject—it is an act of liberation, distinguishing itself from all fixed differences. The “Unique One” does not institute a new order but preserves itself as the capacity to destroy, to differentiate without inheritance. It inherits no distinctions, but creates them as its own act—without grounding them in truth or order. Here, difference is not a form—it is a gesture of freedom.

For Friedrich Nietzsche, nihilism is not an endpoint but a passage. He recognizes the “death of God” as the collapse of external grounds of differentiation: goodness, truth, order are no longer sanctified by the transcendent. In response, Nietzsche proposes a revaluation of all values, wherein the differentiating being becomes the creator of distinctions. This is not freedom *from*, but freedom *for*—an act of the will to power that affirms new forms. Yet even here, there is no fixation: the Übermensch is not a stable subject, but an open pro-
ject—a becoming. The will to power is not domination over others, but difference sustained in tension, in overcoming, in play. Nietzsche is the first to distinguish play as a mode of being after the destruction of foundations: a game without guarantees, without closure, but with rhythm—in which the differentiating continues to move.

Lev Shestov radicalizes the rupture between rationality and existence, rejecting systems—philosophical, theological, moral. He sees in them not forms of difference, but attempts to neutralize it. True difference, for Shestov, emerges only in the experience of the extreme—death, suffering, absurdity. His figure is Job, who accepts no explanation, but holds the difference without answer. Shestov offers no new foundation; he discerns the impossibility of foundation itself. This is not skepticism, but faith as a structure of differentiation without ground—not knowledge, not hope, but an inner act of holding Potentiality in the void.

Albert Camus places the differentiating being in a world that gives no reply. Man seeks meaning, but the world is silent—and absurdity emerges: the rift between expectation and reality, between reason and chaos. Camus offers no exit, but proposes action. Sisyphus, rolling his stone, is the differentiating one who has recognized the absurd but does not cease to differentiate—a forerunner of the Player. Revolt for Camus is not separation from the world, but a form of holding difference without meaning. He shows that even without finale, without God, without truth—differentiation endures. It becomes Play: a form not guaranteed, but an act that continues.

Jean Baudrillard adds to this line the notion of transparent play through his concept of hyperreality and simulacra. In *Simulacra and Simulation*, the distinction between the real and the illusory collapses: the world becomes hyperreal, where signs and images replace reality, creating an endless game of surface differences. For Baudrillard, the loss of the “real” is not the loss of difference, but its radical eman-
cipation: the differentiating acts in a world where all becomes simu-
lacrum, no longer seeking foundation or truth. This is transparency,
where differences exist without depth, without anchorage in reality.
The differentiating continues to play, never fixing what is differenti-
ated, allowing difference to multiply in infinite simulation.

Each of these thinkers—from Stirner’s radical negation, through
Nietzsche’s creative becoming, Shestov’s existential rupture, Camus’s
revolt, to Baudrillard’s transparent simulation—reveals the same in-
sight: even when forms disappear, difference persists. It needs no sys-
tem in order to act. It endures in void, in absurdity, in solitude, in
simulacrum. Nihilism, in the light of the ontology of differentiation,
is not the end of difference, but its purification from all obligation
*to be*—to be truth, to be order, to be something. Difference remains
not as knowledge, not as form, but as possibility. The Player is not
born at the peak of a system, but in its rupture—where difference
no longer requires justification. The differentiating remains—not as
subject, not as truth, but as act, ready for Play.
Postmodernism and Radical
Constructivism: Differentiation Without
Ground

Postmodernism and radical constructivism do not merely extend the nihilistic critique of foundations—they transform the very topology of the differentiating act: from a fixed point to a multiplicity of networks, from truth to relation, from center to play. Here, difference no longer seeks anchoring in truth, essence, or universality; it no longer demands final justification. Difference becomes multiple, fragmentary, operational. Form yields to process, truth to locality, the subject to a point of observation. In this field, guarantees dissolve—but a new intensity of differentiation arises: without center, without endpoint, without telos.

Jacques Derrida's différance does not lead to meaning—it defers,
splits, and disperses it into a sliding chain of traces where meaning
never fully arrives. Every sign refers to another sign; every term de-
fers to a trace. The idea of a center from which all else could be dif-
ferentiated is deconstructed. In place of essence, we find the trace;
in place of knowledge, the residual play of difference that cannot be
seized. The differentiating is not destroyed, but loses its authority.
This is a mode of transparency: difference unsupported by form, but
never disappearing.

Jean-François Lyotard, in refusing grand narratives, turns toward a multiplicity of language games. Within each game, meanings, actions, and subjects are differentiated—but no game can claim a universal scale. Epistemological transparency here is achieved through the rejection of the universal: no truth holds the privilege to differentiate. The act of differentiation ceases to be guaranteed by a system and becomes open, localized, situated. Difference does not vanish, but it is never again “one.” Each game holds its internal differen-
tiations, but between games lies a transparent incommensurability: multiplicity without a substratum.

Michel Foucault dismantles the possibility of differentiation from a central position by showing that differentiating practices—diagnosis, normativity, law—do not belong to the subject, but are embedded in historical power structures. Knowledge is sanctioned differentiation within a regime. Yet difference is never permanently fixed: each regime produces its own normality within a complex historical context. In his later work, Foucault moves toward the idea of self-formation: the differentiating begins to reflect on its own differentiation—not as liberation, but as a practice. Not with a claim to truth, but with attention to boundaries.

In *How Real is Real?*, Paul Watzlawick treats difference as a product of communication, not a reflection of objective reality. His thesis—"we cannot not communicate"—emphasizes that every interaction inevitably produces difference, even if unnoticed. What we take as "reality" is the outcome of communicative acts in which difference is always distorted and embedded in relational networks. Difference, for Watzlawick, is no longer logic but rhetoric; not knowledge, but correlation. Reality emerges as the effect of communication, not as its foundation.

In radical constructivism (Ernst von Glasersfeld, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela), differentiation is not a mirror of reality but an internal operation aimed at sustaining the coherence of a system. Life is autopoiesis: the self-production of distinctions that allow a system to remain differentiating. The "world" is not known but emerges as the result of differentiation. Maturana's notion of structural coupling shows that difference always arises in relation, in coordination, not as reflection of an external object. The subject is not a primary observer but a threshold between systems of differentiation.

This constructivist line—from pragmatic communication to biological autopoiesis—is especially close to our own model. Here, dif-
ference ceases to be representation and becomes an internal opera-
tion of the system, oriented not toward truth but toward continued
distinctness. Constructivism, like the ontology of differentiation, as-
serts that knowledge does not uncover the world but constructs what
can be differentiated—and the differentiating is not an observer but
an emergent node within the Game. In this sense, constructivism is
one of the most profound philosophies of the differentiating after
the disappearance of foundations: it does not fear closure, because
differentiation continues within it.

Theodor Adorno introduces a unique twist on dialectics: a nega-
tive dialectic in which thought does not seek synthesis or reconcilia-
tion of opposites but instead holds onto their irreducibility. His core
thesis—that the thing is not identical with the concept—means that
thinking must preserve the tension of difference rather than resolve
it. For Adorno, this is not merely a method but an ethical and onto-
logical position: a refusal of conceptual violence. Difference does not
lead to new form but reveals the incompleteness of all structure. This
is close to the meta-level of our ontology, where differentiating con-
sciousness stops searching for final form and learns to sustain irre-
ducibility as truth. Adorno’s “negative dialectic” becomes an ethical
act of differentiation—not resolving, not concluding, but remaining
sharply attentive to the boundary of its own form.

Roland Barthes contributes the notion of transparent play
through his concept of the “death of the author.” In his theory, the
text is not the product of the author but a “weaving of differences”,
where meaning arises in the act of reading, not in pre-established in-
tention. The author as center of meaning vanishes, and the differenti-
ating (reader) becomes a co-participant in a game where differences
unfold without fixation. For Barthes, the text is a space in which dif-
ference is not stabilized but opens itself in the endless play of signs.
This is transparency: the differentiating acts without center, without
closure, without truth—sustaining the openness of differentiation it-
self.

Postmodernism and constructivism together affirm that differ-
ence is not substance, not knowledge, not being—it is movement,
play, relation. It arises not from a center but in the space between
centers; it cannot be controlled, but it can be held. This process be-
comes the key to the meta-level in the ontology of differentiation:
the differentiating ceases to be a position and becomes a field. Trans-
parency is understood not as emptiness but as the refusal to fixate.
The Metagame arises as a transition—from knowledge to attentive-
ness, from truth to resonance. In this context, the Game is not chaos,
not result, but a form of being for the differentiating—one that does
not dominate or disappear. It is the ability to hold difference, not for
the sake of truth, but for the sake of differentiation itself. This is Po-
tentiality: unexpressed, but sustained.
# Hinduism: Cycle, Differentiation, and the Game

Hindu thought encompasses a wide range of traditions in which differentiation is not an abstract category but a living ontology—a mode of existence and liberation. There is no unified doctrine within Hinduism, but the various philosophical schools propose different models of the differentiating, its structures, pathways, and limits. From a philosophical perspective, these schools may be viewed as distinct regimes of retaining Potentiality: they do not merely describe the world but articulate schemas of difference through which Potentiality unfolds into knowledge, practice, and release.

Sāmkhya, one of the earliest philosophical systems, presents a strict dualist model of differentiation. All reality consists of two principles: puruṣa (the witness, the differentiating) and prakṛti (nature, the field of differences). Puruṣa does not act and is not involved—it merely perceives, while prakṛti generates all that is mutable, including mind, ego, senses, and body. Here, differentiation is not action but presence: puruṣa differentiates without intervention, without generating distinctions, but by observing them already manifested within prakṛti. Puruṣa does not create difference but recognizes its possibility, remaining transparent and uninvolved. This resembles the pre-reflective phase of differentiation—difference already operates but has not yet become an act—which aligns with levels R₂ and R₃ in the ontology of differentiation: difference is at work but not yet recognized as active. Liberation (kaivalya) in Sāmkhya is achieved when the differentiating detaches itself from the differentiated—when puruṣa ceases to identify with the moving flow of prakṛti.

Yoga, especially as interpreted by Patañjali, continues the Sāmkhya ontology but augments it with practice. If Sāmkhya de-
scribes differentiation, Yoga offers the method of sustaining it. The central goal of Yoga is *citta-vṛtti-nirodha*—the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind. Yogic discipline aims at a shift from reactive differentiation to pure sustaining of difference, corresponding to the transition from level R₃ (linguistic fixation of distinctions) to level R₄ (reflexive subjectivity). The various techniques (asceticism, meditation, concentration) are not directed at the differences themselves, but at enabling consciousness to sustain its own differentiating activity. The *yogi* is one who has learned not merely to differentiate, but to recognize themselves as the differentiating. This is not knowledge but discipline—a becoming of the node that can hold difference.

*Vedānta*, especially in the Advaita Vedānta of Śaṅkara, radically shifts the focus: all distinctions are declared secondary, conditioned by *māyā*—the power of reifying the differentiated as real. *Brahman* is neither differentiator nor differentiated—it is *non-dual* (*a-dvaita*), beyond all difference. In this system, differentiation must be transcended—not as illusion, but as the mistake of fixing distinctions into form. This closely parallels the meta-level of transparency in the ontology of differentiation: the differentiating consciousness recognizes that all differentiation is provisional, and in that recognition renounces fixation. This is not skepticism but apophatic differentiation—where the act of differentiating persists, yet abandons form. Potentiality here touches itself without image. Yet Advaita tends toward ontological unity, whereas Potentiality in our model retains difference in transparency—not dissolving it, but keeping it open.

*Tantra*, particularly in the Kashmir Śaiva tradition, reveals another path: differentiation is not rejected but played. *Śiva* is the differentiator, *Śakti* the energy of differentiation. Together they are not opposed but unified in the act of *Līlā*—divine Play. *Līlā* is not a metaphor but an ontological statement: all is the Game of Potentiality, freely differentiating, creating, sustaining, dissolving, and re-generating difference. Unlike *Sāṃkhya* or Advaita, *Tantra* does not seek
an exit but a retention of difference in freedom, an experience of Potenciality in action. The body, energy, thought, sound—all become modalities of the Game in which the differentiating does not vanish but unfolds. This reveals level R₇—Player, who differentiates without domination, who holds form but does not identify with it. Līlā is not narrative but structure, where form arises and dissolves as a gesture. This makes Tantra especially close to our notion of the Game: differentiation is not overcome, fixed, or dissolved, but revealed as the movement of Potentiality itself, playfully sustaining form without becoming it.

The *Bhakti* tradition, especially as expressed in the *Bhagavad Gītā* and in the teachings of Rāmānuja (Viśiṣṭādvaita—qualified non-dualism), offers yet another regime of differentiation through devotion and love for the divine. In Bhakti, the difference between devotee and God (e.g., Krishna) is not overcome but preserved as the ground of ethical and emotional relation. Rāmānuja emphasizes that Brahman includes differences as attributes: the world and individual souls are real, but exist in unity with the divine. Devotion becomes an act of differentiation that does not dissolve the “I” in God but holds the distinction in love, creating a space of dialogue and participation. This reflects level R₅, where the difference of the other (in this case, the divine) becomes the condition for one’s own being, while remaining vibrant and mobile in the act of devotion. Such difference—gentle but firm—is held not by the intellect but by the heart. It does not dissolve the “I” into Brahman, nor does it isolate it. It is a space of difference that is, by nature, already dialogical: difference as love, not as separation.

All these approaches can be viewed as forms of retaining Potentiality within the differentiating. Thus, Hindu philosophy—despite internal divergences—demonstrates remarkable affinity with the ontology of differentiation. It neither reduces difference to essence nor denies it. Rather, it holds difference as act, as play, as the pulsation
of being. Especially in Tantra and Bhakti, difference becomes not a shadow of unity but a way of touching Potentiality—alive, open, continuous. *Līlā* allows Hinduism to hold cyclicity not as repetition but as freedom: everything returns, but in a new rhythm. Difference does not close but plays—like the breath of Potentiality, revealing itself through world, consciousness, yogic body, and word.
Buddhism: Differentiation Without
Essence

Buddhism offers not so much a doctrine as a method of liberating
differentiation. Unlike systems that seek to establish truth through
fixation of differences, it unfolds a path in which difference is sus-
tained without assertion, and the differentiating is liberated from
attachment to the differentiated. This makes Buddhism not only a
practice but also an ontological inquiry: the subject is not destroyed,
but dissolved into differentiating attention—not through negation,
but through the refusal of fixation.

Early Buddhism rejects the idea of a fixed "self." The concept
of *anattā* (non-self) does not negate subjectivity, but refuses to see
it as something unified, continuous, or identical. What we call the
subject, in Buddhist analysis, turns out to be a temporary configu-
ration of elements: form, sensation, perception, volition, and con-
sciousness. All arise, function, and dissolve. Differentiation happens,
but there is no fixed differentiator. This corresponds to levels of per-
ception and language in the ontology of differentiation: there is re-
action, recognition, even knowledge—but no stable node that holds
difference as a differentiating center. Such a state is close to the meta-
level of differentiation without a center: difference occurs but is not
affirmed, and therein lies its release.

Yet Buddhism does not stop at describing absence. Its attention
is directed not toward the denial of subjectivity, but toward liberat-
ing the differentiating act from suffering—that is, from grasping at
forms. Difference is not denied but is not turned into an object of
possession. To differentiate is not to seize; to know is not to affirm.
Each retention can be released—without disappearance.

In Mahāyāna, this turn takes the form of the concept of śūny-
atā—emptiness. Emptiness does not mean non-existence but the ab-
sence of self-being, that is, the impossibility for the differentiated to be the ground of itself. Everything that exists arises through other differences, in a web of interdependent origination. Every difference is the result of another difference. Everything that appears stable emerges as a pattern of Potentiality: a difference flares up but is not affirmed, leaving behind only the possibility of the next differentiation. This resembles both the emergence of a nodal structure and the transition from stable difference to transparent difference in our ontology: the differentiating recognizes that the differentiated does not ground it. All forms are temporary, all boundaries contextual, all differences conditional—but not false.

In this attentiveness to conditionality, no skepticism arises—but a distinct form of freedom. The Buddha is not one who knows the truth, but one who has ceased to hold onto the differentiated as his own. His enlightenment is transparency—not leading to dissolution, but eliminating fixation. Potentiality, manifested as difference, remains alive, yet no one claims it. Liberation is not the result of action, but the letting go of differences as doctrine or identity. The Buddha differentiates but does not affirm himself as the differentiator.

In Zen Buddhism, this turn becomes radical. Any fixation is interpreted as error—even the idea of enlightenment can become an obstacle. Zen does not teach, explain, or name, but creates conditions in which differentiating attention can be held at the edge between form and its disappearance. Meditation here is not a method, but a space where differentiation becomes pure, yet unformed. This is maximally close to the Game of Potentiality: form is differentiated but not fixed, and each moment is not an event of meaning, but a moment of pure play in which no one plays, yet difference still occurs.

Vajrayāna, or the Diamond Path, adds to this lineage an active use of difference as a tool of transformation. In this tradition, dif-
ference is not only released but also transmuted through ritual, visualization, and symbolism. Practices such as meditation on mandalas or deity visualization allow the differentiating to work with differences—not clinging to them but turning them into a path of liberation. For instance, anger or desire, which in other traditions may be seen as obstacles, are here differentiated as manifestations of energy that can be transmuted into wisdom. This is the meta-level, where the differentiator becomes a Player: actively engaging with differences, not fixing them, but playing with them as temporary forms. Vajrayāna thus intensifies the aspect of the Game, showing that difference can not only be released but also used as a path to transparency.

In this perspective, Buddhism is not a denial of difference, but a revelation of it as an event without a bearer. The subject does not vanish but becomes non-essential: it may emerge and act, yet it is not a foundational ground. The node of differentiation is not predetermined—it arises as a condition of Potentiality but does not remain the center. This allows difference to be free: to occur without closing into a result.

Buddhism is not a system but a way of being in difference without dominion over the differentiated. It does not teach withdrawal from the world but shows how not to cling to forms; it does not negate the subject but reveals its instability; it does not propose a doctrine of Potentiality, but discloses the mode of its operation: as that which appears but is not held. Potentiality in Buddhism is not named but lived as *śūnyatā*. The Buddha is one who differentiates in such a way that difference does not become a chain.

Difference, stripped of support, does not disappear but becomes a current that cannot be seized—but can be traversed. The one walking this path receives not knowledge but transparency toward difference. Buddhism does not form a new system—it demonstrates the limits of systems, revealing Potentiality not as content but as the
rhythm of differentiation. In this lies its deep kinship with our ontol-
ogy: it does not name Potentiality—but lives it.
Daoism: The Fluidity of Differentiation

In Daoism, differentiation is neither denied, asserted, nor dominated—it flows. It is perhaps one of the few teachings in which the act of differentiating is not opposed to the undifferentiated but unfolds as its free, non-coercive form. In the *Dao De Jing*, Laozi presents difference between things not as the result of opposition or conflict, but as a natural consequence of the fluidity of the Dao. He writes: “The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao.” In this is already a radical caution toward any fixation of distinctions: what is differentiated loses its essence the moment it is named.

Dao is not a substance, an object, or a principle—it is a symbol for what we call *Potentiality*: unformed, discernible, but not itself differentiating. Dao does not fix difference; it lets it be. It cannot be expressed, because any expression is already a structure. Daoist teaching does not destroy difference—it reveals its fluidity: difference arises, vanishes, returns, hides—but is never ultimately affirmed.

This becomes especially clear in the concept of *wu wei*—“non-action”, or more precisely, action without imposing form. Wu wei is differentiation without assertion, a way of acting without creating a differentiator. This is akin to transparency as a mode of action without domination: the differentiating moves without fixing itself or the difference, allowing both to arise and dissolve, like waves in a current. Daoist action does not break the flow—it follows it, differentiating within the fluidity. It is not merging with the world but refusing to structure it.

In contrast to the Indian idea of liberation through knowledge or accumulated merit, Daoist liberation is the release of the need to hold distinctions. The Daoist is not the one who knows, but the one who does not interfere with differentiation. This state is analogous to transparency at the meta-level: the differentiating is present but
does not name itself as differentiator, and boundaries may arise but
are never affirmed.

The myth of Pangu, who separates heaven and earth, can be
read as a primal differentiation, followed by all forms. But after Pan-
gu's death, all parts of his body become elements of the world—the
differentiated returns to fluid totality, losing fixed distinction. This
is not a cycle as in Hinduism, but the dissolution of fixation. The
metaphor of breath (*qi*) that permeates all points to difference as
rhythm, not boundary. Qi does not differentiate forms, but allows
them to differentiate. It is differentiation without a differentiator.
Daoist alchemy does not “transform” the body but renders it more
fluid, more open to Potentiality.

Zhuangzi, a central thinker of Daoism, deepens this line through
paradoxes and metaphors that emphasize the relativity of all distinc-
tions. In his famous butterfly dream, he asks: is he Zhuangzi dream-
ing of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming of being Zhuangzi?
This question disrupts the fixed distinction between “self” and “oth-
er”, showing that distinctions are conditional human constructs,
while the Dao lies beyond them, ungraspable. Zhuangzi insists on
spontaneity and the equality of all things (*qi wu*), where differences
exist but have no hierarchy or absolute meaning. His approach in-
troduces the Game as a way not to escape differences, but not to be
caught by them either. His metaphors are not attempts at descrip-
tion but movements of differentiation in language that do not create
truth, but liberate from the need for it.

Daoism is radically non-ontological: it does not seek founda-
tions and does not require truth, since form is temporary, name is
conditional, and structure is fluid. It is a mode of differentiation in
which holding on is no longer necessary, and differentiation returns
to Potentiality without losing action. The Daoist is not the Player,
but may be the environment in which the Player becomes possible.
Daoism becomes not an ethics, not a metaphysics, not a religion, but
a unique mode of differentiating sensitivity, in which *not* differentiating forcefully becomes more important than differentiating correctly.

Daoism not only anticipates the idea of the transparency of the differentiator—it practices it. It is a rare case of a philosophy that not only becomes aware of Potentiality, but lives in accord with its fluidity, without disturbing it with structure. Difference here is not abolished but remains elusive, manifesting simply because it is possible—a process that requires no further justification. Daoism does not deny difference but relinquishes the claim to it. Difference is not an object, not an act, but a breath we breathe without knowing who differentiates.
Christianity: Differentiation as
Revelation, Path, and Return

Christian teaching, as well as the entirety of the Bible, unfolds within a paradigm of differentiation. The first chapter of Genesis is a sequence of distinctions: light and darkness, heaven and earth, water and land, human and animal. The act of creation is presented as an act of differentiation, where being arises not from substance, but from discernibility: "And God separated the light from the darkness... and called." The world arises not from substance but from difference, shaped through the Word. The Word—Logos—functions not merely as a tool of creation, but as the very structure of discernibility.

This differentiation is not static, but unfolds as history, law, covenant, sacrifice, and grace. All of Christian revelation is a path in which differentiation is first given (as commandment), then broken (as sin), then recognized (repentance), restored (atonement), and ultimately fulfilled in freedom (grace). There is a spiral running throughout Scripture—from the first act of differentiation to the eschatological fullness: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:13). This spiral is not a closed loop, but an unfolding: differentiation emerges, is lost, redeemed, returns, and transforms—from primordial act to consummated glory.

The cycle closes not by returning to the origin, but in its fulfillment: differentiation does not disappear, it becomes deified. The end of time in Christianity is not the annihilation of the world, but the transfiguration of difference—a return of Potentiality in its fullness, having passed through form, sacrifice, and love. Christ does not cancel difference, but traverses it—between God and human, life and death, law and grace.
The Cross becomes the site of ultimate differentiation: God made human, dying upon the tree, unites the irreconcilable. It becomes the point of transparency in difference: brought to its extreme, difference does not destroy but reveals the path—through death, toward the freedom to differentiate without annihilating the other. This marks a transition: differentiation, taken to its limit, becomes the beginning of a new life. It is a prototype of the meta-level in the ontology of differentiation: form, brought to transparency, ceases to hold difference by force and thus gives space to freedom.

The apostle Paul articulates the transition from structure to Potentiality through grace: “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). Law is the structure that holds difference, while grace is the holding without structure—a differentiating freedom in which the subject does not cancel the other, but upholds them as brother: “There is neither Jew nor Greek... you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). This is not the erasure of differences but their recognition as intrinsic to the body where difference is necessary, but not dominating. Each one is other, but not isolated. This is difference in shared breath, not in uniform form. Paul’s idea of the Body of Christ is not a metaphor, but an attempt to describe a multiple retention of differentiating beings. In his letters, the Church is not collective consciousness or moral community, but a structure in which each retains the difference of the other as part of a unified act.

Paul’s statement—“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12)—approaches transparency as the regime of holding without form. Here, the differentiating consciousness recognizes that difference is possible but never final; vision occurs but does not capture. This is transparency: difference is held, but not absolutized. Paul does not reject truth but shows that until the end of time, it remains semi-transparent—as a movement toward Potentiality, not a possession of it.
The mystery of the Eucharist is a radical act of differentiating attunement: the many become one body without losing their difference. Bread and wine are simultaneously form and content, matter and meaning, other and one—making the Eucharist one of the most precise images of difference without domination. Here arises the rhythm of the differentiating: not the disappearance of differences, but their co-presence, held not by structure, but by love; not by knowledge, but by gesture. This is not mystification but a structural model of the meta-level of the ontology of differentiation: difference is not annulled but refracted and remains alive.

The Gospel metaphors of light open another path of the differentiating: “You are the light of the world”, “You are the salt of the earth”, “No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bowl, but on a stand”, “The lamp of the body is the eye”, “Let your light shine before others...” These all describe difference not as separation, but as illumination—not power, but visibility, in which difference becomes accessible to others. Light does not form but lets things be seen. Salt does not create but preserves. The eye, as the lamp of the body, points to the inner differentiating which makes the whole body discernible. The command “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48) does not call for an essence, but for differentiating fullness—to be transparent to difference, neither destroying nor asserting it. This nears the ideal of the Game of Potentiality: to differentiate not as master, but as lamp—illuminating but not possessing.

In the apophatic tradition—from Dionysius the Areopagite to Gregory Palamas—difference becomes the only way to approach the unapproachable: the difference of boundary, where there is no object, no affirmation, but presence. God is differentiated through that which cannot be differentiated. This resonates with transparency: difference, brought to its limit, becomes not emptiness but a place of presence without form.
Thomas Aquinas, the medieval theologian, adds a rational and metaphysical aspect to this line through the concept of the *analogy of being* (*analogia entis*). In his *Summa Theologiae*, the difference between God and creation is not erased but becomes the basis of their relation: God infinitely exceeds the world, yet the world participates in His being through analogy. This allows one to speak of God without fixing Him in categories, preserving difference as an open relation. Thomas emphasizes that God is pure act (*actus purus*), while created being is a differentiated participation in it. This correlates with R₄, where the differentiating begins to differentiate the form of its own differentiation, but does so through structured thought, remaining open to Potentiality as the source of all being.

Christianity thus offers a unique reading of the pattern of differentiation as a path: from first distinction to its fulfillment, from form to love, from law to grace. Potentiality is not denied but enters the world, becomes differentiated as Christ, dies as form, and is resurrected as the freedom to differentiate without domination. The Game begins not after the end, but where the end ceases to be a limit and becomes a space of differentiation—not as conclusion, but as transparently held fullness. Difference does not vanish but for the first time resounds as freedom.
The Abrahamic Traditions: Law,
Differentiation, and the Breakthrough to
Potentiality

The Abrahamic religions formulate differentiation not as an episte-
mological category, but as a sacred act: to differentiate is to enter in-
to covenant, to be in relationship, to be called and to respond. Al-
ready in the covenant between God and Abraham lies the principle:
to be chosen is to be set apart. Judaism and Islam, like Christianity,
construct the world not around substance, but around the differen-
tiable—between the pure and impure, the permitted and forbidden,
the righteous and the sinful, the self and the other. Their theology
is a theology of differentiation, where the boundary between the sa-
cred and the profane, the lawful and the sinful becomes not merely
ethical, but ontological.

In Judaism, differentiation is rooted in the very understanding
of being as covenant. The Torah is not merely a set of rules, but a
structure of distinctions that shape the path of the people, the indi-
vidual, and time itself. Each mitzvah is an act of differentiation: to
act is to discern. Dietary laws (kashrut), purification rituals, and the
rhythm of festivals are forms of sustaining differentiation—not as a
theoretical system, but as a rhythm of life. Here, differentiation con-
cerns not only thought but also body, time, food, and gesture. It is
a structure of presence, where everything serves as a reminder that
the world cannot be reduced to a single order. Even the name of God
(YHWH, the Tetragrammaton) is not pronounced—not because it
is forbidden, but because the distinction between the name and the
one it names is preserved as impassable.

Maimonides (Rambam), the great Jewish philosopher of the
12th century, adds a rational dimension to this tradition. In his
*Guide for the Perplexed*, he attempts to reconcile the Torah with