Conceptual Foundation

Structural Ethics

Critique of Substance

A path is continuing connection in an open process. A school, for example, continues through teaching, relationships and shared practices, even as people and routines change. Path Ethics takes a process-ontological view of its existence: through activities and relationships that continue over time.

A-A-P keeps the initials of the German terms Autonomie, Anschlussfähigkeit and Persistenz. In English: autonomy, connectivity and persistence.

Historical Foundation

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

Konzept: Conatus

Each thing strives to persist in its being.

*In path ethics:* Conatus is the precursor to path persistence. Being-preservation is not a static state, but active resistance to decay.

Alfred N. Whitehead (1861-1947)

Konzept: Process

The world consists not of things, but of events (actual entities).

*In path ethics:* Whitehead provides the ontology for path ethics: A path is a 'society' of events that transmit a common form.

Gilbert Simondon (1924-1989)

Konzept: Individuation

The individual is never finished; it is a permanent process of individuation.

*In path ethics:* For Simondon, technology is not a tool, but a way of existing. Path ethics uses this for hybrid systems.

Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998)

Konzept: Connectivity

Communication only occurs when it connects to previous communication.

*In path ethics:* The core concept A₂ (connectivity) comes directly from systems theory. Without connection, the path dies.

Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995)

Konzept: Rhizome & becoming

Connections without a centre: no beginning, no end, only “middles” – multiplicity rather than a unity-tree.

*In path ethics:* Rhizome and becoming conceive paths as networked, open linkage and continuous variation – alongside sequential connection and event ontology.