Relations and “good reasons”

Relation is a gratuitous act of the subject; we are put in relation with the other who means something to us without waiting for anything in return, and nothing is more antithetical to this dimension of the relation than the logic of an exchange for utilitarian purposes. The networks of relations in which each of us is immersed and which has its own life-in the sense that they do not completely depend on us, but they still need our willingness to carry them forward and to care for them-constitute the most sensitive and yet the least analyzed part of social activity. Of course, at the base of every relation is an affective dimension, but it would be incorrect to confine the relation to just the emotional dimension. Relation also arises from a more general instance that if it encounters the network of social rules from one side and freely chosen affinity from the other, it goes beyond these dimensions: it includes it but goes beyond establishing a new space between subjects, that of a relation that has its own life.