maxim:Thou shalt discuss the compatibility of the new propositions with
those which are already instituted, in such a way as to maintain them all in
the same common world that will give them their legitimate rank.Contrary
to what the presence of this requirement in the slot reserved for val-
ues may suggest, it iswith the second(which belonged, however, to
the packet of facts), that of institution, that it is most appropriately
grouped. In order to define assured essences, we must, before the dis-
cussion ends, be quite sure that the entities that are candidates for the
establishment of the collective find their rank and place among those
which are already established.
To conclude this section, let us try to summarize in tabular form the
operation we have just carried out and the one on which we are about
to embark. By unpacking the contradictory contents of the two con-
cepts, fact and value, and discovering two pairs of concepts in each
case, we are going to be able to regroup the essential requirements in
sets that are much better formed. This new arrangement will allow us
to respect the commitment we made at the end of the previous section
according to which we decided to abandon the fact-value distinction,
provided only that we could resituate more comfortably the crucial
difference that this distinction did not manage to shelter carefully
enough.
What happens if we regroup the first and third requirements under
the headingtaking into account,and if we regroup the second and
fourth requirements under the headingputting in order?(Now that
these requirements have been placed in more coherent packets, I have
renumbered the essential requirements, for reasons of logic and dy-
namics that will become clear only in the last section.)
Instead of the old distribution of facts and values, we maintain that
this new, much more logical grouping makes it possible for two new
powers to emerge. The first answers the question “How many are
we?” and the second answers the question “Can we live together?”
(Box 3.1).
The Collective’s Two Powers of Representation
We have just traversed one of the four or five most difficult passages of
our itinerary, but there was no way to avoid this effort, since the dis-
tinction between facts and values had for a very long time paralyzed
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