foreclosure

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Foreclosure, in the ethical sense, occurs when a regime closes the viable possibilities of some beings so that another trajectory can flourish. It turns their becoming into material for other projects, rather than sustaining possibilities that can continue together. This is more specific than the exclusion of alternatives that accompanies every constraint or act of form-taking.

Explanation

AB distinguishes ordinary conflict, rationing and limitation from the destruction of others’ viable futures. Irreversible harm, entrenched domination and captured judgment name severe ways such closure can become durable. An ethical regime is not required to preserve every imaginable possibility, including projects that destroy others.

PB states the substantive demand to sustain compossible becomings and then explores a separate categorical model. Its non-collapse and future-preservation conditions are proposed formal representations; neither mathematical coherence nor local compatibility establishes ethical bindingness or globally compatible composition.

RB3 applies the distinction to animal production and constitutional limits on calculated aggregate benefit. Shared vulnerability does not itself justify extraction. Emergency action may require choosing under loss, but the sources demand the least foreclosure with a path to repair rather than making emergency exclusion ordinary governance.

Scope and attribution

The ethical entry preserves the source’s separate ontological and formal uses without merging them into a single unrestricted definition.

AB — The Actual Book

Regime foreclosure differs from ordinary selection among possibilities.

Occurrence locators: 158, 172, 174, 175, 176, 181, 182, 183, 185, 186, 191, 193, 195, 196, 197, 208, 209; Glossary: 225; Notes: 248; Appendix: 279, 281.

PB — The Possible Book

Ethical non-foreclosure and its explicitly limited formal models remain separate.

Occurrence locators: 64, 105, 106, 107, 147, 155, 175, 176, 177, 179, 180, 181.

RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being

Source-verified occurrence; see the printed-page references below.

Occurrence locators: 295.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

Animal and AI cases test coexistence, aggregate benefit and emergency limits.

Occurrence locators: 190, 192, 206, 219, 220, 229, 239, 247, 258, 315, 318; Living in a World of Relations: 345.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.