This is a parallel to the already discussed case of the individual person: internal continuity is a condition of external difference. In a world without boundaries or patterns, although in one sense everything would be different, by the same token everything would be the same. We are what we are by virtue of our defining, delimiting (in each case, literally ‘bounding’) qualities, which nonetheless paradoxically liberate (‘unbounding’) us into being what we are: what we are is disclosed equally by what we are and are not. Which is why groups cease to cohere if they have no criteria of
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