Publicness as the Meta-Logic of Human Action——A Coordinate Comparison Based on Agential Rationality

Publicness,individuality,privateness,and stateness are not only core agential categories for understanding the forms of human existence but also fundamental modes of organizing human operations.They concern the pathway selection of governance.This article employs the nature-society-state praxis as its coordinate framework,conducting a multidimensional comparative analysis across theoretical pathways,empirical contexts,interactive relationships,composite spatiotemporal dimensions,and gradients.Publicness embodies the collaborative attribute of collective production and communal life;individuality manifests as a capability-based attribute rooted in individual survival and development;privateness represents a rights-based attribute centered on subjective freedom and resource control;stateness denotes an attribute of political governance and administrative management founded on the allocation and configuration of power resources.As the meta-logic of human action,publicness—with communal association as its pure form—integrates the agential forces and relational configurations of individuality,privateness,stateness,and the public.It thereby constitutes the constitutive nature of public administration.