What a Satisfactory Theory Keeps

In practice

Keep reason and impartiality: judgments backed by reasons, interests weighed without arbitrary exemption — the minimum conception survived every unit that followed it. Keep the wide community: everyone with interests is inside the count, and every century's worst arguments were boundary frauds. Keep consequences: a theory blind to outcomes did not survive Unit 4's defenses, and no satisfactory theory ignores what its verdicts do to people. Keep persons: the transplant room taught that sums need walls — some things are not counted because they are not for sale. Keep character and care: rules were always hoping for people who would need them least, and the near-and-far settlement gave each half its province. Keep desert: treating people as they deserve — answering their choices rather than managing their futures — is how a theory respects agency instead of administering it. What emerges is not an eleventh theory. It is a discipline: multiple strategies, each checking the others — convergence as confidence, the whistleblower's case; divergence as a map of what is genuinely at stake, the surgeon's. The course's promise was never a formula. It was that falling behind would always be recoverable: every idea numbered, every number's ancestors known, every claim carrying its receipt. The satisfactory theory, if it arrives, will be built by people who argue this way — reasons aloud, sources public, corrections welcome. Start anywhere. Follow the numbers back.