Relational traits like rulership can detach from their needed counterpart and persist alone

Evidence

We encounter here a peculiar sociological form-type: where characteristics of an element can originate only in the relation between this and another element, and can derive their content and significance only from this relation; yet these characteristics come to be essential qualities of the element and no longer depend on any interaction. The fact that one is the ruler presupposes an object of one’s domination; yet the psychological reality can, to a certain extent, evade this conceptual necessity. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 6725

Categorization

• DEFINE: Articulates Simmel’s core move: a property born in interaction can harden into an internalized quality no longer requiring the interaction.
• XREF: connects to: Rulers administer enjoyment to subjects until it is extinguished in fixed entertainments; Interests are relational and can include other beings without ceasing to be one’s own. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 558; Loving ecological relationships can be destroyed while their material systems persist — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 895