This volume does not ask what life is, but how life becomes readable at all. Its contribution is to relocate the problem of life from definition to pre-definitional readability. Volume II of Kasei-Theory addresses “life” not as a biological entity, but as a post-positional phenomenon that becomes readable only after the world has already been partially structured for reading. Rather than defining life, the volume analyzes the structural conditions under which life becomes readable, without presupposing biological categories or explanatory vocabularies. The analysis concerns a pre-definitional regime in which retention, delay, and history-constraint appear prior to their translation into biological notions such as memory, adaptation, purpose, or survival. These constraints are treated as world-side conditions that do not belong to life itself, but which become readable as “life” only through post-positional translation. Life is neither assumed nor defined; instead, the volume examines how translation from world-language into life-language reduces and stabilizes these constraints. The volume introduces the framework of post-positional surfacing and establishes three weak constraints—retentive drift, delay, and history-constraint—as non-biological precursors of readability. The aim is not to define life, but to explain why life becomes definable at all, and why attempts to define life repeatedly fail. This manuscript represents a working release of Volume II. Kasei-Theory is a multi-volume framework, and the present volume remains structurally open pending integration with Volume III (Dec-Reading). Subsequent revisions may refine terminology and notation without altering the core propositions.
Juza Minamikata (Sat,) studied this question.