Abstract

This treatise examines how human beings perceive the movements of experiential space, incorporate parts of those movements as information, and formalize them into fixed and transmissible forms of knowledge and narrative. Human beings cannot directly control the movements of worldly telos, human telos, state-oriented horizons of expectation, instrumental horizons of expectation, or the social environment. Yet they do not merely endure these movements as given. They sense, undergo, observe, select, and arrange them into intelligible forms structured by causality, value, and direction. This treatise formalizes that process as a theory of narrative–structure circulation. A narrative is not merely a story or a subjective interpretation. It is a form of understanding through which human beings bind the multiple layers of experiential space into a causal chain that simultaneously organizes what is real, what counts as a good life, and what must be done to attain that life. The project begins with two problems raised, but not fully formalized, by Max Weber in Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus. Weber showed how a Calvinist narrative of salvation was transformed into ascetic vocational conduct and the spirit of capitalism. Yet he did not fully theorize the conditions under which a narrative acquires binding force over conduct, nor did he develop a general account of why the forms of conduct produced by a narrative may persist as structure even after the original narrative is no longer believed. This treatise extends Weber's problem beyond the specific case of Calvinism and capitalism by reconstructing it as a general theory of how narratives organize practices, how repeated practices become objectified as structures, and how those structures later coerce human beings after the origins of the narrative have been forgotten. The reversal by which a narrative initially constructed to save human beings returns as a structure that constrains them is what this treatise calls the dialectic of salvation. The central claim is as follows. A narrative acquires binding force when, through the cycle of externalization, objectivation, and internalization, it hardens into doxa—that is, into a self-evident reality that no longer appears to require justification. The layers of experiential space, however, do not change at the same rate. Social environments are transformed relatively rapidly by changes in markets, technology, institutions, population, labor, housing, and media. Instrumental horizons of expectation adjust more slowly because they are embedded in institutions, networks, and repeated practices, while state-oriented horizons of expectation persist even longer because they are rooted in human telos and culturally embodied conceptions of the good life. A narrative begins to collapse asymmetrically when changes in the social environment undermine the factual adequacy of an instrumental horizon, while state-oriented horizons and normative imperatives remain in place. This gap is conceptualized as V1: the temporal disjuncture between structural transformation and narrative adjustment. Narrative collapse is therefore not simply the abandonment of belief. It is a process in which a once-effective path ceases to produce the promised outcome while continuing to persist in institutions, norms, and relations. To analyze this process, the treatise proposes a V–Q–C triple-axis framework composed of three analytically irreducible dimensions. The V-axis describes the temporal and distributional form of the relation between narrative and structure. V1 refers to the temporal gap between structural transformation and narrative adjustment; V2 to the intensity with which doxa is internalized by an actor as self-evident reality; and V3 to the distributional breadth of a narrative across both actor and institutional levels. The Q-axis evaluates the quality of existing and alternative narratives. Q1 refers to factual adequacy, Q2 to internal coherence, and Q3 to the character of the structures and relations that a narrative produces or sustains. The C-axis describes the material and social resource conditions of actors. C1 refers to capital that directly sustains survival and safety; C2 to capital that enables performance within a particular field; and C3 to capital that enables departure from an established path or transformation of the structure itself. By distinguishing these three axes, the framework separates the temporal conditions of narrative collapse, the quality of narratives, and the material conditions of performance, exit, and structural transformation. The framework derives five mechanisms of suffering. First, suffering within a narrative occurs when actors with high V2 repeatedly impose the standards of the narrative upon themselves as criteria of personal legitimacy. Second, double-bind suffering occurs when the Q1 of an existing instrumental horizon has declined, yet normative imperatives and a high V3 remain, while low C3 makes both compliance and exit costly. Third, anomic suffering occurs when an existing doxa has lost its self-evidence but no alternative narrative with sufficient Q has been formed. Fourth, suffering under structural coercion occurs when an actor's V2 has declined and the previous narrative is no longer believed, yet its V3 distribution and Q3 control structure persist, while low C1 or C3 blocks survival outside the established path or prevents exit from it. Fifth, guilt through legitimacy attack occurs when multiple narratives remain active within a single actor and the meta-language of one narrative attacks the legitimacy of an instrumental horizon performed under another. These types do not classify persons. Rather, they distinguish ideal-typical mechanisms through which different configurations of narrative, structure, capital, and meta-linguistic conflict produce suffering. The treatise consists of three parts. Part I constructs the formal theory of narrative–structure relations in logical order. It defines narrative, theorizes pre-narrative reality and experiential space, distinguishes supporting structure from produced structure, and develops the concepts of narrative socialization, doxa, the forgetting of origins, narrative collapse, the V–Q–C framework, narrative evaluation, the typology of suffering, and the treatise's relation to existing theories. Part II redescribes the same formal theory in genetic and temporal order. Beginning with worldly telos and human telos, it traces the formation of state-oriented horizons, instrumental horizons, social environments, and the processes of narrative formation, circulation, objectivation, and collapse. It thereby shows how the temporal pathway through which a narrative is formed conditions the topography of its later collapse and the forms of suffering that emerge from it. Part III applies the formal theory experimentally to two distinct experiential spaces: the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism in England, and the collapse of the life-course narrative and structural suffering in contemporary Korean society. The two cases are not identical in historical content or causal context. They are comparable at the level of form: in both, narratives bind state-oriented and instrumental horizons, organize practices, become objectified as structures, and later coerce human beings after their origins have been forgotten. Methodologically, the treatise adopts the Weberian ideal type as its principal analytical tool and aims not at closed-system causal proof but at the formalization of generative mechanisms and demi-regular patterns that recur, without recurring identically, within open experiential spaces. Because doxa, V1, V2, V3, Q3, and the conditions of the C-axis are not directly observable through any single indicator, they must be examined indirectly through the convergence of institutional indicators, discursive materials, patterns of conduct, in-depth interviews, historical sources, and distributions of capital. In this sense, the treatise is not a completed empirical study but a theoretical groundwork, or Grundlagenarbeit, for subsequent historical-sociological, qualitative, and quantitative research. It does not seek to offer a closed grand theory capable of capturing the whole of reality. Rather, it provides a formal coordinate system through which phenomena often treated separately—narrative collapse, the inertia of doxa, structural coercion, anomie, self-blame, and unequal capacities for exit—may be compared and analyzed within a common theoretical language. At the same time, the treatise acknowledges that its own theory is itself a form of knowledge produced by selecting and arranging particular movements of experiential space. Narrative–structure circulation, the forgetting of origins, the V–Q–C framework, and the typology of suffering are not reality itself but formal languages that temporarily stabilize particular movements of reality in order to make them intelligible. Their validity therefore cannot be secured by internal coherence alone. The theory must remain open to revision and expansion through its encounter with new evidence, counterexamples, and other experiential spaces. What the treatise seeks to prevent is not theoretical incompleteness as such, but the possibility that theory might forget its own historical origins and conditions of application and thereby harden into another doxa. The practical implication of this treatise is not the imposition of a new correct narrative. What is required after narrative collapse is not the elimination of narrative, but the cultivation of Bildung and a narrative ecology that enable individuals and communities to compare multiple narratives and evaluate their Q-axis conditions. They must be able to ask how adequately a narrative interprets reality, how coherently its core propositions and practical directives are connected, and what kinds of institutional and relational structures it produces. Such a capacity is a condition for moving beyond both first naïveté, in which a narrative is accepted as self-evident reality, and cynicism, in which all narratives are dismissed as mere fabrication, toward a second naïveté: a stance in which one recognizes that narratives are constructed yet still relates to them critically and responsibly. This treatise therefore does not ask whether human beings should possess narratives at all. Rather, it seeks to provide a formal language for asking more precisely which narratives should be chosen, under what conditions, through what critical processes, and with what structural consequences.