  According to Yorck, the characteristics of human psychology and the economy of primary life delimit the course of history, since historical life merely repeats or amplifies the primary stances of consciousness. Although there is thus a natural ground for history, Yorck is at pains to emphasize that the three psychological functions outline “possibilities” only, without any inbuilt teleology or fixed equilibrium, or a relation to “an unchanging ordo” as a permanent backdrop for history (ST, p. 4). Against such approximations of history to nature, Yorck argues for a thoroughly historical conception of the historical: “History has nothing of the isolation [Selbständigkeit] of the natural [order]” (ST, p. 6), but rather, in each of its phases, history is self-reflexively involved in its own historicity—“as the ferment of its aliveness”—and thus opens itself to the ever new “historical contrapposto” (ST, p. 6). Nothing is exempt from historical change. Philosophical categories through which the world is understood are historical products of life and hence inextricably bound up with the historicity of humankind. For instance, Yorck explicitly claims that the category of “being” is itself “a result of life” (ST, p. 8). This liberates history from all relation to an unchanging, fixed point of reference outside historical  life.[16] 