The Equivalence of Several Basic Theorems for Subdifferentials

Several different basic tools are used for studying subdifferentials. They are a nonlocal fuzzy sum rule in (Borwein et al., 1996; Zhu, 1996), a multidirectional mean value theorem in (Clarke and Ledyaev, 1994; Clarke et al., 1998), local fuzzy sum rules in (Ioffe, 1984, 1990) and an extremal principle in (Kruger and Mordukhovich, 1980; Mordukhovich, 1976, 1980, 1994). We show that all these basic results are equivalent and discuss some interesting consequences of this equivalence.