I was thinking today about the fact that it's precisely the lesser nature of private goods as opposed to common goods that makes them uniquely precious and meaningful expressions of love.
For the unaware, the distinction between common and private goods has nothing to do with private property or communism or anything like that, but is a central categorization in ancient and Medieval philosophy of the good things that can be given and received and enjoyed. A private good is any good that is diminished in being shared with another. The classic examples are material goods like food, resources, etc. If I bake a pie, my giving you pie means there is less pie for me to enjoy. If my people gives food or water or money or oil or gold to yours, there is less for us to use. Common goods, in contrast, are goods that are not diminished in being shared. This category is typically understood with reference to intellectual goods, political and social goods, and spiritual goods. If I know something, the fact that you also know it in no possible sense diminishes my knowledge. In a truer sense, there are common goods that can *only* be enjoyed in common with another person or persons. I cannot enjoy the good of marriage alone, nor the good of political community. St. Augustine argues that God is a good that can only be had in common with others, that must be shared with others if we are to possess it--and, going even farther, that our possession and enjoyment of God, the Trinitarian God who is love, is not only not diminished, but actually increased the more we give him away, and the more we share him in common with others.
In a straightforward sense, then, common goods are simply superior to private goods, and superior precisely in their connection to relation and therefore to love, human and divine. Love is a common good, and in a sense the exemplar for all other common goods.
Still, it occurred to me today that it is also precisely the lesser nature of private goods that allows them, in actual human life, to often express and create love in a uniquely powerful way. The very fact that there is a limited amount of them, that they are diminished when they are shared, makes it all the more precious when they *are* shared, when they are given. Giving knowledge, etc, doesn't diminish my enjoyment of it, but increases it--but then, so often "giving knowledge" can be just a way to make myself feel important for having knowledge, or for giving it, knowing full well that I lose nothing in so doing.
Giving food, or money, when there is only so much of it, when the fact that I give it to you means there is less of it for me--it is this which, in human life, both expresses and ensures the reality of love, its truthfulness, even its proper commonality. Merely giving common goods does not necessarily mean that I am not treating love itself as a private good, enjoyed alone and diminished by giving. To give another something of which there is a limited amount is to express, more than anything else, the reality, essential to love, that my good, the good of love, is found precisely in our relation, that their good is in fact, to this extent, simply my good. It expresses something of love, human and divine, that would remain unexpressed if we only had common goods to share with one another. As the Gospel would have it, to give only out of and in abundance does not express love so much, or in the same way, as to give out of poverty.
And then I was thinking about the various private goods we can give or receive, and it occurred to me that in this life, perhaps the most limited good of all is time itself. In a limited life, bounded by birth and death, devoting a moment of time to a particular person, as opposed to any other purpose at all, is probably the most meaningful thing that can be given, precisely because it is so limited, because we are so limited within it. Life is very short, and human capacities are very small. I can only do so much in a moment, or an hour, or a lifetime--in a larger sense, not very much at all. To give *that* to another is to express, more than almost anything else, the reality of love as a good of relation, as a good found simply in willing the good of the other.
And then I began to think about how when God wanted to express the infinity of his love, the perfect love of the Holy Trinity, he did it by becoming man, by becoming a limited creature, with a limited human reason and will, and a lifetime of moments. Catholic tradition is replete with reflections on the life and the Cross of Christ, on each day and hour and moment spent with Mary and Joseph and his disciples and others, on each wound and each drop of blood, given by him to each and every one of us, individually and together. When he gave these things to us, limited goods exhausted in the giving, it cost him everything, including his life. When he gives himself to us in the Eucharist, it is precisely as food, broken and shared and diminished and consumed. This is how God chooses to express his own infinite and eternal love.
Anyway, it's worth a thought.
For the unaware, the distinction between common and private goods has nothing to do with private property or communism or anything like that, but is a central categorization in ancient and Medieval philosophy of the good things that can be given and received and enjoyed. A private good is any good that is diminished in being shared with another. The classic examples are material goods like food, resources, etc. If I bake a pie, my giving you pie means there is less pie for me to enjoy. If my people gives food or water or money or oil or gold to yours, there is less for us to use. Common goods, in contrast, are goods that are not diminished in being shared. This category is typically understood with reference to intellectual goods, political and social goods, and spiritual goods. If I know something, the fact that you also know it in no possible sense diminishes my knowledge. In a truer sense, there are common goods that can *only* be enjoyed in common with another person or persons. I cannot enjoy the good of marriage alone, nor the good of political community. St. Augustine argues that God is a good that can only be had in common with others, that must be shared with others if we are to possess it--and, going even farther, that our possession and enjoyment of God, the Trinitarian God who is love, is not only not diminished, but actually increased the more we give him away, and the more we share him in common with others.
In a straightforward sense, then, common goods are simply superior to private goods, and superior precisely in their connection to relation and therefore to love, human and divine. Love is a common good, and in a sense the exemplar for all other common goods.
Still, it occurred to me today that it is also precisely the lesser nature of private goods that allows them, in actual human life, to often express and create love in a uniquely powerful way. The very fact that there is a limited amount of them, that they are diminished when they are shared, makes it all the more precious when they *are* shared, when they are given. Giving knowledge, etc, doesn't diminish my enjoyment of it, but increases it--but then, so often "giving knowledge" can be just a way to make myself feel important for having knowledge, or for giving it, knowing full well that I lose nothing in so doing.
Giving food, or money, when there is only so much of it, when the fact that I give it to you means there is less of it for me--it is this which, in human life, both expresses and ensures the reality of love, its truthfulness, even its proper commonality. Merely giving common goods does not necessarily mean that I am not treating love itself as a private good, enjoyed alone and diminished by giving. To give another something of which there is a limited amount is to express, more than anything else, the reality, essential to love, that my good, the good of love, is found precisely in our relation, that their good is in fact, to this extent, simply my good. It expresses something of love, human and divine, that would remain unexpressed if we only had common goods to share with one another. As the Gospel would have it, to give only out of and in abundance does not express love so much, or in the same way, as to give out of poverty.
And then I was thinking about the various private goods we can give or receive, and it occurred to me that in this life, perhaps the most limited good of all is time itself. In a limited life, bounded by birth and death, devoting a moment of time to a particular person, as opposed to any other purpose at all, is probably the most meaningful thing that can be given, precisely because it is so limited, because we are so limited within it. Life is very short, and human capacities are very small. I can only do so much in a moment, or an hour, or a lifetime--in a larger sense, not very much at all. To give *that* to another is to express, more than almost anything else, the reality of love as a good of relation, as a good found simply in willing the good of the other.
And then I began to think about how when God wanted to express the infinity of his love, the perfect love of the Holy Trinity, he did it by becoming man, by becoming a limited creature, with a limited human reason and will, and a lifetime of moments. Catholic tradition is replete with reflections on the life and the Cross of Christ, on each day and hour and moment spent with Mary and Joseph and his disciples and others, on each wound and each drop of blood, given by him to each and every one of us, individually and together. When he gave these things to us, limited goods exhausted in the giving, it cost him everything, including his life. When he gives himself to us in the Eucharist, it is precisely as food, broken and shared and diminished and consumed. This is how God chooses to express his own infinite and eternal love.
Anyway, it's worth a thought.
