Finite and Infinite Games

by James P. Carse

It is apparent to infinite players that wealth is not so much possessed as it is performed.

Creativity is a continuity that engenders itself in others. “Artists do not create objects, but create by way of objects” (Rank).

For this reason it can be said that where a society is defined by its boundaries, a culture is defined by its horizon.

“just as the blowing of the winds preserves the sea from the foulness which would be the result of a prolonged calm, so also corruption in nations would be the product of prolonged, let alone ‘perpetual’ peace” (Hegel).

When we ask where an audience will find its own audience, we discover the division inherent in all audiences. Each side of a conflict comes with its own partisan observers. Inasmuch as the conflict is expressed within the bounded playing of a game, the audience is unified—but its unity consists in its opposition to itself.

We cannot become a world without being divided against ourselves.

able to see the beginning and the end simultaneously.

One is speechless before a god, or silent before a winner, because it no longer matters to others what one has to say. To lose a contest is to become obedient; to become obedient is to lose one’s listeners. The silence of obedience is an unheard silence. It is the silence of death. For this reason the demand for obedience is inherently evil.

The psychotherapeutic relationship will become horizonal only when both patient and therapist realize that the Freudian myth does not determine the meaning of what happens between them, but offers the possibility that their relationship will have a story of its own.