Finite and Infinite Games

by James P. Carse

A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.

There is no finite game unless the players freely choose to play it. No one can play who is forced to play. It is an invariable principle of all play, finite and infinite, that whoever plays, plays freely. Whoever must play, cannot play.

Just as it is essential for a finite game to have a definitive ending, it must also have a precise beginning. Therefore, we can speak of finite games as having temporal boundaries—to which, of course, all players must agree. But players must agree to the establishment of spatial and numerical boundaries as well. That is, the game must be played within a marked area, and with specified players.

The license never belongs to the licensed, nor the commission to the officer.

Finite games can be played within an infinite game, but an infinite game cannot be played within a finite game.

A point of great consequence to all finite play follows from this: The agreement of the players to the applicable rules constitutes the ultimate validation of those rules.

The rules of an infinite game must change in the course of play. The rules are changed when the players of an infinite game agree that the play is imperiled by a finite outcome—that is, by the victory of some players and the defeat of others. The rules of an infinite game are changed to prevent anyone from winning the game and to bring as many persons as possible into the play.

Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.

To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself.

Dramatically, one chooses to be a mother; theatrically, one takes on the role of mother.

A true Master Player plays as though the game is already in the past, according to a script whose every detail is known prior to the play itself.

Surprise causes finite play to end; it is the reason for infinite play to continue.

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.

Training repeats a completed past in the future. Education continues an unfinished past into the future.

“He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (Jesus).

The contradiction of finite play is that the players desire to bring play to an end for themselves. The paradox of infinite play is that the players desire to continue the play in others. The paradox is precisely that they play only when others go on with the game.

The joyfulness of infinite play, its laughter, lies in learning to start something we cannot finish.

Power is never evident until two or more elements are in opposition. Whichever element can move another is the more powerful.

Power is always measured in units of comparison. In fact, it is a term of competition: How much resistance can I overcome relative to others?

If I accept death as inevitable, I do not struggle against mortality. I struggle as a mortal. All the limitations of finite play are self-limitations.

Strength is paradoxical. I am not strong because I can force others to do what I wish as a result of my play with them, but because I can allow them to do what they wish in the course of my play with them.

Unheard silence is not the loss of the player’s voice, but the loss of listeners for that voice.

Evil is never intended as evil. Indeed, the contradiction inherent in all evil is that it originates in the desire to eliminate evil.

Only that which can change can continue: this is the principle by which infinite players live.

Before I can have an enemy, I must persuade another to recognize me as an enemy. I cannot be a hero unless I can first find someone who will threaten my life—or, better, take my life.

a culture does not have a tradition; it is a tradition.

Only by free self-concealment can persons believe they obey the law because the law is powerful; in fact, the law is powerful for persons only because they obey it. We do not proceed through a traffic intersection because the signal changes, but when the signal changes.

Artists cannot be trained. One does not become an artist by acquiring certain skills or techniques, though one can use any number of skills and techniques in artistic activity. The creative is found in anyone who is prepared for surprise. Such a person cannot go to school to be an artist, but can only go to school as an artist.

where a society is defined by its boundaries, a culture is defined by its horizon.

Who lives horizonally is never somewhere, but always in passage.

To keep its definitions clear a state must stimulate danger to itself. Under the constant danger of war the people of a state are far more attentive and obedient to the finite structures of their society: “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).

Metaphysics is about the real but is abstract. Poetry is the making (poiesis) of the real and is concrete. Whenever what is made (poiema) is separated from the maker (poietes), it becomes metaphysical. As it stands there, and as the voice of the poietes is no longer listened to, the poiema is an object to be studied, not an act to be learned. One cannot learn an object, but only the poiesis, or the act of creating objects. To separate the poiema from poiesis, the created object from the creative act, is the essence of the theatrical. Poets cannot kill; they die. Metaphysics cannot die; it kills.

To speak, or act, or think originally is to erase the boundary of the self. It is to leave behind the territorial personality. A genius does not have a mind full of thoughts but is the thinker of thoughts, and is the center of a field of vision. It is a field of vision, however, that is recognized as a field of vision only when we see that it includes within itself the original centers of other fields of vision.

The more we are recognized as winners, the more we know ourselves to be losers. That is why it is rare for the winners of highly coveted and publicized prizes to settle for their titles and retire. Winners, especially celebrated winners, must prove repeatedly they are winners.

The finite player’s interest is not in being healed, or made whole, but in being cured, or made functional. Healing restores me to play, curing restores me to competition in one or another game.

“One may say ‘the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility’” (Einstein).

Gardening is not outcome-oriented. A successful harvest is not the end of a garden’s existence, but only a phase of it. As any gardener knows, the vitality of a garden does not end with a harvest. It simply takes another form. Gardens do not “die” in the winter but quietly prepare for another season.

Genuine travel has no destination. Travelers do not go somewhere, but constantly discover they are somewhere else.

Nature does not change; it has no inside or outside. It is therefore not possible to travel through it. All travel is therefore change within the traveler, and it is for that reason that travelers are always somewhere else. To travel is to grow.

To tell a story for its own sake is to tell it for no other reason than that it is a story. Great stories have this feature: To listen to them and learn them is to become their narrators.

Infinite players are not serious actors in any story, but the joyful poets of a story that continues to originate what they cannot finish.