Possession

Use in the book

At 230c Socrates speaks of the person “having” decent gain or base gain. The later proposed definition then makes gain a possession acquired under one of two conditions: with no expenditure, or with less spent than received (231a). This is a change of focus from a disposition of persons to a relation between something acquired and the acquisition’s cost.

The feast tests the first branch. A guest spends nothing but acquires disease; the companion denies that this is gain. Health acquired from a feast, by contrast, is gain. The same verb and noun family can describe both outcomes, so the act of acquisition alone is insufficient. Socrates explicitly concludes that acquiring any possession whatever is not gain.

The second branch leads to gold and silver. Again, the bare fact of acquiring more cannot determine gain until the relevant worth is specified. The object’s desirability matters independently of the numerical addition. At 231e Socrates accordingly asks whether what has worth is worth possessing, then whether what is worth possessing is beneficial. The perfect infinitive focuses on having the thing as a condition, rather than the excitement or success of getting it.

This progression does not prove that “acquisition” and “gain” are never interchangeable in ordinary speech. It establishes the companion’s willingness to exclude acquisitions that are bad for their recipient. The philosophical pressure lies in the breadth of the exclusion. If the final account makes every gain beneficial by definition, the original distinction between decent and base ways of gaining may have been displaced rather than answered. It remains possible for an acquisition to count as a financial profit and yet not be worth possessing on an all-things-considered assessment.

The lexical distinction also guards against treating possession as automatically stable or secure. The dialogue asks about having and acquiring, but does not discuss legal title, ownership rights or whether the recipient can retain what is obtained.

Places to read

1. 231aπᾶν κτῆμα ὃ ἄν τις κτήσηται — The first proposed account identifies gain with a suitably acquired possession.
2. 231bνόσον κτήσηται — Disease tests the breadth of acquisition.
3. 231bτὸ ὁτιοῦν κτῆμα κτήσασθαι — Any acquisition whatever is explicitly ruled insufficient.
4. 231eΝαί, κεκτῆσθαι — The companion accepts possessing as the completion of worth.

Translation in this edition

The edition’s Key Words expressly distinguishes κτᾶσθαι “acquire” from κεκτῆσθαι “possess.” At 231c Burnet’s “acquires more” depends on a reported later-hand reading; that textual choice affects the quantitative definition but not the basic distinction between acquisition and possession. See Text and apparatus for its limits.

Use in the book

The defining paradox is that every person can be sole heir of the world. I.29 does not resolve this by subtracting the inheritance of other people; their equal inheritance makes one’s own greater, because the fellow enjoyers themselves become treasures. Possession has changed its governing relation. What is owned through love and enjoyment need not be unavailable to anyone else.

This enlarged sense does not simply make outward things imaginary. I.38 insists that they serve best in their proper places. The sun need not be removed from the sky and lodged in a private room to become one’s own. The decisive addition is a suitably formed recipient: clear sight, generosity, capacity for delight at a distance, and joy in others’ felicity. The possessor’s excellence matters more than a nominal title to everything.

II.79 explores two apparently contrary desires. A person wants everything for himself and also wants companions to whom his joys can be told and whose happiness can be shared. Divine giving makes the desires mutually enriching. Others do not merely tolerate one’s enjoyment; their responsive lives provide part of its substance. This account depends on goods whose use can be communicated without depletion, and on a spiritual interpretation of relation that should not be mistaken for ordinary rules of acquisition.

The practical consequence is tested in IV.39. The world is possessed as a theatre of virtues because it sustains persons toward whom care, fidelity, prudence, and love can be exercised. To claim universal possession while refusing concern for others would contradict the mode by which possession becomes real. Inward esteem and outward care belong to one account.

Finally, IV.96 explains why celestial riches can initially seem irrelevant. Familiar meditation changes the apprehension: remote things become near and what seemed unconnected with the self appears truly its own. Ownership therefore requires recognition, but recognition is recognition of an offered relation, not permission to seize goods. Traherne’s attack on false proprieties opens an ethical and contemplative critique; it is not a detailed replacement for civil property law.

Places to read

1. I.29Every person’s sole inheritance enlarges rather than diminishes that of every other.
2. I.38Things serve best in their proper places; worthy enjoyment requires an excellent recipient.
3. II.79Private possession and shared enjoyment are reconciled through the value of companions.
4. IV.39The world is possessed as the theatre of care and the exercise of virtues.
5. IV.96Meditative familiarity discloses celestial things as genuinely one’s own.

In this edition

Possession here often exceeds legal ownership without simply abolishing it. Propriety retains the older meaning of property or a rightful relation of belonging; its context determines whether the relation is praised or criticized.

Use in the book

In Fusées I, love wishes to go out of itself and merge with a victim while preserving a conqueror's privileges. Union and domination are thus simultaneous, not successive stages. The claim that ownership corrupts a generous taste for prostitution makes exclusivity ethically suspect: what appears to protect love may turn another person into territory.

The later prophecy in Fusées XXII reverses the political valuation. Baudelaire claims that property has already disappeared in principle with the abolition of primogeniture and imagines revolutionary heirs losing their last morsel. This is his polemical judgment, not a neutral history of property law. The notebook does not reconcile its distrust of intimate ownership with its attachment to inherited hierarchy. Reading the two together discloses a tension between generosity as a relation and property as a structure of continuity.

Fusées XXII also makes a respectable bourgeois wife the ideal kept woman: legality has perfected the financial transaction it supposedly excludes. The target is less the unmarried woman's status than a world in which money supplies the final criterion of worth. Mon cœur mis à nu XCVII's attack on commerce develops the same suspicion that apparently virtuous exchange may conceal a demand for more in return.

Places to read

1. Fusées Imais il est bientôt corrompu par le goût de la propriété — Ownership is named as a corruption of love’s initial generosity.
2. Fusées Ià la fois de l’ange et du propriétaire — The supported mistress’s keeper combines benevolence and mastery.
3. Fusées XXIILa propriété avait disparu virtuellement avec la suppression du droit d’aînesse — A polemical institutional claim gives property a different value.
4. Fusées XXIIl’idéal parfait de la femme entretenue — The prophecy turns legal respectability into perfected financial dependence.

Translation in this edition

The edition uses ‘ownership’ in the erotic argument and ‘property’ in the institutional argument, a productive contextual distinction within the same French word. It follows the printed entreteneur as ‘the man who keeps a mistress’; the translator's note explicitly rejects an online reading entrepreneur. This matters because the immediate figure is a sexual patron, even though commercial imagery surrounds him. ‘In principle’ for virtuellement avoids treating the historical assertion as a claim that all property literally ceased to exist.