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cooperation as not derived from egotism


i. Consider the simple enjoyment of our own bodily well-being (contentment, comfort, and the like) or pleasant food or the like:  these are examples of a private good.  The crudest version of so-called egotism would be one who lives for this experience alone: everything else is just a means toward that end.

ii. If that were the only thing we could enjoy, then our public actions (as well as the objects of those actions) would have only an instrumental value , but . . .

iii. we often take delight IN acting, so action is not always merely instrumental.  This kind of delight is most obvious when we act so as to enjoy "concupiscible" goods.  You might say that we live to act rather than we act to live or to obtain some future reward.  

iv. And among those actions that we delight in most are those interactions with other individuals whereby we enjoy the interaction itself as an object OR we cooperate with others so as to create something that can exist only inasmuch as it is shared by many: in any case, a common good is thereby shared by many.

v. In those situations, one is neither egoistic nor altruistic.  For there is no thematization of the self as such and in contrast to the other.  No deliberation about which is to be preferred and which is to be instrumentalized.  There is just the simple desire to live and act together.  

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