1.1 Goodness and time-limitation

Here are some examples of the sort of thing I mean when I talk about a precious good:

Take another example:

What do these examples have in common? First, they feature states of affairs, events, objects, and so on that are valuable. The intense, loving relationship between a young child and a parent is certainly good; valuable not only for the parent but also (plausibly) for the child, the ebbing of which is experienced by many parents as a loss. In addition, L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped was a project of astounding esthetic value and cultural significance. Second, these goods are time-limited. The intense love of a child is not something that lasts forever (much to the chagrin of generations’ worth of loving parents). And the very nature of the Christo and Jeanne-Claude piece is its impermanence.

These features are the key elements that explain or ground the preciousness of goods. To begin with an obvious point, precious goods must be, well, good: preciousness is at least in part dependent upon the presence of value. Being hit with a Mack Truck ends pretty quickly; one’s time in the dentist chair is fleeting. But none of these are precious. Indeed, it seems right to say that precious goods of the kind I’m interested in discussing (and that plausibly have the normative significance I see in precious goods) must be intrinsically valuable, or perhaps “finally valuable” or “valuable as an end.”Footnote ⁴ To be, say, merely instrumentally valuable, even if time-limited, is not sufficient to make this particular good precious, at least on my account (one might consider, for instance, a soon-expiring high-limit credit card; of time-limited instrumental value, but not precious). Notice that intrinsic value upon which preciousness can supervene can come in different flavors. For instance, some precious goods may have esthetic value (cf. the wrapped Arc de Triomphe). Some precious goods may have welfare value (the short-lived but intense relationship with one’s small child). In addition, a precious good might instantiate intrinsic value “tout court” – it may just be a good thing (such as, e.g., Moore’s beautiful world) (Moore (1903), §50).

In addition, these goods (to be precious) must be fleeting, fragile, or time-limited. I do not call intrinsic values that are permanent or “hard to take away” precious; rather, this term is reserved for goods that are time-limited in the way specified by the examples above. Now, it is surely the case that all goods are at least to some extent time-limited. Even if we imagine that goods can have that status independently of the existence of human beings, surely the heat death of the universe will destroy whatever good happened to exist. Just because this is true, however, it is nevertheless the case that we can and should talk about goods that are more precious; more time-limited. Preciousness, then, is a scalar phenomenon – the more time-limited an intrinsic good is (other things being equal), the more precious.

1.2 Time and fragility

So far, it would appear that being precious (or the extent to which preciousness is instantiated) is grounded in or explained by two properties, viz., being good, and being time-limited. And while this account is a good start, it needs amendment. Other examples of precious goods seem not to depend on the time-limitedness of the good, per se, but rather something like its fragility – the ease by which it might be taken from us. Take, for instance:

Consider also:

These cases are different than the former. The goods on display here (i.e., the beauty of the canvas, the achievement of the musician) are not – or, at least, not necessarily – time-limited. Suppose, for instance, that the dystonia never develops in the musician; the canvas is successfully preserved. But these goods are nevertheless fragile, precarious, and, it seems to me, precious. Their existence is unstable and subject to being lost.

The notion of fragility in this context calls out for analysis. But this analysis reveals that the differences between strictly time-limited goods and fragile goods are less than one might imagine at first. After all, when the worried musician worries, what, precisely, is he worried about? Presumably, that his career may be lost, that it may end up being actually time-limited or shortened beyond what he would value. When we take care to preserve the ancient canvas, we try to avoid the state of affairs in which it crumbles, lasts less time than we would ordinarily like. Put another way, fragility is typically understood as a paradigmatic instance of a disposition – the disposition to, say, break or in some other way be destroyed under certain conditions. But this disposition can simply be put in temporal language: the disposition to endure for less time.Footnote ⁶

But if this is right, we can make a distinction between what we might call objective time-limitedness of goods (goods that are actually, in point of fact, limited in time), and dispositional time-limitedness of goods (viz., goods that are apt to be time-limited under certain conditions). So, for instance, if the musician’s career never actually ends as a result of focal dystonia, we may say that his career is precious given that it maintains a degree of dispositional time-limitation – “fragility.” One can interpret the relation between fragility and preciousness in different ways. One might say that both time-limitation and fragility ground preciousness. Alternatively, one might cleave the notion of preciousness itself; perhaps dispositional time-limitation yields only a form of dispositional preciousness. For my money, I’m inclined toward the former interpretation, but I won’t argue for that in any strong way here.Footnote ⁷ Though I’ll continue to talk about preciousness tout court, those who wish to mark a distinction between objective and dispositional preciousness are free to do so.Footnote ⁸

1.3 Repetition

Further amendment is required. Importantly, preciousness is not guaranteed simply by the fact that a good is time-limited or fragile. To see this, consider the following case:

I submit that Susan’s experience of her first cup of coffee is not particularly precious, though it is intrinsically good and also time-limited. What is missing between the examples of precious goods I’ve so far outlined and Susan’s, delicious though it may be, cup of coffee? Plausibly: the value contained in this cup of coffee (perhaps the pleasure of drinking it, etc.) is subject to repetition.Footnote ⁹ After all, Susan can have another cup of coffee tomorrow morning, or perhaps even later today.

Consider also:

The esthetic value of the original wrapped l’Arc de Triomphe was precious: time-limited. But surely it is the case that the repetition of this good tempers its preciousness. After all, it will happen again next year, and the next, and so on.

Two notes. First, being subject to repetition must be balanced against being time-limited. Imagine a flower that blooms once per year, and only overnight. This bloom, intrinsically valuable given its beauty, may be highly precious despite being subject to repetition. Thus being subject to replacement or repetition is not sufficient to strip preciousness from a given good; at best it is a tempering device. Second, a lack of repetition is not itself guaranteed to make a good precious. The Grand Canyon, for instance, is not subject to repetition. It is, as Gwen Bradford would suggest, an “irreplaceable good” (Bradford (Reference Bradford2023), (Reference Bradford2024)). But it is not ipso facto precious given its irreplaceability. The Grand Canyon, though finite given the structure of the universe and the laws of geology, lacks any particular time-limitation.

With all this in mind, what does repetition refer to? The answer is far from straightforward. Imagine, for instance, a parent engaged in a particularly intense loving relationship with their young child. Is this relationship subject to repetition? Well, in one sense, no: this child will clearly not be this young again, and hence the particular good of this intense relationship is not repeatable. On the other hand, the parent could have another child, and if they do, one might imagine that they have another relationship with their new child that is in many ways similar. Is the good of the original relationship repeatable? Or not? If the answer here is “yes,” then it would seem as though that intense relationship is a less precious good than I would originally have thought. But if the answer is “no” then it’s hard to see why the esthetic value of the Christo and Jeanne-Claude piece is subject to preciousness-tempering repetition; same for the good obtained by Susan’s morning coffee. After all, this particular wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe; this particular cup of coffee, will not occur again.

To better understand the notion of repetition, I borrow from Bradford’s analysis of irreplaceability. Take the cup of coffee. Intuitively speaking, this good is subject to repetition by, for instance, having another cup of coffee. But, literally, the experience of having that cup of coffee will not be identical – there will be a number of both intrinsic and extrinsic properties that will be distinct (the particular temperature; the particular moment the coffee is had after rousing from sleep; the unique bitterness of this cup given the slightly-harder-than-normal water that went into making it, and so on). Bradford rightly suggests that, when it comes to replacement or repetition, the key is to pick out the relevant properties that determine whether the good is or is not repeated. And put in this way, the question becomes more tractable. The proposal is that a good x is repeated to the extent that the value-instantiating properties of the particular good are repeated. Of course, how we understand this notion will depend on what we think the value-instantiating properties are. For instance, imagine that the value-instantiating properties of a cup of coffee merely include the such-and-such degree of pleasure one obtains from the coffee, of a certain temporal duration t. If that’s right, then that good is not precious and will certainly be repeatable, not just by having another cup of coffee, but by doing anything that grants that degree of pleasure for that particular temporal duration.

However, we may wish to expand our understanding of value-instantiating properties,Footnote ¹⁰ perhaps via a form of perfectionism (Hurka (Reference Hurka1993), Brink (Reference Brink2008), Bradford (Reference Bradford2015) or a so-called “objective list” approach to the good (Fletcher (Reference Fletcher2013), Rice (Reference Rice2013)). For instance, one might imagine that value-instantiating properties of the cup of coffee go beyond the simple pleasure of drinking it, but also include, say, the gustatory or cultural experience involved; perhaps there is a deeper esthetic appreciation one might have of specific elements of this or that coffee brew with a particular single-origin coffee beans, and so forth. If that’s right, then depending on the sort of coffee we’re dealing with, and depending on the sophistication of the consumer’s palate, there may be additional goods derived from this particular cup, making the good less repeatable, more precious. In the case of, e.g., the Christo and Jeanne-Claude piece the value-instantiating properties will be, for instance, its audacity (it’s the Arc de Triomphe!), as well as its grandeur, its delicacy, and so on. But if they choose to repeat their work, these properties will be instantiated again the next year, and the next, making this good subject to repetition.

In addition, we generally regard special relations to others, like children or other loved ones, as not subject to evaluative repetition or replaceability.Footnote ¹¹ For instance, a key objection to some accounts of friendship is what Kristán Kristjánsson calls the “problem of essential substitutability” (Kristjánsson (Reference Kristjánsson2022), 43), viz., the suggestion that the value of a friendship is divorced from the particular person; one could simply substitute one friend or loved one for another were the good-making properties of the other equivalent or superior. But this seems wrong: the value maintained by a particular relation – say, between this particular parent and this particular child, or these particular friends – is dependent upon the particulars (for instance, the particular relationship that has been built up (Jeske (Reference Jeske2024)).Footnote ¹² If that’s right, then any parent’s bond with an individual child will have unique evaluative properties that cannot simply be replicated, even if the proposed replication is by means of another child. If these reflections are correct, and if they can be sustained by an adequate account of such relationships,Footnote ¹³ then we should regard the valuable relationship between young child and parent as being both valuable, time-limited, and not subject to repetition – in other words, precious.

Alternatively, one might adopt something like a subjectivist account of the fundamental value-bearing properties. In this case, the value-instantiating properties of the cup of coffee will depend on the properties instantiated by the coffee that are valued or desired or otherwise taken a pro-attitude toward by the person who consumes it. Perhaps they like its strength, its dark creaminess, its tendency to jolt one into waking life, or its powerful hit of caffeine. Perhaps they just value drinking coffee for its own sake. The relevant good, then, will be subject to repetition to the extent that the objects of this person’s valuing attitudes that explained the value of the original good are repeated – the strength, the darkness, bitterness, the intrinsic coffee-ness, or whatever. And, indeed, such an account seems plausible in the case of the parent and child’s intense relationship. If we’re talking about welfare value for the parent, part of what typically bears value for the parent is not that the relationship is with some child or other, but rather this child in particular. (See, especially, Raz (Reference Raz2001), 25.) Having another child, with which one has such an intense relation, will not be sufficient to repeat the first, given that this will be a different child, valued differently (perhaps because the relationship is one with that child). Of course, if the parent has a different sort of attitude, i.e., they just like to have intense loving relationships with whatever kids are around, then the preciousness of this particular relationship will be diminished, which seems overall like a plausible verdict in light of such a psychology and an underlying subjectivism.

Summing up these ruminations, then, the preciousness of a good seems determined by the following factors:

3.1 Cherishing as attention

So far I have argued that precious goods call for a distinct attitudinal response from agents that I call “cherishing.” But what is cherishing? What does this attitude amount to? My answer runs like this: cherishing seems to me a quasi-cognitive, quasi-affective orientation toward the good in question. I think there are two essential elements of this orientation, though I don’t want to rule out the possibility that there could be others. To begin, it is an appreciation of the good in question. Appreciation, as I understand it here, is a form of attention, and a recognition of the goodness inherent in the particular good. In this way, appreciation of the value of a precious good is in some ways different than the more familiar notion of esthetic appreciation. Typically, esthetic appreciation is understood as a cognition of the value-making properties of an object, understood by a kind of first-personal acquaintance or confrontation.Footnote ¹⁷ For instance, Page (Reference Page2022) suggests that an “appreciative understanding” of an esthetic object involves two key components, viz., “the capacity to form and communicate an appreciative interpretation of an artwork and an experiential sensitivity to the artwork’s particular esthetic character and/or value,” (52). Here esthetic appreciation crucially involves understanding and cognizing the value-making properties of an object, and cognizing those properties as valuable (perhaps first-personally, communicably, and so on). When it comes to cherishing, it seems right not only that one will cognize the relevant properties as valuable, but rather that this valueableness will be part of that to which one directs one’s attention. So cherishing has at least the following feature, viz., a specific orientation toward the goodness of the precious good. Caveat: I want to be careful that cherishing not become too intellectualized. To be attentive to the goodness of some good is not necessarily to be attentive to the goodness of that good under that description, or as an instance of, say, some Platonic form of goodness, etc. It is sufficient, it seems to me, that the attention paid to the good abstract positively from the individual properties that bear value. (So, rather than just paying attention to the feeling in one’s stomach when on a wild roller-coaster, one notices not only this feeling, but also that it is “fun,” “great,” “enjoyable,” or of some positive valence.)Footnote ¹⁸

But cherishing some good g involves more than just attention to, or appreciation of, the goodness of g. Rather, it is to treat the attention to or appreciation of the goodness g as especially urgent or significant; more urgent, more significant, than other occurrent intrinsic values. For instance, one might think that there’s reason to appreciate all goods, but that to cherish a good is to treat the appreciation of that goodness as especially urgent or important, at least in comparison with other goods one may have reason to appreciate. It is an orientation toward paying attention to this good rather than that good (and the goodness they instantiate), insofar as the goodness of the former is especially worthy of urgent appreciation.

So far, the attitude of cherishing is primarily cognitive: to attend to or recognize the goodness of the goods to be cherished. But, as stated before, cherishing has a crucial affective feature, as well. To cherish a good is, at least in part, to revel in its goodness. And by this I mean to grant the good in question a focused, joyful attention. When I cherish, say, my relationship with my young child, I focus my attention on its goodness, and that attention will have a particularly positive affect or valence: it will, as I suggest, be joyful. However, I want to be careful here. Different theorists have different understandings of the nature of “joy.” According to Roberts (Reference Roberts2019), for instance, one is joyful only insofar as one is aware of a concern of theirs being satisfied. But this seems too bloodless for cherishing (even if it is an adequate account of joy). Rather, what I mean by a “joyful” attention is something more intense: an occurrent, positive affective state directed toward the particular good in question. (Cf. Watkins, et. al. (2017).) To sum up, then:

To hold that we have reasons to cherish (in the sense I mean) precious goods is commensurate with common sense. In the case of the worried musician, our advice would be, likely, to try to reduce stress, to avoid activities that are likely to lead to the development of focal dystonia, and so on. But our advice will also touch on the right sort of attitude he should display toward his career while it remains: “enjoy or embrace it while it lasts”; to gather, as it were, one’s rosebuds while one may. And we would regard failure to do so as a form of normative failure. If the musician failed to attend to the goodness of his career – failed to give its goodness the sort of focused, joyful attention that is constitutive of cherishing – and lost it, we would feel a sense of tragedy. Tragedy not only in the fact that his career is now gone – tragic thought that is – but that he didn’t property attend to its goodness while it was around.

3.2 Some clarifications

So far I have argued that precious goods call for a specific form of psychological response on the part of agents, viz., cherishing. But there are some clarifications I’d like to discuss here lest my view be thought too narrow or burdensome.

To begin, precious goods call for a cherishing response. “Call for” is normative in content, viz., grounds a reason to cherish the good in question. But the reason to so cherish goods can, and often will, be overridden by contrary concerns. For instance, as many new parents will realize, the activity of cherishing one’s intense relationship with a young child can be exhausting, draining, frustrating, and so forth. Sometimes parents just “need a break,” and need to forget their parenthood for a space of time. Of course, the reason to actively cherish one’s relationship with a child tells against such an activity; doing so will certainly not involve focused, joyful attention on the good of such a relationship. But that’s OK – the normative significance of precious goods can be overridden given sensible prudential, moral, or other demands that tell against such an attitude.

In addition, though precious goods certainly call for a cherishing response, I do not mean to suggest that one cannot or should not cherish robust rather than precious goods. We may perfectly rationally, say, cherish the Mona Lisa despite its robustness. But I do claim that robust goods do not ground reasons to cherish in the same way. We may have, say, permission to cherish the Mona Lisa, but no command to do so. The reason to cherish precious goods seems to have the form of a requiring rather than simply permitting reason (cf. Gert (Reference Gert2005)), and failure to do so seems to be a normative failure in the way that failure to cherish more robust goods does not.Footnote ¹⁹

So, to sum up: the evaluative effects of precious goods are varied and inconsistent. Preciousness can be good and bad in instrumental terms, and the fact of preciousness can contribute to, but also detract from, the intrinsic value of a particular good. But preciousness per se seems to generate a reason to cherish: to grant the goodness inherent in the precious good a focused, joyful attention and to treat the appreciation of such a good as urgent in comparison with other values.

3.3 Objection: preciousness per se

An objection should be discussed here. One might say that the fact of preciousness does not have any per se normative significance. Rather, the reasons we have to cherish precious goods just arise from the fact (a) one has reason to appreciate any good and (b) one only has a certain amount of time to appreciate goods that are time-limited. And so of course to appreciate such goods is a more urgent matter than to appreciate more robust goods; one just has a lot more time to appreciate the latter rather than the former. But this is not an intrinsic reason-grounding fact of preciousness.

In response, the attention that seems called-for in the case of precious goods is not simply the form of appreciation that one would give any old good, made more urgent given the fact of time-limitations. This argument misses the significance of reveling in the goodness of precious goods; the importance of granting such goods one’s focused, joyful attention. While, in other words, the simple fact of time limitation may seem to explain, as it were, the scalar increase in significance of appreciation, it does not explain the additional attitudinal aspect of cherishing that one has reason to adopt in the case of precious goods.

3.4 Objection: one thought too many

Let’s say you and I are competing in an intense chess match, say, the deciding game of the World Championship. Playing in this game is a profound good for both of us, but it is also fleeting, precious: we will never play such a game again. But it would seem that, given the nature of chess, especially at the highest levels, were I to attend to the fleeting goodness of this game, it would break my concentration, I would blunder my position, and lose. This sort of example could generalize: if I’m concentrating on the goodness of my fragile violin career, I might flub a note; if I’m concentrating on the fleeting nature of the intense relationship with my child, I may not pay my child the fundamental attention that would make our relationship even better.

And this may seem to constitute an objection to the current thesis. Why believe that precious goods call for cherishing if their very goodness is at risk in so doing? Perhaps to cherish a precious good can be one thought too many (Williams (Reference Williams1981)) in the classic sense: attending to some normative or evaluative feature of one’s circumstances can undermine the value of worth of those circumstances. My reply to this objection is twofold. First, it seems to me an important empirical question the extent to which cherishing some good has or might have these various value-defeating effects. Offhand, and from the armchair, it seems quite plausible to say that one can both cherish the goodness of an activity, and pursue that activity with abandon. In addition – in a more conciliatory vein – the reason to cherish a good isn’t a reason to do so continuously. Perhaps, in the case of the musician, one can attend to the exceptional value of one’s career, say, between movements.

But let’s say that this isn’t always possible. Perhaps there are cases in which cherishing cannot be accomplished without a sacrifice or diminishing of the value of a precious good. This is no problem for my proposal. Note again that the reason to cherish a given good provided by the fact of its preciousness is not necessarily overriding. It could be that if genuinely cherishing some good g would render g less valuable, then the reason to cherish that good is overridden by the loss of value in so doing. This is perfectly compatible with the view I advocate. It is sufficient for my purposes simply to insist that agents have good reason to so cherish, whether or not, as rational agents, they will do so in every case.