Interest

(1) Money earned by money (Usury).

(2) Engagement with a subject on its own terms; encounter with it beyond preoccupation with the self.

(3) Rational advantage—that is, recognition of what you want: it is in your interests to eat if you are hungry. The interest is still rational even if it is mistaken—you eat the food even though you should have suspected it contained salmonella; it is not rational if you know it has salmonella, and you don’t want to get food poisoning, but you eat it all the same. That is not as improbable as it may appear, because of divided intentions. You want to drink five pints; you also want to keep your driving licence. Your decision as to which of those intentions is to be overridden is not necessarily a rational one: it may be a direct, pre-rational expression of who you are, of what your body, its hormones, its addictions, reflexes and nervous system instruct (Identity).

(4) The pathway by which a person formed her opinion on a subject in question: the prior agenda and loyalties that made her think the way she does (Emergence).

(5) The potential for material or other gain from a subject which—unless successfully inhibited by cultural, constitutional or practical constraints—will lead the person to concentrate just on that gain and on the falsehoods and bad faith needed to procure it (Looter’s Ethics).

Related entries:

Subjective, Ad Hominem, Incentives, Credit Union, Capital.