When discussing the value and the price of common goods like water, air, fisheries, or forests, the light does not often come into focus. Let’s do it!

A close friend of mine and a brother, Peter, recently came up with the peculiarity of the Slovenian language that differentiates light as a source of light and light as a product of that source.

»Luč« in Slovenian denotes the source only, while »svetloba« denotes the result of that source. Peter cleverly noticed that while the light as a source stays as something objective, the light reveals itself as something personal, something that each of us constructs for himself as a personal experience.

The difference between the real (luč) and reality (svetloba) exists for everything human. It is based on the Kantian ontology that differentiates between “things on themselves” and “things for us”. Yet not all dualities are explicit in the language. This one is explicit in Slovenian.

Sacred light

Should the peculiarity end here, I would not devote it to a post. But then Peter added the analysis of the word »svetloba«. The root of »svetloba«, »svet«, is a whole word of being blessed, being a saint, being holy. So the one that is enlightened is at the same time being blessed, and being blessed is, as we know, not something objective but utterly personal. It is even more peculiar than other Slavic languages, which do not share two words for light with the Slovenian language. All languages I checked, from Sinhalese, Hindi, Urdu, Esperanto, Thai, French, Yiddish, and so on, have only one word for the two of Slovenian.

I do not want to say that we are chosen people, but that fortunately, there is one language that is explicit about the double nature of light that was obscure even in the sacred scriptures of the ancients. Should this distinction be clear, it would also be easier to understand the difference between (any) God as a source of light and enlightenment that happens (or does not happen) as the result of the source. And it would then also be clearer why it is wrong to understand the Enlightenment of the 17th century as the starting point of secularism. Prominent figures of the Enlightenment, like Hobbes and Locke, for instance, were as far from secularism as is the present Pope (but not the previous one*) from Richard Dawkins.

The light and the value

But let me remind you of another peculiarity of the Slovenian language that I discovered while developing Branding theory revealed in Brandlife and to a certain extent also in the post The Price of the Value. We Slovenians have two words for the value. One, »vrednota« denotes the subjective value while »vrednost« denotes material value. »Vrednost« is directly linked to the price, while »vrednota« has no price. 

Could we then say that the light as the source, »luč« has material value while the result of the light, »svetloba« does not? This is a very tricky question since Phillips, for instance, tries to change its business model from charging light bulbs to charging the light as a final product. I doubt they will succeed in this, but should they, it will disprove the link between values and light, but still prove the superiority of the Slovenian language in its separation of the source from the result. However, Phillips’ intentions reveal that, in fact, we as customers pay for svetloba (the result of the light) and not for the light itself. So the material value of the light bulb has no value for us. We indeed buy “svetloba”, the result of the bulb, and not the light bulb or any other source of light. 

Does God have a Price?

But finally, it would be intriguing to evaluate the price of the ultimate source of light, the God, should the source have some material value/price in distinction to the subjective value of the result, enlightenment itself. Would not such dualism explain the opposition between Catholicism and Protestantism, the former somehow charging the source of light through indulgence, and the latter as rejecting the possibility that a source has or should have any material value? 

In any case, I’m using the example of »light« as the proof of intersubjectivity of human knowledge on one side and as the example of how important it is to take language seriously, as a source of our enlightenment, if taken rigorously. 

 

• This post was originally written in 2020 and rewritten in August 2025. I do not know who will be the next Pope when I rewrite this post next time.