The Wisdom of the Egoist: The Moral and Political Implications of Valuing the Self

1997 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Hampton
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Other Regarding ◽  
Traditional Understanding ◽  
Moral Philosophers

There is a traditional understanding of what morality is, an under-standing that most contemporary moral philosophers take for granted. This understanding is not itself a theory, but rather an account of the phenomenon of morality, to which these philosophers have thought any theory of the phenomenon must conform if it is to be considered successful as either an explanation or a justification of our moral life. According to this account, there are three prominent features that, together, characterize the moral:First, moral action and moral regard are taken to be other-regarding. While some philosophers have identified a certain kind of self-respect as part of morality, in general morality has been thought to involve duties to others, requiring that they be treated with respect. Self-interest is generally taken to be outside the province of the moral.

The Virtue in Self-Interest

1997 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 264-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Slote
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Self ◽  
Virtuous Agent ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Background Assumption ◽  
Moral Philosophers

As a motive, self-interest is constituted by a certain kind of concern for oneself; but we also use the term “self-interest” to refer to the object of such a motive, to the well-being or good life sought by a self-interested agent. In this essay, I want to concentrate on self-interest in the latter sense and say something about how self-interest or well-being relates to virtue. One reason to be interested in this relationship stems from our concern to know whether virtue pays, i.e., is in the moral agent's self-interest, a question which Plato notably asks in the Republic and which has been of concern to moral philosophers ever since. But the importance for ethics of notions like virtue and self-interest is hardly exhausted by their role in the debate over whether virtue pays; indeed, any large-scale ethical theory will presumably have something to say about how these major notions relate, so we have reason to want to understand this relationship independent of the particular desire to show that morality or virtue is in the self-interest of the (virtuous) agent.It will be a background assumption of this essay that some ways of connecting virtue and well-being/self-interest redound to the advantage of the larger theories that incorporate them. If, in particular, we believe in the bona fides of ethical theory, then unifying power is a desideratum in ethics and it stands in favor of utilitarianism (and Epicureanism) that it offers us a way of unifying our understanding of virtue and well-being. To be sure, that advantage may to some extent or ultimately be undercut if unification leads to counterintuitive ethical consequences.

Levels and types of breaking the maxims: A neo-Gricean account of humor

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Attila L. Nemesi
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
The Self ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Cooperative Principle ◽  
Pragmatic Theory ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Constant Tension

AbstractOn the basis of examples drawn from seven classic Hungarian film comedies, I argue in this article that the place of humor within the Gricean–Leechian model needs to be revisited and extended towards social psychological pragmatics to account for a wider range of humorous material. Scrutinizing the relevant controversial details of Grice’s conceptual framework, my concern is to find a practical way of fitting the various forms of humor into an adequate (and not an idealistic) pragmatic theory. I propose to differentiate between two levels and five types of breaking the maxims, introducing the Self-interest Principle (SiP) supposed to be in constant tension with, and as rational as, Grice’s Cooperative Principle. Politeness and self-presentational phenomena are subsumed under the operation of the SiP which embraces and coordinates the speaker’s own personal and interpersonal purposes.

Sex Differences in Reward Allocation

1988 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 981-982
Author(s):  
Kerry C. Martin ◽  
Jay Hewitt
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Work Groups ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
High Productivity ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Reward Allocation

Men and women were presented descriptions of two dyadic work groups. In both groups, one member of the dyad did approximately two-thirds of the work. For one of the groups, subjects were asked to imagine that they were the worker of high productivity while for the other group subjects were asked to imagine that they were impartial observers. Subjects were asked to divide the rewards among the two workers for both groups. Men and women did not differ in allocation of reward when acting as impartial observers. When subjects imagined themselves as the worker of high productivity, men gave themselves a greater share of the reward than did women. It was concluded that the results were consistent with the self-interest explanation of sex differences in allocation of reward.

scholarly journals The harm principle and the greatest happiness principle: the missing link

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (129) ◽  
pp. 99-110
Author(s):  
Cinara Nahra
Keyword(s):  
Harm Principle ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Missing Link ◽  
Prudential Value ◽  
Classic Problem ◽  
Other Regarding ◽  
Legal Force ◽  
The Harm Principle

In this article I present a possible solution for the classic problem of the apparent incompatibility between Mill's Greatest Happiness Principle and his Principle of Liberty arguing that in the other-regarding sphere the judgments of experience and knowledge accumulated through history have moral and legal force, whilst in the self-regarding sphere the judgments of the experienced people only have prudential value and the reason for this is the idea according to which each of us is a better judge than anyone else to decide what causes us pain and which kind of pleasure we prefer (the so-called epistemological argument). Considering that the Greatest Happiness Principle is nothing but the aggregate of each person's happiness, given the epistemological claim we conclude that, by leaving people free even to cause harm to themselves, we still would be maximizing happiness, so both principles (the Greatest Happiness Principle and the Principle of Liberty) could be compatible.

Reasonable Self-Interest

1997 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-85
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Hill
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Rational Requirement ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Interest Model ◽  
Moral Requirements

Philosophers have debated for millennia about whether moral requirements are always rational to follow. The background for these debates is often what I shall call “the self-interest model.” The guiding assumption here is that the basic demand of reason, to each person, is that one must, above all, advance one's self-interest. Alternatively, debate may be framed by a related, but significantly different, assumption: the idea that the basic rational requirement is to develop and pursue a set of personal ends in an informed, efficient, and coherent way, whether one's choice of ends is based on self-interested desires or not. For brevity I refer to this as “the coherence-and-efficiency model.” Advocates of both models tend to think that, while it is sufficiently clear in principle what the rational thing to do is, what remains in doubt is whether it is always rational to be moral. They typically assume that morality is concerned, entirely or primarily, with our relations to others, especially with obligations that appear to require some sacrifice or compromise with the pursuit of self-interest.

scholarly journals Belief in altruistic motives predicts prosocial actions and inferences

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan W. Carlson ◽  
jamil zaki
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Lay Theories ◽  
Prior Work ◽  
Altruistic Motivation ◽  
Social Correlates ◽  
Prosocial Motives ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Trait Empathy

Are humans ever truly altruistic? Or are all actions, however noble, ultimately motivated by self-interest? Scientists and philosophers have long grappled with this question, but few have considered laypeople’s beliefs about the nature of prosocial motives. Here we examine these beliefs and their social correlates. In line with prior work, we find that people tend to believe humans can be, and frequently are, altruistically motivated. Moreover, people who more strongly believe in altruistic motivation act more prosocially themselves—for instance, sacrificing relatively high levels of money and time to help others—a relationship that holds even when controlling for trait empathy. People who believe in altruism also judge other prosocial agents to be more genuinely kind, especially when agents’ motives are ambiguous. Together, this work suggests that believing in altruism predicts the extent to which people both see altruism and act altruistically, possibly reflecting the self-fulfilling nature of such lay theories.

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