Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T23:40:14.224Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

PHILOSOPHICAL EGOISM: ITS NATURE AND LIMITATIONS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2010

Hans Bernhard Schmid
Hans Bernhard Schmid*
Affiliation:
Universities of Basel and St. Gallen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Egoism and altruism are unequal contenders in the explanation of human behaviour. While egoism tends to be viewed as natural and unproblematic, altruism has always been treated with suspicion, and it has often been argued that apparent cases of altruistic behaviour might really just be some special form of egoism. The reason for this is that egoism fits into our usual theoretical views of human behaviour in a way that altruism does not. This is true on the biological level, where an evolutionary account seems to favour egoism, as well as on the psychological level, where an account of self-interested motivation is deeply rooted in folk psychology and in the economic model of human behaviour. While altruism has started to receive increasing support in both biological and psychological debates over the last decades, this paper focuses on yet another level, where egoism is still widely taken for granted. Philosophical egoism (Martin Hollis’ term) is the view that, on the ultimate level of intentional explanation, all action is motivated by one of the agent's desires. This view is supported by the standard notion that for a complex of behaviour to be an action, there has to be a way to account for that behaviour in terms of the agent's own pro-attitudes. Psychological altruists, it is claimed, are philosophical egoists in that they are motivated by desires that have the other's benefit rather than the agent's own for its ultimate object (other-directed desires). This paper casts doubt on this thesis, arguing that empathetic agents act on other people's pro-attitudes in very much the same way as agents usually act on their own, and that while other-directed desires do play an important role in many cases of psychologically altruistic action, they are not necessary in explanations of some of the most basic and most pervasive types of human altruistic behaviour. The paper concludes with the claim that philosophical egoism is really a cultural value rather than a conceptual feature of action.

Type
Essay
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , July 2010 , pp. 217 - 240
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Andreoni, J. 1990. Impure altruism and donations to public goods: A theory of warm glow giving. The Economic Journal 100/401: 464–477.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Batson, C. D. 1991. The Altruism Question: Toward a Social-Psychological Answer. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Becker, G. S. 1986. The economic approach to human behavior. Reprinted in Rational Choice, ed. Elster, J., Ch. 4. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Comte, A. 1851. Système de Politique Positive ou Traité de Sociologie. Vol. 1. Paris: Librarie de L. Mathias.Google Scholar
Davidson, D. 1963. Actions, reasons, and causes. The Journal of Philosophy LX (23): 685–700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, E. and Fischbacher, U. 2003. The nature of human altruism. Nature 425: 785–791.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feinberg, J. 1958/1995. Psychological egoism. In Ethical Theory: Classical and Contemporary Readings, 2nd edn, 62–73. Belmont: Wadsworth.Google Scholar
Frankfurt, H. 1971. Freedom of the will and the concept of a person. Journal of Philosophy 68: 12–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freud, S. 1921/2005. Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse. Frankfurt: Fischer.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, A. 1981. Forms of Explanation. Rethinking the Questions in Social Theory. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hollis, M. 1998. Trust within Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, P. 1998. Psychological altruism, evolutionary origins, and moral rules. Philosophical Studies 89: 283–316.Google Scholar
Lipps, T. 1903. Grundlegung der Ästhetik. Hamburg/Leipzig: Voß.Google Scholar
Lévinas, E. 1991. Entre nous. Essais sur le penser-à-l'autre. Paris: Bernard Grasset.Google Scholar
Nagel, T. 1970. The Possibility of Altruism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Paprzycka, K. 2002. The false consciousness of intentional psychology. Philosophical Psychology 15/3: 271–295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pettit, P. and Smith, M. 2004. Backgrounding desires. In Mind, Morality, and Explanation, ed. Jackson, F., Pettit, P. and Smith, M., 269–293. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Scheler, M. 1913/1979. The Nature of Sympathy. Translated by Heath, P.. Hamden, CN: Shoe String Press.Google Scholar
Schopenhauer, A. 1840/1995. On the Basis of Morality. Translated by Payne, E. F. J.. Providence, RI: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Schopenhauer, A. 1849. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Wiesbaden: Brockhaus.Google Scholar
Schueler, G. F. 1995. Desire: Its Role in Practical Reason and the Explanation of Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, J. R. 2001. Rationality in Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sen, A. K. 1977. Rational fools. A critique of the behavioral foundations of economic theory. Philosophy and Public Affairs 6: 317–344.Google Scholar
Sen, A. K. 1985/2002. Goals, commitment, and identity. Reprinted in Rationality and Freedom, 206–225. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Simmel, G. 1892. Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft. Vol. 1. Berlin: Hertz Verlag.Google Scholar
Sober, E. and Wilson, D. S. 1998. Unto Others. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Stirner, M. 1845/1995. The Ego and His Own, ed. Leopold, D.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. 1998. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Trivers, R. 1971.The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology 46: 189–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, B. 1981. Internal and external reasons. Reprinted in Moral Luck, 101–113. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar