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Beyond Self and Other*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Kelly Rogers
Kelly Rogers
Affiliation:
Philosophy, University of Florida
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Extract

Today there is a tendency to do ethics on the basis of what I should like to call the “self-other model.” On this view, an action has no moral worth unless it benefits others–and not even then, unless it is motivated by altruism rather than selfishness. This radical rift between self-interest and virtue traces back at least to Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 b.c.–50 a.d.), according to whom, “lovers of self, when they have stripped and prepared for conflict with those who value virtue, keep up the boxing and wrestling until they have either forced their opponents to give in, or have completely destroyed them.” More recently, the distinction between those who value themselves and those who “value virtue” has been drawn sharply by Bernard Williams: “[I]n moral theory … it is not the Kantian leap from the particular and the affective to the rational and universal that makes all the difference; it is rather the Humean step–that is to say, the first Humean step–from the self to someone else.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , Winter 1997 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1997

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References

1 Philo, The Worse Attacks the Better, in Philo, vol. 2, trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1929), X.32.

2 Williams, Bernard, “Egoism and Altruism,” in Williams, Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 For example: Nagel, Thomas, a neo-Kantian, asserts: “[M]oral requirements have their source in the claims of other persons” (Nagel, The View from Nowhere [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986], p. 197);Google ScholarSinger, Peter, a utilitarian: “The ethical life is the most fundamental alternative to the conventional pursuit of self-interest” (Singer, How Are We to Live? Ethics in an Age of Self-interest [Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1995], p. ix);Google Scholar and Blum, Lawrence, a virtue ethicist: “Basically, what makes the altruistic emotion morally good is that its object is the weal of another person. Why it is of moral value to have sympathy, compassion, or concern for someone is that one is thereby concerned for the good–the weal and woe–of another person” (Blum, Friendship, Altruism, and Morality [Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980], p. 163).Google Scholar Classical virtue ethicists, such as Plato and Aristotle, of course, rest ethical theory on the ideal of personal flourishing (eudaimonia), but for many modern commentators that is precisely what undermines the Greeks' claim to be doing moral theory. Some interpretors have tried to show that certain Greek ethical theories do by and large conform to the self-other paradigm–see, e.g., Irwin, Terence, Aristotle's First Principles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988),Google Scholar esp. sections 208–12–but I have found problems with this idea; see my “Aristotle on Loving Another for His Own Sake,” Phronesis, vol. 39, no. 3 (1994), pp. 291–302.

4 An early paper that raises significant criticisms is Falk, W. D.'s “Morality, Self, and Others,” in Hector-Neri, Castaneda and George, Nakhnikian, eds., Morality and the Language of Conduct (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965), pp. 25–67.Google Scholar For more recent discussions, see Cottingham, John, “The Ethics Of Self-Concern,” Ethics, vol. 101 (July 1991), pp. 798–817;CrossRefGoogle ScholarBadhwar, Neera Kapur, “Altruism versus Self-interest: Sometimes a False Dichotomy,” Social Philosophy and Policy, vol. 10, no. 1 (Winter 1993), pp. 90–117;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Hampton, Jean, “Selflessness and the Loss of Self,” Social Philosophy and Policy, vol. 10, no. 1 (Winter 1993), pp. 135–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cottingham attacks impartialism in ethics; Badhwar challenges the alleged incompatibility of altruistic and self-interested motivation; and Hampton argues that self-sacrifice is not necessarily morally praiseworthy. Michael Slote also raises important challenges to the self-other approach to morality in his From Morality to Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).

5 Baier, Kurt, The Moral Point of View, abridged version (New York: Random House, 1965), pp. 110–11.Google Scholar

6 Cf. Schmldtz, David, “Reasons for Altruism,” Social Philosophy and Policy, vol. 10, no. 1 (Winter 1993), p. 68.Google Scholar

7 Darwin, Charles, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life and The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (New York: Modern Library, 1948), p. 494.Google Scholar

8 A recent example appears in Peter Singer, How Are We to Live? Ethics in an Age of Self-interest, ch. 5.

9 Baier, The Moral Point of View, pp. 107–8.

10 Dewey, John, Lectures on Psychological and Political Ethics, 1898, ed. Koch, Donald F. (New York: Hafner Press, 1976), p. 210.Google Scholar

11 Ibid.

12 Singer, Peter, Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 218–19.Google Scholar

13 This observation belongs to Joseph Butler, who deftly observes that “love of our neighbor … has just the same respect to, is no more distant from, self-love than hatred of our neighbor, or than love or hatred of anything else”; see Joseph Butler: Five Sermons, ed. Darwall, Stephen L. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1983), p. 50.Google Scholar

14 Sidgwick, Henry, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1907), pp. 90–91.Google Scholar

15 Dewey, John and Tufts, James, Ethics (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1908), p. 364.Google Scholar

16 For a fuller discussion of the objective component of self-interest, as well as a detailed consideration of its relation to the agent's subjective state, see Griffin, James, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), esp. part 1.Google Scholar

17 See Hampton's “Selflessness and the Loss of Self” for further discussion of this idea.

18 Frankfurt, Harry, “The Importance of What We Care About,” Synthese, vol. 53 (1982), p. 257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 I say “potentially” in order to leave open the question of what pursuits may have moral import in a given situation; for as the case of the veteran suggests, something as mundane as getting oneself to school can be morally significant. This approach rejects any intrinsic moral/nonmoral divide, though it need not make a moral issue out of every step one takes. Whether a given item or issue will have moral significance will depend in a given circumstance on such things as whether it conflicts with any of one's other values, the sorts of choices and struggles it involves, its importance to one's well-being and/or that of others, and so forth. Unfortunately, I can do no more here than allude to these issues, which merit a separate discussion of their own.

20 This approach is broadly Humean in refusing to recognize any fundamental difference between the personal and social virtues qua virtues, concurring with Hume that “[i]t is probable that the approbation attending the observance of both is of a similar nature and arises from similar principles …” (Hume, , An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Hendel, Charles W. [New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1957], p. 139).Google Scholar

21 What happens, though, when we turn our attention from the benefits of virtue to the costs of vice? Crusoe may be praised equally for all his displays of honesty, regardless of their beneficiary, but does he not commit a more serious moral offense when he lies to Friday than when he merely deceives himself? (I am grateful to David Schmidtz for raising this objection.) Surely the two cases are not equivalent, but their inequivalence does not, I think, lie in any difference between them qua instances of dishonesty. Rather, forcing another to pay the price of one's own misdeeds involves the additional vice of negligence or indifference toward the consequences of one's actions. Negligence may occur in self-confined cases as well–Crusoe may ignore the fact that self-deception tends to result in various psychological maladies–but we tend to think of him as being free to inflict these evils upon himself in ways he is not free to inflict them upon others.

22 See Aristotle's entire discussion of generosity in the Nicomachean Ethics, book IV, ch. 1. Its lack of an other-regarding focus is quite striking, as I discuss in “Aristotle on Beneficence” (unpublished manuscript).

23 Hume, Inquiry, p. 130. This passage–which is one of many passages exemplifying Hume's belief that virtue “consists altogether in the possession of mental qualities, useful or agreeable to the person himself or to others” (ibid., p. 89; cf. note 20 above)–makes it difficult to see why Williams would regard Hume as a proponent of the self-other model (see the text accompanying note 2 above). Hume places great value on benevolence, but clearly he does not regard morality as exclusively other-regarding.

24 As Bernard Williams has stated: “[T]he point of selecting certain motives for moral approbation: we are concerned to have people who have a general tendency to be prepared to put other people's interests before their own” (Williams, Morality: An Introduction to Ethics [New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972], p. 74).

25 Though sympathy and love doubtless enhance our sensitivity to others' plights, I must concur with Bernard Mandeville when he says of the related sentiment, pity, that, “as it is an Impulse of Nature, that consults neither the publick Interest nor our own Reason, it may produce Evil as well as Good” (Mandeville, An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue, in The Fable of the Bees, Or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, ed. F. B. Kaye [Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1988], p. 56). For a person who cannot properly regulate his passions, it is strictly a matter of chance whether his sympathy and love will lead to virtuous action or the reverse; so-called “altruistic” sentiments are not privileged in this respect.

26 Hutcheson, Francis, An Inquiry Concerning the Original of Our Ideas of Virtue or Moral Good, 4th ed. (1738), in British Moralists 1650–1800, ed. Raphael, D. D. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1991), p. 273.Google Scholar

27 I thus disagree with Kant, who wrote:

As regards meritorious duties to others, the natural end which all men seek is their own happiness. Now humanity could no doubt subsist if everybody contributed nothing to the happiness of others but at the same time refrained from deliberately impairing their happiness. This is, however, merely to agree negatively and not positively with humanity as an end in itself unless every one endeavors also, so far as in him lies, to further the ends of others. For the ends of a subject who is an end in himself must, if this conception is to have its full effect on me, be also, as far as possible, my ends. (Kant, Immanuel, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Paton, H. J. [New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964], section 69)Google Scholar

Not only does this involve an untenable self-other asymmetry of the sort identified by Dewey, but, as Sidgwick observes: “It is hard to see why, if man as a rational being is an absolute end to other rational beings, they must therefore adopt his subjective aims as determined by his non-rational impulses” (Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, p. 390n.).

28 Bentham, Jeremy, Deontology, in Deontology Together with A Table of the Springs of Action and the Article on Utilitarianism, ed. Goldworth, Amnon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), p. 121f.Google Scholar

29 Badhwar, “Altruism versus Self-Interest,” p. 115.

30 Butler, Five Sermons, pp. 48–49.

31 Dewey, Lectures on Psychological and Political Ethics, p. 209.

32 Butler, Five Sermons, p. 51.

33 On the radical transformation of prudence since antiquity, see Uyl, Douglas Den, The Virtue of Prudence (Bern: Peter Lang, 1991).Google Scholar

34 Dewey, Lectures on Psychological and Political Ethics, p. 213.

35 Ibid., pp. 210–11.

36 James, William, The Principles of Psychology, vol. 1 (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1890), p. 320.Google Scholar

37 Ibid.

38 See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book IX, chs. 4 and 8.

39 See, e.g., Williams, Bernard, “Persons, Character, and Morality,” in Williams, Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Cottingham, “The Ethics of Self-Concern” (supra note 4).

40 James refers to it as the “impartial” viewpoint, but the surrounding context indicates that he is referring simply to making an objective judgment about oneself, not viewing oneself with impartial concern.

41 Adolf Horwicz, Psychologische Analysen aufPhysiologischer Grundlage (Theil II, lite Halfte, section 11), quoted in James, Principles of Psychology, p. 326. It is worth quoting the remainder of this most interesting passage:

Here are some examples: A piece of music which one plays one's self is heard and understood better than when it is played by another. We get more exactly all the details, penetrate more deeply into the musical thought. We may meanwhile perceive perfectly well that the other person is the better performer, and yet nevertheless–at times–get more enjoyment from our own playing because it brings the melody and harmony so much nearer home to us. This case may almost be taken as typical for the other cases of self-love. On close examination, we shall almost always find that a great part of our feeling about what is ours is due to the fact that we live closer to our own things, and so feel them more thoroughly and deeply. As a friend of mine was about to marry, he often bored me by the repeated and minute way in which he would discuss the details of his new household arrangements. I wondered that so intellectual a man should be so deeply interested in things of so external a nature. But as I entered, a few years later, the same condition myself, these matters acquired for me an entirely different interest, and it became my turn to turn them over and talk of them unceasingly. … The reason was simply this, that in the first instance I understood nothing of these things and their importance for domestic comfort, whilst in the latter case they came home to me with irresistible urgency, and vividly took possession of my fancy. So it is with many a one who mocks at decorations and titles, until he gains one himself. And this is also surely the reason why one's own portrait or reflection in the mirror is so peculiarly interesting a thing to contemplate … not on account of any absolute ”c'est vnoi,” but just as with the music played by ourselves. What greets our eyes is what we know best, most deeply understand; because we ourselves have felt it and lived through it. We know what has ploughed these furrows, deepened these shadows, blanched this hair; and other faces may be handsomer, but none can speak to us or interest us like this. (pp. 326–27; passage translated by James)

42 James, Principles of Psychology, p. 328.

43 I am grateful to Thomas Hurka for raising this objection.

44 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book IX, ch. 7. Interestingly, Aristotle argues that this principle also explains why benefactors love their beneficiaries more than vice versa:

Each [craftsman] likes his own product more than it would like him if it acquired a soul. Perhaps this is true of poets most of all, since they dearly like their own poems, and are fond of them as though they were their children. This, then, is what the cause of the benefactor resembles; here the beneficiary is his product, and hence he likes him more than the product likes its producer. The cause of this is as follows: (1) Being is choiceworthy and lovable for all. (2) We are in so far as we are actualized, since we are in so far as we live and act. (3) The product is, in a way, the producer in his actualization. (4) Hence the producer is fond of the product, because he loves his own being. And this is natural, since what he is potentially is what the product indicates in actualization. (Nicomachean Ethics, 1167b34–1168a9, trans. Terence Irwin [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985])

45 Survival itself would also seem to demand that we spend the most time trying to understand our own selves and affairs.

46 Cottingham, “The Ethics of Self-Concern,” pp. 815–16.