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Self-Interest and Self-Concern*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Stephen Darwall
Stephen Darwall
Affiliation:
Philosophy, University of Michigan
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Extract

In what follows I consider whether the idea of a person's interest or good might be better understood through that of care or concern for that person for her sake, rather than conversely, as is ordinarily assumed. Contrary to (informed) desire-satisfaction theories of interest, such an account can explain why not everything a person rationally desires is part of her good, since what a person sensibly wants is not necessarily what we (and she) would sensibly want, insofar as we care about her.

First, however, a tale:

There was no other explanation which seemed reasonable. … [W]as it not reasonable to assume that he meant never to claim his birth-right? If this were so, what right had he, William Cecil Clayton, to thwart the wishes, to balk the self-sacrifice of this strange man? If Tarzan of the Apes could do this thing to save Jane Porter from unhappiness, why should he, to whose care she was intrusting her whole future, do aught to jeopardize her interests?

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , Winter 1997 , pp. 158 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1997

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References

1 Burroughs, Edgar Rice, The Return of Tarzan (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1941).Google Scholar

2 Not to worry: Tarzan and Jane are happily reunited at the end of the novel.

3 “Self-interest” is ambiguous as between a person's good or interest, on the one hand, and her desire to promote it (the interest she takes in her interest)on the other. Unless context makes clear otherwise, I will generally use “self-interest” in the former sense.

4 On this point, see Mark Overvold, “Self-Interest and the Concept of Self-Sacrifice,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 10 (1980), pp. 105–18.Google Scholar

5 A person's attitude is de se if it includes an ineliminable reference to him- or herself, as in: “He believes he is always being persecuted.” See Lewis, David, “Attitudes De Dicto and De Se,” Philosophical Review, vol. 88 (1979), pp. 513–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Scanlon, T. M., “Preference and Urgency,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 72 (1975), pp. 655–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Nagel, Thomas, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 166–71.Google Scholar Scanlon argues that preferences make, in themselves, no moral claim–not that considerations of interest do make such a claim.

7 Sen, Amartya, Inequality Re-examined (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).Google Scholar I am grateful to David Sobel for this reference.

8 Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), esp. appendix I.Google Scholar

9 This distinction is sometimes put as that between prudential value and perfectionist value. As near as I can tell, the term “prudential value” derives from Griffin, James, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).Google Scholar On the distinction between prudential and perfectionist value, see Sumner, L. Wayne, “The Subjectivity of Welfare,” Ethics, vol. 105 (1995), pp. 764–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Sidgwick, Henry, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (1907; reprint, London: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 111–12;Google Scholar further references will be noted parenthetically in the text as ME. Richard Brandt offered a similar definition of welfare in “Rationality, Egoism, and Morality,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 69 (1972), p. 686. John Rawls relies on Sidgwick's formulation in defining a rational life plan for a person in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 408. Peter Railton offers an account of a person's good in Sidgwick's manner, but with an important revision. For Railton, what is for a person's good is not what that person would want if he were fully informed, but what a fully informed version of himself would want for himself as he actually is; see Railton, Peter, “Moral Realism,” Philosophical Review, vol. 95 (1986), pp. 163–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This avoids what Robert K. Shope called the “conditional fallacy”; see Shope, Robert K., “The Conditional Fallacy in Contemporary Philosophy,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 75 (1978), pp. 397–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Se also Shope, Robert K., “Rawls, Brandt, and the Definition of Rational Desires,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 8 (1978), pp. 329–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Railton, however, distinguishes between a person's good and her welfare; see note 24 below. James Griffin also defends a kind of informed-desire account in Well-Being. In Impartial Reason, I followed Sidgwick's formulation as an account of a rational conception of the good life, but distinguished it from an account of the person's good for reasons I hope to clarify and develop here. See Impartial Reason, p. 105.

For criticisms of full-information accounts of a person's good, see Velleman, J. David, “Brandt's Definition of ‘Good’,” Philosophical Review, vol. 97 (1988), pp. 353–71;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSobel, David, “Full Information Accounts of Well-Being,” Ethics, vol. 104 (1994), pp. 784–810;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Rosati, Connie S., “Persons, Perspectives, and Full Information Accounts of the Good,” Ethics, vol. 105 (1995), pp. 296–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Griffin, James, “Are There Incommensurable Values?” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 7 (1977), pp. 59–79.Google Scholar

12 Parfit, Reasons and Persons, p. 494.

13 See the references to Robert K. Shope and Peter Railton in note 10.

14 Overvold, “Self-Interest and the Concept of Self-Sacrifice” 117–18n. Overvold formulates this restriction to deal with a “self-sacrifice” objection to the sort of informed-desire account of self-interest that Richard Brandt proposes in “Rationality, Egoism, and Morality.”

15 Kavka, Gregory S., Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 41.Google Scholar

16 In fairness to Kavka, we should note that his primary interest is to fashion a category of “self-interested desire” for a workable formulation of psychological egoism, in order to evaluate whether Hobbes was a psychological egoist. A conception of self-interested desires broader than desires for self-interest might well be preferable for that purpose.

17 So what makes a motive selfish? Good question. If selfishness is not always an (excessive) form of self-concern, it must include other forms of self-obsession (arrogance, for example) as well.

18 As Parfit points out, however, this does not entail that things outside the boundaries of a person's life cannot be part of something that does make an intrinsic difference to the person's welfare. Being a good parent and giving my children upbringings suitable to their futures may be an important constituent of my welfare–it may be part of what I want for my sake as well as for theirs–and its success conditions will depend on occurrences beyond my life's boundaries. (See Parfit, Reasons and Persons, p. 495.)

19 Parfit, Reasons and Persons, p. 494.

20 The success theory should also be understood to include a restriction to intrinsic de-sires. To see this, consider Tarzan's situation. Tarzan desires (informedly, we may suppose) that Jane be happy; but the satisfaction of this desire does not advance his interest according to the success theory, since its object (Jane's happiness) is not itself part of his life. To use Overvold's formulation, it is not a logically necessary condition of Jane's being happy that Tarzan exist. But consider Tarzan's (derived) desire that he live the rest of his life without Jane. This is a desire that satisfies Overvold's restriction. Suppose that Tarzan's view of things is correct, that Jane really would be happier if he were never to see her again. It will then be true that this is what Tarzan would want most with full information and experience. But if the satisfaction of his desire for Jane's happiness is not in his interest, then the satisfaction of his desire to live the rest of his life without her can hardly be so if the only reason he has the latter desire is because he has the former.

21 I do not, of course, mean that if my concern for someone makes me want something for her then this is sufficient for that thing to be something that would actually be good for her. It must be something it makes sense for someone who cares about her to want for her for her own sake.

22 For the distinction between “now for then” and “then for then” preferences, see Hare, R. M., Moral Thinking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 101–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Williams, Bernard, “Internal and External Reasons,” in Williams, Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 101–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Something like this may be at work in Peter Railton's remark that his distinctive informed-desire account of a person's good should not be regarded as an account of that person's “welfare.” See Railton, “Facts and Values,” Philosophical Topics, vol. 14 (1986), p. 30, n. 9.

25 Of course, some of the benefits may accrue to me now, like the pleasure of knowing that I will be going. I take it for granted that it is the (enduring) person who benefits, not a “person-stage.” On this point, see Brink, David, “Sidgwick and the Rationale for Rational Egoism,” in Essays on Henry Sidgwick, ed. Schultz, Bart (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 199–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 That is, it would depend on my current choice context only insofar as there are current pleasures and pains that are relevant to a decision to do now what would be necessary to go to the concert a year from now.

27 That is, a pleasurable experience for someone or other. See Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, book III, ch. XIV, “Ultimate Good.” I am not sure if this is precisely what Derek Parfit has in mind when he cites the “in harmony with reason” formulation to show that Sidgwick holds what he (Parfit) calls a “critical present-aim theory,” but it supports that conclusion. See Parfit, Reasons and Persons, p. 500.

28 Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 3d ed. (London: Macmillan, 1884), p. 108, emphasis added. This passage is quoted and usefully discussed in Crisp, Roger, “Sidgwick and Self-Interest,” Utilitas, vol. 2 (1990), pp. 267–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Of course, Sidgwick does not really think that reason dictates that we care about ourselves or others in the sense I have in mind either. Rather, he thinks that among the self-evident axioms are rational dictates such as “a smaller present good is not to be preferred to a greater future good,” “a rational being is bound to aim at good generally … not merely a particular part of it,” and so on (ME 381, 382). However, to arrive at the principles of rational prudence and benevolence, these must themselves be interpreted in terms (indeed, solely in terms) of persons' goods, of what is good for persons. That is, it must be true that what is good for persons (either for oneself or for persons generally) should matter to a rational agent. And I cannot see how that could be true unless practical reason could somehow dictate that one care for oneself (and for others).

30 It is consistent with this that there could be a derivative rational requirement for agents with a certain kind of psychology (maybe ours) to care about themselves or others, if rational deliberation would give rise, given their psychology, to such concern.

31 Compare, for example, Williams, “Internal and External Reasons” with Korsgaard, Christine, “Skepticism about Practical Reason,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 83 (1986), pp. 5–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The term “internalist requirement” derives from Korsgaard's article. I discuss the intuitive ideas underlying empirical naturalist internalism, on the one hand, and autonomist internalism, on the other, in “Internalism and Agency,” Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 6 (1992), pp. 155–74. I discuss the development of these two traditions among the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British Moralists in my book The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’: 1640–1740 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

32 Railton, “Facts and Values,” p. 9.

33 Parfit, Reasons and Persons, pp. 117–94.

34 See note 27.

35 Note that internalists are by no means restricted to anything like Richard Brandt's notion of cognitive psychotherapy as a deliberative ideal. I argue for a more Kantian ideal in Impartial Reason, pp. 201–39.

36 Parfit, Reasons and Persons, pp. 141–42.

37 As David Brink has argued in “Sidgwick and the Rationale for Rational Egoism.”

38 On this point, see ibid.

39 I owe this point to Tom Hill.

40 I thank Jennifer Roback Morse for this suggestion.

41 That is, the normative claim that is intrinsic to the concept of interest. It may follow from a theory of rationality, together with facts about an agent's psychological makeup, that rational deliberation (including, say, vivid consideration of a person's plight) would trigger psychological mechanisms leading that agent to care. And if that were so, then a person's interest would have a normative claim on such an agent. Maybe each of us is such an agent.

42 On this point, see Anderson, Value in Ethics and Economics, pp. 26–30. I am indebted to David Velleman for the term “indirect object” in this context. Thanks also to Tom Hurka for pressing me on the distinction between caring about someone and caring about her states.

43 Nonetheless, I have argued that they can be seen as a kind of intersubjective value (Impartial Reason, pp. 130–67). For a general theory of plural kinds or forms of value, grounded in a variety of distinctive evaluative emotions and attitudes, see Anderson, Value in Ethics and Economics.

44 Compare Taylor, Charles on “strong evaluation” in Taylor, “The Diversity of Goods,” in his Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 23–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Derek Parfit suggests something like this:

What is good for someone is neither just what Hedonists claim, nor just what is claimed by Objective List Theorists. We might believe that if we had either of these, without the other, what we had would have little or no value. We might claim, for example, that what is good or bad for someone is to have knowledge, to be engaged in rational activity, to experience mutual love, and to be aware of beauty, while strongly wanting just these things. (Parfit, Reasons and Persons, p. 502)