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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Jean Hampton
Jean Hampton
Affiliation:
Philosophy, University of Arizona
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Extract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , Winter 1997 , pp. 21 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1997

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References

1 For example, see some of the works of Neera Badhwar, Thomas Hill, Kelly Rogers, and David Schmidtz, all of whom have essays in this volume. See also Armas, Julia's The Morality of Happiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, which explores the way in which an individual's happiness is associated with morality in the thinking of ancient Greek and Roman philosophers.

2 See, for example, Wolf, Susan, “Moral Saints,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 79, no. 8 (August 1982), pp. 419–39;CrossRefGoogle Scholar reprinted in The Virtues: Contemporary Essays on Moral Character, ed. Robert B. Kruschwitz and Robert C. Roberts (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1987), pp. 137–52.

3 Hurston, Zora Neale, Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934; reprint, London: Virago, 1987), pp. 206–7.Google Scholar

4 Mill, John Stuart, The Subjection of Women, ed. Okin, Susan Moller (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988), p. 87.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., pp. 87–88.

6 Ibid., p. 88.

7 Ibid. For the master/slave dialectic, see Hegel, G. W. F., The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Miller, A. V. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), pp. 111–19.Google Scholar

8 One advocate of mothers, who recently founded an organization called “Mothers Matter” (a name that nicely indicates the extent to which, in our society, mothers do not matter very much), gave an interview in which she lamented the way in which “mother and martyr are treated like the same word,” and joked that mothers “feel guilty about running through the park on a spring-like day when there's laundry to be done.” (See Donna de las Cruz, “Program Teaches Motherhood as a Profession,” The Davis Enterprise, July 6,1995, p. 8; the quote is from Kay Willis, founder of “Mothers Matter.”) Her organization strives to enable mothers to give themselves some time off each week to pursue their own interests–a task that she reports is not particularly easy, not merely because many fathers fail to be sympathetic to such requests but also because many mothers persistently feel guilty if they put their own interests before the interests of others in their families.

9 See Hampton, “The Retributive Idea,” in Murphy, Jeffrie and Hampton, Jean, Forgiveness and Mercy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Hampton, “Correcting Harms versus Righting Wrongs: The Goal of Retribution,” UCLA Law Review, vol. 39, no. 6 (1992), pp. 1659–1702.

10 I develop such a theory in “Correcting Harms versus Righting Wrongs.”

11 Lee, Harper, To Kill a Mockingbird (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1960), p. 239.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., p. 240.

13 I related this story in “Correcting Harms versus Righting Wrongs,” p. 1675. The story was told by Jones on Great Performances–Dance in America: Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane and Co. (PBS television broadcast, February 12, 1992).

14 Mill, The Subjection of Women, pp. 45–46.

15 See Kant, Immanuel, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Paton, H. J. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964), p. 88.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., p. 96.

17 See Stocker, Michael, “The Schizophrenia of Modern Moral Theories,” in The Virtues: Contemporary Essays on Moral Character, ed. Kruschwitz, Robert B. and Roberts, Robert C. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1987), pp. 36–45;Google Scholar reprinted from Journal of Philosophy, vol. 73 (August 12, 1976), pp. 453–66.

18 Ibid., p. 40.

19 Eliot, George, Middlemarch (1871), ed. Harvey, W. J. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965);Google Scholar all page references to this work will be given parenthetically in the text.

20 For example, Thomas Nagel suggests that egoism is the “analogue of solipsism” in the practical sphere; see Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 107.

21 Eliot, George, letter to Maria Lewis dated February 18,1842, in The George Eliot letters, ed. Haight, Gordon S. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1954), vol. 1, p. 127.Google Scholar

22 The term is that of Chase, Karen, George Eliot: Middlemarch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 From “A Memory of George Eliot by F. W. H. Myers,” quoted by Catherine Neale, Middlemarch by George Eliot (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989), p. 39; Neale drew the quote from Willey, Basil, Nineteenth Century Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 204.Google Scholar

24 See Hegel, G. W. F., The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Miller, A. V. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).Google Scholar I am indebted to Stephen Darwall for discussions of this point.

25 I am indebted to Don Scherer for discussions of this point.

26 Again, the point I am making here could be construed as Hegelian; think of the evolution of consciousness in The Phenomenology of Spirit. I am indebted to Maudemarie Clark for pointing this out to me.

27 One can interpret Alan Donagan's work as advocating such a version of Kantian moral theory. See Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).

28 Note that if selfhood does come in degrees (e.g., if it makes sense to say that, say, late-term fetuses or young babies are only partial selves), then it would make sense to say that, in this sort of case, value is also partial.

29 See Stocker, “The Schizophrenia of Modern Moral Theories.” A personalized worth-based moral theory is neither consequentialist nor deontological, although it can generate consequentialist or deontological moral principles, depending upon the kind of “theory of rightful treatment” the theory generates. A utilitarian theory of rightful treatment begins with well-being, because on this view the way to honor the equality of human beings is to work toward maximizing human happiness in a community, where each person's well-being counts in our calculations once, but only once. A Kantian theory defines a theory of rightful treatment that focuses on actions more than on well-being, although that is a bit misleading because treating someone as an end is going to involve concern for his or her welfare as well as concern that he or she not receive certain kinds of treatments deemed “demeaning.”

30 See Hampton, , “Feminist Contractarianism,” in A Mind of One's Own, ed. Anthony, Louise and Witt, Charlotte (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), pp. 227–55.Google Scholar