Blackwell
Companions to
Philosophy
A Companion
to Ethics
Edited by
PETER SINGER
BLACKWELL
P u b lish ers
Copyright © Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1991, 1993
First published 1991
First published in paperback (with corrections) 1993
Reprinted 1993 (twice), 1994 (twice), 1995, 1996,
1997 (three times), 1999, 2000 (twice)
Blackwell Publishers Ltd
108 Cowley Road
Oxford 0X4 1JF, UK
Blackwell Publishers Inc
350 Main Street
Malden, Massachusetts 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes
of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission
of the publisher.
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition
that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or
otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding
or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library o f Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A Companion to ethics/edited by Peter Singer,
cm. — (Blackwell companions to philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Ethics. 2. Social ethics. I. Singer, Peter. II. Series.
BJ1012.C62 1991
90-23456
170—dc20
CIP
p.
ISBN 0-631-16211-9 — ISBN 0-631-18785-5 (Pbk)
Typeset in 10.5 on 12.5pt Photina
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
This book is printed on acid-free paper
i
6
Egoism
K U R T B A IE R
i
T
Introduction
y p i c a l
e g o is ts ,
one
m ig h t
say,
are
s e lf- c e n t r e d ,
in c o n s id e r a te ,
u n fe e lin g ,
u n p r in c i p l e d , r u t h l e s s s e lf - a g g r a n d iz e r s , p u r s u e r s o f t h e g o o d t h i n g s in life w h a t ­
e v e r th e c o s t to o th e r s , p e o p le w h o th in k o n ly a b o u t th e m s e lv e s o r , if a b o u t o th e r s ,
t h e n m e r e ly a s m e a n s to th e ir o w n e n d s .
Perhaps this characterization fits only very crass and ruthless egoists but,
whatever its level or degree, egoism involves putting one’s own good, interest,
and concern above that of others. But this does not seem to be the whole story:
surely, I am not an egoist just because I care more about my own health than
yours. Nor does my egoism wax and wane precisely in proportion to the number
of instances in which I favour myself over others. Rather, what makes me an
egoist seems to depend on some special feature of the cases in which I do so.
That feature emerges if we attend to the moral overtones of ‘egoism’: to call
you an egoist is to ascribe to you a moral flaw, namely, a determination to promote
your own good or interest even beyond the morally permissible. You behave
egoistically if you fail to restrain the pursuit of your own good in situations when
it conflicts with mine, and it is morally required or desirable that I observe that
restraint. And you are an egoist in this everyday sense if the proportion of your
behaviour that is egoistic exceeds a given measure, typically the average.
ii Psychological egoism
Those who think of egoism (and its corresponding opposite, altruism) in this
morally loaded way, and believe that excessive egoism and insufficient altruism
are among the main causes of most of our social problems, are likely to be
surprised, perhaps bewildered or even shocked, if they read books on ethics. For
in many of them the view is seriously entertained that everybody is an egoist, and
egoism is not always regarded as a bad thing. In the main, they will find two such
theories. The first, psychological egoism, to be discussed in this section, is an
explanatory fheory~to the effect that we are all egoists in the sense that all our
actions are always motivated by concern for our own best interest or greatest
good. The second, to be discussed in subsequent sections, conceives of egoism as
an ideal requiring one to act egoistically.
197
P A R T IV
' H O W O U G H T I TO L I V E ?
Adherents of psychological egoism can admit that we may not always actually
promote or even protect our greatest good, for we may be mistaken about what
it is, or how to get it, or we may be too weak-willed to do what is needed to obtain
it. Thus, strictly speaking, psychological egoism claims to explain not all human
behaviour, but only behaviour explainable in terms of the agent’s beliefs and
desires, or the considerations and reasons that weighed with the agent.
The ‘egoism’ meant by the psychological egoist is not, of course, the kind
defined in section (i). It is incapable of degrees and is not restricted to what is
morally objectionable. It is the motivational pattern of people whose motivated
behaviour is in accordance with a principle, namely, that of doing whatever and
only what protects and promotes their own welfare, well-being, best interest,
happiness, flourishing, or greatest good, either because they are indifferent about
that of others or because they always care more about their own than that of
others when the two conflict. (There are important differences between these ends,
but they can here be ignored.) To be such an ‘egoist’, one need not consciously
apply this principle every time one acts; it is sufficient that one’s voluntary
behaviour conform to this pattern.
However, the available empirical evidence seems to refute even this psycho­
logical egoism of merely motivated behaviour. Many normal people appear quite
frequently to be concerned not with their own greatest good but with the attain­
ment of something the pursuit of which they know or believe to be to their own
detriment. One may woo one’s boss's spouse, though one knows or believes with
good reason, that the pursuit, and even more the attainment, of this end will cost
one one’s livelihood, destroy one’s marriage, alienate one’s children and friends,
and will in other ways ruin one’s life.
To dispose of these apparent counter-examples, psychological egoism would
have to make it plausible that they are illusory. To that end, it can, of course,
point to the fact that many non-egoistic explanations of someone’s behaviour are
suspect. Since egoistic behaviour is morally disapproved of, people may wish to
conceal their real, egoistic, motivation and to persuade us that their behaviour
really was non-egoistically motivated. Not infrequently, we are able to unmask
such non-egoistic explanations as hypocritical or at least as due to self-deception.
But this does not justify us in generalizing to all cases, for quite often we not only
cannot unmask someone’s seemingly non-egoistic behaviour in this way, but we
have no reason to suspect the existence of hidden egoistic motives. Most of us are
acquainted with cases of people knowingly endangering their health, risking their
worldly fortune, or even their life, in the hope of attaining some end, such as
satisfying the (perhaps extravagant) desires of one with whom they are infatuated
or the needs of another whom they love or to whom they feel committed for other
reasons, as when someone donates a kidney to her sister with whom she had not
been on speaking terms for some years, or blood to someone whom she does not
even know.
Psychological egoists should not attempt to dispose of these prima facie cases
of non-egoistic behaviour, as some tend to do, by insisting that there must be an
198
l6
• EGOISM
egoistic explanation. Admittedly, a clever psychological egoist can often invent a
plausible underlying egoistic explanation of the apparently non-egoistic behaviour
in question, just as a dissembling egoist can substitute an invented, nobler expla­
nation for the real egoistic one. But insisting that there must be such an egoistic
motive, and inventing a possible one, does not make it the operative one.
Some of us may find any substituted egoistic explanations more plausible than
a non-egoistic one, because we already believe that deep down we are all egoists.
But, despite the many ‘unmasking’ explanations to which Marx and Freud have
accustomed us, to think the egoistic explanations are as such deeper, more
complete, more persuasive, and so more satisfactory than non-egoistic ones - and
therefore to find the egoistic explanation more plausible - is simply to assume
what needs to be proven. If psychological egoism is based on this assumption, it
is not the surprising and disillusioning ‘discovery’ about human nature it purports
to be, but at best an unsubstantiated claim that we have not found the ‘real’
explanation of someone’s behaviour until we have ‘unearthed’ suitable egoistic
motivation. But then to use this ‘real’ explanation in support of the more general
claim is to argue in a circle.
At this point, a psychological egoist may object that all supposedly non-egoistic
behaviour is in reality egoistic. For after all, the objection goes, in examples like
those given above, the person did what she really most wanted to do.
But this objection emasculates psychological egoism. Instead of being a sur­
prising, indeed shocking, empirical theory to the effect that we are all always
egoistically motivated in the ordinary sense of ‘egoistic’, it merely gives a new and
rather misleading meaning to ‘egoistic motivation’. On this new interpretation,
one is egoistically motivated, not if and only if one is motivated to do whatever
one takes to be for one’s own greatest good even if it harms others, but if one does
whatever one most wants to do, whether or not that is what one takes to be for
one’s greatest good, and even if one’s aim is to benefit others in ways costly to
oneself. Ordinarily, an egoist is someone who most wants something much more
specific, namely, to promote his own good, to promote only interests in his self,
to promote his own best interest, to satisfy only self-regarding wants or aims. The
non-egoist, by contrast, does not want this most, at least not when it is morally
impermissible. Thus, ordinarily, egoists are characterized by the uniformly over­
riding strength of their self-regarding, non-egoists by an ‘adequate’ strength of
their other-regarding, desires or motivations.
The present version of psychological egoism is, therefore, empty since ‘what
one “ most wants” to do’ here must mean, whatever one is finally, all things
considered, motivated to do, for instance, to make a large contribution to Oxfam
(even if one’s most strongly felt inclination is to replenish one’s wine cellar). Thus,
on this last construal, psychological egoism holds that we are all egoists simply
because we are all motivated by our own motivation, not someone else’s; but in
this sense the motivation could not conceivably be anyone else’s: it is mine, not
my sister’s, even if, hating it, I regularly light a candle at our father’s grave, only
because she wants me to.
199
P A R T IV
iii
• H O W O U G H T I TO L I V E ?
Egoism as a means to the common good
Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
(published in 1 776), presents an argument for egoism as a practical ideal, at least
in the economic sphere. He advocated the freedom of entrepreneurs to promote
their own interest, that is, their profits, by suitable (as they saw it) methods of
production, hiring, sales and so forth, on the grounds that such a general arrange­
ment would best promote the good of the whole community. On Smith’s view,
the promotion by each entrepreneur of his or her own good, unimpeded by legal
or self-imposed moral constraint to protect the good of others, would at the same
time be the most efficient promotion of the common good. This would happen,
Smith believed, because there is an ‘invisible hand’ (the pervasive effects of the
free enterprise system itself) which co-ordinates these many otherwise unco­
ordinated individual economic activities.
This idea, that the removal of legal or self-imposed moral constraints on the
pursuit of one’s own interest is generally beneficial, has often been extended
beyond the narrowly economic sphere. It then becomes the doctrine that, if each
pursues her own interest as she conceives of it, then the interest of everyone is
promoted. This theory, if advanced without the support of an ‘invisible hand’,
becomes the fallacy, often ascribed to John Stuart Mill, that if each promotes her
own interest, then the interest of everyone is thereby necessarily promoted. Clearly,
this is a fallacy, for the interests of different individuals or classes may, and under
certain conditions (of which the scarcity of necessities is the most obvious), do
conflict. Then the interest of one is the detriment of the other.
We can think of the theories just described as extolling egoism, not in opposition
to morality, but rather as the best w ay to attain its legitimate end, the common
good. It is doubtful whether this is a form of egoism at all, since it does not embrace
egoism for its own sake, but only as - and to the extent that it really is - the best
strategy to attain the common good.
It should be plain that this practical ideal - whether genuinely egoistic or not rests on a dubious factual claim. For the removal of legal or self-imposed moral
constraints on the individual pursuit of self-interest is likely to promote the
common good only if these individual interests do not conflict, or if something
like a ‘hidden hand’ takes the place of these constraints. If we all rush to get out
of the burning theatre, many or all may get trampled to death or perish in the
flames. To avoid or minimize mutual interference, we need some suitable co­
ordination of our individual activities. Of course, that may not be enough. Even
if we form orderly lines, though no-one will then get trampled to death, the last
ones in the line may be caught in the fire. Thus, our system of co-ordination may
not be able to prevent all harm, and then the contentious problem arises of how
the unavoidable harm is to be allocated. So far as egoism as a means to the
common good is concerned, the essential point is that the pursuit of individual
good does not necessarily promote, and may in fact be disastrous for, the common
good.
200
l6
iv
• EGOISM
Rational and ethical egoism
I turn, last, to two versions of egoism as a practical ideal, usually called rational
and ethical egoism, respectively. In contrast to the previously considered doctrine
of egoism as a means to the common good, they do not rest on any factual claims
about the social or economic consequences of each of us promoting our own
greatest good. They hold, as if this were self-evident or were something for people
to decide simply as they saw fit, that promoting one’s own greatest good is always
in accordance with reason and morality.
Both ideals have a stronger and a weaker version. The stronger maintains
that it is always rational (wise, reasonable, reason-backed), always right, (moral,
praiseworthy, virtuous) to aim at one’s own greatest good, and never rational
etc., never right etc., not to do so. The weaker version maintains that it is always
rational, always right to do so, but not necessarily never rational or right not to
do so.
Rational egoism is highly plausible. We tend to think that when doing some­
thing seems not to be in our interest, doing it calls for justification and showing
that it actually is in our interest after all provides that justification. In a famous
remark, Bishop Butler claimed that ‘when we sit down in a cool hour, we can
neither justify to ourselves this or any other pursuit till we are convinced that it
will be for our happiness, or at least not contrary to it’ (Butler, 1 726, Sermon 11 ,
Para. 20.) Although Butler says, ‘our happiness’ rather than ‘our greatest good’,
he really means the same thing, since he believes that our happiness does constitute
our greatest good.
Together with another highly plausible premise, rational egoism implies ethical
egoism. That other premise is ethical rationalism, the doctrine that if a moral
requirement or recommendation is to be sound or acceptable, complying with it
must be in accordance with reason. In the two emphasized sentences of the
following splendid passage from Leviathan, Hobbes suggests both rational egoism
and ethical rationalism: ‘The kingdom of God is gotten by violence but what if it
could be gotten by unjust violence? Were it against reason so to get it when it is
impossible to receive hurt by it? And if it be not against reason, it is not against justice,
or else justice is not to be approved for good’ (Hobbes, 16 5 1, Ch. 15). Thus, if we
accept the weak version of ethical rationalism - that moral requirements are
sound and may be accepted if complying with them is in accordance with reason and also accept the weak version of rational egoism - that behaving in a certain
way is in accordance with reason if by behaving in this way the agent aims at
his own greatest good -, then we must in consistency also accept the weak version
of ethical egoism - that moral requirements are sound and may be accepted if, by
complying with them, the agent aims at his own greatest good. And similarly for
the strong versions.
Unfortunately, however, ethical egoism is in direct conflict with another
highly plausible conviction, namely, that moral requirements must be capable of
authoritatively regulating interpersonal conflicts of interest. Let us call this the
doctrine of ‘ethical conflict-regulation’. It implies an element of impartiality or
201
P A R T IV
• H O W O U G H T I TO L I V E ?
universality in ethics; arguments for this are presented elsewhere in this volume,
for instance Article 14 k a n t i a n e t h i c s , and Article 40, u n i v e r s a l p r e s c r i p t i v i s m . An example: can it be morally wrong for me to kill my grandfather
so that he cannot change his will and disinherit me? Assuming that my killing
him will be in my best interest but detrimental to my grandfather, while refraining
from killing him will be to my detriment but in my grandfather’s interest, then if
ethical conflict-regulation is sound, there can be a sound moral guideline regu­
lating this conflict (presumably by forbidding this killing). But then ethical egoism
cannot be sound, for it precludes the interpersonally authoritative regulation of
interpersonal conflicts of interest, since such a regulation implies that conduct
contrary to one’s interest is sometimes morally required of one, and conduct in
one’s best interest sometimes morally forbidden to one. Thus, ethical egoism is
incompatible with ethical conflict-regulation. It allows only personally auth­
oritative principles or precepts; they can tell me to kill my grandfather and tell
my grandfather not to allow himself to be killed, perhaps preventively to kill me
in self-defence, but they cannot, ‘regulatively’, tell both of us whose interest must
give way. But it is precisely this interpersonally regulative function we ascribe to
moral principles.
Well, then should we accept ethical egoism and so reject ethical conflictregulation, or should we reject ethical egoism and therefore also reject at least
one of ethical rationalism or rational egoism? Most people (including philosophers),
have not found it difficult to choose between ethical egoism and ethical conflictregulation, since most have rejected ethical egoism for other reasons anyway.
Similarly, few people (including philosophers), have wanted to give up ethical
conflict-regulation. However, as we noted, retaining ethical conflict-regulation
and rejecting ethical egoism involves giving up either ethical rationalism or
rational egoism, and many have found that choice very difficult. Some utilitarians,
following Henry Sidgwick (see his The Methods of Ethics, 1874, 7th edn., final
chapter) have retained ethical conflict-regulation, ethical rationalism, and
rational egoism. (But they can retain rational egoism only in its weak version,
since ethical conflict-regulation and ethical rationalism together are incompatible
with rational egoism in its strong version. For these two, together with rational
egoism in its strong version, would imply that it is sometimes contrary to reason
to do what is in one’s best interest and also contrary to reason not to do it.) They
maintain, in other words, that it is never contrary to reason to do what is in one’s
best interest nor contrary to reason to do what is morally required or desirable,
and that, when the two conflict, doing either is in accordance with reason.
Sidgwick was. understandably, unhappy about this ‘bifurcation’ of practical
reason, and equally unhappy about the only ‘solution’ he could think of: a deity
who, in cases of conflict between the right and the advantageous, attaches
adequate rewards to the right and punishments to the advantageous, thereby
making it rational for people to do what is morally right rather than what but for
the rewards and punishments would have been in their best interest. But why
should a deity, presumably itself a rational being, attach such exorbitant rewards
to choosing what is morally required and such shocking penalties to choosing one’s
202
l
6
• EGOISM
own good, when both ways of acting are supposed to be equally in accordance with
reason?
Another possibility is to retain rational egoism in its strong version but abandon
ethical rationalism, thereby toppling reason, the monarch among justifiers, from
its long-held throne. On this sort of view, the fact that doing the right thing may
be detrimental to one’s interest and therefore contrary to reason, does not imply
that one may, let alone should or ought to, do what is in one’s interest rather
than what is morally required; accordance with reason constitutes only one type
of justification, and ‘decent’ people will ignore it when it conflicts with moral
justification. Taken at face value, this would seem to imply that the choice between
the rational and the moral is a matter of taste, a choice comparable to that between
being a farmer or a businessman, a choice that is solely the chooser’s own business.
But many are convinced there is more to being irrational than indulging a personal
(perhaps idiosyncratic) taste.
v
Conclusion
We have distinguished five versions of egoism. The common-sense version treats
it as a vice, the promotion of one’s own good beyond the morally permissible. The
second, psychological egoism, is the theory that if not on the surface, at least deep
down we are all egoists in the sense that as far as our behaviour explainable by
our beliefs and desires is concerned, it always is aimed at what we believe to be
for our own greatest good. The third, illustrated by the views of Adam Smith, is
the theory that under certain conditions the promotion of one’s own good is the
best means of attaining the legitimate aim of morality, namely, the common good.
If there are no moral objections to bringing about or maintaining these conditions,
then it would seem to be desirable both from the moral and the egoistic point of
view to bring about or maintain these conditions if under them we can attain the
moral aim by promoting our own greatest good. The fourth and fifth versions,
ethical and rational egoism, present it as practical ideals, to wit as the ideals of
morality and reason.
Concerning the second version, psychological egoism, which, because of its
purported unmasking of human nature as less than admirable, has had con­
siderable appeal for the disillusioned, we are convinced of its untenability. Con­
cerning the third version, egoism as a means to the common good, we think it
fairly clear that no-one has yet found those conditions under which a group of
such unconstrained egoists would attain the common good. Certainly, the most
promising candidate for these conditions, the actual existence, if it were possible,
of a perfectly competitive market as defined by neo-classical economists, could not
guarantee the attainment even of their economic version of the common good,
efficiency. There is not even initial plausibility in the fourth version, ethical egoism,
because it requires the abandonment either of morality as a regulator of conflicts
of interest or of the almost certainly true belief that such conflicts are an ines­
capable fact of life. If ethical and psychological egoism are false, then there is no
good reason to reject our first, common-sense, version of egoism as a widespread
203
P A R T IV
* H O W O U G H T I TO L I V E ?
moral failing. This leaves only rational egoism, the most deeply entrenched
normative theory of egoism. But the jury on this case is still in disarray.
References
Butler, J.: Fifteen Sermons preached in the Rolls Chapel (1726); ed. J. H. Bernard (London:
SPCK, 1970).
Foot, P.: 'Morality as a system of hypothetical imperatives’, Philosophical Review, (1972).
Hobbes, T.; Leviathan (1651): ed. J. P. Plamenatz (London: Collins. 1962).
Sidgwick, H.: The Methods of Ethics (1874); 7th edn (London: Macmillan, 1911).
Smith, A. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776): 6th edn
(London: Methuen, 1950).
Further reading
Gauthier, D.: Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
Hampton, J.: Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1986).
Harsanyi, J.: ‘Morality and the theory of rational behaviour’. Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed.
A. Sen and B. Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
Laclos, C. de: Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782): (Paris: Editions Gamier Freres, 1961).
Meredith, G.: The Egoist (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968).
Parfit, D.: ‘Prudence, morality and the prisoner's dilemma', Proceedings of the British
Academy, 65 (1979).
Plato: The Republic, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1982).
Stimer, M. The Ego and Its Own (Leipzig: Phillipp Reclam. jun., 1893).
204