Morality And Self Interest

The relationship between morality and self-interest is a perennial one in philosophy. For Plato, Hobbes, Kant, Aristotle, Hume, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche, it lay at the heart of moral theory. This text introduces the topic and looks at its place in philosophical history.

Does being virtuous make you happy? In this book, Roger Crisp examines the answers to this ancient question provided by the so-called 'British Moralists', from Thomas Hobbes, around 1650, for the next two hundred years, until Jeremy Bentham. This involves elucidating their views on happiness (self-interest, or well-being) and on virtue (or morality), in order to bring out the relation of each to the other. Themes ran through many of these writers: psychological egoism, evaluative hedonism, and - after Hobbes - the acceptance of self-standing moral reasons. But there are exceptions, and even those taking the standard views adopt them for very different reasons and express them in various ways. As the ancients tended to believe that virtue and happiness largely coincide, so these modern authors are inclined to accept posthumous reward and punishment. Both positions sit uneasily with the common-sense idea that a person can truly sacrifice their own good for the sake of morality or for others. Roger Crisp shows that David Hume - a hedonist whose ethics made no appeal to the afterlife - was the first major British moralist to allow for, indeed to recommend, such self-sacrifice. Morality and well-being of course remain central to modern ethics, and Crisp demonstrates how much there is to learn from this remarkable group of philosophers.

Loving Life demonstrates that morality is a matter not of divine revelation or social convention or personal opinion -- but, rather, of the factual requirements of human life and happiness. Biddle shows how a true morality is derived logically from observable facts, what in essence such a morality demands, and why it is a matter of pure self-interest.

Reason, egoism, and utilitarianism, by H. Sidgwick.--Is egoism reasonable? By G.E. Moore.--Ultimate principles and ethical egoism, by B. Medlin.--In defense of egoism, by J. Kalin.--Virtuous affections and self-love, by F. Hutcheson.--Our obligation to virtue, by D. Hume.--Duty and interest, by H.A. Prichard.--The natural condition of mankind and the laws of nature, by T. Hobbes.--Why should we be moral? By K. Baier.--Morality and advantage, by D.P. Gauthier.--Bibliographical essay (p. 181-184).

A collection of essays that sets forth the moral principles of Objectivism, Ayn Rand's controversial, groundbreaking philosophy. Since their initial publication, Rand's fictional works—Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged—have had a major impact on the intellectual scene. The underlying theme of her famous novels is her philosophy, a new morality—the ethics of rational self-interest—that offers a robust challenge to altruist-collectivist thought. Known as Objectivism, her divisive philosophy holds human life—the life proper to a rational being—as the standard of moral values and regards altruism as incompatible with man's nature. In this series of essays, Rand asks why man needs morality in the first place, and arrives at an answer that redefines a new code of ethics based on the virtue of selfishness. More Than 1 Million Copies Sold!

'[T]he good man should be a lover of self.' Aristotle wrote. 'For he will both himself profit by doing noble acts, and will benefit his fellows ... '. Yet in much of contemporary moral philosophy, concern for one's own interests is considered a non-moral issue, while concern for the interests of others is paradigmatically moral. Indeed, a central issue in ethical theory involves the proper balance to be struck between prudence and morality, between the pursuit of one's own good and the pursuit of the good of others. When deliberating over what action to take, should one weigh one's own interests more heavily than those of others? Or is it possible to accommodate both self-interest and regard for others, to show that we have self-regarding reasons for helping others? The twelve essays in this volume - written from a range of perspectives - address these questions and examine related issues.

Many people have an uneasy feeling that they may be missing out on something basic that would give their lives a significance it currently lacks. But how should we live? What is there to stop us behaving selfishly? In this account, which makes reference to a wide variety of sources and everyday issues, Peter Singer suggests that the conventional pursuit of self-interest is individually and collectively self-defeating. Taking into consideration the beliefs of Jesus, Kant, Rousseau, and Adam Smith amongst others, he looks at a number of different cultures, including America, Japan, and the Aborigines to assess whether or not selfishness is in our genes and how we may find greater satisfaction in an ethical lifestyle.

Philosophers across many traditions have long theorized about the relationship between prudence and morality. Few clear answers have emerged, however, in large part because of the inherently speculative nature of traditional philosophical methods. This book aims to forge a bold new path forward, outlining a theory of prudence and morality that unifies a wide variety of findings in neuroscience with philosophically sophisticated normative theorizing. The author summarizes the emerging behavioral neuroscience of prudence and morality, showing how human moral and prudential cognition and motivation are known to involve over a dozen brain regions and capacities. He then outlines a detailed philosophical theory of prudence and morality based on neuroscience and lived human experience. The result demonstrates how this theory coheres with and explains the behavioral neuroscience, showing how each brain region and capacity interact to give rise to prudential and moral behavior. Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality: A Philosophical Theory will be of interest to philosophers and psychologists working in moral psychology, neuroethics, and decision theory. Chapter 3 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The relationship between morality and self-interest is a perennial one in philosophy. For Plato, Hobbes, Kant, Aristotle, Hume, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche, it lay at the heart of moral theory. This text introduces the topic and looks at its place in philosophical history.

For over thirty years Susan Wolf has been writing about moral and nonmoral values and the relation between them. This volume collects Wolf's most important essays on the topics of morality, love, and meaning, ranging from her classic essay "Moral Saints" to her most recent "The Importance of Love." Wolf's essays warn us against the common tendency to classify values in terms of a dichotomy that contrasts the personal, self-interested, or egoistic with the impersonal, altruistic or moral. On Wolf's view, this tendency ignores or distorts the significance of such values as love, beauty, and truth, and neglects the importance of meaningfulness as a dimension of the good life. These essays show us how a self-conscious recognition of the variety of values leads to new understandings of the point, the content, and the limits of morality and to new ways of thinking about happiness and well-being.