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A life of one's own

Pushed to its end, the maximalist principle never stops: it devours the projects, the attachments, the very life of the one it claims to make good.

Objects to Maximalism

Bernard Williams, Susan Wolf · 'Moral Saints' · 1982

1. The maximalist principle, pushed to its end, never stops: as long as an evil remains preventable at a cost lesser than itself, I must give, my time, my money, my projects, up to the point where I would myself need rescuing.
2. But a human life rests on attachments and projects pursued for their own sake, not to maximize the world's good. To summon them to yield at every instant to the calculus of the greater good is to tear from the agent their very integrity.
3. A 'moral saint' who acted only to relieve misery would have an impoverished life, without projects of their own, almost inhuman: not an ideal, but the dissolution of the person into an endless demand.

Therefore So morality cannot demand everything: there must be a part of life that is my own, failing which duty devours the very person it claims to make good.