Self-interest and others

The starting point is each person's pursuit of his own happiness, which seems egoistic; but friendship, born of utility, becomes for Epicurus the greatest of the goods that wisdom procures and a thing sought for its own sake. Of all that wisdom provides for the blessedness of the whole life, much the greatest is friendship: self-interest rightly understood thus blossoms into a disinterested bond.

Principal Doctrines, XXVII (friendship, the greatest of goods) · Vatican Sayings, 23 and 39 (friendship sought for its own sake)

Seeking one's own advantage is the very foundation of virtue, but advantage rightly understood, guided by reason, leads man to seek what he has in common with others: nothing is more useful to man than man. Enlightened conatus thus converges on concord, without becoming disinterested altruism.

Ethics, IV, prop. 18, scholium (seeking one's advantage, the foundation of virtue) · Ethics, IV, prop. 35, corollary (nothing more useful to man than man)

Bentham takes it as a fact that everyone is moved by self-interest, the pursuit of one's own pleasure and the avoidance of one's own pain: a psychological egoism. Yet the moral criterion demands aiming at the happiness of the greatest number: how can a naturally self-interested motive ground a requirement of impartiality? The whole art of the legislator lies in arranging the sanctions so that private interest coincides with the general interest. The norm thus leans toward the altruism of an impartial count, against a backdrop of naturally self-interested motive.

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. III (the four sanctions)

The exceptional friendship with La Boétie, where "because it was he, because it was I" the two souls merge, shows a Montaigne capable of the most entire gift of self. But his ordinary wisdom preaches "husbanding oneself", keeping a "back shop" of one's own and not lending oneself to others to the point of getting lost in them. Neither egoism nor unreserved devotion: a just distance, giving itself fully where the bond is rare and withdrawing everywhere else.

Essays, I, 28, "Of Friendship" and III, 10

The moral end is not the agent's happiness but the general happiness: the utilitarian virtue is altruism, devotion to the good of all. Mill accordingly admires the spirit of sacrifice when it serves another's happiness, while denying any value to a sacrifice that increases no one's sum of happiness.

Utilitarianism, ch. 2 (sacrifice has value only if it increases happiness)

Egoism is the 'colossal' spring of empirical man, who refers everything to himself and would, he says, sooner see the world destroyed than himself. But this spring is precisely amoral: only an action whose motive is another's good has moral worth, and virtue does not consist in reckoning one's interest better but in stepping outside it.

On the Basis of Morality, §14

An action has moral worth only when done from duty and not from self-interested inclination: respect for the law takes precedence over all self-love. Kant does not, however, preach pure self-abnegation, since each has an indirect duty toward his own happiness, placing the score on the altruist side without absolutising it.

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, section I

The doctrine of oikeiōsis describes the natural extension of belonging: starting from concern for oneself, it widens in concentric circles to embrace family, city, then all of humanity. The Stoic sage thus comes to treat another's good as his own, beyond narrow self-interest.

Cicero, On Moral Ends, book III · Hierocles, Elements of Ethics

The end Diogenes pursues is first his own self-sufficiency: he preaches not devotion to others but self-liberation from need and opinion. Yet his frank speech means to be a service to others, whom he claims to treat as a physician treats the sick soul of the city, and his cosmopolitanism refuses to rank human beings. The self-concern here is thus less ethical than methodical: making oneself independent so as to be able to tell everyone a useful truth, while expecting nothing from them.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VI, 30 and 63

Stoic appropriation extends self-concern to all humans: born for mutual aid, we owe others kindness, clemency and help. Beneficence (On Benefits) and gentleness toward humankind draw Seneca toward altruism, without denying that virtue remains first a perfecting of oneself.

On Benefits, I, 1-4 (the practice of disinterested giving) · On Anger, II, 31 (we are born for mutual aid)

The junzi 君子 (person of noble character) minds righteousness (yi) where the petty man minds gain: humaneness means helping others to stand and not inflicting on them what one would not wish for oneself (the golden rule in negative form, shu, reciprocity). This is an altruistic orientation, without self-renunciation: one raises oneself by raising others.

Analects, IV, 16 (the junzi understands righteousness, the petty man profit) · Analects, XV, 24 and VI, 30 (not inflicting on others what you would not wish; helping others to stand)

The Stoic doctrine of oikeiōsis widens concern for oneself to all rational beings, making another's good a part of my own. Epictetus does not oppose self-interest and the common good: playing one's social roles well is to serve the whole, hence an altruistic position that yet involves no self-sacrifice.

Discourses, II.10 (On our stations) · Discourses, I.19

The sage "hoards nothing: the more he gives to others, the more he has." Self-effacement, holding back and not pushing oneself forward, is paradoxically what raises and preserves one: it is by struggling for nothing that one becomes indispensable. Altruism here is less a duty than an effect of non-action, which dissolves calculating egoism without turning it into heroic sacrifice.

Dao De Jing, ch. 81 · Dao De Jing, ch. 7 and 66

To the egoism that society manufactures through amour-propre, Rousseau opposes pity, prior to all reflection, which tempers self-love by identification with the suffering being. Man is not naturally inclined to harm; it is social denaturing that sets him against others. A stance leaning toward altruism, grounded in a feeling rather than in a duty.

Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

To will one's own freedom is, by the same movement, to will that of others. The engaged Sartre, drawing ever closer to Marxism after 1945, makes solidarity and the struggle against oppression an extension of this demand. The position leans toward an altruism of responsibility, without giving up each person's grounding in his own free project.

Existentialism Is a Humanism (willing the freedom of others) · Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960), commitment and collective praxis

Cartesian generosity unites a legitimate self-esteem, grounded in the right use of free will, with esteem for others: recognizing in every person this same power of willing well, the generous are naturally inclined to do good toward others and to value nothing more highly than being useful to them. Self-concern is thus not displaced but reconciled with benevolence, which leans moderately toward others without lapsing into self-forgetfulness.

The Passions of the Soul, arts. 153-156 · Letter to Princess Elisabeth, 6 October 1645

Hume rejects the psychological egoism that would reduce all motivation to self-interest: there exists a genuine disinterested benevolence and real sympathy, the sources of moral approval. Interest is therefore not the only spring, though it plays a large part (utility, the origin of justice), hence a moderately altruistic position.

Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Appendix II (of self-love)

Marx denounces the bourgeois society that has drowned every human tie in the icy water of egotistical calculation, reducing relations to interest and cash payment. Far from making this egoism a norm, he sees it as the historical product of capitalism, and aims at a community where the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all: a critique of egoism in the name of class solidarity, without idealising an abstract altruism.

Manifesto of the Communist Party, ch. 1 (the icy water of egotistical calculation) and ch. 2