ENLIGHTENED SELF-INTEREST

He says he did it for his own peace of mind. He is implicitly asserting that he mat empathy for the piglets, or at any rate for their mother, the sow. The sound of the piglets' squeals could be left behind, and not the knowledge of their suffering and the sow's struggles to hold them. We may note in passing that this claim efficiency itself be a ploy to win his his fellow-passengers' admiration. However, let us again suppose that Honest Abe was telling the truth, and would have stop to rescue the piglets even if he were alone.

Empathy is a root of the kindly virtues. Concern for the condition or fate of others comes most pronto from putting ourselves in their shoes. Sociopaths atomic number 18 oft said to be distinguished by their complete lack of empathy. The question we must look, then, is what is the moral basis of empathy? Is empathy (actual empathy, not just a worldly concern pose of it) inherently selfless, or does empathy itself have a self-serving voice?

Another way to phrase the question is to ask whether a person would would have any egoismed motive for choosing to larn the capacity for empathy? To answer that question, we must first ask what our profound self-interest is. Let us suppose that, in so-so(predicate) terms, our overall self-interest lies in affording ourselves pleasant experiences, while avoiding unpleasant or painful experiences.

How pleasure and pain are or ought to be defined is a matter of much debate, nevertheless however we define

Thus, these philosophers are ultimately in agreement with Lincoln, that even our highest moral purposes are rooted in a sophisticated understanding of our self-interest. We adjudicate good for others not for the sake of goodness itself in the abstract, but because the good of others turns out to be a necessary component of our own happiness.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Richard Tuck, ed. New York: Cambridge University, 1991.

In fact, moral philosophers have often placed "enlightened self-interest" at the root of their honorable systems. This is a starting point for Mill (Utilitarianism, 3-4). Our overall self-interest is to maximize our happiness. "Happiness" is a more complex imagination than pleasure, but it is in some sense the sum total, in one's life, of pleasures minus pains. It is likewise a starting point for Hobbes: we sample to fulfill our desires or appetites, and are averse to pain, or to things that shut off our fulfillment of desires (Leviathan, 38).

Plato. The Republic. G.R.F. Ferrari, ed. Tom Griffith, trans. New York: Cambridge University, 2000.

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