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Self and Others: the Inadequacy of Utilitarianism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
The dominance of the utilitarian tradition has given a particular prominence to the problem of egoism and altruism in Anglo-American moral philosophy. For, if actions are to be justified by their capacity to satisfy desires and interests, we are bound to confront the question: whose interests? Many philosophers would say that morality is, almost by definition, tied to altruism, to the idea that any moral agent's pursuit of his own interests ought to be qualified by a recognition of the interests of others. It has, however, appeared notoriously difficult to provide any rational argument as to why someone not already committed to a recognition of others’ interests should take any account of them.
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References
1 On the various attempts to provide such arguments within the utilitarian tradition, see chapter 2 of my Reasons for Actions (Blackwell, 1971). A valuable discussion of the problem without particular reference to utilitarianism is Williams, Bernard: “Egoism and Altruism”, in Problems of the Self (Cambridge University Press, 1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Erich Fromm: Man for Himself (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1947) pp.128f.
3 I know of no solution to the problem of pronouns and gender. ‘He’ alone is sexist; ‘he or she’ is ponderous; and neologisms are ugly. I shall simply be inconsistent.
4 Whom I shall from now on refer to as ‘Plato'. For simplicity's sake, too, I shall refer to the view presented by Glaucon and Adeimantus as ‘Glaucon's view', although in the Republic he does not himself advocate it but only report it.
5 See Prichard, H.A.: “Duty and Interest” p.214 (in Moral Obligation and Duty and Interest (Oxford University Press, 1968)).Google Scholar
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14 At this point the utilitarian might take refuge in some kind of ruleutilitarianism. It is, he might say, one of the rules of the institution of friendship that one should give one's friend special treatment, but this is justified because the observance of the rule, or the maintenance of the institution, contributes to the general happiness. I can deal only briefly with this possibility. First, I am not sure that I know what it would mean to assess friendship in this external way, standing outside it and asking whether its existence helps to maximize the general happiness. Second, friendship is not an ‘institution’ or ‘practice’ constituted by ‘rules'. But third, even if we were to accept such a framework, the attempt to work out an adequate ethical account of the social institutions and relationships which contribute to the general happiness would take us way beyond the confines of any traditional utilitarian theory.
15 I should like to thank the TIP group at the University of Utah, with whom I discussed some of these ideas; and colleagues at the University of Kent with whom I have talked about the problems over the past few years, especially Chris Cherry, Sean Sayers and Tony Skillen.