A Brief (Philosophic) History of Selfishness

Part 4 in a series . . .

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As we saw in “Jesus and the Philosophy of Selflessness,” the ethical teaching of Jesus Christ of Nazareth cast a long shadow over Western moral thought and action. The Christian ethic has been the dominant moral teaching of the West for 2,000 years. Christ taught men to love their neighbors as themselves, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, to love thy enemy, to turn the other cheek, and to judge not lest ye be judged. Ironically, the pure white light of Christian love nonetheless taught man to judge and condemn his own selfish soul and to turn himself over to the needs of other men as his only path to God’s glory. Thus, selfishness became man’s greatness moral sin and selflessness his greatest moral virtue.

Christ’s moral teaching swept aside the Greco-Roman moral teaching embodied in the ethical writings of Aristotle, Epicurus, Cicero, Seneca, and Epictetus (and even Plato in a certain way), who gave pride of place to the individual and his moral improvement if not his moral perfection as an end in itself. These Greco-Roman moralists believed, for instance, that each man should be concerned primarily with the attainment of his own happiness, which was to be achieved by the exercise of the rational faculty in the pursuit of man’s highest good.

Let’s take the moral views of Aristotle who, for instance, in Book 9 of the Nicomachean Ethics, identified the object or proper moral action:

[The decent person] . . . wishes for the good things for himself, that is, the things that appear such to him, and he does them (since it belongs to a good person to work at what is good); and he does them for his own sake, since he acts for the sake of the thinking part of himself, which is in fact what each person seems to be. He also wishes that he himself live and be preserved, and especially that [part of himself] with which he is prudent. For existence is a good to the serious person, and each wishes for the good things for himself. . . . Such a person also wishes to go through life with himself, since he does so pleasantly: the memories of what he has done are delightful, his hopes for the future are good, and such things are pleasant.

Whereas the ethical teachings of the Greco-Roman moralists were, to one degree or another, inherently individualistic, self-regarding and aristocratic, Jesus’s other-regarding moral teaching was simultaneously utopian in that it cut against the grain of human nature (i.e., that men seek self-improvement) and at the same time appealed to man’s lowest common denominator.

This essay traces the slow and painful rebirth of the idea of self-interest as a morally legitimate concept. The rediscovery of the “self” as the primary unit of moral value (as opposed to some collective entity, such as the tribe, race, nation, or Church) and the concomitant pursuit of one’s individual, selfish interests became the driving moral force in the rise of liberal capitalist societies in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

This history of man’s pursuit of freedom and happiness is synonymous with this story.

The New Moral Science

Starting sometime in the seventeenth century, philosophers began to reexamine man’s nature and human affairs in the light of the new scientific method being developed by natural philosophers such as Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton. Influenced if not traumatized by Newton’s earth-shattering discoveries at the end of the seventeenth century, Enlightenment philosophers attempted to reduce morality and politics to a science. In other words, they asked how Newton’s scientific method and principles could be applied to human affairs and to the discovery of moral, social, political, and economic laws of nature that not only describe the sources or causes of human action but also prescribe courses of action in different areas of human life. By the end of the eighteenth century, Enlightenment thinkers sought to uncover principles of social and economic harmony and laws of moral goodness and political justice.

Starting with John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) and culminating with Jeremy Bentham’s An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1780), the search for a demonstrative if not an objective science of ethics began first with a reexamination of human nature followed by a reconsideration of man’s moral actions and the standards of right and wrong. A new generation of Enlightenment thinkers hoped to do for moral and political philosophy what Newton had done for science. Specifically, they sought to determine in the moral realm causes and consequences (i.e., laws) analogous to the principle of universal attraction. In his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), David Hume announced the purpose of his book in its subtitle, which was “to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects.” Following Hume’s example, Claude Adrien Helvétius in his De l’sprit (1758) proposed to treat morality “like all the other sciences, and founded on experiment, as well as natural philosophy.” A new and improved moral era was about to launch for western society.

As their first task, the new moral scientists began to re-examine human nature or the “self.” They began to study and catalog man’s pleasures and pains, desires and passions, inclinations and motives, opinions and ideas, interests and actions in their search for the objective moral laws of nature. In their quest to discover the moral equivalent of Newton’s law of gravity, Enlightenment philosophers began to focus on man’s pursuit of his so-called “interests” as the dominant fact or law of human life. The primary goal of Enlightenment philosophers was to take the law of interests (i.e., that men pursue that which they desire) and put it under the supervision and rule of reason, which Adam Smith understood to be a “branch of the science of a statesman or legislator.”

By the end of the early modern period, moral philosophers had begun a slow and often tortuous reconsideration of a trilogy of concepts that had been the bane of Western moral thought for millennia, namely, “selfishness,” “interest” and “self-interest.” As noted above, most moral philosophers and theologians throughout history had viewed these concepts as connected to the passions and divorced from reason, and thus dubious if not simply bad. With the rise of commerce and the recognition of its importance during the Renaissance, a new generation of moral philosophers began to reassess and rethink the problem of man’s “interests.”

The primary debate of moral philosophers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries centered around the problem of determining whether man’s interests were driven primarily by the passions, reason, or some combination of both. A new generation of moral psychologists were coming to see man’s pursuit of his interests as guided by his reason (at least in part) and not simply by his passions.

In the context of this contested seventeenth-century debate, the concept “interest” and the pursuit of it was wedged between the passions and reason, with those opposed to “interest” tying it to the passions, and those open or even favorable to “interest” connecting it to reason. (What the proponents of both sides did not understand, however, is that the passions are not independent variables disconnected from reason. A proper view of the passions views them as a response to consciously chosen values.)

More importantly, early modern philosophers began to recognize “interest” and even “self-interest” as a universal and constant characteristic of human nature. That all men pursue their self-interest was not viewed positively as a moral principle or virtue but simply as a descriptive fact of all human action. That men pursue what they desire was simply a different way of explaining the Thrasymachian problem or challenge, but starting in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, philosophers began to view the problem using the tools of the new modern science.

More precisely, I am concerned to elucidate how a troika of related words—i.e., “selfishness,” “self-interest,” and “interest”—have been viewed, developed, and used over time in post-Machiavellian world.

Machiavelli’s Thrasymachian Moment

The first major philosophic and political reconsideration of the role of “interests” and “self-interest”—if not “selfishness” itself—in human life begins with Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) and his seminal works, The Prince (1513) and Discourses on Livy (c. 1517). Indeed, one might call this Renaissance thinker the great philosopher of “interests” and “self-interest” in the sense that he rediscovered these concepts after a century-and-a-half of Christian theology and politics, which sought to defeat self-interest with other-regarding love. Machiavelli’s views on self-interest stem from a pessimistic outlook on human nature in which people are viewed inherently “self-interested” and always acting for their own gain.

In this, Machiavelli seems to have launched a new era of political thinking and political action, which means we should spend some time with him. The Florentine is not for the faint-hearted or the sentimental; his is not the politics of moist eyes that “feels your pain.” Quite the opposite. His is the politics of wincing pain. In fact, Machiavelli may be the only political thinker whose very name has come to be associated with a certain kind of politics—the politics of self-interest if not self-aggrandizement otherwise known as Machiavellianism. At his best, Machiavelli is a hardheaded realist; he tells you the way it really is; he gives you the unvarnished truth that he calls “effectual truth.” His political instruction mirrors the school of hard knocks on steroids. But Machiavelli does not simply tell us the way it is; he also advises rulers on how one ought to rule. And it is here that Machiavelli is most infamous. His political thought teaches rulers how they might “get away with murder,” literally, which, we are told, is sometimes in your self-interest, he says.

In the opening paragraph in Chapter XV of The Prince, Machiavelli summed up his revolution in moral and political philosophy:

And because I know that many have written of this, I fear that in writing of it again, I may be held presumptuous, especially since in disputing this matter I depart from the orders of others. But since my intent is to write something useful to whoever understands it, it has appeared to me more fitting to go directly to the effectual truth of the thing than to the imagination of it. And many have imagined republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in truth; for it is so far from how one lives to how one should live that he who lets go of what is done for what should be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation. For a man who wants to make a profession of good in all regards must come to ruin among to many who are not good. Hence it is necessary to a prince, if he wants to maintain himself, to learn to be able not to be good, and to use this and not use it according to necessity.

Machiavelli is not simply or solely describing men’s motivations and how in fact they do act; his grander motive is to prescribe rules for rulers on how they ought to rule. In answer to his famous question in Chapter XV of The Prince—Is better to be loved than feared or vice versa?—Machiavelli answers that, since it is near impossible to be both loved and feared simultaneously, it is better to be feared than loved in the pursuit of one’s self-interest, at least in the political realm. To be loved depends on others; to be feared depends on oneself. And when it is not in one’s self-interest to use those political methods “proper to man” (i.e., “with laws”), then one must use the methods associated with “beasts” (i.e., “with force”). In other words, Machiavelli advises prudent rulers “to know well how to use the beast and the man.”

Machiavelli’s core insight is that men act on their interests and that political rulers must therefore act in their interests so that they may act for the interests of the state, whether it be a principality or a republic. It may be said of the Florentine political philosopher—known for his realpolitik view of politics—that he rediscovered and then reinvented the Thrasymachian approach to politics, or at least he accepted certain Thrasymachian premises about human nature. His views on “interests” and “self-interest” reveal a realistic if not a brutalistic approach to political theory and practice rather than a utopian or idealistic approach.

Machiavelli’s political premises begin with his view of human nature and the role played by the interests in human affairs, but his ultimate vision ends with a deep consideration of the relationship between power and freedom. It might even be said of Machiavelli that he was decidedly not a teacher of evil as some have suggested, but rather and ultimately a teacher of political freedom which can only exist within a context of stability. Machiavelli’s position seems to suggest that rulers should use deception and force to achieve stability and freedom their citizens. Otherwise, he says, you’re simply naïve or a chump.

In The Prince, Machiavelli advises rulers on how to acquire and maintain power in a world where all political competitors domestic and foreign are pursuing their own interests. Indeed, The Prince must be viewed as a guidebook for identifying one’s proper interests as a ruler and then learning how to pursue, implement, and achieve one’s interests and those of one’s people. That all men pursue their self-interest is simply a fundamental fact of human nature and political reality for Machiavelli. The Florentine’s dog-eat-dog understanding of, and approach to, politics teaches rulers and potential rulers how to prioritize their own interests and those of the state relative to others.

This non-principled, pragmatic approach suggests that political survival may require actions that defy traditional morality. Machiavelli asserts that rulers must prioritize and pursue their own interests and those of the state to maintain power and ensure survival of both prince and state. In Chapter XVIII, he argues that political survival often demands actions that defy conventional morality, stating, “A prince, and especially a new prince cannot observe all those things for which men are held good, since he is often under a necessity, to maintain his state, of acting against faith, against charity, against humanity, against religion.” For Machiavelli, the pursuit of Thrasymachian self-interest is the only realistic response to the demands of governance, stability, and freedom.

A key concept in Machiavelli’s philosophy is virtù, which includes qualities such as decisiveness, strength, cunning, and adaptability. These traits enable rulers to advance their interests, navigate political challenges, and ultimately to tame fortuna. Machiavelli sees virtù as the means by which rulers can pursue their self-interest effectively, seizing opportunities, and outmaneuvering opponents to gain and maintain power. Machiavelli teaches future rulers that it is better to appear to be liberal, generous, merciful, faithful, effeminate, spirited, humane, chaste, honest, agreeable, light, and religious, but in reality it is better to be rapacious, cruel, unfaithful, pusillanimous, fierce, proud, lascivious, astute, hard, grave, and unbelieving. Machiavelli’s message is simple: Do whatever it takes to get whatever you want.

A serious consideration of Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy is too much for our purposes here, but this much can be said profitably to support our reading of The Prince. In the Discourses, Machiavelli shifts focus to republics and their governance, exploring how self-interest operates within a system of competing social orders (e.g., the few wealthy and the poor many) that must be channeled in certain ways to achieve and then preserve stability and freedom. He discusses the interplay of individual and group interests, particularly among nobles, commons, and leaders. In the Discourses, he argues that the best republics harmonize the self-interest of rulers and citizens through balancing laws and institutions.

Reinventing Selfishness—Self-Interest—Interest

One of the earliest reconsiderations of the issue of selfishness, self-interest, and interest can be found in the writings of Charles Herle (1598-1659), a prominent English theologian and commonwealthman, who noted in 1655 that “the word interest is a word of late much come into use among us, and in the ordinary use of it . . . it implies in one two things, concernment and importance” [i.e., that which is of concern or importance to us]. One’s interests, Herle wrote, are those things in which men take an interest to serve or satisfy some end. Herle went on to cite a common French maxim, “interest will not lye,” by which he meant that a “if a man know what is his true Interest, he is undoubtedly true it.” The key to understanding Herle’s comment is in the knowing of what is in a man’s true interest. Herle was describing a fact of human nature, but he was not necessarily or simply endorsing it. The knowing of one’s true self-interest is the rub, which opens a whole universe of philosophic investigation.

A few years later, Marchamont Nedham (1620-1678), another English commonwealthman, published a tract titled Interest Will Not Lie or a View of England’s True Interest (1659) that took Herle’s idea of interest one step further. According to Nedham, the maxim “interest will not lie” was a truism that it behooved men to recognize. For “if a man state his own Interest aright, and keep close to it, it wil [sic] not lie to him or deceive him, in the prosecution of his Aims and ends of Good unto himself, nor suffer him to be missed or drawn aside by specious pretences; to serve the ends and purposes of other men.” And again, the key to understanding Nedham’s comment is in the knowing of a man’s interest “aright” and the “ends of Good.” Nedham came close to not only describing self-interested actions as a fact of human nature but also as the morally proper way to think and behave.

Herle and Nedham were using the word “interest” as it related mostly to the realm of politics, but their ideas surely had relevance for a man’s private thoughts and actions in the moral and economic realms as well. They used the word interest to suggest that men should pursue their moral, political, and economic interests in a reasonable and prudent manner. They were breaking free from the traditional Thrasymachian and Christian views of selfishness. Unlike their classical and Christian predecessors who were willing to use either the coercive force of the State, threats of divine punishment, or guilt to tamp down on man’s selfish or self-regarding behaviors, a new generation of modern philosophers were willing to accept that men are motivated to act by their interests and then to channel those interests in salutary directions.

Most modern philosophers came to think that man is self-interested by nature (as did many ancient philosophers), but without the necessarily negative connotations that came with that assessment. It was a common maxim starting in the seventeenth century, commonly associated with the French philosopher François de La Rochefoucauld that “interest governs the world.” (In Maxims, published in 1665, La Rochefoucauld wrote: “L’intérêt parle toutes sortes de langues et joue toutes sortes de personnages; tantôt la souplesse de la cour, et tantôt la sévérité philosophique.” (Translated as: “Self-interest speaks all sorts of languages and plays all sorts of roles, now that of the humble supplicant, now that of the critic.”) La Rochefoucauld’s maxim was stated as a descriptive fact of human nature rather than as a moral recommendation or commandment, but again he was opening up or massaging the concept in new and different ways. He was stating what is rather than what ought to be.

Going forward, the question for philosophers and theologians was to determine whether individuals ought to be self-interested, and, if so, in what way. In fact, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century moral philosophers still viewed self-interest morally as a vice, but less so. Indeed, it was now seen as a necessary evil, or, better yet, as a vice with positive externalities.

The animating question that Enlightenment philosophers were moving toward was: Could the pursuit of one’s self-interest be viewed as morally necessary if not praiseworthy?

A New Beginning

The reconsideration of self-interest as something other than the greatest of all vices can be found most notably in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1689), in Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees (1723), in Claude Adrien Helvétius’s De l’sprit (1758), and in Sir James Steuart’s Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy (1767).

In Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the Englishman declared, echoing ancient Greek and Roman moral philosophers, that the “pursuit of happiness . . . is our greatest good” and summum bonum, and in the Second Treatise of Government (the most influential book of the American revolutionary period), he wrote that the true purpose of law in a free society is to guide “a free and intelligent agent to his proper interest.” (The primary challenge for Lockeans was and is to identify what Locke meant by one’s “proper” interest. Not all “interests” are equal. Some interests are objectively good and some objectively bad.) Man’s “proper interest” is his achievement of true happiness rightly understood.

It is important to note that Locke drew a crucial distinction between what we might call objective and subjective happiness. He differentiated what he called “true,” “solid,” and “real” happiness from “imaginary” happiness. He also knew that most men pursue, or at least attempt to pursue, true happiness, but not all men achieve it. Not all “interests” and forms of happiness are equal. There is a rationally identifiable and objective hierarchy of human goods. Real happiness requires, first, a rational identification of clear-sighted, life-affirming values, and then, second, a rationally identified path to pursue it. The pursuit of one’s rational self-interest and happiness are part of a process of choosing well and acting correctly.

In Mandeville’s notorious Fable of the Bees, the Anglo-Dutch philosopher, poet, and satirist notoriously claimed that man’s vices (i.e., self-interested actions) serve the public interest. Mandeville’s controversial formula—i.e., “private vices, public benefits”—provided a soft utilitarian defense of self-interest as efficacious for society. Mandeville had prided himself on the fact that he believed he had discovered and “demonstrated that, neither the friendly qualities and kind affections that are natural to man, nor the real virtues he is capable of acquiring by reason and self-denial, are the foundation of society; but that what we call evil in this world, moral as well as natural, is the grand principle that makes us sociable creatures.”Morally speaking, Mandeville (using the moral idiom of his time) treated self-interest as a vice if not a wicked vice, and he considered self-denial as a virtue. His treatment of self-interest represents one step backward (i.e., treating self-interest as a vice) followed by two steps forward in that he recognizes self-interest as a necessary motivation for general human wellbeing.

In Helvétius’s De l’sprit, the Frenchman wrote that “if the physical universe is subject to the laws of motion, the moral universe is equally so those of interest.” Helvétius is here saying as an observable fact that all men act on their interests, that men’s interests can be studied, catalogued, and channeled in salutary directions (just as with particles in motion,), and he also seems to be leaving open the possibility that such actions are in accord with the moral laws of nature.

In Steuart’s Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy, the Scottish Jacobite took another step forward in the philosophic dialogue over the nature and meaning of “interest” when he claimed that self-interest was more reliable and indeed preferable to the rule of altruistic motives and concern for the so-called public good:

Were miracles wrought every day, the laws of nature would no longer be laws: and were everyone to act for the public, and neglect himself, the statesman would be bewildered. . . .

. . . were a people to become quite disinterested: there would be no possibility of governing them. Everyone might consider the interests of his country in a different light, and many might join in the ruin of it, by endeavoring to promote its advantages.

Steuart seems to be suggesting here that altruism and the men who claim to act from it violate the moral laws of nature. Men are not disinterested and those who claim to act in the name of the public interest are only acting (dishonestly) in their own interest, the purpose of which is to control the lives of others. By contrast, men’s proper interests (and the motivations behind them) are observable and can be guided toward salutary, life-affirming moral ends.

To be continued . . .

**A reminder to readers: please know that I do not use footnotes or citations in my Substack essays. I do, however, attempt to identify the author of all quotations. All of the quotations and general references that I use are fully documented in my personal drafts, which will be made public on demand or when I publish these essays in book form.