Self-love, Egoism and the Selfish Hypothesis: Key Debates from Eighteenth-Century British Moral Philosophy

by Christian Maurer

Overview

The dawn of the Enlightenment saw heated debates on self-love. Do people only act out of self-interest? Or is there a less pessimistic explanation for human behaviour? Maurer delves into the contributions to these debates from both famous and lesser known authors, including Lord Shaftesbury, Bernard Mandeville, Francis Hutcheson, Joseph Butler, Archibald Campbell, David Hume and Adam Smith, and puts them in their philosophical, theological and economic context. Maurer identifies five distinct conceptions of self-love and looks at their role within theories of human psychology and morality while drawing attention to the heuristic limits of our contemporary notion of egoism. He compares the central arguments and the different strategies intended to morally rehabilitate human nature and self-love before and during the Enlightenment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474477970
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	11/10/2020
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Christian Maurer is SNSF Professor in Philosophy at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He has studied, taught and held research fellowships in various Universityies across Switzerland, Scotland, France and Germany. Maurer’s main research areas are in moral and political philosophy. He has worked extensively on the history of British moral philosophy and theology, on pre-Enlightenment Scottish moral philosophy, on the reception of Stoicism, on tolerance and on love.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

1.1. The questions of self-love1.2. Five conceptions of self-love1.3. Contexts and historiographies – old ones and new ones

2. Shaftesbury on the self-affections and the selfish hypothesis

2.1. ‘Hobbesian egoism’ and the right love for oneself2.2. Shaftesbury on the self-affections in the Inquiry2.3. A side-note on pride in Pathologia and Miscellanies2.4. Concluding thoughts

3. Mandeville: Self-love, self-liking and Augustinian themes

3.1. Mandeville on the passion of self-liking3.2. Self-liking and the civilising process: Politeness and honour3.3. Mandeville on the social virtues (plural) and on moral virtue (singular)3.4. Concluding thoughts

4. Hutcheson on self-love, benevolence, and self-cultivation

4.1. Hutcheson on self-love and the selfish hypothesis4.2. The moral value of self-love4.3. Self-love and self-cultivation4.4. A side-note on Alexander Forbes’ Essay on Self-Love (1734)4.5. Concluding thoughts

5. Butler on self-love as respect of self

5.1. The ‘inward frame of man’: Butler’s moral psychology5.2. Butler on self-love as respect of self5.3. A comparison between Butler and Hutcheson on self-love 5.4. The influence of Butler’s conception of self-love as respect of self5.5. Concluding thoughts

6. Campbell on true self-love and virtue

6.1. Campbell on self-love, the selfish hypothesis and sociability6.2. Campbell on morality and moral motivation6.3. Campbell’s attacks on Mandeville: Vice, Luxury, Fashionable Clothing and Virtue6.4. Campbell and the Committee for Purity of Doctrine on self-love6.5. Concluding thoughts

7. Hume, Smith and beyond

7.1. Hume on self-love, pride and vanity7.2. Smith and the rehabilitation of self-love7.3. The selfish hypothesis in Gay and Associationist psychology7.4. Towards the end of the eighteenth century7.5. Concluding thoughts

8. Conclusions

Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

Christian Maurer's book is both exciting and scholarly. It offers revisionist readings of philosophers such as Hume, Butler and Mandeville, and of central themes in moral psychology, including self-love. Maurer combines the argumentative rigour of philosophy with the nuance and contextual sensitivity of intellectual history. This work is an outstanding achievement.

University of South Florida Colin Heydt

Christian Maurer's book is both exciting and scholarly. It offers revisionist readings of philosophers such as Hume, Butler and Mandeville, and of central themes in moral psychology, including self-love. Maurer combines the argumentative rigour of philosophy with the nuance and contextual sensitivity of intellectual history. This work is an outstanding achievement.

Editorial Reviews

Maurer has produced an admirable book that explores a neglected topic without sacrifice of detail or verve.

Eighteenth-Century Scotland - Eugene Heath

In placing emphasis on both arguments for the reality of benevolence and arguments for the moral value of self-love, Maurer makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the so-called “British moralists” … An excellent book. It is well-written, thoroughly researched, and intellectually adventurous. Anyone working on the moral philosophy and moral psychology of 18th-century philosophy will need to read it.

Intellectual History Review - James A. Harris

Christian Maurer's book is both exciting and scholarly. It offers revisionist readings of philosophers such as Hume, Butler and Mandeville, and of central themes in moral psychology, including self-love. Maurer combines the argumentative rigour of philosophy with the nuance and contextual sensitivity of intellectual history. This work is an outstanding achievement.

Colin Heydt

This book provides a developed conceptual analysis of the term ‘self-love’ as used by a number of major and less-known philosophers engaged in this central debate of the time. Maurer's attention to the various meanings of this term provides a useful guide for navigating the development of this dialogue, including the shift to many views that take self-love to be compatible with or even essential for virtue. The book also successfully distinguishes commitments to self-love as a natural motivation from commitments to the selfish hypothesis. The reader gains a clearer sense of the central claims these philosophers were debating, as well as the conceptual and cultural challenges they faced in endorsing them. This book will be of interest to anyone looking to get beyond a superficial understanding of these key figures’ moral and psychological commitments, and despite its brevity and broad scope, it is rich enough to engage those who study these figures individually and to open new avenues of interpretation.

Journal of Scottish Philosophy - Erin Frykholm

A great virtue of Christian Maurer’s Self-Love, Egoism, and the Selfish Hypothesis is to disambiguate five senses of self-love in eighteenth-century discussions. ‘Self-love’ and its synonyms variously refer to (1) egoistic desire, (2) love of praise, (3) self-esteem, (4) amour propre and (5) self-respect. Maurer uses these ideal types forensically to provide a better understanding of what is being debated by whom and why … All scholars of early modern moral philosophy will benefit from reading this book and will think about the debates over self-love differently after having read it.

Journal of the History of Philosophy - Aaron Garrett