As a motive, self-interest is constituted by a certain kind of concern for oneself; but we also use the term “self-interest” to refer to the object of such a motive, to the well-being or good life sought by a self-interested agent. In this essay, I want to concentrate on self-interest in the latter sense and say something about how self-interest or well-being relates to virtue. One reason to be interested in this relationship stems from our concern to know whether virtue pays, i.e., is in the moral agent's self-interest, a question which Plato notably asks in the Republic and which has been of concern to moral philosophers ever since. But the importance for ethics of notions like virtue and self-interest is hardly exhausted by their role in the debate over whether virtue pays; indeed, any large-scale ethical theory will presumably have something to say about how these major notions relate, so we have reason to want to understand this relationship independent of the particular desire to show that morality or virtue is in the self-interest of the (virtuous) agent.

It will be a background assumption of this essay that some ways of connecting virtue and well-being/self-interest redound to the advantage of the larger theories that incorporate them. If, in particular, we believe in the bona fides of ethical theory, then unifying power is a desideratum in ethics and it stands in favor of utilitarianism (and Epicureanism) that it offers us a way of unifying our understanding of virtue and well-being. To be sure, that advantage may to some extent or ultimately be undercut if unification leads to counterintuitive ethical consequences.

Motivated by a deep sense that injustice and inequality are wrong, liberals and reformers in the Western political tradition have focused their energies on policies and programs which seek inclusion: extending the suffrage to those without property; seeking to treat women the same as men, and blacks the same as whites; trying to ensure that as few as possible are excluded from economic opportunity due to lack of resources. Under current conditions, such demands for inclusion take two primary forms, especially in the United States. One is a commitment to using the state to equalize the life chances of individuals. The other is a call for treating groups which have experienced discrimination with full respect. The former leads to the welfare state, while the latter is produced by, and in turn produces, what is commonly called identity politics, the politics of recognition, or the politics of presence.

Political theory has a good deal to say both for and against the establishment of the modern welfare state. As one might expect, most of that discussion is directed toward the expanded set of basic rights that the state confers on its members. In its most canonical form, the welfare state represents a switch in vision from the regime of negative rights in the nineteenth century to the regime of positive rights so much in vogue today. Negative rights—an inexact and somewhat misleading term— stress the right of an individual to be free from certain kinds of external interventions. These rights arrange themselves on two basic lists. The first list generates a set of civil capacities that all individuals enjoy over their own labor and property: the right to contract, to make wills, to sue and be sued, to give evidence, and the like. The second list, from which the term “negative rights” derives, protects all persons from interference, either by force or by fraud, in the conduct of their own affairs. The resulting set of rights is short, snappy, and knowable; it is internally consistent; and it prepares the stage for productive human behavior (exchange) while limiting destructive forms of behavior (theft). Even though it is not couched in explicit utilitarian language, it can surely be defended on general functional grounds.

My topic in this essay is the comparative moral value of self-interest and altruism. I take self-interest to consist in a positive attitude toward one's own good and altruism to consist in a similar attitude toward the good of others, and I assess these attitudes within a general theory of the intrinsic value of attitudes toward goods and evils. The first two sections of the essay apply this theory in a simple form, one that treats self-interest and altruism symmetrically. The third section examines whether the theory can be revised to accommodate an apparent asymmetry in our common-sense thinking about self-interested and altruistic attitudes.

I will start by assuming that each person has a good, or that certain states of the person are intrinsically desirable and others undesirable. Of course, philosophers have disagreed for centuries about what this good consists in, or what particular states are desirable. Welfarists take each person's good to consist in pleasure, the fulfillment of her preferences, or something describable as “welfare” or “happiness.” Perfectionists hold that certain states of a person are good apart from any connection with happiness. Thus, some perfectionists hold that knowledge, achievement, and deep personal relations are good independently of how much a person wants or enjoys them. For the purposes of this essay it does not matter much which initial claims about the good we accept. To discuss issues about self-interest and altruism we need only some initial theory of each person's good, whatever its specific content. Consequently, and to cover as many bases as possible, I will start by assuming a mixed welfarist-perfectionist theory of the good, one claiming that pleasure, knowledge, and achievement are all intrinsically good.