UADPhilEcon Papadopoulou Eleni

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Compare and contrast the ways in which non-selfish motives are accounted for in:
a) Hume
b) Kant
c) Ordinal Utilitarianists

In the framework of any philosophical inquiry on the origins of collective interaction

and social formation, it is inevitable to come across the contrasted notions of
selfishness (or self-interest) and non-selfishness (or benevolence) in human nature.
The scope of this essay is to briefly determine the notion of non-selfish motives in
individual action as dealt with in the works of Hume, Kant and ordinal Utilitarianists
(viz. Jevons, Menker, Walras) and to identify the extend to which such motives render
specific characteristics to the society within which the former interact. Following, a
contrast will be attempted as to the results produced by each theoretical approach.

a) In Book III of the Treatise on Human Nature, Hume states that motives as
opposed to actions are those to be inspected when any judgment on the virtue of
human nature is undertaken. Moreover, these motives are thought to be distinct from a
sense of duty and to that extend from a sense of morality in the state of nature and
stem directly from human passions. Hume takes the example of actions on behalf of a
parent to take care of her child. Such actions are considered to be virtuous not because
they are signs of the parent’s “conformity” to some kind of duty towards the child, but
because they express a meritorious motive which in this case is parental affection and
which is described as a “natural motive or virtue”. According to Hume, moral
obligations or duties cannot produce any action in the state of nature. However the
case is somewhat different in society (especially in a small society where any
individual behavior is directly observed and judged), for actions can be produced once
certain values are commonly shared and respected. The latter are the so called
“artificial virtues” which in turn are products of reason, custom, education and “the
artifice of politicians”.

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Having said that, we can now turn to the subject of non-selfish individual motives, the
actions they produce as such and the results of these actions in terms of human
interaction. The question posed at this point is one the one hand, whether these
motives actually exist and can be considered as natural and on the other hand whether
they are sufficient for producing acts of justice and honesty and for keeping together a
functional society. As to the former question, Hume states that motives of public
benevolence are indeed existent and inherent in human nature. This acknowledgment
is a major reason for parting ways with Hobbes within the Anglo- Celtic tradition, for
Hobbes was more pessimistic as to human nature and attributed everything to human
selfishness resulting to hostility and conflict.

Nevertheless, motives regarding the public interest cannot be thought as sufficient to

establish justice and honesty as “artificial virtues”. Hume puts forth three
considerations of why this is the case: Firstly, as shall be noted in what follows, the
emergence of justice is directly connected with self-interest through conventions.
Secondly, if a just or honest action was for whatever reason only privately and not
publicly observable, then the regard to public interest would no longer be intelligible.
Thirdly, public interest is “a motive too remote and too sublime to affect the
generality of mankind and operate with any force in actions so contrary to private
interest as are frequently those of justice and common honesty1”.

The question then is what motive is powerful enough to generate social coherence. At
this point it is noted that human necessities are too broad and complicated to be
satisfied on individual basis. This in turn is a driver for conjunction of powers that is
only possible in society and that is able to overcome the limits of human force, ability
and security. Should the benefits of such a conjunction not only exist, but also be
acknowledged, we have a first strong purpose for cooperation. However, there exist
some characteristics of “natural temper” as Hume puts it, which operate contrary to
this conjunction, the most substantial of which is selfishness. It is therefore
recognized that people are naturally self-interested (this does not oppose to the above
statement that there exist non-selfish motives, as it is declared in the Treatise: “though
it is rare to meet with one who loves any single person better than himself, yet it is as
rare to meet with one, in whom all the kind affections taken together, do not
1
Hume, D, Treatise on Human Nature, Book III: Of Morals, p.533

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overbalance all the selfish2”). Moreover, selfish motives are powerful enough so that
before the influence of social custom, people are determined by the natural partiality
of their passions which the uncultivated ideas of morality further instigate. Thus, in a
state of liberty, the general passions of self affection and affection towards close
people alienate the individual from community.

Nonetheless, through interaction people realize that these passions are better satisfied
in society, so that there is an incentive to its preservation. It is thus reason, not
morality (as the recognition of right or wrong as a driver to action) which inhibits the
natural operation of individual passions for the sake of a more constant and permanent
self-interest (here stands a basic difference with the Kantian mindset which will be
further presented in what follows). However we should note here that reason does not
impose itself on passions nor has the ability to alter them. It is an instrument for
serving the passion by the appropriate use of the available means to that end. But
though reason has no such power, social conflict is minimized through a sense of a
common interest which results to the emergence of conventions that regulate social
interaction.

Being an empiricist, Hume believed that these conventions gain status and respect
through repeated experience that constantly proves the benefits of their existence and
the vice following digressions. The consolidation of these conventions in turn gives
rise to the “artificial virtues” of justice, property and obligation, in a way that they
themselves can now constitute non-selfish motives for action. Concluding, I think that
the existence of irreducible natural, non-selfish or benevolent motives is implied in
Hume (in contrast with Hobbes that reduces everything to self-love). However, these
motives are not strong enough to result to either conventions, or to that extend
obligations, duties and rules of justice. The latter are produced from the interaction of
human selfishness and limited generosity with the realization of social advantages to
the satisfaction of these passions and of the various human wants and furthermore to a
common sense of interest slowly progressing through custom, habit, education and
“political artifice”. Non-selfish motives are then encountered as stemming from
artificial virtues (which sometimes prevail so instinctively as to be hard to be
distinguished from natural ones).
2
Hume D., “Treatise on Human Nature, Book III: Of Morals”, p.538

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 b) Turning to the views of Kant regarding (at first) motives in general, a good
starting point would be the fundamental difference with the Humean (and to that
extend the Hobbesian) view outlined above, that reason alone is not a driver of action.
In Hume, individuals are driven by their passions, which reason is destined to serve
and unable to have any effect upon. On the opposite, Kant believed in the sufficient
impetus that reason alone was able to provide for action and moreover that reason was
directly attached to moral obligations and duties. In this way, moral appraisals are
thought to be fundamental motives as long as they can be universalisable. That is,
should a moral belief be shared so that everyone would want everyone else to behave
in a way as to respect it, everyone should act according to it irrelevant of what they
believed would be done by everyone else, though believing in everyone’s Good Will.
This is the notion of the Categorical Imperative or Reasoning in the Kantian thought
(categorical in the sense that it involves a “should” rather than an “if”) that comes to
oppose to the Hypothetical Reasoning of the Anglo-Celtic tradition, and it is a notion
of moral independence.

The question then is whether such motives as can be described by “non-selfish”, fit to
the general description of motives or in other words whether they can be described as
moral interests in the way that Kant suggests. If selfishness as described in the
Humean theory is a motive which urges a person to seek in his actions primarily the
good of his own self, then the end of non-selfish motives is primarily different than
the good for the self. Moreover selfishness is an irreducible inclination or passion that
is able to produce actions in order to satisfy personal desires which reason alone
cannot prevent. In this sense, individual motives in the Kantian sense are not selfish
motives.

However, there exists an ambiguity here as to whether selfish motives coincide with
motives described as “duties to oneself”, such as “preserving own life”, “developing
talents”, “securing own happiness”. Paton (1990) claims that these kinds of duties (to
oneself) even have priority against duties to others in the sense that they have a
greater moral importance. Paton gives an example that reveals the difficulty of taking
a position to that issue: If we accept that there is a “duty to oneself to secure one’s
own happiness”, are we in fact acting for the sake of happiness itself or for the sake of

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duty? And to take it a bit further, if as Paton claims, duties to oneself have priority
against all other because of their higher moral importance, were one faced with a
decision between an action that promotes own happiness and one that promotes a
collective goal and chose the former, would this be inconsistent with reason and to
that extend with Kant’s Categorical Imperative? Kant in fact holds that the examples
mentioned above are all illustrations of inclinations, of which he characterizes the
preservation of life an “immediate inclination” and “the universal inclination towards
happiness” the “strongest and deepest one” and by this challenges their moral
worthiness.

There from stems a commonly addressed criticism to Kant’s perception of moral

worthiness and duty. Is it implied that an action produced by reverence to a moral law
be free of feelings of pleasure in a way that if pleasure is included the sense of duty
fulfillment is lost? To that Kant replies that: “Reverence for the moral law entails a
subjective effect on feeling that is truly elevating”. Moreover “this feeling is different
from the pathological feeling. It is a moral feeling that follows from the thought of the
law. It is then by this feeling that the notion of moral interest is explained”.

Having said that, a quote from Galvin (1991) will be employed to demonstrate the
qualitative difference that the notion of non-selfish motives (as are indeed those in the
Kantian though) holds as opposed to that which is attributed by Hume: “the
“orthodox” interpretation of Kant is that only actions done from the motive of duty
possess moral worth and there is abundant textual support for this view. There is,
however, also textual support for the view that actions according with duty but not
performed from the motive of duty possess moral worth although the highest moral
value is reserved for actions done from the motive of duty3”. In this sense, a
benevolent action like visiting a friend in the hospital is a result of a non-selfish
motive but it is not a pure product of rationally perceived duty and thus a qualitative
difference is implied with another action produced by a non-selfish and dutiful
motive. This again depicts the difference with the rejection of dutiful motives by
Hume.
3
Galvin R., (1991), “Does Kant’s Psychology of Morality Need basic Revision?”, Mind, New Series,
Vol.100 (p.230)

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 c) Before assessing the nature of motives in ordinal utilitarianism, it is useful, for
reasons of contrast with what was presented above, to note the connection between
human psychology as accounted for by Hume and by Ordinal Utilitarianism. As
stated, according to Hume passions are the drivers of human action to which reason is
subordinated and in fact it serves as an instrument to their satisfaction. Utilitarianism
in its primary form was closely connected to this view. Effectively, what Bentham
(who first conceptualized the sense of utilitarianism) did, was to state that there is a
single- dimensional motive in individuals and that is a passion for pleasure and an
aversion for pain. From there was initiated the notion of cardinal (measurable) utility
that people acquired through their actions and that was the guide of their choices.

The difference in Ordinal Utilitarianism actually lies upon the measurability of utility
rather than the fact that it constitutes a motive (in fact the only motive for action).
According to Ordinal Utilitarianism people are bundles of well-ordered preferences
which they are bound to satisfy. The higher in order the preference they satisfy, the
more utility they acquire. If we were to put this in terms of Hume’s theory, we could
say that the passion that governs individual decisions is a passion for the highest
possible utility. Moreover, what seems to be common with Hume but opposite to
Cardinal Utilitarianism, is that Passion in the same sense as Ordinal Utility is not
comparable among individuals.

On these grounds, we could assess whether non-selfish motives can fit in the
framework of Ordinal Utilitarianism in a similar manner as we in the case of Hume.
In this sense selfish and non-selfish motives can be equally warranted, to the extend
that they have a positive effect on utility (which in this case is individual utility rather
than the average utility of Bentham “the greatest amount of utility for the greatest
number of people”). Benevolence can just as well bring on utility, if someone
classifies it higher in her order of preferences than selfishness. Similarly, in the
Humean framework passions can have ends different than the self.
Now, there exists again a fundamental difference with the moral psychology of Kant,
for in Ordinal Utilitarianism keeping a promise or refrain from lying or making a
donation to an orphanage cannot be actions motivated by any conformity to duty or

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reverence to moral law and moreover are not produced neither by reason, nor by
morality.

Nevertheless, there remains a question as to whether a benevolent action that

increases utility more than a selfish one is performed by a non-selfish motive or not.
For, if the ultimate scope of the individual is to better satisfy an order of arranged
preferences, the motive’s end (which is not the action’s end as well) is a personal
utility order or function and thus a selfish motive. If seen from this perspective, it is
hard to make the distinction. In either case, however, the critique addressed to Ordinal
Utilitarianism as suggesting acting in selfishness is not well justified.

Finally, it must be noted that the above brief contrast is not anywhere near being
exhaustive. Its scope is to give a rough idea of the perceived similarity of accounting
for non-selfish motives in Hume and in Ordinal utilitarianism which I think stems
from a similar view to human psychology and is fundamentally different with the
Kantian rational morality.

References

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Bradley McGilvary E., (1903), “Altruism in Hume’s Treatise”, The Philosophical
Review, Vol. 12

Galvin R., (1991), “Does Kant’s Psychology of Morality Need basic Revision?”,
Mind, New Series, Vol.100

Huff T., (1972), “Self-interest and benevolence in Hume’s Account of Moral

Obligation”, Ethics, Vol.83

Hume D., “Treatise on Human Nature, Book III: Of Morals”, Oxford 1888

Kant I., “An Idea for a Universal Theory with a Cosmopolitan Purpose”, Political
Writings, Cambridge University Press

Kant I., (1785), “The Metaphysics of Morals”, Cambridge University Press (1996)

Katz J., (1948), “On the Nature of Selfishness”, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol.45

Paton M., (1990), “A Reconsideration of Kant’s Treatment of Duties to Oneself”,

The Philosophical Review, Vol.40

Raynor D., (1978), “On Hume’s Corrections to Treatise III”, The Philosophical
Quarterly, Vol.28

Singer P., (1972), “Is Act-Utilitarianism Self-Defeating”, The Philosophical Review

Vol.81

Varoufakis Y., (1998), “Foundations of Economics”, London and NY: Routledge

(Chapter 3: A brief history of utilitarianism)

Wand B., (1956), “Hume’s Account of Obligation”, The Philosophical Quarterly,

Vol.6