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The Equal Moral Weight of Self- and Other-Regarding Acts*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Judith Andre
Judith Andre*
Affiliation:
Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA23508-8510, U.S.A.
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Extract

Self-regarding acts are frequently classified as non-moral; even more frequently, they are assumed to have less moral weight than parallel other-regarding acts. I argue briefly against the first claim, and at greater length against the second. Our intuitions about the lesser moral weight of self-regarding acts arise from imperfectly recognized, and morally relevant, differences between acts which are ordinarily described in misleadingly parallel phrases. ‘Love of self,’ for instance, and ‘love of another’ are not symmetrical attitudes, in spite of the symmetrical grammar. More obviously, one cannot steal from, lie to, nor force oneself in the same way one can do these things to others. I conclude, therefore, that difference in moral weight never stems merely from a difference in the person concerned (myself or another), but rather from differences between the actions themselves; furthermore, that whatever it is wrong to do to a willing other, it is wrong to do to oneself.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , March 1987 , pp. 155 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1987

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Footnotes

*

This paper was made possible by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. I am grateful for help from Alasdair MacIntyre, Craig Ihara, Michael Pritchard, and several anonymous referees.

References

1 From this passage it may seem that Baier is speaking only of self-regarding acts performed in a state of nature. From the rest of his work, however, it is clear that he considers self-regarding acts, if they are possible, amoral as such. Baier, Kurt The Moral Point of View (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press 1958), 215Google Scholar.

2 Singer, Marcus George Generalization in Ethics (New York: Alfred A Knopf 1961), 315Google Scholar. See also Singer, ‘On Duties to Oneself,’ Ethics 69 (1959), 202CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Singer, ‘Duties and Duties to Oneself,’ Ethics 73 January 1963), 134CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 See in particular discussions by Mothersill, Mary Knight, Frank and Wick, Warner in Ethics 71 (1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and by Kading, Daniel and Wick, Warner in Ethics 70 (1960) 155–7; 158–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Falk, W.O. ‘Morality, Self, and Others,’ in Reason and ResponsibilityGoogle Scholar, Feinberg, Joel ed. (Belmont, CA: Dickenson Publishing Company 1978), 576Google Scholar

5 Sidgwick, Henry Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (New York: Dover Publications 1966), 379Google Scholar

6 Falk, 573

7 Falk, 575

8 Falk, 577

9 I have discussed this elsewhere: Andre, Judith ‘Nagel, Williams, and Moral Luck,’ Analysis 43 (1983) 202–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.