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Selflessness and the Loss of Self*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2009

Jean Hampton
Jean Hampton
Affiliation:
Philosophy, University of Arizona
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Extract

The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. is bound to be noticed.

Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , Winter 1993 , pp. 135 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1993

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References

1 Kierkegaard, Soren, Ttie Sickticss Unto Death, trans. Hannay, Alastair (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989), pp. 62–63.Google Scholar

2 See Gilligan, Carol, In A Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982)Google Scholar. She has revised and expanded her ideas since then. See a variety of articles about Gilligan's recent work in Mapping the Moral Domain, ed. Gilligan, Carol, Ward, Victoria, and McLean, Jill, with Bandige, Betty (Cambridge: Center for the Study of Gender, Education, and Human Development, 1988)Google Scholar. And see Gilligan, Carol, “Moral Orientation and Moral Development,” in Women and Moral Theory, ed. Kittay, Eva Feder and Meyers, Diana T. (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987), pp. 19–33.Google Scholar

3 The discussion of Jake and Amy is partly drawn from my paper “Feminist Contractari-anism,” in Analytic Feminism, ed. Antony, L. and Witt, C. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992).Google Scholar

4 Gilligan, , In A Different Voice, pp. 35–36.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., p. 36.

6 Ibid., pp. 35–36.

7 Ibid., p. 36.

8 I am indebted to Elizabeth Willott and David Schmidtz for this way of contrasting the children's moral outlooks.

9 Baier, Annette, “What Do Women Want in a Moral Theory?” Nous, vol. 19, no. 1 (03 1985), p. 62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Ibid.

11 Wood, Allen, Karl Marx (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 126–27.Google Scholar

12 See Kagan, Shelly, The Limits of Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

13 The quote is drawn from section 6 of the Second Treatise in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), p. 311.Google Scholar

14 Wolf, Susan, “Moral Saints,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 79, no. 8 (08 1982), pp. 419–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Ibid., pp. 420–21.

16 Ibid., p. 436.

17 From Shakespeare, 's As You Like ItGoogle Scholar, Act III (in a speech by Jacques).

18 See Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Macpherson, C. B. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), chap. 10, para. 16, p. 42.Google Scholar

19 For example, Kant maintains that those who are morally bad can deserve punishment, but he is also well-known for insisting that punishment is a way of respecting a person's autonomy, and represents neither a violation nor a suspension of that autonomy.

20 See Murphy, Jeffrie, “Afterword: Constitutionalism, Moral Skepticism, and Religious Belief,” in Constitutionalism: The Philosophical Dimension, ed. Rosenbaum, H. (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), pp. 239–49.Google Scholar

I was struck recently by how many people in American culture accept this view of worth when I read a letter written by parents of children in a Tucson-area elementary school, calling upon the school to foster the idea that “all people are equal.” In attempting to explain this equality, the authors of the letter noted that although each of us is different, our differences do not affect our equality. As they put it: Just as 3 + 3 + 1 is different from but equal to 3 + 4, so too are we different from, but equal to, one another.

21 Woolf's account of her mother's life can be found in autobiographical fragments published as “A Sketch of the Past,” in The Virginia Woolf Reader, ed. Leaska, Mitchell (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1984).Google Scholar

22 This obvious lesson is often missed. Consider that airlines find it necessary to teach parents that if oxygen masks are necessary during flight, they should place the masks over their own noses and mouths first, and only then help their children to secure their masks.

23 I am indebted to Elizabeth Willott for this way of putting the point.

24 For a prominent discussion, see Elster, Jon, Ulysses and the Sirens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; the fact that Elster takes for granted the idea that Ulysses's desire to steer the ship toward the rocks is not a genuine desire is noted, and criticized, by Hubin, Don, “On Bindings and By-products: Elster on Rationality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 15, no. 1 (Winter 1986), pp. 82–95.Google Scholar

25 See again her “Moral Saints.”

26 Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, Book IX, 1166b22–24Google Scholar. The quote is drawn from the Ross, W. D. translation in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. McKeon, R. (New York: Random House, 1941).Google Scholar

27 I am indebted to David Schmidtz for this last point.

28 Keller, Catherine discusses Kierkegaard's views in this context in her From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, and Self (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), p. 12.Google Scholar

29 See Kierkegaard, Soren, Sickness Unto Death, pp. 80–81n.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., p.81n.

31 Christian theology uses the Greek word agape to denote this form of love.

32 But there may be times when a person serves reluctantly because he has a conflict between his love for others and his own self-regarding interests. I discuss such conflicts in the next section.

33 So my position is not so anti-Kantian as it might initially appear. Like Kant, I agree that morality requires service to others, despite one's self-regarding interests. But I see that service as commendable only if it is connected in a certain way not only to that person's will but also to his conception of himself.

34 See Badhwar, Neera Kapur, “Altruism Versus Self-interest: Sometimes a False Dichotomy,”Google Scholar in this volume. I am indebted to Badhwar for helping me to develop many of the ideas in this paragraph.

35 I cannot pursue here the difficult question of when (and in what way) human beings should establish connections of love with others. It cannot be morally required that we become friends with everyone, or that everyone become some kind of parent, although the kind of universal connection with fellow human beings experienced by the rescuers does seem to be morally required of us all. I have argued elsewhere that answering this question will involve, among other things, considering issues of justice (to oneself and others); see my “Feminist Contractarianism.”

36 Quoted by Ruddick, Sara, “Maternal Thinking” in Women and Values: Readings in Recent Feminist Philosophy, ed. Pearsall, Marilyn (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1986), p. 340Google Scholar; from Echergaray, J., “Severed Heart,” quoted by Jessie Bernard in The Future of Motherhood (New York: Dial, 1974), p. 4.Google Scholar

37 Quoted by Ruddick, Sara, “Maternal Thinking,” p. 344Google Scholar; original story told to Ruddick by Miriam Schapiro.

38 This story was told during a sermon by the Rev. John Snow, delivered at the Harvard University Chapel, in 1978. I am quoting from the text of that sermon.

39 Life is filled with such unfairness, but we ought to blame our social systems for some of that unfairness if we live in a society that persistently puts people of a certain class, or gender, or race, or caste in the position of having to choose between caring for those whom they love and developing themselves as persons. Granted, it is hopelessly Utopian to strive for a world in which individuals never have to compromise their own development in order to care for others whom they authentically love. But surely it is reasonable at least to strive for a world in which society is not persistently doing things that encourage such dilemmas for only some of its members.

40 Might this be a way to explain why many people regard as morally permissible Gauguin's choice to leave his family and go to Tahiti to develop as an artist? It strikes me as preferable to Bernard Williams's explanation that we commend the choice only because Gauguin prospered as an artist in Tahiti, and thus was “morally lucky.” See Williams, 's discussion of this example in his “Moral Luck,” in Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 This is partly because contemporary moral philosophy has been fixated on other-regarding moral duties, to the serious neglect of self-regarding ones. What explains this fixation? A Marxist explanation (which was suggested to me by Christine Korsgaard) is that the call for equal rights by those who have been in lower class, “servant” groups (e.g.,. women and African Americans) has alarmed the rest of society sufficiently that they have encouraged servile conceptions of morality that would, if accepted by these people, keep them in their servile roles—and such conceptions have (wittingly or unwittingly) been accepted by moral philosophers (who have traditionally come from more powerful, nonservile social groups). An alternative explanation (which is potentially consistent with the first) is that moral philosophy, up until very recently, has been done almost exclusively by males, who commonly hold a Jake-like understanding of morality, and who are attracted to an other-regarding conception of morality as they become aware that their highly self-regarding conception of their connection to other people needs correction (not realizing that many people might need a very different kind of correction). Moreover, recent feminist celebrations of women's propensity to care have certainly encouraged this tendency to think of morality as almost exclusively other-regarding.

42 Thus, I do not mean to bo hostile to the currently popular celebration by feminists of women's persistent interest in caring. I only wish to put caring in its proper moral place. There are a number of women that have sounded similar themes recently; e.g., Okin, Susan Moller, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989)Google Scholar; and Friedman, Marilyn, “Beyond Caring: The Demoralization of Gender,” in Science, Morality, and Feminism, ed. Hanen, Marsha and Nielsen, Kai (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1987)Google Scholar. See also my “Feminist Contractarianism.”