Self-Interest

Self-interest is commonly defined as the explicit concern for the wants and needs of the individual. Typically, the expression is contrasted with other terms, such as altruism or collectivism, which privilege the needs of others or the broader group unit. Since antiquity, the topic of self-interest has been hotly debated and contested in the Western intellectual world and beyond. It has spanned across many academic disciplines and caught the attention of such luminary figures as Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Max Stirner, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Ayn Rand, to name a few.

One particularly influential reading of self-interest comes to us from the Western philosophical tradition of psychological egoism. In broad terms, what psychological egoists are said to advance is the descriptive view that human beings are always only self-interested. This is a point famously articulated by seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who in his seminal work, The Leviathan, contends that self-interest is an inescapable fact of human nature; so much so that human beings, he writes, would destroy one another to advance their own interests if not for some intervening force.

Classically, psychological egoism can be distinguished from its distant relative, normative egoism. What this variant of egoism holds is that self-interest is not assumed to be the only possible mode of action—just that it ought to be. Normative egoism can be broken down into two main strands: ethical and rational. What differentiates these two types of normative egoism is that whereas the former privileges self-interest in the sphere of ethical action, the latter only tries to establish self-interest as the sole criterion for rationality.

Self-interest has also been bound up in the discourse surrounding individualism, which, etymologically speaking, first arose in Western Europe around the early nineteenth century. As Stephen Lukes reports, one of the chief characteristics of individualist thought is the belief in self-autonomy. This is the idea that individuals, by their own accord, can change and direct their own destinies. Such a view can be contrasted with the notion that it is the larger whole of society that determines in toto how each and every one of us will live. To be an individualist, [Page 1256]then, is to reject such deterministic and selfless ways of thinking.

Individualism and egoism have typically been associated with the modern capitalist project. Because of this, self-interest has received much attention from contemporary social thought, as it has often been used to characterize—both approvingly and pejoratively—the actions of modern capitalist peoples. Broadly speaking, Adam Smith, the eighteenth-century English philosopher, is credited as one of the main thinkers responsible for forging this link. His writings have been particularly influential in persuading people to believe that the pursuit of one's own self-interest can actually be beneficial, not harmful, to the “common good” of a society. Famously, this was captured by Smith's concept of the “invisible hand,” which Smith used to illustrate his ethical egoist stance that self-interested behavior could in the long run create more, not less, wealth for societies on the whole.

In more recent times, however, many have sought to show that this latter concern of Smith's philosophy has greatly diminished in its importance; although self-interest is still a greatly prized quality in modern capitalist societies, whether or not this leads to any benefits for the “common good” no longer commands as much attention as it once did. An area where this view has found particular resonance is in the sociology of work and employment. Here, a number of sociologists, such as Ulrich Beck, have emphasized how especially cutthroat and individualized the job market in the West has become since the latter half of the twentieth century. Correspondingly, Zygmunt Bauman (2003) has written about how much the idea of utopia has dramatically changed since the early modern period. In contrast to times past when utopia was seen as a collective project, nowadays in the early twenty-first century, utopia has come to be seen as a more individualistic venture—one that highlights the possibility of only personal, not collective, salvation. Many social thinkers like Bauman have put this down to a number of recent social developments—in particular the decline of the welfare state, as well as the overall speed up of capitalist processes, which has resulted in more uncertain employment conditions.

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