Interests

[Page 349]The notion of interests is intimately connected to the notion of political and social power. The viewpoint one adopts with regard to the interests of a person, group, or some other actor partly determines one's attitudes to the nature of power in society. For this reason, the concept of interests, like the concept of power itself, is often described as “essentially contested.” To claim that a policy or practice is in the interests of some agent is to say both that the actor would benefit from that policy or practice and that therefore there is a reason for enacting that policy or practice. It means that interest is both a descriptive term and, more than many other words, a normative one.

The concept of interest can be used in a number of different ways: we can talk about the interests of a person, of a group, of an organization such as firm or political party; the national interest, the public interest, and so on. Let us begin by discussing how we might define the interests of a single agent, a person, and then examine the complications that can result from applying this concept to collective entities such as firms or “the public.”

A person's interests might be equated with the person's welfare or well-being. Thus, it is in someone's interests to be healthy, happy, and materially comfortable. Any aspect that affects a person's welfare might be thought to be in their interests. Thus, a healthy diet contributes to good health, so it is in your interests to eat healthy food and avoid unhealthy food. But of course, many people like to eat unhealthily. They choose to eat poor food when they could afford healthy food. Indeed, we often recognize that we do not always act in ways that are in our interests. We cannot therefore judge what is in someone's interests by examining their behavior. Although we satisfy our immediate wants and desires through our actions, they do not reveal our true interests.

Saying that immediate wants and desires revealed through action are not identical to interests does not mean that interests are not tied closely to wants and desires. We might eat unhealthily but know we ought to eat better food. In that sense, we do want what is in our interests, even though we do not follow them. However, this does suggest that there is an objective element to our interests. One way of understanding that objective element is to make a distinction between wants and needs and to perceive that the notion of interests is tied to needs.

The difference between wants and needs is that the latter is a modal term—that is, it has to be explained in terms of something else—but the former is not. Any statement that x is needed for y only provides a reason for doing x if y is something that we want. If we say, for example, that a healthy diet requires fresh fruit, then eating fresh fruit is something desirable only because a healthy diet is something we want. Of course, it hardly seems necessary to explain that we want health because it is so obvious; nevertheless, the objective nature of the need—it is, say, factual that fruit is necessary for a healthy diet—ensures the link between what is in our interests and our wants. In liberal accounts, this link is vital. Liberal accounts of the good life want to ensure a strong link between any claim that something is in our interests and what we would choose if we were free to do so. Interests are thus tied to well-being, but the basis of that well-being must be tied to what the person wants. If someone genuinely does not care about his or her health, then we cannot make the claim that eating fresh fruit is in that person's interests. The liberal account of interests might be referred to as “subjective interests” because they are tied to the explicit wants of the subject.

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