3 ms·
Well, pure self-interest would probably fall outside of morality, but one could make an argument that many conscriped ISIS fighters, US soldiers, and perhaps US
by michael_fine 11y ago
Well, pure self-interest would probably fall outside of morality, but one could make an argument that many conscriped ISIS fighters, US soldiers, and perhaps US leaders are acting out of self-interest.
- Natsu 11y agoI think things could get a bit ambiguous when you consider something like the Stalinist purges. Those would seem to be an intersection of self-interest and self-righteousness. Although their morality was not theistic, they clearly believed that they must prevail over those who had wronged them.
- danharaj 11y agoSelf-interest is not a well defined concept. The notion of self is not somehow objective or immutable. Describing someone's self-interest is just another framework for describing the same underlying system that morality and all that is trying to describe. There is a bit of circularity when one tries to make self-interest an essential feature of brains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_egoism#Circularity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_egoism#Circulari... In cases like extreme nationalism, the zealot has essentialized the nation-state into their identity and is thus acting in their 'self-interest'. If one defines self-interest as interest in the health and reproduction of the body, then humans are emphatically not drive solely by self-interest.
- tremon 11y agoWhy was this down-voted? The parent makes an excellent point that self-interest relies on a moral judgement about who the "self" is.