![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Selfish Heart of Virtue
Jul. 21st, 2025 09:44 pmi used to believe i was selfish and broken. the kind of person who only thought of himself, who didn’t care enough about others, who lacked empathy, who was perhaps the most egoistic person i’d ever seen. i carried that shame for a long time, until i began to realize that it wasn’t just me, it was everyone. it wasn’t a defect unique to me, but something rooted in the fabric of all humanity. we’re all egoistic, just in different ways and to different degrees. everything we do is, at its core, for ourselves. true altruism, if you really look closely, doesn’t exist.
this realization is what philosophers call psychological egoism, and it’s one of the most controversial and unsettling ideas in moral philosophy.
the claim that all human behavior is fundamentally self-interested has angered and disturbed thinkers for centuries, because it seems to undermine the cherished ideal of pure selfless virtue. if our “moral” and “noble” acts are actually selfish in disguise, then what does that say about morality itself?
one of the most provocative defenders of this view was bernard mandeville, whose "fable of the bees" brilliantly argued that humans are fundamentally motivated by self-interest, and that even what we call “vices” (like greed, pride, and ambition) are what drive progress and prosperity in society.
what we think of as morality is just society’s way of using selfishness productively. even virtues like generosity and charity, when you look closer, arise from self-love because they make us feel good, win us admiration, or relieve our own discomfort at the suffering of others.
if psychological egoism is true, then morality isn’t an ideal we rise to, it’s simply a social tool for coordinating our competing self-interests.
what we call “moral” acts (helping the poor, risking your life for someone, being faithful, etc.) are strategies to gain approval, avoid guilt, feel good about ourselves, or secure rewards, not pure self-sacrifice.
hobbes put it bluntly:
“no man gives but with intention of good to himself.”
for hobbes, all behavior reduces to the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure in one form or another. humans crave the esteem of others, and much of what we call “virtue” is simply a strategy to earn that esteem. civilization itself emerges from carrying those selfish instincts toward stability and cooperation.
mandeville also argued that we should recognize that these instincts aren’t just inevitable, they’re useful. without selfish passions, society would stagnate.
mandeville’s ideas outraged many of his contemporaries because they challenged the comforting belief that humans are capable of true altruism.
one of his most striking arguments comes in the form of a rhetorical question:
“what interest can a fond mother have in view, who loses her health by assiduous attendance on her sick child, and afterwards languishes and dies of grief, when freed, by its death, from the slavery of that attendance?”
at first glance, the mother’s sacrifice looks like the epitome of selflessness. but mandeville asks us to look closer. she suffers and grieves not simply out of pure concern for the child as a separate being, but because the child is part of her self, even physically, since he was made from her own body. her attachment, her sense of purpose, and her identity are all bound up with him. when he suffers, she suffers, when he dies, she feels as though a part of herself has died. her devotion, even unto death, arises from her own passions, needs, and self-love, not from a detached, impartial altruism. even here, in one of the most intimate and moving examples of human love, self-interest quietly underlies and drives her actions.
so if even a mother’s care for her sick child can be explained by self-love, then the theory holds even in the most powerful, intimate, and emotional situations.
he’s not saying people are consciously selfish or calculating, but that even our deepest instincts, love and grief included, are expressions of self-love.
personally, i find it hard not to agree with him.
many philosophers accused mandeville of “cheating,” because his theory seemed to absorb all criticism. if you point to an apparently selfless act, he simply explains how it serves the self, no matter how noble or sacrificial it appears. but to me, that’s exactly the point. and another proof that he’s right, the very fact that people get so angry and defensive about this idea is itself evidence of its truth: they don’t want to face the unsettling reality that selfishness lies at the heart of everything, even in what we proudly call virtue, morality, and altruism. the resistance to his view only shows how deeply invested we are in maintaining the illusion of selflessness.
mandeville’s view isn’t just provocative, it’s liberating. it frees us from pretending we’re something we’re not and allows us to see morality for what it really is.
