Download Can self-interest be moral?

The Art of Being Human, 7/e
Chapter 13 –
Morality
PowerPoint by Julie Rodakowski
©2003 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman
Publishers.
THE MORALITY
OF
SELF-INTEREST
©2003 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman
Publishers.
Can self-interest be moral?
FAMOUS PEOPLE
WHO WRESTLED
WITH THIS IDEA:
• Henry David Thoreau
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Socrates
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Publishers.
Can SELF-INTEREST and the TRUTH coexist in
such a manner that actions are moral?
Many philosophers and persons
associated with the humanities
believe that self-interest is not
always evil, but is sometimes
necessary and important to society.
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What is ENLIGHTENED SELF-INTEREST, and does
it assure a moral existence?
MACHIAVELLI believed that
politically enlightened self-interest
was the only possible means to a
stable and harmonious society,
thus assuring morality.
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What role does ECONOMICS play in SELFINTEREST, and if the two are linked, is
morality still a possibility?
ADAM SMITH believed that the
perfect society was one in which
all people were free to pursue selfinterest.
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How can one TRANSCEND SELF-INTEREST to
assure that one is being moral?
A widely admired—and for some,
purely theoretical—moral path that
transcends self-interest is the path of
ALTRUISM, the extreme opposite of
self-interest.
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THREE
MORAL
AUTHORITIES
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Jeremy Bentham: Moral Mathematics
He believed in the greatest good for the
greatest number.
John Stuart Mill: Liberalism
The Tyranny of the Majority—the majority can be
wrong, and government is needed to balance the
irresponsibility on the part of the general
population.
Immanuel Kant: The Moral Imperative
His moral imperative states that the sense of
right and wrong is inborn and that this “sense of
ought” is an intuitive classification of actions
and choices as morally acceptable and
unacceptable.
©2003 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman
Publishers.
RELIGION AND
MORALITY
The major world religions—
Hinduism, Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam—have
provided what we might call
“moral orientation” for most of
the world’s population.
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WORK AND MORALITY
The workplace is for many people the
means to the good life, but others
envision an ideal world of friendship,
trust, and security—qualities associated
with altruism—that is separate from the
adversarial world of working for selfinterest.
©2003 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman
Publishers.
MORAL RELATIVISM
The belief that right and wrong have no
universal meaning but must be defined
within a given context.
MORAL RELATIVISM is in opposition to
MORAL ABSOLUTISM, in which actions
are right or wrong, no matter what the
situation.
©2003 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman
Publishers.