The Morality of Self-Interest [antikvár]

PREFACEThe Morality of Self-biterest deals with most of the problems traditionally discussed by moral philosophers-reason and ethics, egoism and altruism, conscience, freedom and determinism, the development of moral character, ethics and religion, etc.but from a distinctive point of view. The principal contentions are that questions of personal ethics cannot, as is all too commonly thought, be divorced from questions of social policy; that an act cannot be considered right unless it promotes the well-being of both the agent and society; that the individual is most likely to contribute to social betterment by rationally pursuing his own best long-range interests; that rational procedures of the kind employed in the empirical sciences are in principle competent to define moral terms and determine the truth or falsehood of moral judgments; and that prevailing religious views, far from being conducive to moral uprightness, in fact seriously undermine the practice of morality.This book is addressed not only to professional philosophers, but also to scholars in other fields, especially the behavioral sciences, and to the intelligent general reader. Technical terms, therefore, have been used sparingly and defined when introduced, references to philosophers have been kept to a minimum, and where it has been deemed necessary to criticize another thinker his position has first been expounded. At no point, however, have I simplified the statement of my position or omitted essential arguments in order to attract more readers.Many persons will be disturbed by a number of psychological and sociological generalizations offered in this work that are inadequately supported by statistical data or controlled experimental investigation. In this connection I should like to make two