Hobbes' Psychological Egoism

Exam Instructions

• Each part of the exam should take approximately 90 minutes.
• Each subsection should take about 22 minutes and 30 seconds.
• Responses are graded on the degree of mastery of course material.
• Criteria include relevance, accuracy, completeness, clarity, and explanatory sophistication.
• Responses must be legible, but structure, style, and proofing won't be considered.

Human Nature and Morality and Political and Social Philosophy

Hobbes' Psychological Egoism

• Hobbes defended psychological egoism as the proper explanation of human nature.
• Psychological egoism explains even actions appearing virtuous are motivated by self-interest.
• Humans are not naturally moral, rational, or cooperative, according to Hobbes, but driven by appetites and aversions.
• Every action traces back to self-centered motivation, maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain.

Psychological Egoism as a Descriptive Truth

• Hobbes viewed psychological egoism as descriptive of how people behave, not how they should act.
• Humans left to their natural condition fall into conflict due to competition for resources, status, and security according to Hobbes.
• Psychological egoism is the foundation of Hobbes' political philosophy which needs a powerful sovereign authority to constrain egoistic impulses.

Illustrating Psychological Egoism: State of Nature Example

• Hobbes used the example of individuals in the state of nature to illustrate psychological egoism.
• The lack of overarching government leads to a “war of every man against every man."
• Life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" in this condition.
• Cooperative behaviors are temporary and instrumental, motivated by self-preservation.
• Cooperation becomes self-preservation.

Charity and Self-Interest

• Acts of charity are ultimately self-interested, driven by a desire for social approval, inner satisfaction, or a sense of superiority.
• People perform good deeds anticipating some personal benefit, whether praise, gratitude, or feeling of virtue.
• Traditional moral behavior is reinterpreted as a form of disguised self-interest.

Psychological Egoism as Basis for Political Theory

• If humans were naturally benevolent, an absolute authority wouldn't be required to maintain peace.
• A strong sovereign is required to enforce laws, adjudicate disputes, and suppress violent impulses because everyone's driven by self-interest.
• The social contract arises not from a moral commitment to justice, but from rational calculation.
• Each person gives up some freedom to a sovereign in exchange for security and protection which forms foundation of civil society.

Leviathan's Purposes

• Psychological egoism explains mankind without political authority and justifies an absolute sovereign to restrain the self-interest - towards social stability.
• While pragmatic, people are not entirely beyond control and their egoism can be managed for the collective good with the right system.

Mandeville's View

• Mandeville followed Hobbes in regarding humans as non-rational beings driven by passions.
• Conventional morality is an artificial construct, invented by politicians to tame individual passions for the benefit of civil society.

Vanity as a Driver

• All human beings are motivated by the desire for praise and the fear of shame.
• Altruistic behaviors are performed out of a desire to be admired.

Creating Morality

• Society cannot function if individuals act solely on passions, which politicians and leaders understand, thus they manipulate vanity to control the masses.
• Behaviors that benefit the group are praised, while those that cause harm are shamed, leaders redirecting passions towards socially useful ends.
• Virtue and vice aren't defined by any order, but by the interest of the state or group.

Artificial Virtue

• Accepted virtues like humility or self-restraint were tools for social control, invented to maintain peace.
• Private vices yield public benefits, as selfish motives can result in prosperity, innovation, and economic growth.
• It flips conventional moral view as what appears immoral individually can be beneficial socially.

Necessary Illusion

• The illusion of morality is necessary for social cohesion.
• Politicians convince people moral standards are real and sacred, even though they are fabricated.
• Deception of morality as a noble lie for social peace.
• Praised behaviors are rooted in vanity, and leaders manipulate this to structure society.
• Moral virtues aren't natural, but constructed norms for self-love.

Critique and Defense

• Mandeville's work is a critique of traditional morality and a defense of vice and illusion.
• Morality is not a product of reason or divine command, but a political tool crafted by those in power to regulate behavior.
• Mandeville challenges the notion that virtue may be little more than well-managed vice.

Hume's View on Reason

• Reason is subordinate to the passions according to Hume.
• Hume argues reason is the subordinate tool, with passions as the drivers.
• Morality stems from sentiment, emotion, and human nature, not pure reason.

Humans as Primarily Emotional

• Humans aren't primarily rational creatures.The mind is a bundle of perceptions linked by habit and feeling.
• Reason can determine goal achievement, but cannot determine the goal itself.
• Morality is not grounded in reason, but in sentiment. People express feelings, not make discoveries.

Moral Sense

• Moral distinctions derive from a moral sense or feeling, described as approval or disapproval
• Moral evaluations are grounded in sympathy, feel with and for others.

Reason and Moral Motivation

• Reason alone is insufficient for moral motivation. Pure feeling is wrong.
• Morality arises from human psychology and emotional and social faculties.
• Hume rejects rationalist moral theories by claiming an "ought" cannot be derived from an "is", thus reaffirming the role of passions.

Emotions from Society

• Moral values stem from human emotional responses in society, which gives them importance, and natural social tendencies become real.

Hume's Natural Benevolence

• Hume's account of morality is grounded in human nature, sentiments, and social instincts.
• Natural benevolence is when humans possess a universal disposition to care others and their well-being, recognized widely.
• Moral Properties are not objective, but they are real in the sense of promoting social cohesion.

Morality Arising from Sentiment

• Reason alone cannot motivate action or moral sentiment.
• Emotional responses to people and actions is part of sentiment.
• Humans are disposed to feel concern for others from an innate disposition.

Approval Across Cultures

• Benevolence evokes moral approval consistently across all societies.
• Kindness feels good, and a natural sentiment results from a approval.

Moral Properties and Benevolence

• Benevolence gives rise to recognizable moral traits.
• Real means they come from shared reactions and social utility.

Usefulness and Agreeableness

• Morality consists of “usefulness and agreeableness” to the people.
• Benevolence is agreeable and important for a society to operate, making it's a virtue.
• Involves feeling is essential to Hume's ethics.

Natural allows for refinement

• Hume is a nature that can be cultivated.
• We can learn to value.
• Shared support is key.

Spinoza, Locke, and Hobbes Political Authority

• All three thought of the state from a state of nature, before everyone was organized.
• Limits were the question.
• It comes to their vision of human nature.

Hobbes

• Said that people are evil and lead by passion.
• People will give power in exchange for the government.
• People should not remove the power.
• Should not be resisted.

Locke

• Humans can respect and need life.
• People give the government power to protect.
• Government is limited. If not, revolt.

Spinoza

• Believes that humans have power, thus that should be their right.
• In a state, people should align with self interests.
• Leads to free speech and tolerance.

Comparison and Contrast

• Hobbes- the limit to freedom is the state. Be absolute.
• Locke, the limit to freedom.
• Human needs determine the limit.
• Not only about the politcal, what is it to be them at all?

Locke Explanation for Government

• Second tries to dive into how politics arise.
• That government is in action.

Rational action, creation

• The state arises with people give consent, to nature law.
• However this is a power issue.

Not the Goal

• Not with government, but between one another with laws

Dissolution

• State are simply a tool, must give way when things get tough.
• Underline of rights.
• Ignored
• To save themselves
• When governments do this
• It is not desotryying, more so saving.

How Impossble

• Locke said with a state of nature.
• Free does want to be saved with law.
• Not a act of reason
• Liberty is under law.
• If it is not like law, it is a regression.

The end

• What to do to safe.
• A way to go on.
• The foundation

Section colonailsm

• How it was not locke, but an expoloatiion.

What the Locke Had to do

• He did not have colonial people
• His moderate could be used.

Colonies

• Secretary of state- made what went. That document the Carolina

Theory Propert

• Land use.
• And in short, that they may exist within reason that humans need.

How He Did

• His political mind of the scope.
• It for the male.

Legacy

• Hired to give.
• Exclusion for certain kinds of people of his work.
• Liberal will exist.

Equality Women and Locke

• It from Locke
• The way of gender could be gone with learning.

Revolution

• He did think what it was.
• It would take it was.

Astell

• A pure person under god. Then do anything with the system.

Locke on the point

• To be more of what the state.

Locke Famous Quote

• Know not what. No one knows.

Weak view

• Not sure what is up.

Berkeley

• That not the case.
• We do not agree
• To know is to be.