Objection and Reply

I have thought of an objection to my counterexample from yesterday. Specifically I am thinking of the claim that the girl did not approach the crying woman out of pleasure. On the one hand, I am sure that she did it out of sympathy, which is importantly different from pleasure. On the other hand, I can still see a Kantian objection to which that motive would be vulnerable. One could argue that in feeling this sympathy she felt something of the woman's pain. It does not sound like it would be of moral worth if the girl did what she did in order to relieve her own pain. If that was indeed the motive, then I seem to be forced to agree with this. It is not morally praiseworthy to do something simply because it is in one's own interests. And yet, look at how different this kind of motive is from what some egoists call "enlightened self-interest". Enlightened self-interest involves acts of reciprocity. Hence, there is a gap in the time between when the other person's interests are fulfilled and when one's own interests are fulfilled. Furthermore, one's own good deeds are never always reciprocated. So the average return on one's investment in this enlightened self-interest is less than a hundred percent. When this girl helped this person, there seemed no delay in between the fulfilment of either person's interests. It was in the girl's interests solely in that it was in the other person's interests. Nor could the return on investment have been anything other than a hundred percent. If the other person's interests were fulfilled, then so were her own. If this is self-interest, therefore, then it seems a particularly benign kind of self-interest. In fact, I would further argue that calling this self-interest seems question-begging. If your own interest has become that bonded to the interest of another person, then in what sense can it truly be said to be your interest at all? In this situation I would say that the distinction between self and others has blurred into nonexistence. And if the motive is not real self-interest, then the objection collapses.

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