The relational conception of the self: historical threads, part 1

Aristotle's conception of the good life

In my recent series of posts on self-interest, I argued that the way we conceive of the self affects our understanding of self-interest, for better or for worse. In particular, I suggested that if we understand the self in a way that connects our interests to those of others (which is the right way to understand the self), then acting in self-interest isn’t necessarily selfish.

Who's the self in self-interest? Part 1

Who's the self in self-interest? Part 2

Who's the self in self-interest? Part 3

The Western philosophy that has shaped the modern mindset has deep roots, is well-established, and has been fruitful. But as I’ve suggested in other posts, some of its most basic assumptions are no longer serving us well. Those assumptions include the premise that we’re fundamentally and ideally separate individuals, rationally pursuing a rather narrow self-interest.

The relational view of human nature has equally deep roots, though they haven’t been cultivated as carefully in recent centuries. I don’t normally spend a lot of time in this newsletter explicating philosophical views, but I think it’s worth gathering up some of these threads to show that it’s possible to weave a different cloth out of materials we already have. Philosophy fed the individualistic mindset. It also feeds a relational one.

Aristotle

Much of ancient philosophy was done in pursuit of understanding the good life. What does this have to do with self-interest? Since a good life is presumably better than a bad one, it’s in our interests to pursue it. Knowing what it is gives us a map and a compass.

Aristotle’s understanding of many things (including the nature of women and slaves) is, to put it mildly, out of date now. Nevertheless, his understanding of the good life still contains truth we can adapt to modern life.

One assumption Aristotle makes is that the outlines of the good life will be the same for all of us, though we’ll color them in differently. This is likely to meet with skepticism in the 21st century, because we’re so used to individualism and believing we’re unique. We are. But we also want many of the same “big” things. It shouldn’t be surprising that there could be a unified but flexible guide to how to live well.

Aristotle operates in a teleological framework, according to which everything has a telos, an “end” that governs it. We don’t think in those terms anymore, but as I tell my students, a lot of what’s valuable about philosophy in particular and humanities more generally is that using different lenses can illuminate and reveal things we don’t usually see.

Aristotle begins the Nichomachean Ethics with the idea that everything we do aims at some ultimate good, namely happiness. But the English word “happiness” can mean a lot of things, and Aristotle isn’t talking about day-to-day mood happiness. He means something more like flourishing: eudaimonia. The Greek roots are eu, “good,” and daimon, “spirit.” It’s a global state in which, even if you’re having a bad day, you can say overall that you have a good life.

But saying that happiness is the ultimate good is practically a tautology. It doesn’t really tell us anything. What we really want to know is how to achieve happiness.

Photo by D Jonez on Unsplash

Aristotle says we should get a better idea of what we’re looking for if we understand the telos or function of human beings—our nature. These days we’re not used to thinking that humans have a function, so this feels strange. But hang in here for a sec—like I said, different lenses can be illuminating even if they’re not truthful in a scientific sense.

Let’s start with something simple. Take a pen. What makes it a pen? Writing. That is, a pen’s function is to write, and if it doesn’t do that, it’s not really a pen—it’s an empty stick. Furthermore, a good pen is going to be one that writes well. Maybe that means the ink is smooth, the grip is comfortable, it lasts a long time, etc. Once we know what a thing is for, its aim or purpose, then we can understand both what it is and what qualities it needs to have to be a good one.

What’s the function of a human being, then? Yes, it’s a strange question. But not as strange as it looks at first. What is it that we characteristically do? The thing that humans have that other animals don’t (Aristotle thinks) is reason. So reasoning is our function, the thing that defines our nature. From this it follows that a good human—one that is flourishing as a human—is going to be one who’s good at reasoning. In terms of action, Aristotle claims this means that a good human is one who exercises wisdom in the service of developing the qualities it takes to be a good human—that is, virtues.

Aristotle names reason as the heart of virtue, but I want to emphasize that in his framework virtues involve not only reason, but also emotions, which motivate action. Reason helps us get our emotions right. But how can we do that? What does “right” even mean?

The idea is that we should train our emotions to fit the situation. We need the right amount of them in order to choose wisely. Consider traits like courage or moderation (which Aristotle calls “temperance”). Courage is feeling the amount of fear that’s appropriate to the situation, and moderation is permitting yourself an appropriate amount of enjoyment of physical pleasure. If you’re facing a dragon, you’d better be afraid. An appropriate amount of fear keeps you on your toes, but too much prevents you from doing what needs to be done to fend it off. Similarly, it’s healthy to enjoy reasonable amounts of food, drink, sex, and so on. But both too much and too little of that interfere with our normal functioning and can become problematic. Reason is a guide to what’s appropriate in a given context.

The important idea is that when it comes to virtue, it matters not just what you do, but how you do it and what’s motivating you. It takes a long time to build virtuous habits, but we can do it with practice and guidance, the way we learn a sport or a musical instrument. So we’re developing habits not just of acting, but of feeling. It’s related to the modern concept of emotional intelligence. This is the most difficult part of virtue, but it’s also the reason why virtue is stable once we develop it.

There’s a lot more to Aristotle’s story,¹ but the important thing for our discussion of self-interest is that Aristotle’s view of human nature leads us to a view that’s considerably different from Hobbes’. If what humans are “meant” to do is cultivate virtues in ourselves, because this is what leads to eudaimonia, then self-interest essentially amounts to self-improvement. That’s a little different from our usual understanding of self-interest, don’t you think?

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This may still appear to be an individualistic conception of self-interest, since you need to develop courage, kindness, patience, justice, wisdom, etc. in yourself. It’s less conducive to selfishness than Hobbes’ notion, though, because (given that we’re social creatures) many virtues require us to take others into account: what it means to be kind, for instance, is to act out of genuine concern for others. Ironically, you acquire a virtue for yourself by learning to leave your self out of it. You might do a kind thing, but if you’re doing it in order to get a reputation for kindness, it’s not as good as if you’re motivated entirely by the needs of others. This makes the bar for virtue pretty high. But it also makes the idea of acting in your self-interest less negative; your interests include consideration of others. It’s one way our view of human nature influences our view of how to live.

Does the fact that we no longer think teleologically undermine the usefulness of Aristotle’s account? I think not. While we wouldn’t arrive at an understanding of virtue the way he does, we can still draw the lessons that virtues (a) involve training our emotions to fit the situation and (b) require aiming not at virtue itself, but at the targets of virtues—genuine concern for others, for instance. Eudaimonia isn’t exactly what English speakers think of when we hear the word “happiness,” but it’s also not terribly foreign as a picture of what we want out of life. And it builds in a relational mindset.

Stay tuned

There are several other threads I have in mind to gather. I don’t want to make this newsletter entirely about self-interest, however, so I’ll sprinkle them in with “everyday life” content over the coming weeks.

1. And there are worthy questions about virtue ethics as a moral framework, including what counts as a virtue. But that’s beyond our current scope.