Two approaches to self-love: Hutcheson and Butler

• Main Author: Christian Maurer
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Rijeka. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences 2006-01-01
• Series: European Journal of Analytic Philosophy
• Subjects: self-love; interest; passions; Francis Hutcheson; Joseph Bbutler; Harry Frankfurt
• Online Access: https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/135792

This paper contrasts Frankfurt’s characterisation of self-love as disinterested with the predominant 18th-century view on self-love as interested. Ttwo senses of the term ‘interest’ are distinguished to discuss two fundamentally different readings of the claim that self-love promotes the agent’s interest. This allows characterising two approaches to self-love, which are found in Hutcheson’s and in Bbutler’s writings. Hutcheson sees self-love as a source of hedonistic motives, which can be calm or passionate. Bbutler sees it as a general affection of rational beings in the sense of a kind of love of one’s real nature.