Self-love, Egoism and the Selfish Hypothesis

Christian Maurer is SNSF Professor in Philosophy at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He has studied, taught and held research fellowships in various Universities across Switzerland, Scotland, France and Germany. Maurer’s main research areas are in moral and political philosophy. He has worked extensively on the history of British moral philosophy and theology, on pre-Enlightenment Scottish moral philosophy, on the reception of Stoicism, on tolerance and on love.

• 1. Introduction 1.1. The questions of self-love1.2. Five conceptions of self-love1.3. Contexts and historiographies – old ones and new ones2. Shaftesbury on the self-affections and the selfish hypothesis 2.1. ‘Hobbesian egoism’ and the right love for oneself2.2. Shaftesbury on the self-affections in the Inquiry2.3. A side-note on pride in Pathologia and Miscellanies2.4. Concluding thoughts3. Mandeville: Self-love, self-liking and Augustinian themes 3.1. Mandeville on the passion of self-liking3.2. Self-liking and the civilising process: Politeness and honour3.3. Mandeville on the social virtues (plural) and on moral virtue (singular)3.4. Concluding thoughts4. Hutcheson on self-love, benevolence, and self-cultivation 4.1. Hutcheson on self-love and the selfish hypothesis4.2. The moral value of self-love4.3. Self-love and self-cultivation4.4. A side-note on Alexander Forbes’ Essay on Self-Love (1734)4.5. Concluding thoughts5. Butler on self-love as respect of self 5.1. The ‘inward frame of man’: Butler’s moral psychology5.2. Butler on self-love as respect of self5.3. A comparison between Butler and Hutcheson on self-love 5.4. The influence of Butler’s conception of self-love as respect of self5.5. Concluding thoughts6. Campbell on true self-love and virtue 6.1. Campbell on self-love, the selfish hypothesis and sociability6.2. Campbell on morality and moral motivation6.3. Campbell’s attacks on Mandeville: Vice, Luxury, Fashionable Clothing and Virtue6.4. Campbell and the Committee for Purity of Doctrine on self-love6.5. Concluding thoughts7. Hume, Smith and beyond 7.1. Hume on self-love, pride and vanity7.2. Smith and the rehabilitation of self-love7.3. The selfish hypothesis in Gay and Associationist psychology7.4. Towards the end of the eighteenth century7.5. Concluding thoughts8. Conclusions Bibliography

A great virtue of Christian Maurer’s Self-Love, Egoism, and the Selfish Hypothesis is to disambiguate five senses of self-love in eighteenth-century discussions. ‘Self-love’ and its synonyms variously refer to (1) egoistic desire, (2) love of praise, (3) self-esteem, (4) amour propre and (5) self-respect. Maurer uses these ideal types forensically to provide a better understanding of what is being debated by whom and why … All scholars of early modern moral philosophy will benefit from reading this book and will think about the debates over self-love differently after having read it.