Slote, Michael - The Tanner Lectures on Human Values

92 <strong>The</strong> <strong>Tanner</strong> <strong>Lectures</strong> on Human Values
major element in personality, and contrasting this disposition with
the disposition to optimize whenever there is an issue for rational
deliberation and choice.) However, in comparing satisficing and
optimizing to the detriment of the latter, I have said nothing
against the rationality of optimizing. I have treated both satisficing
and optimizing as forms of practical rationality. We shall
perhaps be less surprised by this set of conclusions if we consider
the rather parallel set of conclusions that can be reached on the
subject of altruism, the concern for others. Those who would
defend altruism often seek to show that egoism, exclusive devotion
to one's well-being, is self-stultifying and that one is likely to
be better off, happier, if one devotes oneself to others. But such
arguments are not always convincing and, in any case, usually
depend on empirical assumptions that may be denied or fail to
hold for a given individual. But independently of the possible
benefits, to an agent, of an altruistic attitude and altruistic deeds,
we non-egoists (and even perhaps many egoists) find something
attractive and admirable in an attitude of concern for others, and
pure egoism, by contrast, seems repellent and inhumane. Most
of us tend to think less well of someone who is incapable of concern
for others, and this opinion in no way depends, I think, on
a belief that an egoist's egoism prevents him from doing as well
as he can for himself. <strong>The</strong>re is something inherently unattractive,
even pathetic, about total egoistic self-concern, but in reacting
thus to the image of the egoistic individual, I do not think we are
necessarily imagining that there is anything irrational about the
egoist. We may deplore the limitation of his practical concerns,
but that failure does not typically strike us as a failure of practical
rationality - we have other words, and we have just used some
of them, for describing what we object to in such an individual -
and of course in the actual pursuit of his limited objectives, there
need be no failure of practical rationality on the part of the
egoist. l2
On the other hand, it is difficult to show that there is
12 It is traditionally assumed that the egoist must be an optimizer, but our discussion
should make clear the possibility of a satisficing form of egoism. On this