I'm not sure what you mean by "self-serving" here. I would argue that self-actualization is self-serving, but in an entirely noble sense. Ethical action isn't the pursuit of just any desire, but of right desire -- those desires that are in one's best interests because they actualize one's potentialities in an integrated and harmonious way.
eudaimonia,
Mark
By "self-serving," I mean volitional action undertaken in order to satisfy one's own desires however they happen to be, whether noble or ignoble--hedonistic pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain, basically.
But yes, I can see how pursuit of moral virtue might be thought of as self-serving in a broader sense, viz. in the sense that it is
good for us. So if we're conducting ourselves virtuously, I suppose we might be serving our own interests insofar as we're choosing to be objectively better persons than we would have been had we chosen to pursue vicious desires instead.
Of course, this might come at a terrible cost. A soldier in battle might fall on top of a grenade in order to save the lives of his comrades, and in so doing, he might be serving his own interest insofar as he's choosing the more virtuous course of action than running away and perhaps saving his own life. But ironically, it would be by placing himself in a position that will almost certainly result in his own death that he would be serving his own interests. I don't deny that he would be choosing the more virtuous course of action by falling on the grenade, but it seems to me rather odd to call this choice of action "self-serving."
Anyway, this is a minor quibble. It seems we're basically in agreement.
variant,
Pardon my curiosity, but what do you think moral goodness is? Do you think it ultimately boils down to our subjective likes and dislikes, or do you think it's grounded in something more objective, something outside our subjective selves, perhaps something that imposes a normative standard upon our moral dispositions?
I don't mean to be prodding, but since Mark and I seem to be more or less in agreement and since you seem to be adamant that
goodness has no bearing at all upon the
reality or
actuality of manhood or personhood, I'd just like to get a more constructive sense of where you're coming from.
For my own part (I'll let Mark speak for himself), I would say, first of all, that manhood (or humanity more generally) and personhood are distinct. While it might be the case that every human being exhibits some degree of personhood, it needn't be the case that every person be human (perhaps there might be non-human extraterrestrial persons, for example).
But more to the point, I would say that neither of these properties need be exhibited in an all-or-nothing, fully present or fully absent manner. Rather, they may be exhibited in degrees of perfection.
Say, for example, that you have two men: one a fine physical specimen of a man, physically fit, in excellent physical health, extremely intelligent, but a ruthless tyrant who delights in the suffering of others; the other in poor physical health, suffering from a crippling congenital birth defect, not especially bright, but extremely kind-hearted and compassionate and always putting the needs of others before his own.
I would say that each of these individuals exhibits the properties of manhood and personhood, but each exhibits them very differently from the other. The former, the tyrant, exhibits the biological and physiological attributes of manhood more excellently (i.e. to a greater degree of perfection) than the latter, the kind-hearted cripple. However, the kind-hearted cripple exhibits the greater perfection of personhood (manhood and personhood are both perfective attributes, but not all perfective attributes are on a par) more excellently than the tyrant. So, while both of these men exhibit personhood, we call the kind-hearted cripple the better person because he exhibits the perfection of personhood more excellently than the tyrant.
, this is not all that terribly different from my own moral philosophy. On my view, moral goodness, which is that goodness attributable to ourselves as rational agents, consists in the degree to which we actualize our potential to be true persons. This true personhood is the ideally virtuous human nature. So we are true persons to the degree that we possess (or actualize) the ideally virtuous human nature.
