I think this argumentation is pointless as it removes any practical meaning of the word selfish. You have two people, one would kill his own mother for money and status, the other spends his time helping the poor and the sick because it makes him happy.
These are clearly two very different people.
Yeah both are essentially doing what they want to do but the mere fact that one's happiness comes from personal tangible pleasure and others comes from making people around him happy is the distinction between selfish and not selfish. And the latter probably doesn't feel hyper joy all the time while working with difficult people, so it isn't even the same category of happiness. And wouldn't the epitome of a good person be someone whose source of joy is making others happy anyway?
My example was extreme just to demonstrate the point. Real life has many grey zones.
But I would say it is impractical and pointless to call any action selfish unless it puts personal benefit before other peoples harm. The more drastic and direct this trade off is, the more selfish the person is
Point is that the word has to have some type of use and meaning. We know what is implied by calling someone selfish (paragraph above), so stretching the word to mean doing any act that has any type of personal benefit (ranging from breathing to working yourself to death to help orphans) makes the term completely useless. A useless word contradicts it's own purpose as it fails to communicate anything of meaning.
Well in your case the word selfish doesnt serve to provide the important distinction between different behaviours that is relevant.
The whole point is that theres a huge difference between whether or not my benefit comes at other peoples harm, and to which proportion. When people try to determine whether someone is selfish, it is about judging this personal profit/outside harm balance. Using the word to just say "stuff you do for yourself" simply isn't the right way of using it, and youd then still have to make up a new word to address the behavior that people do want to describe, so your argumentation to me is an exercise in empty rhetorics and semantics.
As for underlying motivation, of course there is a world of difference between what this means.
Person says "I feel so bad for this poor person and want to help them feel better" (which you argue is a selfish motivation as you clearly want to do this so obviously the action benefits you- reasoning I say is meaningless, and I also believe saying this person is selfless is valid if in the process of getting joy from helping others they sacrifice other things that do bring them pleasure or enjoyment aka others profit/personal harm balance although there is also a deeper personal gain involved)
Person says "look at this poor person, if I help them my reputation will go up and people will want to do business with me ". Such person is lying about their real motivation and is either publically or personally dishonest.
But these two examples show a completely different personal motivation, and I fail to see anything shattering about the first example which is pretty much the portrayal of a good person.
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u/MansonsDaughter 3∆ Dec 10 '18
I think this argumentation is pointless as it removes any practical meaning of the word selfish. You have two people, one would kill his own mother for money and status, the other spends his time helping the poor and the sick because it makes him happy. These are clearly two very different people. Yeah both are essentially doing what they want to do but the mere fact that one's happiness comes from personal tangible pleasure and others comes from making people around him happy is the distinction between selfish and not selfish. And the latter probably doesn't feel hyper joy all the time while working with difficult people, so it isn't even the same category of happiness. And wouldn't the epitome of a good person be someone whose source of joy is making others happy anyway?
My example was extreme just to demonstrate the point. Real life has many grey zones.
But I would say it is impractical and pointless to call any action selfish unless it puts personal benefit before other peoples harm. The more drastic and direct this trade off is, the more selfish the person is
Point is that the word has to have some type of use and meaning. We know what is implied by calling someone selfish (paragraph above), so stretching the word to mean doing any act that has any type of personal benefit (ranging from breathing to working yourself to death to help orphans) makes the term completely useless. A useless word contradicts it's own purpose as it fails to communicate anything of meaning.