To Spinoza self-interest or the interest to "seek one's profit" is identical with virtue. He says, "The more each person strives and is able to seek his profit that is to say, to preserve his being, the more virtue does he possess; on the other hand, is so far as each person neglects his own profit he is impotent". According to this view, the interest of man is to preserve his existence, which is the same as realizing his inherent potentialities. This concept of self-interest is objectivistic inasmuch as "interest" is not conceived in terms of the subjective feeling of what one's interest is but of what the nature of man is, objectively. Man according to Spinoza has only one real interest and that is the full development of his potentialities, of himself as a "human being". Just as one has to know another person on his real needs in order to love him, one has to know one's own self in order to understand what the interests of his self are and how they can be served. It follows that man can deceive himself about his real self-interest if he is ignorant of his self and its real needs and that the science of man is the basis of determining what constitudes man's self interest.
In the last three hundred years the concept of self-interest has increasingly been narrowed until it has assumed almost the opposite meaning which it has in Spinoza's thinking. It has become identical with selfishness; and instead of its being synonymous with virtue, its conquest has become an ethical commandment.
This deterioration was made possible by the change from the objectivistic into erroneously subjectivistic approach to self-interest. Self-interest was no longer to be determined by the nature of man and his needs; correspondingly the notion that one could be mistaken about it was relinquished and replaced by the idea that what a person felt represented the interest of his self was necessarily his true self-interest.
The "fallacy of self-interest" in modern man has never been described better than by Ibsen in his play Peer Gynt. Peer Gynt believes that his whole life is devoted to the attainment of the interests of his self. He describes his self as:
"The Gyntian Self!
- An army, that, of wishes, appetites, desires!
The Gyntian Self!
It is a sea of fancies, claims and aspirations;
In fact, it's all that swells within my breast
And makes it come about that I am I and live as such"
At the end of his life he recognizes that he had deceived himself; that while following the principle of "self-interest" he had lost the very self he sought to preserve. He is told that he never had been himself and that therefore he is to be thrown back into the melting pot to be dealt with as raw material. he discovers that he has lived according to the Troll principle: "To thyself be enough" - which is the opposite of human principle: "To thyself be true". He is seized by the horror of nothingness to which he, who has no self, can not help succumbing when the props of pseudo self, success, and possessions are taken away or seriously questioned. He is forced to recognize that in trying to gain all the wealth of the world, in relentlessly pursuing what seemed to be his interest, he had lost his self.
The failure of modern culture lies not in its principle of individualism, not in the idea that moral virtue is the same as the pursuit of self-interest, but in the deterioration of the meaning of self-interest, not in the fact that people are too much concerned with their self interest, but that they are not concerned enough with the interest of their real self; not in the fact that they are too selfish, but that they do not love themselves.
The issue in hand then is how to distinguish from the "subjective self interest" and "objective self interest". The question is how to know that a course of action expresses the real self, and at the same time is what is right and good - ie. expresses the true human nature of man. Putting it in other way how to discover one's own real self - own real conscience?
There is no prouder statement man can make than to say: "I shall act according to my conscience." Throughout history men have upheld the principles of justice, love and truth against every kind of pressure brought to bear upon them in order to make them relinquish what they knew and believed. The prophets acted according to their conscience when they denounced their country and predicted its downfall because of its corruption and injustice. Socrates preferred death to a course in which he would have betrayed his conscience by compromising with the truth. Without the existence of conscience, the human race would have bogged down long ago into its hazardous course.
One's conscience has to be developed such that it manifests the state of really being a human. That is the highest state of being for a man. In scholastic philosophy, conscience is considered to be the law of reason implanted in man by God. It is different from habit of faculty of judging, and of willing the right.
The issue becomes even more difficult when man accepts the contents of the Calvinistic doctrine. He makes himself an instrument, not of God's will but of the economic machine or the state. He has accepted the role of a tool for industrial progress. Not only do the authoritarian ideologies threaten the most precious achievement of Western culture, the respect for the uniqueness and dignity of the individual; they also tend to block the way to constructive criticism of modern society, and thereby to necessary changes. The failure of modern culture lies not in its principle of individualism, not in the idea that moral virtue is the same as the pursuit of self-interest, but in the deterioration of the meaning of self-interest; not in the fact that people are too much concerned with their self interest, but that they are not concerned enough with the interest of their real self; not in the fact that they are too selfish, but that they do not love themselves.
Canalizing of all human energy into work and the striving for success was one of the indispensable conditions of the enormous achievement of modern capitalism, a stage has been reached where the problem of production has been virtually solved and where the problem of organization of social life has become the paramount task of mankind. Man has created such sources of mechanical energy that he has freed himself from the task of putting all his human energy into work in order to produce the material conditions for living. He could spend a considerable part of his energy on the task of living itself.
The idea is about realizing one's own self, i.e. the ideal nature of man - and use the opportunity of this life to use the unique power endowed to man, being his real self.
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