Selfhood and the Metaphysics of Altruism

Altruistic and greater-good considerations are not only fundamental aspects of ethical maturity, but also a basic means for coming to know each other. Rational egoism (the view that practical rationality requires some form of personal pay-off for the goal-driven agent) is not so easily snubbed, nor has it fallen terribly out of fashion in the social sciences and economics. I argue that it is not a truism that altruism is less natural than egocentrism for an ordinary self. It is false. I aim to reconceive the problem that altruistic considerations seem less rational than justified, egocentric considerations. I conclude that the self can identify with subjectivity as such, and thereby advance the interests of a "weself." While epistemically distant, the "we-self" is ontologically prior to the ego.;I conceive the problem in terms of a central distinction in Indian philosophy; the distinction between an ego-self (ahan˙kara) and either a bundle of property tropes (as we find in schools of Buddhist philosophy), or a persisting synthesizer of experiences that is not solely identified as &;In chapter 4, I offer a Saivist-inspired solution to the problem of other minds. Borrowing from Abhinavagupta (c. 10th-11 th century C.E.), I contend that the possibility of identifying with and acting for a larger whole lies in recognizing ourselves as both individuals and others (bhedabheda). I develop this by showing how normativity and a concept of selfhood go hand in hand; and, furthermore, the reflexivity of consciousness allows us to recognize a self that is not limited to only practical and narrative identities, but to self as such..