[Odyssey] Does Pursuing Self-Interest Really Create the Public Good?

“Everyone works not for others, but for themselves.”

We agree with this proposition. No one can live another person’s life in their place. But what if one were to argue that living for oneself is good not only for oneself, but for everyone? That may be hard to accept immediately. This is the challenge we encounter in this Odyssey.

More than 200 years ago, Adam Smith argued in The Wealth of Nations that “the free pursuit of private interest by individuals creates a public good they did not intend.” For liberals, Smith’s claim may be a troubling one. In fact, even anti-liberal critics of liberalism identify Adam Smith’s argument that private interest leads to public good as a logic thoroughly defending the capitalist class. Common sense, too, seems to support such criticism.

If individuals each pursue their own private interests, would that not produce the Hobbesian state of “the war of all against all”? In such a situation, how could the common good possibly be maintained? Did Adam Smith view the world too optimistically?

But if we think a little more deeply, we can see that Smith’s claim that private interest creates public good is true in relation to human nature. Adam Smith called the human tendency to focus not on other people but on one’s own concerns and problems “self-interest.” We possess this self-interest because we cannot know other people’s purposes, intentions, or values. Drivers on a highway are a good example. They are interested only in the destination they themselves wish to reach, not in where other people’s cars are going or what their destinations may be.

This characteristic of drivers is not selfishness. Even so, the reason accidents do not constantly occur is that drivers with self-interest are cautious. They practice defensive driving while paying attention to the direction and speed of other vehicles. In this way, individuals with self-interest also possess a desire for self-preservation. Spinoza called this “conatus.” Everything in the universe has a reason for existing, and therefore a nature that seeks to preserve itself. Thus, if someone tries to benefit himself by harming me, we naturally regard that as unjust.

Adam Smith says that this sense of injustice arises not only in relation to oneself, but also through sympathy with the misfortune or harm suffered by others. The reason we grow angry at violence and abuse of power by the strong against the socially vulnerable is precisely this nature of “sympathy.” Adam Smith argued that the essence of justice lies not in the combination of formal logics, but in this bond of sympathy among people. In other words, because there exists within people an “impartial third observer,” each of us seeks our own benefit while also making moral judgments and acting morally.

In that sense, self-interest is like a mirror through which each person reflects the others back to one another. Through this mirror, we come to see ourselves through the eyes of others. In the end, if everyone acts to benefit themselves, then no one can act only to benefit themselves. At this point, we are confronted with the question of how to establish the rules of public interest. We can see that Adam Smith’s idea of self-interest, by which private interest gives rise to public interest, contains not only an economic principle but a political one as well. Then how is this common good, governed by rules of public interest—that is, by just rules—to be created? The answer was given by another liberal, Rousseau, who is often thought to stand opposite Adam Smith. That concept is the general will of the people. Rousseau explains this issue in The Social Contract through the story of the “stag hunters.”

Rousseau’s Stag Hunters

In his work The Social Contract, Rousseau explains the general will of the people through the metaphor of a tribe hunting a stag. The story goes roughly as follows.

A primitive tribe lived by hunting rabbits. Since each person could hunt rabbits through individual effort alone, there was no need for cooperation among the tribe members. But at some point, rabbits became scarce, and the tribe decided instead to hunt stag. The problem was that unlike rabbit hunting, stag hunting could not be done by one individual alone; it required cooperation. Someone had to spot the stag, someone had to drive it, and someone had to catch it.

The tribe members assigned their roles and set out on the stag hunt. But one of the beaters spotted a rabbit and gave in to temptation. Honestly, stag hunting does not succeed simply because I do my part well on my own, does it? If I catch that rabbit instead, at least my family can eat for a day. Succumbing to that temptation, he abandoned his role in driving the stag and tried to catch the rabbit. In the end, the stag that he was supposed to drive in a certain direction escaped instead. All the stag hunters came up empty-handed and had to return with nothing.

Through the story of the stag hunt, Rousseau asks us: what should be done about this individual? Brief but powerful, Rousseau’s story of the stag hunters addresses, at its core, the problem of private interest and public interest. Through it, Rousseau presents clearly his theory of the social contract and the concept of the general will of the people. If we have agreed to some common good, then there emerges for us something like a responsibility and obligation to submit to something beyond individual free will. For the stag-hunting tribe, the common good consists in catching the stag and sharing it among the tribe members, and those who agreed to participate are thereby given a duty to act in accordance with that common good. The norms of conduct required by such a common good are “sympathetically” presented to all participants, even if they are not concretely enumerated and written down like constitutional basic rights. This is precisely what Rousseau calls the “general will.”

The general will of these stag hunters is not merely “the will of all the hunters.” It does not change simply because the number of current stag hunters decreases or increases. It becomes the general will, rather than the will of all, because it is a norm that anyone who participates in the stag hunt at some future point—even newcomers—could also consent to. This is why Rousseau distinguished the general will from the will of all.

According to Rousseau, such a general will is always right. The general will is nothing other than what individuals unanimously regard as both “right” and “good” for each person, and therefore all are willing to submit to it of their own accord. Anyone unwilling to submit need not participate in the common good, and at the same time has no right to enjoy the benefits arising from it. Of those who reject the general will, Rousseau argued that they “must be forced to be free.” This claim of Rousseau provoked fierce opposition from liberals. But there is a reason for his argument.

According to Rousseau, human beings are creatures who entered society out of nature through civilization. Such society bound human beings, once free in nature, in chains of oppression marked by rulers and ruled. Yet civilized human beings cannot leave society and return to nature, and so within society we must turn this relationship of rule and subordination into just rules. That is the path by which human beings, within civilized society as a second nature, can live as free and equal beings just as they once did in nature. Just rules governing rulers and ruled: Rousseau found the principle for creating them in the general will of the people. Rousseau’s general will is therefore not the unilateral command of a monarch or a particular ruling class. It is established instead on the republican principle that all rule all, and all obey all. Rousseau called such a general will “law.” Therefore, law must be observed by everyone, and it must benefit everyone who obeys it. If a law damages the freedom and interests of some for the freedom and interests of a privileged few, Rousseau boldly argues that the power that enacted that law must be overthrown.

This naturally raises a question. Is there really such a thing as a “social contract”? Let us now begin the journey of answering that question.

---

Original title: [오디세이] 사익의 추구가 정말로 공익을 창출할까?

Author: Jeong-seok Han

Date: 2020-12-16

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=column&pn=5&idx=23357