Is self-love selfish?
Aug 08, 2020
3 minutes
Self-Love, Egoism and the Selfish Hypothesis: Key Debates from Eighteenth-Century British Moral Philosophy
Christian Maurer
Edinburgh University Press, 2019
240 pages
Hardback, £75.00 (paperback edition forthcoming)
ISBN: 9781474413374
The concept of ‘self-love’ is sometimes touted as radical today. It was much more so in 18th-century Scotland, where innate human benevolence was a heretical idea. The Westminster Confession of Faith outlined the orthodox calvinist view: the sin of Adam and Eve had left humans ‘utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all Good,, Christian Maurer explores the British moral philosophical debate about self-love and selfishness, which emerged against this backdrop of evolving ideas about human nature.
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