So again, even those who hold that moral rules are only obligatory
because it is the individual’s interest to conform to them--thus
regarding them as a particular species of prudential rules--do not
thereby get rid of the ‘dictate of reason,’ so far as they recognise
private interest or happiness as an end at which it is ultimately
reasonable to aim. The conflict of Practical Reason with irrational
desire remains an indubitable fact of our conscious experience, even if
practical reason is interpreted to mean merely self-regarding Prudence.
It is, indeed, maintained by Kant and others that it cannot properly
be said to be a man’s duty to promote his own happiness; since “what
every one inevitably wills cannot be brought under the notion of duty.”
But even granting[38] it to be in some sense true that a man’s volition
is always directed to the attainment of his own happiness, it does not
follow that a man always does what he believes will be conducive to his
own _greatest_ happiness. As Butler urges, it is a matter of common
experience that men indulge appetite or passion even when, in their own
view, the indulgence is as clearly opposed to what they conceive to be
their interest as it is to what they conceive to be their duty. Thus
the notion ‘ought’--as expressing the relation of rational judgment
to non-rational impulses--will find a place in the practical rules of
any egoistic system, no less than in the rules of ordinary morality,
understood as prescribing duty without reference to the agent’s
interest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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