Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Vexing questions Hyattsville, Md. , To the Editors: I found the Himes brothers' article ["The Myth of Self-interest," September 23] very interesting reading. As an English graduate...
...Professor McLaughlin's interesting letter correctly notes that Adam Smith described sympathy as operating spontaneously...
...Indeed, self-interest is only a myth within a philosophical context of pure idealism...
...It is clear from these examples that Smith was not a reductionist...
...Buckley's attack, however, came from apparent anger after Vidal had called him a "crypto-Nazi...
...francis m. Mclaughlin Associate Professor Boston College The authors reply: Ms...
...Cohen seems entirely to misunderstand our article: His charge that we fail to reconcile the irreconcilable would be telling had we tried to do so...
...The horrific shadow of the same sort of sectarian strife still mangles Northern Ireland, India, and the Middle East...
...If less than ideal expectations govern, self-interest and community may be reconciled...
...Smith further maintained that when we approve of another person's judgment, we do so originally, not because it gives us pleasure, but because we regard it "as right, accurate, and agreeable to truth and reality...
...I am happy to proffer this mitigation for the man who first brought me into electoral politics...
...The source of discord here is not due to conflicts of self-interest, but to what is closer to the altruism the Himeses would like to see institutionalized...
...We must note that his conclusion is without empirical support...
...Vidal's provocation certainly does not excuse, but helps explain...
...An unswerving commitment to a moral climate within society has been the hallmark of Judeo-Christian teachings...
...even if this dejects the authors...
...4) Mr...
...It is, he believed, simply the by-product of the natural principle of sympathy...
...But along with John Courtney Murray, we are convinced that it is a necessary one...
...Rather than reconcile the self-interest of classical liberal ideology with a Catholic understanding of the human, our concern was to make explicit the tension existing between the two...
...But so would Jehovah's Witnesses, Muslims, Buddhists, and Mormons...
...Likewise, with respect to Adam Smith, they may prefer the notion of altruism, but his observation that sympathy would constrain self-interest and foster the common good bears at least equal validity...
...As a nine-year-old I campaigned around the Bronx's Ford-ham section for Buckley, the 1965 Conservative mayoral candidate who opposed the Civilian Police Review Board which every police officer, including my more-liberal-than-most-cops father, was against...
...m]y grief...
...However,- the Himeses leave me with some vexing questions...
...Perhaps the authors might contemplate whether the Roman Catholic perception of absolute community leads ultimately to state aggrandizement...
...But he does maintain in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that, when analyzed, sympathy is seen to be the imaginative capacity to project ourselves into another's position and so see ourselves as we are seen by the other...
...It is not, therefore, in the least selfish" (TMS, Liberty Classics...
...For example, Smith wrote that "[s]ympathy,...cannot, in any sense be regarded as a selfish principle...
...w]hen I condole with you for the loss of your only son...
...2) Mr...
...He also wrote that he did not believe that a person who approves the passion or the action of another does so because of his interest in the pleasure that comes from the harmony of sympathies...
...3) Mr...
...Thus Smith's ethic of sympathy in The Theory of Moral Sentiments is coherent with his emphasis on self-interest in The Wealth of Nations...
...Cohen's letter seem required...
...He concludes that self-interest has done more to promote virtue than communitarianism...
...Sheed's narrative confuses the sequence of the remarks...
...And the doctrine of self-interest is certainly not the only stumbling block to public funding of institutions...
...The symbols of eschatology, so important within the Judeo-Christian tradition, wisely temper the zeal of any believer to found a perfect society within history...
...As an English graduate student and sometime instructor at a large state university, I am often frustrated by the lack of scaffolding from which to discuss values when so much of any cultural heritage concerns values...
...It is not what originally motivated our action...
...The individual as the basic unit of political currency emerged as a common ground in a world that could not agree on a common good-a Europe rent by Protestant-Catholic violence...
...We then react to "the sentiments of the real or supposed spectator of our conduct...
...I would like the Himeses to suggest some possibilities...
...KEVIN M. DOYLE...
...The authors cannot obviate the conclusions of Hobbes merely by replacing them with subjective theological values of their own, or those of the church...
...ELLIOTT A. COHEN Smith according to Himeses Chestnut Hill, Mass...
...Indeed, I wish there were less assumption of "the common good" in what the government sponsors-in projects and policies which I adamantly oppose, such as nuclear weapons and deterrence...
...In our article, we wrote of pluralism and subsidiarity as key elements of Catholic social theory...
...Had we done so, we would not have written the article...
...The pleasure we obtain is an afterthought...
...They may rightfully abhor self-interest, but they are no more correct than Hobbes in his belief that the predicate of community is self-interest...
...Cohen again misreads our article as is evident in his complaint that self-interest is not a myth "because its very efficacy is evident...
...And although I agree with the authors' characterization of the Reformers' view of original sin, and Hobbes's reduction of it, as inimical to many facets of human social development, I see...
...The argument with secularists, nevertheless, is not over ends...
...LINDA C. BRIGHAM Self-interest is no myth New, York, N.Y...
...That is why we advocated a strategy of increased support for a variety of mediating structures in social life...
...Many honestly see a strong defense as an altruistic policy...
...Doubtless, Catholics, would find the mission of Building the kingdom less thwarted if the government fostered church-related institutions...
...MICHAEL J. HIMES KENNETH R. HIMES Sheed on Buckley New York, N.V: To the Editors: Wilfrid Sheed's piece, "William Buckley's Several Selves" [November 4], was almost as amusing as Buckley himself...
...How do we negotiate radical divergences in values without making the kinds of compromises which force many religious people to withdraw from civil participation...
...Apparently he interprets the word "myth" as meaning that which is unreal...
...No short cuts exist to a public philosophy in a democracy such as ours...
...We agree with her perception that forging a consensus among different communities about the common good is a difficult task...
...This problem seems directly related to the concern of the article-the integration of a socially nurturing vision into governmental structures...
...More virtue has been promoted through self-interest than by Roman Catholic communitarianism...
...Is there to be a more perfect society, or a perfect one...
...Thus, we do not question the reality of self-interest...
...Himes to reconcile the irreconcilable in "The Myth of Self-Interest" [September 23], is clear: The observations of Thomas Hobbes, as well as the ethical perceptions of Adam Smith and the Roman Catholic church's commitment to the community, are incongruous...
...They might also ruminate empirically about whether liberalism and capitalism have promoted more of the common good than has the communitarian postulate of Catholicism...
...Many see abortion funding as an altruistic policy...
...To the Editors: The unsuccessful endeavor by co-authors K.R...
...To the Editors: In "The Myth of Self-Interest" [September 23], Michael and Kenneth Himes assert that Adam Smith tried"to resolve the problem of the com-(Continued on page 26) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 2) mon good within the Hobbesian framework which postulated self-interest as the sole human motivation...[and denied]...the possibility of altruism...
...While voters do not necessarily vote their pocketbooks (the Jewish community being most representative of this proposition) and while ideology may override, this premise does not make of self-interest a myth, because its very efficacy is evident...
...Brigham's concern about competing visions of the common good is well taken...
...How do we negotiate the territory between communities...
...How this is to be done must be the subject of another article...
...Even so, Sheed shortchanges Buckley in recounting the infamous Vidal-Buckley exchange during the 1968 Democratic Convention...
...Cohen advises us to"ruminate empirically" on the comparative promotion of the common good by liberalism and capitalism on the one hand and com-munitarianism on the other...
...Which means, however, shall be employed...
...is entirely upon your account and not in the least upon my own...
...Smith held that, in the vast majority of instances, sympathy is not a conscious or deliberate choice based on calculation of the value of fellow-feeling...
...As we thought obvious in our article, we employed "myth" to designate a paradigmatic account of human social existence...
...What we suggested is that self-interest alone is not an adequate explanation of political and economic activity...
...Himes and M.J...
...I atoned for my ideological misdirec-tion by campaigning for George McGovern seven years later, but am still beholden to Buckley...
...There are many places in the Theory of Moral Sentiments where Smith indicated that he believed individuals could transcend their self-interest...
...It is incumbent upon us all, therefore, to contribute to a thoughtful and serious dialogue on the meaning of the American proposition...
...1) Mr...
...Cohen's addition of the adjective "absolute" to community is gratuitous...
...This leads to the conclusion that Smith regarded all human behavior as self-interested, but such a conclusion is not consistent with a close reading of Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments...
...He maintained that the pleasure that is experienced is "always felt so instantaneously, and often upon such frivolous occasions, that it seems evident...[that it cannot]...be derived from any such self-interested consideration...
...The Himeses support their opinion by arguing that Smith included among the objectives of self-interested action the sense of self-worth that comes from performing acts approved by others...
...I believe there are answers to these questions, but I don't know what they are...
...He was not willing to explain all purposeful human action as a result of a conscious drive to maximize self-interest...
...Buckley indeed stooped to gay-baiting Vidal-an embarrassment, ultimately, to gays almost as much as to Buckley...
...other reasons for a system based on individual turf...
...Four comments about Mr...
Vol. 116 • January 1989 • No. 1
