Selfish is an odd word because its meaning is almost entirely negative. It does not mean "prudent, promoting one's own interest". It means "not promoting other people's" or, as the dictionary puts it, "devoted to or concerned with one's own advantage to the exclusion of regard for others". This being usually seen as a fault, the word serves chiefly as a term of abuse. And it raises a difficulty for theorists who want to say that self-interest is, in some sense, the core of all human motivation. We wonder how, if this is so, the word could ever come to be invented at all? Just as there would be no word for white if everything was white, there could surely be no word for selfish if everyone was always selfish. As things are, however, we notice that some people do consider others less than most of us, and we use words like selfish or mean to record this fact
Selfishness cannot, then, be a universal condition. This was a central problem for Hobbes, who went to great trouble to prove that, in all our acts, our real aim is always our own interest. To explain the appearance of disinterested behaviour he focussed on enlightened self-interest, explaining that what looks like altruism is really only a shrewd insurance-policy. We act virtuously only because this is part of the social machine which keeps us alive… If so, however, it is surely odd that we should ever have begun to pretend that anything else was involved? Why have we invented concepts such as mercy, loyalty, justice and friendship which often conflict with our interests and will surely deceive nobody? And why, despite everything, do these concepts often actually influence our behaviour?
Hobbes's trouble here was that he was not actually an immoralist. He did not actually want to get rid of the virtues. He liked an orderly society. He just wanted to stop people using morality against their own interests, especially in futile revolts or religious wars. So he argued that virtue does serve for self-preservation, so long as the State is still functioning efficiently.
This, however, is scarcely convincing. The gap between the demands of justice or gratitude and those of self-interest is simply too wide, so wide that no amount of enlightened foresight will bridge or remove it. Accordingly, many sensible critics – Hume, Rousseau, Butler, Kropotkin – have pointed out that Hobbes's reductive approach does not explain how morality works but only claims that it isn't really there at all. These people have therefore sketched out more plausible accounts of the complex motives involved.
Prominent among these analyses is Charles Darwin's very interesting discussion of the origin of morals in The Descent of Man. Darwin derived morality, not just from our extra intelligence but from the combination of that intelligence with the strong affectionate and co-operative motives which we share with other social animals, and related these to our evolutionary history. As he put it, "Thus the social instincts – the prime principle of man's moral constitution – with the aid of active intellectual powers and the effects of habit, naturally lead to the golden rule, 'As ye would that men should do unto you, do ye to them likewise' and this lies at the foundation of morality".
It is rather striking that Richard Dawkins, when he treats of human motives in The Selfish Gene, bypasses these suggestions entirely and reverts to full-scale Hobbism. In this discussion - which is quite distinct from his account of "gene-selfishness" – he writes flatly that "we are born selfish" – we ourselves, not the genes. The word selfish clearly has its normal, negative sense here because he has just written that, if we wish
to build a society in which individuals co-operate generously and unselfishly… you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then have a chance to upset their design, something which no other species has ever aspired to.
It is surely rather surprising that we – creatures who are, as he has explained, merely lumbering robots, survival-machines entirely controlled by these super-beings – are, at this stage of our evolution, suddenly free to rise up with one bound and overpower them. Dawkins's first explanation for this is still that of Hobbes – our extra intelligence, producing enlightened self-interest.
We have at least the equipment to foster our long-term self-interest rather than our short-term self-interest. We can see the long-term benefits of participating in a 'conspiracy of doves'.
This seems to imply, rather strangely, that nobody has tried to enlighten self-interest up till now. Moreover, it suggests that intelligence is independent of genetic causes. But still more remarkable is Dawkins's next proposal – one that would have shocked Hobbes profoundly. Dawkins writes,
We can even discuss ways of cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism, something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world.… We have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.
Hobbes would have pointed out pretty sharply that this is a metaphysical claim to a very strong form of free-will – a mental ability to resist physical causes. Moreover, he would have asked what could possibly be the motivation for trying to transform one's own basic wishes so completely?
This manifesto, prominently placed at the beginning and end of Dawkins's book, serves to reassure readers who are shaken by the extreme egoism, fatalism and determinism of the remainder. But it might perhaps have been better to avoid those extremes in the first place. The central weakness of Hobbism is its arbitrary, simplistic, sweeping psychology. And that is surely better dealt with by giving a more realistic, more biological account of human social motivation, as Darwin did in The Descent of Man.