4. Self and Unself

This chapter looks at the imperfect antithesis of selfishness and unselfishness, which organises Wedgwood’s thought on the self and ethics. She criticises contemporary James Hinton, who believes that we can be educated to the point where the selfishness/unselfishness dichotomy is overcome. Wedgwood thinks this is unrealistic, and that the real antithesis of selfishness and unselfishness is where the challenges of ethical life get started. Having a self entails some level of selfishness; being unselfish is the highest moral ideal; and given natural selfishness, being unselfish necessarily means making some sacrifice of oneself, which must be a hard struggle. These claims can be reconciled with Wedgwood’s historical account of selfishness as a distinctly modern development, if we see history as moving progressively towards realising inherent features of the self. I then introduce some problems with her ideal of self-sacrifice. First, it may be a veiled form of self-fashioning and self-inflation. Second, she thinks women are much more given to self-sacrifice than men. This at worst praises women’s moral exploitation, although her aim is to place women at the centre of moral life. The chapter closes by drawing together several imperfect antitheses that are at work here. Above all, unselfishness is the highest virtue, yet selfishness is normal and not blameworthy nor vicious.