Spinoza on the Metaphysics of Self-Interest
Implicit in being oneself is the commitment to oneself. One pursues one's life. One doesn't need a reason to pursue it. One pursues it, quite obsessively, because it's one's life. Who else's life is one supposed to pursue anyway? There is an absurdity in even asking for a reason as to why we should care about ourselves. Identity itself explains the self-concern. We don't require any persuasion in taking a special interest in what will befall us. The persuasion we require is to take an interest in others as well. That's the business of ethics, and the business, too of [Spinoza's] The Ethics . Spinoza tries to capture this fundamental fact -- that our commitment to ourselves is unlike the commitment to anything else, since it is tantamount to simply being oneself -- in his concept of conatus . Conatus is simply a thing's special commitment to itself....: "The endeavor, wherewith everything endeavors to persist in its own being, is nothing else b