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    Is self-love selfish?

    Aug 08, 2020 3 minutes

    Self-Love, Egoism and the Selfish Hypothesis: Key Debates from Eighteenth-Century British Moral Philosophy

    Christian Maurer

    Edinburgh University Press, 2019

    240 pages

    Hardback, £75.00 (paperback edition forthcoming)

    ISBN: 9781474413374

    The concept of ‘self-love’ is sometimes touted as radical today. It was much more so in 18th-century Scotland, where innate human benevolence was a heretical idea. The Westminster Confession of Faith outlined the orthodox calvinist view: the sin of Adam and Eve had left humans ‘utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all Good,, Christian Maurer explores the British moral philosophical debate about self-love and selfishness, which emerged against this backdrop of evolving ideas about human nature.

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