ABSTRACT
As James Sterba recognizes in "From Rationality to Equality," humans in society are often confronted by a conflict between self-regarding and other-regarding reasons. In this chapter, the author wish to ask: if we accept Sterba's conception of morality as an incomplete compromise between egoism and altruism, how might we think about "completing" it—developing a more specific view of how a plausible human morality might "balance" egoism and altruism? Basic to Sterba's argument is that both altruistic and self-interested reasons "are relevant to rational choice." Our question when deciding what to do in some context is which of these two types of reasons should have "priority." If principles of reason and rational argumentation do not tell us much about how we must compare self-interested reasons and reasons of altruism, how do human communities come to resolve these issues in their conceptions of morality?
