ABSTRACT
Throughout the history of philosophy, by far the most popular candidate for the position of the moral point of view has been self-interest. Sidgwick appears to believe that egoism is one of the legitimate ‘methods of ethics’, although he himself rejects it on the basis of an ‘intuition’ that it is false. A consistent egoist has only one supreme principle, to do whatever is necessary for the realization of his one aim, the promotion of his interest. It is therefore not surprising that many philosophers have abandoned Kant’s view that the moral rightness of an act is its property of being in accordance with a moral rule or principle. Secondary moral rules are determined by the concept of desert, of positive or negative moral merit. The aim of a morality is to prevent the upsetting of the moral equilibrium by violation of ‘rules of duty’ and to encourage it by the observation of ‘rules of supererogation’.
