Simon Blackburn, “Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love” (Princeton UP, 2014)

At the heart of our moral thinking lies trouble with our selves.  The self lies at morality’s core; selves are intimately connected to the proper objects of moral evaluation.  But a common theme of moral theory is that the self, and concern with the self, is the source of much that is immoral: selfishness, greed, vanity, arrogance, envy, and so on.  Many moral views that otherwise are opposed to each other seem to agree that being good requires some kind of dissociation with the self.  And the transcending of the self is a central theme of our most popular religious traditions.

Yet selves are not going away.  Indeed, culturally the self is increasingly dominant.  We now use the first-personal pronouns as a prefixes: we use iPods to listen to iTunes, and use our iPhones to take “selfies.” And all of this self-assertion seems connected to social ills stemming from lack of concern with other selves.  The question, then, is how to discern the proper degree of self-regard.

In Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love (Princeton University Press, 2014), Simon Blackburn explores the complex phenomena surrounding selves and self-regard, offering deep insights into notions like pride, ambition, vanity, authenticity, and much else.

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