When we consider the phrase “self-interested,” it typically carries negative connotations. However, in the realm of philosophy, self-interest is more neutral—simply denoting that we all have our own welfare in mind when we act. It is not until we consider moral philosophy—which seeks to categorize things into standards of right/good and wrong/bad—that self-interest becomes decidedly one or the other. Let’s consider the more unconventional viewpoint of “enlightened self-interest,” a concept realized by Adam Smith that prescribes a strictly positive point of view to pursuing your own interests—which asserts that one’s actions to further their own welfare will ultimately create greater benefit for everyone. But, to what extent does enlightened self-interest truly expand the welfare of others, and therefore to what extent is it moral? If, like philosopher Kurt Baier, we assume that morality is “for the good of everyone alike,” then according to the ideology of enlightened self-interest, self-interest must be moral because it will ultimately be for the welfare of all.¹ Thus, from this, we can define the “common good” as the result of making morally virtuous choices to the extent that an individual’s actions may create a general sort of welfare or improvement for others.

In this essay, I will begin by exploring enlightened self-interest concerning politics and its theories. Then, I will correlate these ideas to the stories of Frankenstein and The Picture of Dorian Gray to consider the applicability of these theories to the pursuit of knowledge and power as well as aestheticism—the appreciation of beautiful things—and hedonism—the pursuit of pleasure—as they relate to the common good. Lastly, I will argue the impracticality of enlightened self-interest due to disparities that can be shown when looking at things pragmatically versus in theory. This will be explored through both real-world politics and the characters in the novels. Ultimately, I will show that though enlightened self-interest could not feasibly provide the most welfare for all, it is not unethical to justify morality in terms of self-interest.

The contemporary association with the term “self-interest” would be “selfishness” or “conceit” and some philosophical theories, such as Kantian deontology, would tend to agree; however, plenty of what some deem “selfish” would be considered “enlightened” by others. Given the fact that Smith employed both individualistic and social methods, many of “his interpreters offer incomplete, one-sided analyses [as] they assume that he used only one of them.”² Some philosophers’ methods try “to make Smith’s system a mechanical model of self-preservative desires, much as in Hobbes’ system. Whereas . . . others, considering Smith as a forerunner of modern sociology, somewhat neglect the individualist drives that spring from universal human psychology rather than from social forces.”³ However, enlightened self-interest assumes a balance where the individual is just as important as the group because it is the individual who creates the group’s welfare. 

I will introduce some political thought experiments to consider why, while in theory the “I” may be moral, in practice it only benefits the privileged few. Take trickle-down economics, for example. In trickle-down economics, governments deregulate business and award tax breaks for corporations with the assumption that allowing the wealthiest to create profits through their pursuit of self-interest will also create wealth for the lower classes. It sounds good in theory, however, it makes assumptions upon the fact that the wealthy and corporations don’t try to mitigate this “trickle-down” effect through shortcuts, corporate misconduct, or fraudulent activity. Furthermore, studies have shown the theory’s lack of effectiveness. A study done by Ordu University showed that trickle-down economics was seven times less effective in wealth creation across the sixty-five countries tested than when wealth was redistributed to the poor (the bottom 20 percent of income earners)—meaning a distribution of wealth to the poorest (bottom 20 percent of) income-earners raises the wealth of the richest (top 20 percent of) income-earners by seven times greater than the reverse.⁴ Thus, we can discern that enlightened self-interest is not truly practical. This is particularly interesting to explore further through novels because many of them offer real-world lessons and arguments—whether intentionally or not. Such fictional examples allow us to apply real-world thought experiments to interesting hypothetical situations and stories that are unlikely ever to materialize and, therefore, make a particular argument more concrete because it transcends the bounds of our world. Thus, it should enable better applicability across various topics in the real world since it’s been considered so vastly. In this case, we can consider this in novels such as Frankenstein and The Picture of Dorian Gray, which also seemingly argue that the common good does not come from the ideology of enlightened self-interest.

Frankenstein and The Picture of Dorian Gray each explore the applicability of enlightened self-interest through the pursuit of knowledge, power, hedonism, and aestheticism. First, let’s consider Frankenstein through the lens of Victor, Frankenstein’s creator. Right before creating the monster, Victor thinks, “​​A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.”⁵ He considers his endeavors to be a sort of blessing where “Life and death appeared to [him] in ideal bounds, which [he] should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.”⁶ His choice of words would imply that he believes in his actions as a kind of enlightened self-interest, where, by pursuing the creation of new beings that would “bless” him, he would also “pour a torrent of light into our dark world.”

Still, Victor goes on to admit many faults with this endeavor, stating, “As the memory of past misfortunes pressed upon me, I began to reflect upon their cause—the monster whom I had created, the miserable daemon whom I had sent abroad into the world,” and further, “Like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell.”⁷ Thus, Victor essentially affirms that his enlightened self-interest has put him in his own personal hell. Ironically, this is similar to the founders of many political ideologies stemming from enlightened self-interest—such as Herbert Hoover (and later followers like Ronald Reagan) with his trickle-down economics—who still push their idea as a solution despite the proof-of-concept not working. That is, in the same manner that politicians assert that trickle-down economics could still work, Victor contends to himself in regards to self-interested endeavors: “I have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed”⁸—thus producing an endless cycle of “enlightenment” where self-interest is pursued but the common good is not met. Therefore, it could be said that no real enlightenment amounts. 

Now let us examine this same idea, keeping aestheticism in mind, in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Specifically, in the novel, aestheticism is a branch of philosophy where hedonism is chased through an endless pursuit of self-interest to reach a desired “enlightenment.” As such, a world of ubiquitous appreciation of beauty is created that would, in theory, enhance the welfare of the majority, or at least provide the majority with a solid foundation from which they could reach their conceptions of a “good” life. Wilde continuously equates aestheticism to morality, which is an interesting choice given the clear distinctions between the two schools of thought. Yet, in discussing the nature of sin, it can be seen through Dorian that Wilde has a preference for aesthetics over ethics where he “who attains perfection” is incapable of sin “because they can do everything they wish without hurt to the soul, and can wish for nothing that can do the soul harm.”⁹ The fact that aestheticism is being equated to a lack of sin suggests that these people, especially Lord Henry Wotton, whether accurately or not, truly believe they are reaching a form of enlightenment through the endless pursuit of hedonism, which relates to their definition of the common good, albeit not a traditional one, where society is better off when they are better off. To elaborate on this, morality, here, is equivalent to pleasure, and immorality is equivalent to lack of pleasure. Thus, achieving a common good—which is typically denoted as the result of making moral choices—could instead, here, be the natural product of pleasurable choices. Under this guise, as Lord Henry pursues “enlightenment,” he is one who “never say[s] a moral thing,” yet “never do[es] a wrong thing.”¹⁰ We could take this to mean that, in the comparison of actions and words, we have to weigh actions on a scale that is separate from that of words. An individual can choose to act freely by saying or doing something in a way that is independent of the outcome of that same action. Therefore, Lord Henry’s surface-level desires, though seeming to appeal to hedonism or aestheticism, must be removed from a larger question of moral virtuosity—the outcome is more important than the intention. It is this judgment that truly matters when considering the advancement of the common good.

We can consider the practicality of this idea through both Lord Henry Wotton and Dorian Gray. Dorian Gray is initially explained to be particularly passionate and loving, as shown through his relationship with Sibyl Vane, his first love, and Basil Hallward, his closest friend. However, as he develops a friendship with Lord Henry and becomes increasingly self-interested, this demeanor begins to border on something much more complex, more rotten even. As described by Dominic Manganiello: “[Sin] is the pulse, in particular, of The Picture of Dorian Gray . . . [Lord Henry] abides by a new hedonism which promotes pleasure as the only good. [He] celebrates experience as an end in itself and the enjoyment of the intensely lived moment of beauty regardless of moral standpoints.”¹¹ In this case, Dorian becomes more aligned with this hedonistic view of thinking as a means of attaining the perfection to be found through aestheticism. For example, after Basil paints Dorian in all of his glory, Dorian wishes that “the painting would bear the burden of marks of age and lifestyle for him,” indicating to the reader the moment in which Dorian’s enlightened self-interest takes on the brunt of the responsibility for his future, hedonistic actions.¹² And, from this point on we can assess the impact that Dorian’s self-interested actions have on the common good. After proclaiming he no longer loves Sibyl because she’s lost her acting talent, Dorian returns to see a scornful appearance on his portrait’s face. He considers a lifestyle of “eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joy and wilder sins” the only option at this point—he ruins the lives of others, even killing his best friend, who tried earnestly to help him repent.¹³ Decidedly, the painting only continues to deteriorate, showing that in such a “sinless” world, the practical reality is that people, metaphorically and literally, rot.

The distinction to be made here, for Wilde’s characters, is between two kinds of morality. The kind of morality that the rest of this paper advances is one centered on an appreciation of a common good that intentionally improves the welfare of others and is therefore non-relative. However, for characters like Dorian and Lord Henry, morality is different. Dorian and Lord Henry derive their senses of morality from a relative platform of what contributes to their vision of the common good and what can potentially bring them pleasure in the future; it appeals to hedonism and aestheticism. However, concepts like hedonism and aestheticism need foundations from which one can derive comparisons to understand how one’s own actions and aspirations fit into a wider, more open interpretation of the common good. And, even though their kind of self-interested morality is narrow in focus and likely more important to Wilde’s characters’ satiation than it is to impacting the common good, Wilde’s characters’ morality may not be completely separated from the non-relative common good because—under aestheticism and hedonism—his characters’ morality is driven by the background churning of a machine that feeds the common good no matter what. To elaborate, in this world, aestheticism and hedonism have been equated to the common good and, therefore, as these characters pursue their aesthetic and hedonistic desires, they also follow a morality consistent with fulfilling the common good. Thus, we have two versions of morality (one relative and the other non-relative) that each feed their own version of the “common good.”

To make my argument more tangible, let us, once more, consider how, similar to the inhibitory actions that prevent trickle-down economics from working practically, aestheticism and hedonism do not combine to allow one to reach the ideal of enlightened self-interest. Specifically, we’ll consider Dorian’s retrospective reflection: “And yet who, that knew anything about Life, would surrender the chance of always remaining young, however fantastic that chance might be, or with what fateful consequences it might be fraught?”¹⁴ This idea of lost opportunity is equivalent to the mindset of the people involved in the “shortcuts, corporate misconduct, [and] fraudulent activity” that I discussed above. In other words, making the choice to pursue immortality at the expense of the soul, or to attempt personal optimization under a specific economic model, is not simply choosing to act in your own enlightened self-interest; it is blatantly attempting to avoid contributing to a system that would provide welfare for anyone else. This idea is made even more concrete in Gray’s later thought: “Yet, after all, what did it matter to [Dorian]? One’s days were too brief to take the burden of another’s errors on one’s shoulders. Each man lived his own life, and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault.”¹⁵ It seems that, whether in the case of The Picture of Dorian Gray, where Dorian simply doesn’t care and even tries to avoid greater welfare for the common good, or in the case of Frankenstein, where characters such as Victor truly believed they would create common good, both results show the incompatibility of enlightened self-interest with value-dependent ideals that seek to serve a common good. Simply, it can be said that enlightened self-interest does not create welfare or improvement for others and therefore does not advance the common good. 

As I stated previously, we should also consider that self-interest isn’t inherently negative and can act as a means to justify morality; of course, morality can have many different meanings, but for the sake of this paper, it is defined as actions “for the good of everyone alike.” As described previously, Dorian’s self-guided pursuits became purely hedonistic (and therefore self-interested), but let’s explore a case where his self-interest justified a moral action. In chapter eleven, we get a glimpse of the future, a future that portrays Dorian’s new lifestyle: “[Dorian] would throw open to the world his beautiful house and have the most celebrated musicians of the day to charm his guests with the wonders of their art. His little dinners, in the settling of which Lord Henry always assisted him, were noted . . .  for the exquisite taste shown in the decoration of the table, with its subtle symphonic arrangements of exotic flowers, and embroidered cloths, and antique plates of gold and silver.”¹⁶ Of course, Dorian’s actions in hosting are deeply intertwined with his insatiable desire to tend to his own pleasure; however, he is also creating a situation that spreads the welfare for the common good as he hosts these massive, lavish parties, inviting others into the same semblance of comfort that he has come to know and appreciate. In this case, it could be said that self-interest is justifying a morality in which there’s an action “for the good of everyone alike,” not just Dorian. 

We can also apply this more broadly to any case in which your self-interest matches with what is beneficial to others. For example, consider a situation where you own a public garden and make a profit on it from monthly dues, donations, or other methods. It is in your self-interest to keep this garden open to the public as it brings you both external (monetary) and internal (contentment with seeing your creation grow) joy. Say, even, that perhaps that self-interested joy is all that you care about. However, keeping this garden open would also denote a morally good action, as it would provide green space for people who may have none; it would offer improved access to fresh food, relieve stress and increase wellness, and support greater environmentalism through air and soil quality and increased biodiversity. The individual who owns this garden is thus acting morally, good for everyone alike, through self-interest—increased wealth and personal contentment. 

Ultimately, these arguments can lead us to maintain that enlightened self-interest is best served for theoretical supposition rather than practical application, at least for the purposes of creating a common good. As it were, enlightened self-interest can, theoretically, be considered to be moral through its implementation towards a collective good. However, in practice, all pursuits of self-interestedness—such as limitless knowledge, hedonism, and aestheticism—can be examined through real-world application in both political policy and novels, where it becomes clear that enlightened self-interest can be said to be ineffective in creating the welfare in which it conjectures to support. Despite this lack of practicality, we can still discern that self-interested motivation can—and often does—serve as a justifiable foundation for initiating moral action, as it can, in practice, result in welfare for the majority. As Adam Smith said, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”¹⁷

1. Kurt Baier, The Moral Point of View (Cornell University Press, 1958).
2. Robert Boyden Lamb, “Adam Smith’s System: Sympathy Not Self-Interest,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 35, no. 4 (Oct. 1974): 671. Accessed 23 Apr. 2024.
3. Lamb, “Adam Smith’s System,” 671.
4. Merter Akinci, “Inequality and Economic Growth: Trickle-down Effect Revisited,” Development Policy Review, vol. 36, no. S1 (Oct. 2017): 3–20. Accessed 23 Apr. 2024.
5. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text (Penguin Classics, 2018), 39.
6. Shelley, Frankenstein, 39.
7. Shelley, Frankenstein, 194.
8. Shelley, Frankenstein, 182.
9. Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (David Zwirner Books, 2019), 45.
10. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Pearson Education, 1891), 11.
11. Dominic Manganiello, “Ethics and Aesthetics in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray,’” The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, vol. 9, no. 2 (1983): 25–33.
12. Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 34-35.
13. Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 119.
14. Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 119.
15. Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 210.
16. Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 145.
17. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1776), 44.