New York: Routledge, 2024
172 pp. $23.70
This book is the latest in a series called “Why It’s OK: The Ethics and Aesthetics of How We Live,” which the publisher says is intended to “offer compelling arguments for widespread and established human behavior,” as opposed to the “unpopular positions” to which many contemporary philosophers devote their energies. Given that mission, one might expect these books to vindicate the values that today’s philosophy professors scorn, such as rationality, individualism, or the appreciation of beauty. Unfortunately, the other titles in the list indicate their shortcomings; they include Why It’s OK Not to Think for Yourself, Why It’s OK to Make Bad Choices, Why It’s OK to Be a Socialist (is that not the sum of the previous two?), and even Why It’s OK to Be Fat.
But unlike those things, minding one’s own business is rational and moral, at least if properly understood. In fact, the Greek philosopher Epicurus (whom, alas, authors Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke never mention) built his entire worldview around it. He argued that the goal of our ethical lives should be ataraxia, which means serenity or absence of disturbance, and that the best way to achieve this was to indulge modestly in the good things of life while avoiding the stresses of either great misery or great joy, because both cause psychological strain. According to Epicureans, the best life is one devoted—as the 18th-century Epicurean, Voltaire, put it—to “cultivating one’s own garden”; that is, minding one’s own business.
Such a view has long been anathema to many prominent intellectuals, however, who regard it as myopic at best and positively oppressive at worst. They claim that living for one’s own happiness is morally repugnant and that morality consists of moral “duties” toward others—so that, at least according to some of these critics, self-interested behavior does not even qualify as “moral.” From John Rawls, who argued that “those who have been favored by nature, whoever they are, may gain from their good fortune only on terms that improve the situation of those who have lost out”; to today’s acolytes of critical race theory, who characterize individualism as a form of “white supremacy,” which should be replaced with “a shared definition of leadership that assumes a collaborative and collective approach”—discussions about ethics are virtually monopolized by those who preach that morality consists of obligations to other people.1 It’s not just academic philosophers, either. Tosi and Warmke begin their book with examples of celebrity commencement speakers, from Michelle Obama to television personality Katie Couric, urging new college graduates to revolutionize the world and devote their energies to the service of society rather than their individual pursuits.
The task of justifying a life aimed at self-improvement, flourishing, or ataraxia is, therefore, a substantial one for writers on ethics. In a culture in which young people are almost constantly implored to dedicate themselves to serving their communities, their families, or “the greater good” in some vague sense, what case can be made for the simple virtue of non-sacrificially pursuing one’s own ends? What role should ambition play in our lives? How should a person select which categories of life’s business one should mind—particularly when one faces dilemmas that might require giving up one goal to achieve another?
Unfortunately, Tosi and Warmke never answer these questions and in fact, barely try. Instead, they base their argument on what they call “ordinary morality,” which they never quite define but which refers to “the way most people understand what it means to live a morally good life” (6). They supplement this argumentum ad populum with “value pluralism,” by which they mean a recognition that there are many good things in life, and “the best we can do is consider what matters in our circumstances and try to choose wisely” (8–9).
But the obvious problem is that it’s not possible to determine what constitutes a “wise” choice without some standard of value to differentiate wisdom from folly—or even to explain why we ought to choose wisely, as opposed to foolishly. (Perhaps Why It’s OK to Make Bad Choices fills that gap.) In an endnote, they say their “ordinary morality” approach seeks to capture “how ordinary people actually reason when they think about moral decisions,” but the purpose of a book on moral philosophy is to teach people how to reason, not merely to observe and record their uninstructed, perhaps misguided efforts at doing so (144).
Given their lack of foundation, Tosi and Warmke are left with little more than bare assertions that, for example, “there is a danger in thinking of ourselves primarily in terms of our usefulness to others” (138). That’s certainly true—but the authors don’t prove it and do little more than note the fact that most people do typically devote at least some time to their own needs and happiness. But is it not also true that most people feel guilty about doing so? Or that they have been coached by the prevalent cultural voices not to consider such activities “moral” in the first place?
Instead of explaining—as the title says—“why it’s OK” to engage in pursuits of industry and improvement, Tosi and Warmke resort to begging the question, as when they observe that “most people aren’t concerned about the morality of spending time relaxing at home after work” (104). Yet as the authors themselves recognize, many people—including prominent philosophers—think they should be.
Tosi and Warmke would dismiss those philosophers as what they call, in the book’s opening chapters, “busybodies” and “moralizers,” terms they define as people who offer unsolicited moral criticism of others’ choices or who intrude paternalistically into other people’s lives to “protect” them from themselves. Tosi and Warmke offer some valid arguments for why it’s wrong to be either a busybody or a moralizer. For example, we cannot know all the circumstances of others’ lives, so our moral judgments might be inaccurate, and constantly expressing moral opinions about others’ actions can reduce one’s willingness to focus on improving one’s own moral character. But they seem to miss the implications of their best argument against being a busybody—an argument that, if properly developed, would make a far stronger case for minding one’s own business than their book delivers.
Amid their critique of the busybody lifestyle, Tosi and Warmke pause to ask what life is like for busybodies themselves—constantly on the lookout for the opportunity to intervene and save others from the consequences of their own choices. In a twist on a famous thought experiment by Professor Peter Singer, who argued that one is morally obligated to rescue a drowning child even if doing so risks damaging one’s own property, Tosi and Warmke imagine what they call “the world’s worst pool party”—one in which children keep falling into the pool over and over, only to have the busybody rescue them. The parents never bother to come to their own children’s aid because the busybody has already taken it upon herself to save the children, no matter how many times they fall into the pool; in fact, the parents soon start calling friends and inviting them to bring their own children to play in the pool because the busybody has taken on the role of lifeguard.
It’s obvious, Tosi and Warmke conclude, that at some point it’s OK for the busybody to quit volunteering—to stop leaping to the aid of others—because she has a life to lead, too. The lesson reveals the real moral question: not how one should act in an emergency, such as a one-time near-drowning, but “whether we should sacrifice all the time and possessions we have, and ever will have, to help everyone in need” (51). Quite so—and those who answer yes to this question are plainly calling for a world in which the strong must suffer in perpetuity for the sake of the weak; in which the individual has no moral claim over his own life; in which each of us is conscripted into the role of perpetual lifesaver for others.
Tosi and Warmke expand on this point by describing the experiments of psychologists who have explored so-called pathological altruism—a term these researchers define as “an unhealthy focus on others to the detriment of one’s own needs” (58). Their research has shown that children who “scored very high in altruistic behavior and very low in self-actualizing behavior” turned out to be “very likely to share, care for other children, and help around the house,” but they were “not at all likely to enjoy their successful helping behavior . . . or to want to do things on their own” (59). Those results are unsurprising because the self-renunciation and perpetual “rescuing” that the ethics of self-sacrifice demand are inevitably destined to generate numb resignation in its subscribers or resentful cynicism in its survivors.
The conclusion one should draw here is that the morality of duty and self-sacrifice is inherently misguided: The primary aim of one’s ethical activity—just like the primary aim of one’s diet and exercise regimen—is not to rescue others but to live a healthy, productive, and joyful life. Human nature is inescapably individual. Unlike ants or bees (which appear to be truly collectivist creatures), we live through inalienable and autonomous selves—single coherent personalities, the survival and flourishing of which is our natural standard of moral value. Happiness and suffering are inescapably experienced by these selves, and each of us is in the best position to make the choices governing our own actions—that is, each of us is self-responsible.
This individuality inevitably affects everything we do—all our desires, goals, and our sense of success or failure—which is why a proper ethics must center around what Aristotle called eudaimonia, or individual flourishing, defined as “the life of the man who is active in accordance with virtue.”2 A morality that, by contrast, commands one to sacrifice happiness and live out a duty of serving as a perpetual lifeguard makes as little sense for human beings as a theory that bees should move out of the hive and live on their own, or an argument that horses should eat meat. (It’s no coincidence that the foremost advocates of selflessness, whether religious or political, have invariably found themselves fashioning wild schemes for transforming human nature itself.)
The non-sacrificial morality of individual flourishing, often called ethical egoism, is nothing new; the idea was commonplace in ancient philosophy, particularly Aristotle, and has been maintained by modern egoists, notably Ayn Rand, W. D. Falk, David Norton, and virtue ethicists such as Philippa Foot, Paul Bloomfield, and Julia Annas. But it has been vastly overshadowed by the prevailing view that morality means serving others’ needs at one’s own expense, to such a degree that Tosi and Warmke seem virtually to tremble with fear when they offer the feeble suggestion that “taking care of yourself and the people you care about doesn’t cease to matter from the moral point of view just because you enjoy it” (53).
That’s disappointing, because their book does offer some useful observations about the value of the self-directed life. For example, it includes chapters on the importance of creating a happy family, fostering a healthy community, and spending time on one’s own skills and projects. Tosi and Warmke even offer a defense of solitude, which, they write, “makes possible so much human greatness. . . . The world’s best mathematicians have spent uncountable hours alone trying to solve problems. Poets and writers for hundreds of years have sat alone and stared at blank sheets of paper” (135–36). That, they argue, means there’s nothing wrong with spending time away from others “to focus completely on healthy and enjoyable activities that are worth our time and attention” (136).
They also argue that there’s no reason why one must devote one’s time to “grander world-improvement schemes” as opposed to smaller-scale achievements: “Your local world is complex, too,” they write. “You’re more likely to hit upon a beneficial solution to a problem and do good at lower levels of social complexity” than to become a world-changing mathematician, poet, or writer” (101). We need “maintainers” as much as “innovators,” they say, and there is no reason not to take pride in preserving and protecting the good, as opposed to fashioning new, unprecedented, good things (100).
Yet Tosi and Warmke insist that they’re not offering “radical” ideas; “this book is not called Why It’s OK to Be a Rugged Individualist or Why It’s OK to Be Selfish” (99). And that’s just the problem. Without showing that one has the right to one’s own life, and that it’s good to devote one’s energies to pursuing happiness—as opposed to serving the state or achieving the greatest good for the greatest number—it’s impossible to substantiate the assertion that “we owe it to ourselves to make the most of our lives” (53).
Whether or not Tosi and Warmke like it, that proposition is indeed “radical” in today’s culture—because our philosophical discourse is so profoundly corrupted. That, in turns, means that more than a mere appeal to what “most people” do is necessary to vindicate the right to mind one’s own business.
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Endnotes
1. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 101; University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and Art, “Identifying and Addressing Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture,” December 12, 2021, 18; https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/inclusive-teaching/wp-content/uploads/sites/853/2021/12/Identifying-and-Addressing-Characteristics-of-White-Supremacy-Culture.pdf.
2. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics 1179a, in Richard McKeon, ed., Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1947), 1107.
