How I Met Your Mother and Philosophy by Lorenzo von Matterhorn Read Free Book Online Page A

saying that, whatever the human good turns out to be, that’s what everyonedoes or should aim at. The point of saying that the egoist aims to maximize his own good is so that he is not constrained to pursue actions that are good for him in the short term but that end up costing him in the long run. Eating that last iced bun might contribute to your self-interest over the next five minutes, but you’re going to be carrying it around with you on your thighs for a lot longer than that.
    There are a couple of other unconventional moral views, that your mother would disapprove of, but which it is important not to confuse with egoism. Immoralism is the rather perverse position that one ought to do the opposite of whatever conventional morality enjoins. “Evil, be thou my Good,” Milton’s Satan declares, 1 and thereby admits to being an immoralist. As with most of these unconventional moral positions, it would be unwise for him to admit it, except among fellow-travelers.
    Apart from Satan, and his followers, immoralists are a pretty rare breed. A more popular position that is often confused with egoism is moral skepticism, together with its closely related variant, moral nihilism (or amoralism). The moral skeptic believes that no one has (or can have) any moral knowledge. The moral nihilist adds that this is because all moral claims are false. Morality is bunk. It is an invention of the weak to fool the strong into being nice to them. The skeptic and the nihilist agree with the immoralist and the egoist that conventional morality is either unknowable or outright false. It’s simply not true, for example, that you ought to give all your worldly goods to the poor. All of these unconventional moralists may even agree about the origins of conventional morality in a conspiracy of the weak to constrain the strong. However, while the immoralist and egoist go along with the skeptic and nihilist in their contempt for conventional morality, they don’t concede that all morality is bunk. To the immoralist and the egoist, there are moral facts; they are just not what people ordinarily think.
    Of these unconventional moral views, egoism seems to fit Barney the best. However, you may already have spotted a significant stumbling block for this interpretative claim. ‘But wait!’ I hear you cry. ‘What about the time when Barney flew to California to try and get Lily back with Marshall, and kept heroically stealing his dates so that he wouldn’t cheat on her(“Bachelor Party”)? Or how about when, on hearing that Ted was in a car accident, he rushed out of an important business meeting, ran all the way to the hospital, and was run over by a bus, breaking every bone in his body (“Miracles”)? Admittedly on the face of it these don’t look like the actions of an egoist.
    There’s no denying that Barney displays unusual generosity towards his friends, even buying them lavish gifts such as lap dances at the Lusty Leopard. It’s possible that his kindness is purely selfish. No man is an island, and it is perfectly compatible with egoism that the egoist help others, provided that he does so only as a means to his own happiness. Barney needs friends, and you can’t expect to have friends, at least not ones worth having, unless you’re nice to them occasionally. One may feel, however, that in his behavior towards his friends Barney goes beyond what one would expect from a true egoist, who is only interested in friends in so far as they contribute to his own good. He certainly seems to care about their interests as well, even when they are irrelevant to, or (mildly) in conflict with, his own. If he didn’t, he would hardly be such a sympathetic and popular character. He even elevates his attitude towards friends into a sort of personal moral system, in the form of the Bro Code, and then feels guilty when he breaches it to sleep with Robin, Ted’s ex. (“Article 150: