Topics Ethics

Question How much of my time should I spend helping others? Let me first say that I am a pretty happy person in general and I enjoy my life. However, although I volunteer a considerable amount (15-20 hrs. a week), I always feel like I should and/or could be doing more. I am a college student (majoring in philosophy) who lives a considerably comfortable lifestyle (I have a home, food, etc.), and I can't help but feel guilty for taking any pleasure in frivolous activities (video games, socializing, etc.) while I know how many people on earth live extremely hard lives. At the same time, it seems necessary to spend time not helping others and merely enjoying myself. What percentage of our time/effort/money should we spend making others' lives better? Would it be morally mertitorious to devote one's self entirely to others at the expense of ourselves or conversely, would it be alright to not volunteer at all and focus soley one's self? I can't seem to find a happy medium. p.s. This is a great service...keep it up.

Accepted:
August 2, 2010

Comments

How best to spend one's time is a question that every adult grapples with. It has many dimensions, including an ethical one. Though the three most popular approaches in philosophical ethics -- utilitarianism, Kantianism, and virtue ethics -- have something to say about the question, none provides a decisive answer. And that's as it should be: we should be suspicious of any philosophical position that fails to acknowledge the complexity of an issue as central to human existence as the one you raise.

Utilitarians argue that we should try to maximize happiness for the greatest number of people. When you think about it, this is in general a pretty tall order. There's no theoretical built-in limit on how much time we should spend trying to make the most people the happiest. Some utilitarians -- the contemporary philosopher Peter Singer comes to mind -- argue that this is the way it should be, that living the best sort of life may well involve forgoing a lot of personal pleasure. Others -- I think that Bentham and Mill, two of the the philosophers who argued powerfully in favor of utilitarianism in the 18th and 19th centuries were among them -- believe that people should use utilitarianism as a general guide in our public law-making, education system, and establishing of life priorities, but that we needn't be asking ourselves 24/7 how to maximize happiness in the world.

Kantians argue that, though we have a duty to contribute to the happiness and welfare of others, we also have a duty to make ourselves happy. Kant argues that if we are miserable, we are far less likely to have the fortitude not to succumb to what he called "inclination" (something like the desires that pull on us most strongly in any given situation) and to pay attention to what our powers of moral reasoning tell us is the right thing to do in a given situation. This position is related to a distinction Kant makes between what he called "perfect" and "imperfect" duties. Very roughly speaking, the perfect duties are the "don'ts": don't lie, cheat, steal, break promises, etc. The duties to make others happy and to make ourselves happy are imperfect duties, and Kant doesn't have a lot to say about how to balance them. So, though Kant thinks personal happiness is a vital part of the moral life, he doesn't tell us how much time we should spend cultivating it vs. contributing to the happiness of others.

Virtue theorists, such as Aristotle, extol character traits such as generosity and magnanimity -- that is, character traits that lead us to contribute to the happiness of others. They also emphasize that the development of these and other virtues requires not only a good upbringing, but also continued self-development (such as, for example, regular philosophical contemplation). But, just like utilitarians and Kantians, virtue theorists don't give us a precise formula for determining how to spend our time.

The relentlessness of the question of how to live your life -- including the question of how much time to devote to others -- is, I would argue, a fundamental dimension of human existence (Heidegger would call it an "existentiale"). There's no blueprint for living a morally perfect life, and it's not obvious, even, that a morally perfect life would be the best possible human life. (Perhaps, as the contemporary philosophy Susan Wolf has argued, being a moral saint would not be a fully human way to live, were it even possible.) Perhaps the best we can do is check in with ourselves on a regular basis to make sure that the way that we're living is consistent, even if not perfectly so, with our moral and other values. It sounds to me as though you personally are already being quite vigilant in this department -- perhaps even overly so!