Welfare and Rational Care

Chapter I
WELFARE'S NORMATIVITY
THIS BOOK concerns what we variously call a person's good, interest, well-being, or welfare: the good of a person in the sense of what benefits her.1 This differs, I shall argue, from what a person herself values, prefers, or takes an interest in, even rationally. It is true, of course, that helping someone realize her values is almost always a significant part of advancing her welfare. Still, a person's good is a different thing from what she holds good, either actually or rationally, even from her own point of view.
One way to see this is to think about what it is to care for someone. When we care for a person, we desire his good for its own sake, not just as a means to other ends. But not for its sake only (that is, for his good's sake). Any desire for another's good that springs from concern for that person is also for his sake. The object of care is the individual person himself.
Desires are usually individuated by their objects, which are identified with states of affairs. But a desire for someone's good rooted in care has, in addition to the "direct" object of the person's good or the state of its being realized, an "indirect" object: the person himself.2 We desire his good for his sake.
To appreciate what these last three words add, consider that it seems possible for an intrinsic desire for someone's welfare to arise through the sort of associative process by which Mill explains the genesis of an intrinsic desire for wealth, or even, perhaps, through whim or fancy, without involving any concern for the person himself.3 Mill claims that people come to desire wealth even when it lacks instrumental value because of its psychological associations with other things they intrinsically desire. Were a desire for someone's good to arise similarly, it might involve no concern whatsoever for the person himself. One might simply desire intrinsically that another's good be realized without desiring this for his sake.
Caring for someone involves a whole complex of emotions, sensitivities, and dispositions to attend in ways that a simple desire that another be benefited need not. If someone about whom I care is miserable and suffering, I will be disposed to emotional responses, for example, to sadness on his behalf, that cannot be explained by the mere fact that an intrinsic desire for his welfare is not realized. Taken by itself, all that would explain would be dissatisfaction, disappointment, or frustration.
Consider now the difference between the perspective we take when, in caring for someone, we attempt to work out what is good for her, on the one hand, and the perspective that is implicit in her own values, interests, and preferences, on the other. The former is a perspective we attempt to take on the person, whereas the person's own values are what seems good to her from her point of view.
Of course, a person can have concern for herself, and to the extent that she does, she will be the object of her own regard. She will have herself and her good in view. From her perspective what seems valuable will then include herself and her own welfare. But it is virtually unimaginable that a person's concerns could be exhausted by self-concern, or even by what would satisfy it. There will inevitable be things whose value seems different to her from her own viewpoint than they do when filtered through the lens of self-regard. Indeed, it is entirely conceivable, maybe even commonplace, that a person can care relatively little for herself and her own welfare. Sometimes this will just be because other things matter much more to her. But it can also happen, in depression, for example, that someone cares little for herself because she seems to herself not to be worth caring much about.
The difference between empathy and sympathy is instructive here. Empathy is the imaginative occupying of another's viewpoint, seeing and feeling things as we imagine her to see and feel them. Sympathy for someone, on the other hand, is felt, not as from her standpoint, but as from the perspective of someone (anyone) caring for her.4 Empathizing with someone in a deep depression, we imagine how things feel to her, for example, how worthless she feels. When, however, we view her situation with sympathy (a sympathy she perhaps can't muster for herself), she and her welfare seem important, not worthless.
Another reflection of the difference between a person's good and what is, or seems, good from his point of view is the possibility of pursuing values one cares deeply about at some cost to oneself. If there were no difference between what a person valued and what benefited him, self-sacrifice would be impossible, except through weakness of will. Pursuing some values at the cost of others would be possible, of course.