Thank you, Alex Impey, for such a profound question!
I take the worry to be that Alex A (AA), who wants to eat less fast food (say), feels as though she is alienating her ‘true self’, Alex B (AB), who wants to eat as much fast food as she wants.
A full treatment of the relationship between these two selves, AA and AB, would take far more space than I have here, so I will limit myself to examining just a few background assumptions: first, whether there is a ‘true self’ at all; and, second, whether this ‘true self’ is a good guide for our behaviour.
In asking the question, Alex assumes that AB is her ‘true self’ and, more generally, that there is such a thing as a ‘true self’. Of course, it might turn out that there is no ‘true self’. When I look at a picture of my 5 years old self, there is very little I have in common with that little boy. We share no physical matter, have very different mental states, and inhabit very different social roles. Of course, AA and AB have more in common than 28 year old me and 5 year old me, but the point is that there might be no ‘true self’ that connects us through time; and so there might be nothing for you to be ‘true’ to. In other words, your true self might be your actual self, in which case your current desires are the only standard to which you are held.
But maybe there is a true self that follows me from birth to death. In this case, most philosophers agree that the ‘true self’ cannot be simply identified with AB. In other words, your ‘true self’ is probably not the self you are right now (current desires for massive amounts of KFC included), but rather some idealized version of yourself. This means that your ‘true self’ is you as you would be if you were fully rational, sanctified, and not drunk in the Taco Bell drive-thru at 3am. Drunk Alex is still Alex, but no one thinks that drunk Alex is the ‘true’ Alex. Rather, the true Alex, AA above, is probably the sober-minded Alex that feels sick the next day. AA is the version of Alex who makes decisions based on more stable and universal principles than AB. Thus, AA, the Alex who has decided to eat less fast-food, might actually be the true self.
Now, why should you listen to AA? After all, she sounds kinda lame. As mentioned above, AA is you as you would be if you were guided only by universal rational principles, unfettered by the siren song of a crunch wrap supreme. So, AA is a better (more true) version of you because she is guided by more objective and more stable principles. If I ask AA why she wants to stop eating fast food, she might answer that she desires to be healthy. Health is a more objective good than a crunch wrap supreme. It is objectivity in this sense that makes AA’s desires better and therefore a good guide for AB’s behaviour. In other words, AA’s desires are Alex’s “true” desires; and so AB ought to desire health over crunch wrap supremes. Alex might still feel alienated from what feel like her ‘true’ desires in AB, but she is actually moving closer to what her desires ought to be in AA.
What do you think? Are self-improvement and sincerity at odds with one another? Let us know in the comments.
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Image: Self Improvement, by Carlotta Notaro (credit)
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I have a Masters degree in Philosophy from the University of South Carolina where I wrote a thesis on Immanuel Kant’s political philosophy under Konstantin Pollok. I am currently doing a PhD at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands) in the project “Universal Moral Laws” under Pauline Kleingeld. I am interested in Kant’s legal and political philosophy as well as contemporary jurisprudence and republicanism. Predictably, then, my favorite philosophical work is Kant’s Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals. This work contains, in my mind, some of most important ideas for the possibility of universal and objective moral laws.