The Idea of Freedom 145greatest amount of pleasure for oneself—that is, of attain-
ing individual happiness—is calledegoism. This individ-
ual happiness is sought either through thinking ruthlessly
only of one’s own welfare and striving for it even at the
expense of the happiness of other individuals (pure ego-
ism), or through promoting the good of others because
one hopes for indirect advantages from their happiness, or
through fear of endangering one’s own interests by harm-
ing others (morality of prudence). The particular content
of egoistic moral principles will depend on what mental
picture we form of our own or others’ happiness. We will
determine the content of our egoistic striving according to
what we regard as good in life (luxurious living, hope of
happiness, deliverance from various evils, and so forth).
The purely conceptual content of an action should be
seen as a different kind of motive. Unlike the mental pic-
ture of one’s own pleasure, this content relates not just to
a single action, but to the derivation of an action from a
system of moral principles. These moral principles can
regulate ethical conduct in the form of abstract concepts,
without an individual’s worrying about the origin of the
concepts. We then feel that our subjection to the moral
concept, which hovers over our actions as a command-
ment, is simply a moral necessity. We leave the establish-
ment of this necessity to whoever demands our moral
subjection; that is, to whatever moral authority we recog-
nize (the head of our family, the state, social custom, ec-
clesiastical authority, divine revelation). A special kind of
moral principle is involved when the commandment does
not announce itself to us through outer authority, but from