I 've too much self-regard, too obsessed with how I look.
This, at any rate, is Hobbes's cardinal doctrine in moral psychology, that each man's appetites or desires are naturally directed either to the preservation of his life, or to that heightening of it which he feels as pleasure.2 Hobbes does not distinguish instinctive from deliberate pleasureseeking; and he confidently resolves the most apparently unselfish emotions into phases of self-regard.
We have seen that in the latter's system the " moral sense " is not absolutely required, or at least is necessary only as a substitute for enlightened self-regard; since if the harmony between prudence and virtue, self-regarding and social impulses, is complete, mere self-interest will prompt a duly enlightened mind to maintain precisely that " balance " of affections in which goodness consists.
Still, even from this point of view, which is that of the legislator or social reformer rather than the moral philosopher, our code of duty must be greatly influenced by our estimate of the degrees in which men are normally influenced by self-regard (in its ordinary sense of regard for interests not sympathetic) and by sympathy or benevolence, and of the range within which sympathy may be expected to be generally effective.
However, I'm not convinced of such casuistry because I'm not convinced that self-regard and egocentrism are exactly the same thing.
