Suppose you are by nature lazy and selfish and cautious, and you see someone drowning in a lake. Is it more courageous to leap in and try to save them (despite the risk and the cost to yourself and the danger), or to sit idly by and watch them drown (giving priority to living out your own nature more authentically)?
That's an interesting question.
In practical terms, I would choose the latter since I would be interested in signalling heroism and reaping the associated awards.
In idealised terms (see brackets in gjm's post) I believe that the second choice - authenticity over self sacrifice is the dominant choice. However, once again in practice the deservingness of those particular labels (lazy, etc) is dubious. It would be a false dilemma to me since I'm not only lazy, selfish and cautious, but daring and altruistic (paradoxes are ok and natural). Since the feeling of...
Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are: