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Interest: History of the Concept

Chapter · March 2015

DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.03095-6

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Final version is published in: James D. Wright (editor-in-chief), International Encyclopedia of
the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Oxford: Elsevier, Vol. 12, 2015, pp. 386–390.

Interest: History of the Concept

Johan Heilbron

Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique de la Sorbonne (CESSP-CNRS-EHESS),

Paris & Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Abstract :

As a central notion for understanding human behavior, the concept of interest emerged in early
modern European political theory. It was part of the sceptical view of human affairs that
informed the secular approach to politics and government which arose anew in the Renaissance.
In the course of the seventeenth century, the concept entered a variety of other intellectual genres
as well, and obtained a new and crucial significance by becoming linked to a theory of civil
exchange. To view human behavior as interest-driven was not merely considered a matter of
political realism, it came to be valued as socially beneficial as well. This new conception of
human society was subsequently elaborated by political economists and utilitarian philosophers.
From the early nineteenth century onwards the conceptual development has occurred mainly in
debates accompanying the rivalries between academic disciplines. Interest was associated
primarily with economic theories, which have been emulated, enlarged, corrected as well as
contested in other disciplines.

Key words:

Altruism, commerce, disinterestedness, exchange, (self-)interest, invisible hand, Jansenism,

laissez-faire, maximization, rational choice, self-love, self-preservation, utility.

See also:
Behavioral economics; Consequentialism Including Utilitarianism; Disinterestedness;
Enlightenment; Interest, Psychology of; Interests, Sociological Analysis of; Political Economy,
History of; Public Interest; Rational Choice and Organization Theory; Rational Choice in
Politics; Rational Choice Theory: Cultural Concerns; Rational Choice Theory in Sociology;
Utilitarianism: Contemporary Applications
While modern social science is inconceivable without some notion of interest, the actual concept

has a long and complicated history of shifting meanings. In this relatively brief overview, these

changes will be highlighted by following the main stages of this conceptual development. In

doing so, the notion will be understood in its specific sense, abstracting from the development of

similar notions (such as utility or preference), but without isolating the concept from its place in

more encompassing theoretical frameworks. The most significant changes in the history of the

concept are inseparable from its relations to other concepts and to the transformation of broader

theoretical structures. For a proper understanding of these changes, it is important, furthermore,

to realize that they are related to reconfigurations of the intellectual groups that have been the

carriers of the intellectual change.

Understanding human behavior as driven mainly by (self)interest is not in itself very

noteworthy. The idea can be found in many ancient traditions of thought, both religious and

secular. Most of these understandings, however, were normative rather than descriptive or

explanatory. Forms of self-interest were condemned as sinful, as socially disruptive, and they

were generally opposed to either religious or military virtues. Elites in agrarian societies valued

religious devotion and military prowess, that is types of behavior distinct from agricultural labor

and trade or commerce. If (self)interested behavior was not condemned as illegitimate, it was at

best tolerated within very narrow social boundaries, and subsumed to more virtuous modes of

behavior.

As a central term for understanding human behavior, the word interest emerged in

political writings during the early modern period. It was part of the skeptical view of human

affairs which informed the secular approach to politics and government that arose anew in the
Renaissance. In the course of the seventeenth century, the concept entered a variety of other

intellectual genres as well, and it obtained a new and strategic importance by becoming linked to

a theory of civic exchange. To view human behavior as interest-driven was not merely

considered a matter of political realism, it now came to be valued as socially beneficial as well.

This view was subsequently elaborated by political economists and utilitarian philosophers.

From the early nineteenth century onwards the conceptual changes occurred mainly in debates

accompanying the development of academic disciplines. Interest was primarily embedded in

economic theories that have been emulated, enlarged, corrected as well as vividly contested in

other disciplines.

1 The Politics of Interest

The word interest, derived from the Latin inter esse, originally referred to procedures for

compensation in Roman law. The expression id quod interest, meaning ‘that which matters’ or

‘that which counts’, could be applied to a variety of claims in this respect. The specific meaning

of taking rent on loans was directly related to the legal notion of compensation. Interest in this

particular sense came into use in many European languages during the fifteenth century,

commonly as a euphemism for usury (Fuchs 1976, Hirschman 1992).

The more general meaning of the term emerged in the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Interest then referred to the more general sense of advantage and to the human propensity for

seeking benefits. It was part, not of an economic discourse, but of the sceptical anthropology and

the secular approach to statecraft, appearing systematically for the first time in the work of

Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540). Guicciardini, one of the most perceptive political theorists

of Renaissance Italy, frequently observes in his Ricordi (1512/30) that ‘self-interest’ prevails in
nearly all human beings. This applies especially to successful leaders and others who do well in

life: they always have their ‘own interest in mind and measure all their actions accordingly.’

Guicciardini adds, however, that ‘true interest’ does not necessarily reside in pecuniary

advantage: it pertains, more often, to honor and to the art of knowing how to keep a good

reputation.

The general meaning which Guicciardini gives to the term allows him to use it for

matters of government as well. Where particular interests are in conflict with the ‘public

interest,’ Guicciardini advocates the primacy of the latter. The conceptions of Guicciardini and

his contemporary Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) were developed more fully in the reason-of-

state literature, which flourished in Europe around 1600. For one of the leading theorists,

Giovanni Botero (1544–1617), ‘reason of state’ meant ‘reason of interest,’ and state interest

ought to be the supreme rule of conduct for princes and statesmen. In this view religious and

constitutional matters were to be treated as instrumental issues. For the ruler, interest of state is

the only legitimate principle of action, and this interest is defined in opposition to both the

interests of other states and the passions of the ruler. Control over people demands self-control:

passions and other disorderly appetites need to be replaced by a rationally (ob)serving state

interest.

Interests thus came to be seen as the principal motive of human behavior and as the only

realistic rule of political conduct. From a predominantly critical concept, directed against

ecclesiastic and humanistic virtues, it had gained a more positive meaning. While preserving its

amoral connotations, interests appeared to be a more stable and more reliable motive than the

passions (Hirschman 1977). The French Huguenot leader Henri de Rohan (1579-1638) expressed

this view in his influential De l’Intérêt des Princes et des États de la Chrétienté (1638) by stating
that ‘princes order their people around and interest orders princes around.’ The prince can be

deceived, his council can be corrupt, only ‘interest does not lie.’

It was through the translation of Rohan’s work that the term ‘interest’ became established

in the political vocabulary in England. And it was from the political scene that the term was

transferred to the market place and came to be applied to private behavior (Gunn 1969).

In the early modern political literature interest was not merely an analytical term.

Interests were indeed perceived as the predominant motive of human behavior, but political

advisors stressed that interests had to be observed in a rational and calculating way. This was not

because human beings were considered to be rational decision makers, but because of the

strategic advantages of rational calculation. The prudential weighing of costs and benefits was a

behavioral norm for political elites rather than a form of motivational reductionism (Holmes

1995).

2 Contours and Consequences of Exchange

From the political literature, written by counselors and diplomats, the notion of interest entered a

variety of other intellectual genres in the course of the seventeenth century (Heilbron 1998,

Lazzeri and Reynié 1998). Among these other discourses, natural law and moral philosophy

stand out; in both cases interest-driven behavior came to be related to new conceptions of politics

and society.

In modern natural law interest was part of a foundational argument. The anthropology of

the sceptics had given a seemingly universal role to self-interest, and more in particular to self-

preservation. Natural law theorists treated this factual observation as a natural right. On the basis

of the fundamental right to assure one’s self-preservation, they built a system of moral and
political obligation, which was intended to overcome religious orthodoxy as well as the

relativism of the sceptics.

For natural law theorists such as Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and Samuel Pufendorf

(1632-1694), people are motivated primarily by self-love. But the consequences of their view

differed fundamentally. For Hobbes a strong state was the only alternative for permanent and

violent conflict between selfish individuals. Pufendorf constructed more of a historical argument.

Human societies arise out of individual needs. Upon this assumption, he proposed a scheme of

societal development, culminating in a form of sociability proper to ‘commercial society’.

Commerce at the time referred to exchange or traffic in the general meaning of these terms, not

specifically to trade. The idea of a ‘commercial society’ designated a relatively pacified order

within which various realms of exchange had been established. Contrary to Hobbes, Pufendorf

thus envisioned a form of sociability based essentially on the ties of interest-based exchanges

(Hont 1987).

The very idea of a social order emerging out of the self-interested acts of individuals was

more systematically elaborated in seventeenth-century French moral philosophy. In a series of

remarkable essays, collected in his Essais de morale (1671–78), the Jansenist moral philosopher

Pierre Nicole (1625-1695) explained how human society could be well ordered and prosperous

without assuming any religious duties or prescribing secular virtues. Following the Augustinian

tradition, Jansenist theology made a strict distinction between the ‘city of man’ and the ‘city of

God.’ The radically separated realms were founded on two mutually exclusive drives: self-love

and love of God. Nicole and some other Jansenists and writers close to them (Pascal, La

Rochefoucauld) sought somehow to adapt their uncompromising outlook to the demands of

worldly life. Many of them were members of the salon of Madame de Sablé and were like Nicole
searching for a modus vivendi for Christians who were forced to live in a corrupt world. Looking

for an intermediary route between pious retreat and worldly corruption, Nicole proposed what is

probably the first consistent model of commercial society.

The Hobbesian image of a war of all against all, Nicole argued, is valid only in the very

beginning of humankind. Since each human being is a threat to the other and no one wants to be

a victim, people unite with other people. To affirm their union, laws are established and

punishment is instituted for those who violate the laws. Fear of death is therefore the first

restraint on self-love. Once open violence is excluded, human beings are forced to use artificial

means to satisfy their desires. These artificial means are all forms of exchange. The result of this

process is a civil society, which—given the corrupt human nature after the Fall—could not be

better organized, even if true religion is banned. Human traffic alone, established and regulated

by self-love, had produced this result.

From the point of view of God human society meant corruption, but from the point of

view of human beings themselves, the establishment of human civility is the best possible

achievement. Given the fact that very few people are prepared to withdraw from society, Nicole

added that ‘enlightened self-love’ could be considered the most effective policy in human affairs.

For Nicole and his fellow Jansenists, human beings could not be credited with any virtue.

As in the maxims of La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680), they depicted what seemed virtuous

(courage, love, friendship) as being but a refined expression of self-interest. In the words of La

Rochefoucauld : ‘Interest speaks every sort of language, and plays all sorts of roles, even that of

disinterest.’ Since human virtue is a kind of narcissistic illusion, self-interested exchange was the

most realistic alternative for the threat of civil war and a sufficient basis for an orderly society.
 The argument about civil society as a process of generalised exchange on the basis of self-

interest also provoked an historically important counter-argument. In his critique of Jansenist

anthropology, the philosopher François Fénelon (1651-1715) asserted that ‘disinterestedness’ was

not beyond human reach. Human beings may actually experience pure and ‘disinterested’ love,

which is close to a state of selflessness. The love of God is the highest form of this disinterested

love, but Fénelon acknowledged more worldly forms as well, especially in the spontaneity of

children. The term ‘disinterestedness’ and the argument about its possible significance were

formulated in the context of a theological dispute, the querelle du pur amour, but it soon gained

importance in other social domains, first in aesthetics, somewhat later in other areas. When

Immanuel Kant at the end of the eighteenth century defined esthetical experience as disinterested

pleasure, interesseloses Wohlgefallen, he took up the notion of disinterestedness, which British

moral philosophers like Shaftesbury had taken from the French dispute over Jansenism.

3 Political Economy and Utilitarianism

Many of the economic and utilitarian arguments advanced in the eighteenth century were derived

from these seventeenth-century writings in moral philosophy. Well before Adam Smith, Pierre de

Boisguilbert (1646-1714) transformed Nicole’s reasoning into the more specific idea of a self-

regulating economic order. On the condition that this order could function freely, it would tend

towards an equilibrium. That being the case, Boisguilbert spoke of ‘laisser aller,’ advocating to let

this natural order run its course, thus unambiguously announcing the liberal consequences of

Nicole’s model for the economic realm (Faccarello 1999).

Bernard Mandeville’s tale about ‘private vices’ as the actual source of ‘public benefits’

was similarly rooted in the work of French moralists. It was not disinterestedness or self-denial
which produced civil society, but vanity, avarice, and ambition. Inspired by Mandeville (1670-

1733) and his predecessors, Adam Smith (1723-1790) famously pointed out that it is not from

the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from

their regard to their own interest. ‘We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-

love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.’ Society, according to

Smith, ‘may subsist among different men, as among merchants, from a sense of its utility,

without any mutual love or affection.’

The historical significance of Smith and other classical political economists was that they

transformed the argument about self-interested exchange into an economic theory of self-

regulating markets and the idea of harmonizing economic interests through the ‘invisible hand.’

But when the general argument about exchange narrowed down to a mechanism of markets, the

political questions implied in the doctrine of interest reemerged. Utilitarianism was one of the

attempts to rethink the political and moral issues involved.

Emerging in the eighteenth century and becoming an intellectual movement with Jeremy

Bentham (1748-1832) and James Mill (1773-1836), the utilitarian system was built on the

principle that every human being seeks pleasure and avoids pain. Human conduct is universally

guided by the ideas and feelings which are associated with either one of these emotions. This

behavioral principle was applied not only to individuals, but extended to the polity as a whole.

Like individuals, governments should promote the amount of happiness and reduce the amount

of pain. Moral arithmetic, based on the principle of the greatest amount of happiness of the

greatest number, thus provided the means for assessing the utility of public institutions and

initiating political reform.

 The rise of political economy and utilitarian philosophy provoked several counter

movements in the decades around 1800. In their opposition to the French revolution and the

ensuing waves of democratic reform, conservatives appealed to the lustre of tradition in order to

counter the cold-blooded politics of interest. Romantics similarly found ways to reaffirm the

power of the passions.

4 Disciplinary Social Science and Interdisciplinarity

When the social sciences during the nineteenth century became university disciplines, theories of

interest were associated specifically with economics which—with the exception of Marxism—

was increasingly separated from the other social sciences. The broader framework of moral

philosophy disintegrated and made way for a disciplinary division of labor. John Stuart Mill

(1806-1873) redefined the status of political economy by arguing that while different causes

operate in society, some of the more powerful causes need to be studied separately. Political

economy was legitimately restricted to the phenomena based on the desire of wealth and the law

that a greater gain is preferred to a smaller. In Mill’s view political economists do not deny other

motives, but merely abstract from them; self-interest is a methodological construct rather than a

behavioral reality.

During the ‘marginalist revolution’ of the latter decades of the nineteenth century the plea

for scientific abstraction was combined with the postulate of maximization (Demeulenaere 1996,

Hausman 1992). Economic behavior was modeled as rational calculation aimed at maximizing

utility. This approach, which formed the heart of the neoclassical program, allowed much of the

formal and technical developments that have characterized mainstream economics ever since.

Self-interested behavior was now treated by means of a mathematical technique of maximization

under constraint. With Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) the domain of economics was redefined as

the study of choice or optimization, and in Lionel Robbins’s definition economists study ‘human

behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means that have alternative uses.’

While this definition is, in principle, applicable to all forms of human behavior, many

economists were well aware of the limits of their approach. For Pareto neoclassical economics

had a limited validity since many aspects of human behavior do not meet the conditions of

rational calculation. In addition to the restrictions of their behavioral assumptions, many

economists acknowledged the fact that the ‘invisible hand’ and laissez faire politics were no

panacea. For a variety of reasons, market outcomes can be at odds with the welfare of large parts

of the population, and instead of repeating the elusive metaphor of the invisible hand, economists

specified the functioning as well as the dysfunctioning of markets (Medema 2009).

Since its inception during the first half of the nineteenth century, sociologists have

generally contested purely economic and utilitarian approaches (Swedberg 2005). Auguste

Comte (1798-1857) introduced the word sociology to overcome what he saw as premature

specialization and misguided generalization. Interests were an important motivational force, but

so were the human affects. In his later writings Comte coined the term ‘altruism’ for all non-

egoistic forms of behavior, arguing for its primacy over self-interested behavior. Other

sociologists differentiated human behavior in other ways, some of them elaborating a richer

notions of interest than merely individual, economic interest (social, collective or public interest,

vested interest, symbolic interest). Parallel to undertaking historical and empirical inquiries into

the various forms of behavior and sociability, sociologists reacted critically to the abstract and

exclusive nature of homo economicus. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) and François Simiand

(1873-1935) argued against the ‘unrealistic abstractions’ of economic theory, advocating a

positive and more empirical approach that was not unlike that of institutional economics. Max

Weber (1864-1920) proposed a broader understanding of interest and rationality and integrated

these into a general typology of social action. Weber introduced ‘ideal interests’ aside from

material interests, and distinguished instrumental rationality from value rationality. In addition to

affective and traditional action, instrumental rationality refers to a means–end relationship, while

value rationality pertains to choice as derived from values.

While the academic division of labor between the social sciences became much stricter

during the middle part of the twentieth century, it has been increasingly contested since the

1970s. Economic theories and modeling procedures expanded into many areas, which were

previously seen as the territory of other disciplines. Chicago economists like Gary Becker (1930)

argued that the economic approach to human behavior, that is the ‘combined assumptions of

maximizing behavior, market equilibrium and stable preferences’ should be used relentlessly and

unflinchingly for all types of human action in all historical periods. Public choice economics and

the ‘law and economics’ movement similarly extended notions of self-interest and maximization

to the political and juridical sphere. In political science economic approaches to voting, political

parties and government became mainstream, and rational choice, more generally, became the

common denominator for a broad area of interdisciplinary work (Heap et al 1992).

The expansion of economics into non-economic domains in the latter part of the

twentieth century was, be it on a more modest scale, accompanied by a movement in the opposite

direction: psychologists, sociologists, organization theorists gradually invaded the domain of

economics, proposing alternative accounts for core issues of economic theory. Psychologists

established a wide variety of behavioral phenomena, which contradict the assumptions of

rational choice thus contributing to the establishment of ‘behavioral economics.’ Sociologists

have repeatedly shown how cultural beliefs and institutional structures shape (economic)

behavior and its outcomes. Diverse and varied as these contributions may be, they have at least

demonstrated that the technical sophistication of economics depends on assumptions which can

be questioned and contested on empirical as well as on theoretical grounds.

5 Enduring Ambiguities

Since its early uses in Renaissance political theory, the concept of interest and its terminological

derivatives (self-interest, group interest, public interest, vested interest, ideal or symbolic

interests) have been part of what may be broadly considered the materialist tradition in the social

sciences. But this realistic and hard-nosed orientation is itself divided over a number of

fundamental issues. The development of the notion of interest uncovers at least three enduring

ambiguities.

First, the term interest and its equivalents can be used for interpretative purposes in

accounting for observable behavior; they can also be used in a normative way for defining what

rational behavior is. In the former sense interest refers to an explanatory and empirically testable

principle; in the latter it merely designates a logically possible and perhaps desirable course of

action. The ambiguity of serving both descriptive and prescriptive functions has persisted ever

since the origins of the term. Second, interest can refer to material advantages as well as to

political, cultural, and symbolic benefits. If the broader understanding of interest is accepted, the

ideas of rational calculation and maximization become problematic, since it is unclear how costs

and benefits in various domains can be rigorously compared with one another. In the absence of

an overarching metric, people have multiple interests without being able to rationally compare

their relative benefits. Far from being exceptional, uncertainty is a defining characteristic of
human choice. Third, actors may pursue their interests by relying on rational calculation, but

they also do so on the basis of a process of socialization in which choice is not ‘rational’ in the

economists’ sense, but bound up with habitualization leading to the practical mastery of a social

game (Bourdieu 1990). In the former case interest is part of rational choice theory, in the latter it

is not.

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