A conceptual exploration of intra-personal compromise

In this paper, I shed light on the concept of intra-personal compromise, which designates a form of compromise that we make with ourselves. More concretely, if we compromise intra-personally, we compromise between values or principles that are important to us and yet conflict in the sense that we cannot realize them at the same time (Lepora, 2012). With a few exceptions (Lepora, 2012; Röttger & Zanetti, 2021), the literature either ignores this form of compromise or considers it to be derivative of, or even “parasitic” upon (Jones & O’Flynn, 2012; Jones & O’Flynn, 2022) the standard notion of compromise as an inter-personal matter, i.e., an agreement between two or more persons (May, 2013). As such, inter-personal compromise is also perceived to be logically prior to its intra-personal equivalent (Overeem, 2023; for the opposite view: Lepora, 2012). However, I propose that the conceptual downgrading of intra-personal compromise is unwarranted. To argue for this claim, I show that existing accounts tend to proceed from the assumption that intra-personal compromise is tied to inter-personal compromise. That is, existing accounts presume that we compromise intra-personally only in the context of reaching a compromise with someone else (Bellamy, 2012; Lepora, 2012; Overeem, 2023). I propose that it is this presumed connection between intra- and inter-personal compromise that causes the conception of intra-personal compromise as subordinate: If we conceive of intra-personal compromise to be relevant only in relation to inter-personal ones, it is not implausible to think that the former is derivative of the latter. But it is clearly not the case that intra-personal compromise is necessarily tied to inter-personal ones: We are often required to make compromises between our principles merely for the sake of guiding our own actions, without necessarily involving other persons. This clarification has two important implications for the concept of intra-personal compromise: First, if intra-personal compromise can occur independent from inter-personal compromise, the question of logical priority is mute (at least for those cases where both kinds of compromise are disconnected). Secondly, if intra-personal compromise can occur independent from inter-personal compromise, while inter-personal always involves a kind of intra-personal compromise (Lepora, 2012), this suggest that it might be, in the end, intra-personal compromise that is the more essential concept of the two.