Egoism

7 Key excerpts on "Egoism"

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  Ethics

  Theory and Contemporary Issues, Concise Edition

  • Barbara MacKinnon, Andrew Fiala, , , Barbara MacKinnon, Andrew Fiala(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  We must, then, ask a moral question with regard to the empirical science of Egoism and altruism. Should we be motivated by self-interest or should we be concerned with the well-being of others? As a normative theory, ethical Egoism holds that it is good for people to pursue their own self-interest. Some versions of ethical Egoism also hold that altru-ism is misguided and wrong. In this view, not only should people pursue their own self-interest but they should also mind their own business and not reach out to help others. In defense of this idea, ethical egoists may argue that altruism breeds dependency and undermines the self-esteem of those who receive benefits and gifts from do-gooder altruists. Various authors have defended Egoism. One of the most influential is the novelist and essay-ist Ayn Rand. Rand’s ideas have had a significant influence on the thinking of a variety of American politicians—including former Texas Congressman Ron Paul (who ran for president in 2012), his son Senator Rand Paul (from Kentucky), and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan (who was Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate in 2012). Paul Ryan has explained that his reading of Ayn Rand is “the reason I got involved in public service.” 1 These poli-ticians tend to hold to a libertarian ideology, which emphasizes laissez-faire capitalism and limited gov-ernment intervention (these political and economic issues are discussed in more detail in Chapter 14). A fiercely individualistic émigré from Bolshevik Russia, Ayn Rand thought that altruism was perni-cious.

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  After Hegemony

  Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy

  • Robert O. Keohane(Author)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  To speak of empathy in world politics may seem to put one beyond the Realist pale. Yet, in a world of high mobility, instantaneous communication, and extensive transnational relations of various kinds (Keohane and Nye, 1972), it is not obvious that solidaristic relationships coincide with national boundaries. Paul Taylor has pointed out that feelings of community in Europe may on occasion prevail over utilitarian considerations: “the calculation of advantage from cooperation in relation to particular interests may be secondary to a preference for cooperation with a particular partner or partners” (1980, p. 373). Furthermore, public opinion research in Europe has shown that, when asked about intra-European relations, a large proportion of people display policy preferences that deviate from what one would expect on the basis of narrow self-interest. In response to a poll taken in 1977, for instance, over 70 percent of respondents in each of the nine European Community countries declared that if another member of the Community were in serious economic trouble, its partners should help it; and a plurality of respondents even said that their own representatives to the European Parliament should put European interests ahead of national ones (Inglehart and Rubier, 1978, pp. 78, 82-84). These responses may reflect a mixture of instrumental, situational, and empathetic interdependence. But, along with recent work questioning the moral significance of boundaries in world politics (Beitz, 1979a, 1979b), they suggest the possibility that, in limited ways, interests could be interpreted empathetically. In such situations, self-interests would by no means have disappeared. Rather, they would have been redefined so as to depend on the welfare of others being realized as well.

  What we have called “Egoism” so far in this book refers to conceptions of interests as independent or only instrumentally or situationally interdependent. Relaxing the assumption of Egoism means entertaining the possibility that governments and other actors in world politics may redefine their interests so that they are empathetically dependent on those of others. The consequences for cooperation could be far-reaching. Governments that regard themselves as empathetically interdependent will be more inclined than egoists to reach for greater joint gains—solutions to international problems that lead to larger overall value—even at the expense of direct gains to themselves. They will be so inclined because they will also benefit vicariously from the gains achieved by others. Shared interests will therefore be greater. The set of possible agreements regarded as mutually beneficial will be at least as large as it is for egoists, and probably larger.

  EGOISM AND EMPATHY AS COMPETING EXPLANATIONS

  Empathetic explanations of behavior in world politics are limited to relatively small spheres of activity: situations in which actions do not have obvious explanations in terms of more narrowly defined self-interest. The presumption in a self-help system is that empathy will play a subordinate role. Even when behavior appears to be motivated by empathy, it may be possible to construct an alternative, and plausible, explanation for it on the premise of Egoism. Examining these competing accounts may suggest some of the strengths and limitations of egoistic and empathetic interpretations of behavior associated with international regimes.

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  Handbook of Organizational and Managerial Wisdom

  • Eric H. Kessler, James R. Bailey(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  By this reckoning, if one is not seek-ing self-benefit, or if one is taking into account others’ needs without seek-ing personal gain, one is not egoistic. Although this is consistent with the treatment of self-interest by most scholars and laypeople, another semantic approach is possible. Other scholars have considered a more expansive def-inition of Egoism. Although this approach is distinct from our definition, it is worthy of careful consideration. We consider it here. Overview of an Alternative Definition When people choose to act in an altruistic or principled fashion, they have selected one course of action over some alternative. To enact any motives implies that a self wants some result. Consequently, one could claim that such putatively helpful individuals are acting in accordance with their own desires. They are doing what they want to do and are trying to bring about a state of affairs that they see as worthwhile. By extension, even if someone longs to help others or to uphold justice, he or she is still self-interested in this loose sense of pursuing a personally pleasing goal. Holley (1999) summarized the logic this way: A person must be motivated by self-interested desires because what moves her to act is always her own desires” (p. 42, italics in original). If, for example, an individual wants to help someone else, that individual sees helping as a good thing. The indi-vidual is behaving with his or her interests in mind. The reader will readily see why this new definition is broader than the one we provided earlier. We treated self-interest as the pursuit of a goal that is self-beneficial. This new definition goes beyond that. Self-interest is now said to exist whenever one seeks to fulfill any objective or desire that one might hold (Holley, 1999). There is a simple reason for this. Once an indi-vidual decides that a goal or course of action is good, it is in his or her inter-est to fulfill that objective.

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  Ethics

  Theory and Contemporary Issues

  • Barbara MacKinnon, Andrew Fiala(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Accord -ing to this theory, we must show that people always act to promote their own interests. Next, we need to consider whether this has any relevance to the nor -r r mative question of how we ought to act. ETHICAL Egoism What Is Ethical Egoism? Ethical Egoism is a normative theory. It is a theory about what we ought to do, how we ought to act. As with psychological Egoism, we can formulate ethical Egoism in different ways. One version is individual ethical Egoism . According to this version, I ought to look out only for my own interests. I ought to be concerned about others only to the extent that this concern also contributes to my own interests. A slightly broader formulation of ethical Egoism, sometimes called universal ethical Egoism , main -tains that people ought to look out for and seek only their own best interests. As in the individual form, in this second version, people ought to help others only when and to the extent that it is in their own best interests to do so. It is possible to explain cooperation from this perspective as a kind of reciprocal altruism: we cooperate because we each see that it is in our own self-interest to cooperate. As the saying goes, I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine. From this point of view, what I really want is to get my back scratched (something I cannot do for myself) and I realize that in order to get what I want, I have to give you something you want in return. Is Ethical Egoism a Good Theory? We can evaluate ethical Egoism in several ways. We will consider its grounding in psychological Egoism and its consistency or coherence. We will also consider how it explains social cooperation in Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-300 seven.fittedfour.fitted P A RT ONE uni276Funi276F E T HICAL T HEO R Y the social contract theory as well as its derivation from economic theory.

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  Moral Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction

  • Daniel R. DeNicola(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Broadview Press

    (Publisher)

  foreign masters”; he says that we may try to “throw off our subjection” and do otherwise (say, act unselfishly and not for pleasure—though what could motivate us is not clear); and he allows that we may be moved to “pretend to abjure their empire” (by seeming to act on other considerations). But none of this works for us in the end: we are still shackled to seeking pleasure and dodging pain.

  Although psychological Egoism is a descriptive theory of human motivation, we must give it careful attention because, if true, it has enormously significant implications for our normative study: it would shut down all further inquiry in philosophical ethics. There is a venerable principle in ethics: ought implies can. It means that we cannot prescribe the impossible. It would be meaningless to say, “Everyone ought to have a deep knowledge of the specific interests of every other person,” since we finite humans simply cannot do that. Psychological Egoism says that our only motivation is necessarily self-interest. If this is true, any proposal for moral action to be other than self-interested would be doomed; we simply could not behave otherwise. Any talk of behaving differently would be wishful fantasy at best, a reach into what is impossible in this world. Thus, the theory of psychological Egoism represents a serious challenge to philosophical ethics.

  5.2 PSYCHOLOGICAL Egoism: A CRITIQUE

  Theories gain explanatory power when they can show that many apparently different phenomena are actually forms of the same thing and subject to a single law. This is, to reiterate, the attraction of psychological Egoism: it reduces the confusing complexity of human motivation to just one: self-interest. It also has the air of cut-to-the-truth realism: people may seem or claim to act for disinterested or high-minded purposes, but in fact they are masking their promotion of their own good. It denies the possibility of altruism, which is selfless concern for the well-being of others, because self-interested action is the only sort of which humans are capable. In the end, each of us cares only about ourselves. But is this true?

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  Understanding Ethics

  • Torbjörn Tännsjö(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Edinburgh University Press

    (Publisher)

  Arguments in defence of Egoism One widely read author of popular novels during the second half of the last century, Ayn Rand, contributed to public interest in ethical Egoism by her committed defence of the theory. Ethical Egoism has also provided a philosophical rationale behind a certain kind of libertarian political ideology that was very popu-lar at the beginning of this century. It would not be correct to say, however, that Rand puts forward any strong arguments in defence of ethical Egoism. Can any be found? Many seem to have argued along the following lines. Morality must have something to do with rationality. But does not rational action consist in prudent action; that is, does not rational action consist in actions satisfying the long-term interests of the agent himself or herself? Even the great utilitarian author Henry Sidgwick, referred to in the previous chapter, seems to have argued along these lines. This is how he puts the point: [E]ven if a man admits the self-evidence of the principle of Rational Benevolence, he may still hold that his own happiness is an end which it is irrational for him to sacrifice to any other. ( Methods of Ethics , p. 498 ) But this argument is mistaken. It may certainly be said that unless we maximise the satisfaction of the interests we happen to hold, our actions are irrational. This claim could be made true even through an act of fiat: we could claim that maximising one’s interests is what is meant by acting ‘rationally’. And according to this stipulation it is certainly true that, for a person who is exclusively concerned with his or her own happiness, it would be irrational not to maximise it. However, on this notion of rationality, nothing is said about the content of our interests. In a similar vein, for a person who holds an impartial interest in 44 understanding ethics the welfare of all sentient beings, it would be irrational not to maximise the sum total of welfare.

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  The Basho of Economics

  An Intercultural Analysis of the Process of Economics. Translated and Introduced by Roger Gathman

  • Silja Graupe(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  The state uses Egoism to create order. The contradiction in the universal validity of the laws lies in the state pre-supposing an Egoism, on the one side, that it is at the same time threatened by, on the other. As long as we look at the state as being independent from the economic world, this threat doesn’t even swim into view. Its laws seem to be able to lead Egoism without itself being influenced by Egoism. Japa-nese philosophy looks at this idea as a delusion. For it, every universal is not only creative, but at the same time created; it is shaped by the activities of the many just as much as it shapes them. (4.4.1) The following reflec-tions show that something speaks for such an idea: State law not only gov-erns Egoism in the world of economics, it is also formed from this same Egoism. Egoism is not only an instrument of the state, in order to compel an order. Rather, the laws of the state threaten to become themselves a means to express egoistical interests. The lawgiver, for instance, can mis-use her power for her own ends and harm others. 493 We can illustrate this danger in an example given by Baruzzi: Commercial Egoism often enough determines in modern society what the law in general is supposed to mean. The interests of business, for instance, become a fact that is not formed by the law, but instead forms the laws: “The law can grasp and normativize that which in commerce, technology and sci-ence corresponds to our human sense of right. But this is rarely the case. Looking at decisions regarding fraud in commerce, we have to concede that the state of the law’s decisions corresponds only to the views of the commercial class. Literally. It is said that only that can be subjected to legal norms, which does not endanger the ‘functioning of business.’ We could cite a pile of similar formulations. The law is 490 J. Hirschberger, Geschichte der Philosophie , 216. 491 E. Gallu, “Sunyata, Ethics, and Authentic Interconnectedness,” 190.

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