Ethical Egoism

1. Ethical Egoism “Look out for #1…and there is no #2.”

2. Be my valentine? • “Love, we are repeatedly taught, consists of self-sacrifice. Love based on self-interest, we are admonished, is cheap and sordid. True love, we are told, is altruistic.” …But is it? • “Genuine love is the exact opposite. It is the most selfish experience possible, in the true sense of the term: it benefits your life in a way that involves no sacrifice of others to yourself nor of yourself to others.” - Gary Hull

3. Ethical egoism • Selfishness is extolled as a virtue • May appeal to psychological egoism as a foundation • Often very compelling for high school students? • - Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness

4. Versions of ethical egoism Personal Ethical Egoism Individual Ethical Egoism “Everyone should act in my own interest.” • “I am going to act only in my own interest, and everyone else can do whatever they want.” Universal Ethical Egoism • “Each individual should act • in his or her own self interest.”

5. Argumentsfor ethical egoism There are at least three (3) principal arguments in favour or Ethical Egoism: • Altruism is demeaning • Acting selfishly creates a better world • It doesn’t result in such a different world after all

6. Altruism is demeaning • Friedrich Nietzsche and other philosophers argued that altruism was demeaning • it meant that an individual was saying that some other person was more important than that individual. • Nietzsche saw this as denigrating oneself, putting oneself down by valuing oneself less than the other. • This, the heart of altruism, is demeaning in Nietzsche’s eyes.

7. Acting selfishly creates a better world • Epistemological:Each person is best suited to know his or her own best interests. • Moral:Helping others makes them dependent, which ultimately harms them. • Ethical egoists sometimes maintain that if each person took care of himself/herself, the overall effect would be to make the world a better place for everyone.

8. Ethical egoism doesn’t result in such a different world after all! • If psychological egoism is true, then we should admit its truth and get rid of our hypocrisy. • This argument presupposes that people in fact already act selfishly (i.e, psychological egoism) and are just pretending to be altruistic.

9. Criticisms of ethical egoism • Cannot be consistently universalized • Presupposes a world of strangers indifferent to one another. • Difficult to imagine love or even friendship from the altruist’s standpoint. • Seems to be morally insensitive

10. Ethical egoism and moral sensitivity • Can the Ethical Egoist be sensitive to the suffering of others? • Moral sensitivity presupposes that the suffering of others exerts a moral ‘pull’ on the individual; something the Ethical Egoist does not recognize “The Good Samaratin”

11. An ideal world? • Ideally, we seek a society in which self-interest and regard for others converge—the greenzone. • Egoism at the expense of others and altruism at the expense of self-interest both create worlds in which goodness and self-regard are mutually exclusive—the yellow zone. • No one wants the red zone, which is against both self-interest and regard for others.

12. Wrap-Up: Selfish or altruistic? What does it mean to be selfish? If we are selfish, do we only do things that are in our genuine self-interest? • The Chain Smoker • Is this person acting out of genuine self- Interest? • In fact, the smoker may be acting Selfishly (doing what he wants without regards to others), but not self-interestedly (doing what will ultimately benefit him)

13. Wrap up (cont) • If we are selfish, do we only do things we believe are in our own self-interest? • What about those who believe that sometimes they act altruistically? • Does anyone believe that Mother Teresa was completely selfish??