Have you ever met someone who seemed to only care about themselves? Of course, you have; everyone knows someone who seems to be only concerned with their quality of life and does not care how their actions affect others. This person seems to believe everything is about them, asks but never gives, and is hypocritical. This individual could be described as having an arrogant eye, defined as the worldview in which one acquires the service of others by removing the other's substance within themselves. In this paper, I will argue that the arrogant eye fits this description according to what Marilyn Frye writes in her book In and Out of Harm's Way: Arrogance and Love. What exactly is the arrogant eye? The arrogant eye is the term used by Frye in …show more content…
The first example used in Frye’s passage on this is about the Bible and women’s role compared to men. Frye writes, “The Bible says that all of nature (including women) exists for man. Man is invited to subdue the earth and have dominion over every living thing on it” (Frye 66-67). Frye compares the arrogant eye to this to try and paint the picture that women being helpers to men is a deep-seated idea that is still very prevalent nowadays. This is why the arrogant eye is found more often in men than women. The arrogant eye perceives others as how they want them to be. A man will see a woman and think of sex and that is all she becomes to him; this is an example of the arrogant eye stripping the woman of her identity or her substance and reducing her to what the man views her as. The arrogant perceiver creates a mold of what they believe someone else to be and forces them into that mold. It is a coercive perception of others and does not give the individual the chance to express who they are. This definition of the arrogant eye leads to a solid objection: if the arrogant eye only applies to men, but there are selfish and arrogant women, does that make Frye wrong about the whole …show more content…
There are many examples of women controlling others and removing others from their “substance” in the same way a man would to a woman. One such example would be my grandmother and her mother. My grandmother grew up in Cleveland with three brothers and her parents. My great-grandmother was the perfect example of the arrogant eye; she saw her children as a means to gamble and offload responsibility. My grandmother had her first job at age 12 and everything she made went straight to her mother's gambling fund. My great-grandmother would go out every night and gamble away all the money made by her kids and would then come back home and berate them if everything wasn’t perfect. My great-grandfather would drink himself to sleep every night and stopped trying as a father. This is the life my grandmother grew up with, and it was all because of the arrogant eye of a woman. How can the arrogant eye only apply to men if examples like this are present in society? The majority of those with the arrogant eye are men, however, Frye does mention women and how they relate to the arrogant eye. It is not in a direct way, but it does reinforce the idea of an arrogant eye in
Throughout Southern literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries, husbands were often depicted as the keepers of their wives. These men were the heads of their households and often dictated the behavior, responsibilities, and social experiences of their female counterparts. It was assumed that this dominance would bring them wealth and success while promulgating an image of a model family that would win them friends and a high reputation. This expectation of male dominance occurs in the novels The Awakening and Their Eyes Were Watching God as both Leonce Pontellier and Jody Starks endeavor to exert some control over their wayward wives in order to better achieve their goals. However, rather than enforcing this facet of masculinity both
Selfishness is a disease of the soul that every person experiences several times throughout their life. To say that it has never been experienced would be hypocrisy. To say that it is a “good thing”, would be erroneous. Although as humans we like to lie to ourselves, it is no question that selfishness can make any person act like a fool. It consumes us and makes us into someone we are not. Whether it leads to getting people killed, falling in love, or buying alcohol, selfishness always leads to destruction.
Seeing things in other people perspective is crucial to keep a serene relationship between people. For instance, failure to consider another person’s point of view is one of the main causes of prejudice in the world. Prejudiced people judge preconceive opinions that are not based on reason or actual experience. For example, a prejudiced person might look at a homeless person with disdain and say, “Get a job or get lost!” From the prejudiced persons point of view, the homeless person is unwilling to work, lazy, and
Each individual born into this reality is engrained with an ego that has the potential to inflate one’s identity to a grandiose sense of importance. If not kept in restraint, the self-pride may hinder one’s ability to sympathize and conceivably dominate man’s morals in the face of adversity. In his allegorical novel, Lord of the Flies, William Golding expounds on the inherent illness of narcissism and its effect on those who are altruistic. Truly, it is altruism that transforms the egotist, giving him a new sense of humility in relation to others. Despite such philanthropy, it is man’s ego that heightens the desire of self-preservation in the face of adversity.
Ayma Dommy Ciccone English 11 16 October 2015 The Power of Selfishness Humans are selfish, all of the actions we perform are done to benefit ourselves in one way or another. Thomas Hobbes and Arthur Miller, the author of ¨The Crucible¨, display the selfishness of humans in their writings. Hobbes says that many acts our society considers selfless are actually done for internal peace, making the selfless act selfish. The excerpt from Hobbes 's writing claims, ¨Even at our best, we are only out for ourselves.
By definition, altruism is "the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others". Through vigorous analysis, however, I have established it to be a complex ideology whose followers can be divided into three categories: slaves, abusers, and advocates. The slave abides by the ideals of 'pure' altruism. In other words, he does not act according to personal need or desire; humanity is all that matters. This is altruism in its purest form and is the branch of altruism which envelopes Catherine and allows her to feel a sense of purpose. Yet, much more common is the abuser of altruism. He is the altruist who ascertains and seizes any opportunity for personal gain by abusing the ostensibly philanthropic ideology. As ironic as this seems, it is common practice for one to proffer with the intention of receiving something in return. Peter Keating demonstrates how such an abuser manipulates altruism into a golden ladder by which he may reach success. Reigning over even the most conniving abuser is the omnipot...
Ethical Egoism A rear assumption is that the needs and happiness of other people will always affect our moral ethics. If we accept this assumption, we think that our moral ethics balance our self-interest against that of others. It is true, that “What is morally right or wrong depends not only on how it makes us feel, but also how it affects others”. The idea that each person ought to pursue his or her own self-interest exclusively to do in his lifetime for others is known as Ethical Egoism.
Ethical egoism is diametrically opposite to ethical altruism, which obliges a moral agent to assist the other first, even if he sacrifices his own interest. Further, researchers justify and rationalize the mental position of egoism versus altruism through an explanation that altruism is destructive for a society, suppressing and denying an individual value. Although the ‘modern’ age unsubtly supports swaggering egoistic behavior in the competitive arena such as international politics, commerce, and sport, in other ‘traditional’ areas of the prideful selfishness showing off, to considerable extent discourages visible disobedience from the prevalent moral codes. In some cases, the open pro-egoist position, as was, per example, the ‘contextual’ interpretation of selfishness by famous German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, can be described as a ‘grotesque anomaly’.
Egoism is a teleological theory of ethics that sets the ultimate criterion of morality in some nonmoral value (i.e. happiness or welfare) that results from acts (Pojman 276). It is contrasted with altruism, which is the view that one's actions ought to further the interests or good of other people, ideally to the exclusion of one's own interests (Pojman 272). This essay will explain the relation between psychological egoism and ethical egoism. It will examine how someone who believes in psychological egoism explains the apparent instances of altruism. And it will discuss some arguments in favor of universal ethical egoism, and exam Pojman's critque of arguments for and against universal ethical egoism.
“Those who care for others. live a life, in a divine way, above others” -Anonymous. Even as small children, we are taught to treat others as we would like to be treated, but as we grow older, the world becomes more complex, and the length to which we should stretch ourselves for others becomes unclear. Some people may believe that one must always put others first, while others put other people’s worries and safety far behind their own. Throughout this year I have gathered artifacts, some support these theories, while others do not, and a few support my own theory.
Selfishness is a term fairly notorious for its meaning. A lot of people accept that being selfish is wrong, but no one knows how this came about and why it matters. Who has the right to decide whether someone gets to be selfish or not? In his article “The unselfishness Trap”, Harry Browne says that the best way for people to be happy is when if everyone sacrifices but me. Thomas Nagel, on the other hand, argues in his article “The Objective Basis of Morality” that being concerned about others is more important. Being selfish, for many people, is evil. By definition, selfishness is to be more concerned about yourself than others, but that would essentially make every living human being a “selfish” being.
...transcends mere egoism and reveals how the individual itself is constituted by prior patterns of interaction. For Smith, the self is never disembedded or "unencumbered."38 Rather, as he put it, "their approbation necessarily confirms our own self-approbation. Their praise necessarily strengthens our own sense of our own praiseworthiness. In this case, so far is the love of praise-worthiness from being derived altogether from that of praise; that the love of praise seems, at least in a great measure, to be derived from that of praiseworthiness."39 This dialectic between the ego and the other finds expression in sympathy, which provides, by linking self-esteem to social praise, the psychological and social mechanisms undergirding social integration. "Nature," Smith argued, "when she formed man for society, endowed him with an original desire to please, and an original aversion to offend his brethren. She taught him to feel pleasure in their favourable, and pain in their unfavourable regard. She rendered their approbation most flattering and most agreeable to him for its own sake; and their disapprobation most mortifying and most offensive."40
With the development of modern society, many people say that the society has become miserable, and people only care their own profit. The self-interest is becoming the object of attacking. Thereupon, when we mention self- interest, people always mix up the concept of self-interest with selfishness. As we all known, the idea of selfishness is, “Abusing others, exploiting others, using others for their own advantage – doing something to others.” (Hospers, 59) Selfish people have no ethics, morals and standards when they do anything. At the same time, what is self – interest? Self- interest can be defined as egoism, which means a person is, “looking out for your own welfare.” (Hospers, 39) The welfare people talk about is nothing more than
What she wanted to aim actually, is to clarify that men are dominated in the society both economic and social privilege and freedom.
Women have always been essential to society. Fifty to seventy years ago, a woman was no more than a house wife, caregiver, and at their husbands beck and call. Women had no personal opinion, no voice, and no freedom. They were suppressed by the sociable beliefs of man. A woman’s respectable place was always behind the masculine frame of a man. In the past a woman’s inferiority was not voluntary but instilled by elder women, and/or force. Many, would like to know why? Why was a woman such a threat to a man? Was it just about man’s ability to control, and overpower a woman, or was there a serious threat? Well, everyone has there own opinion about the cause of the past oppression of woman, it is currently still a popular argument today.