Three Arguments Of Ethical Egoism

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Ethical Egoism is an idea that we should only care about ourselves and not about anyone else. Many philosophers and ethicists disagree with this idea because it has many issues with it, especially morality. Even though many people disagree with this theory, there are people that think that it is true. The three statements that they say to agree with this theory is; that altruism is self-defeating, Ayn Rand’s argument, and that ethical egoism is involved and explains commonsense morality. However, many philosophers have counterarguments with all of these explanations and they have their own arguments that contradicts the idea of Ethical Egoism. The three arguments they have are; Ethical Egoism supports wickedness, Ethical Egoism is inconsistent, …show more content…

These two ideas are different and both stand independently from each other. Psychological Egoism means that each person follows his or her own self-interests. But this idea, like Ethical Egoism has many flaws that many people do not accept it. Mainly people do not accept this idea because human beings are too complicated for this …show more content…

Furthermore, there are three arguments that try to prove that this theory is correct. Firstly, is that altruism being self-defeating, meaning that looking out for others actually hurting them and invading their privacy. But this claim is wrong because in most cases these wouldn’t be true. For an example, if you feed starving children in Africa, it wouldn’t hurt them but only benefit them. Also this argument goes against the idea of ethical egoism because it is promoting the betterment of society. But in Ethical Egoism we are to only look out for ourselves. Secondly, is the Ayn Rand’s argument, this states that altruism means that you must sacrifice yourself for others. Sacrificing yourself for others is plainly wrong and you should think of your own best interest. This idea goes along with Ethical Egoism. But the flaw with this idea is that, we have more than one option. We don’t have to decide on either of those ideals. Lastly it states that Ethical Egoism involves with commonsense morality. But this is not true because in some cases hurting, lying, and killing others can benefit us, this contradicts commonsense

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