Ethical Egoism
Love Your Neighbor As Yourself: Response to Ethical Egoism
PHIL-122
22 March 2013
We are often taught at an early age that when struggling to make a decision to “let our consciences be our guides”. Conscience can be defined as our adherence to moral principles, or our considerations of fairness and justice. The word “consideration” is used because every individual has their own standards for what they feel to be morally right versus what they feel to be morally wrong, however this concept is not as black and white as it may seem. We accredit our moral considerations to many external and internal factors. An example of an external factor is government laws because they are predetermined rules about behavior and action that have been societally deemed as morally wrong. Laws are based on sociological mores, which follow a culture’s commonly shared and widely observed moral behavior, therefore breaking a law implies going against the proper code your society. Prison also has an external influence on our decision making because it serves as a threat for the negative consequences of disobeying laws, such as the loss of our freedom. Internal factors are our own self-value and personal virtues as well as our sense of selfishness and our concerns of morality. Ethical egoism is the philosophical belief that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest because that is the rational way to live. It contrasts with the theory of ethical altruism, which holds that’s it is our moral obligation to help others. A philosopher and avid supporter of ethical egoism named Ayn Rand however saw ethical altruism in a different way. She viewed altruism as self-sacrifice, and as a state of mind absent from the reality of the life and worth of a human being. Rand was the creator of the property of ethical egoism known as objectivism, or the philosophy that the proper life for rational beings is the pursuit of happiness, and that altruism is incompatible with
PHIL-122
22 March 2013
We are often taught at an early age that when struggling to make a decision to “let our consciences be our guides”. Conscience can be defined as our adherence to moral principles, or our considerations of fairness and justice. The word “consideration” is used because every individual has their own standards for what they feel to be morally right versus what they feel to be morally wrong, however this concept is not as black and white as it may seem. We accredit our moral considerations to many external and internal factors. An example of an external factor is government laws because they are predetermined rules about behavior and action that have been societally deemed as morally wrong. Laws are based on sociological mores, which follow a culture’s commonly shared and widely observed moral behavior, therefore breaking a law implies going against the proper code your society. Prison also has an external influence on our decision making because it serves as a threat for the negative consequences of disobeying laws, such as the loss of our freedom. Internal factors are our own self-value and personal virtues as well as our sense of selfishness and our concerns of morality. Ethical egoism is the philosophical belief that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest because that is the rational way to live. It contrasts with the theory of ethical altruism, which holds that’s it is our moral obligation to help others. A philosopher and avid supporter of ethical egoism named Ayn Rand however saw ethical altruism in a different way. She viewed altruism as self-sacrifice, and as a state of mind absent from the reality of the life and worth of a human being. Rand was the creator of the property of ethical egoism known as objectivism, or the philosophy that the proper life for rational beings is the pursuit of happiness, and that altruism is incompatible with
Bibliography: Pojman, Louis P. “Egoism and Altruism: A Critique of Ayn Rand” The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature. Louis P. Pojman & Lewis Vaughn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Rand, Ayn. “In Defense of Ethical Egoism” The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature. Louis P. Pojman & Lewis Vaughn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.