7.2 Ethical Egoism: What’s in it for me?

But doesn’t it appear that human action might be unselfish in some cases, that genuine altruism is at least possible. This doesn’t mean that we are not often selfishly motivated, nor, as Ethical Egoists will argue, that we really have any good reasons to act unselfishly. Is selfishness ethically defensible? If we consider many peoples’ actions, it appears that human beings can be pretty selfish.

Consider for example, the case of the former CEO of Tyco, Inc., L. Dennis Kozlowski. He and another executive engaged in massive fraud, stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from investors and employees of his firm – all so he could live a life of excessive luxury, which included paying $6000 for a shower curtain with gold threads woven into it and spending well over $2 million on a birthday party for his wife.

Such behavior seems patently wrong. But on what grounds can we say this? Defenders of Ethical Egoism claim that in fact we have no real grounds for condemning such behavior, because the only duties we really have are to ourselves. If we had the opportunity and thought we could get away with it, we’d really act no differently than Kozlowski, and we needn’t feel guilty about it either.

Ethical Egoists claim that we should always put ourselves first and that we should refrain from helping other people. Ethical Egoism thus differs from Psychological Egoism since Psychological Egoism makes a descriptive claim – it describes what human actions are really like – while Ethical Egoism makes prescriptive claims – it tells us what we should do. Ethical Egoism is not going to appeal to facts about human psychology but is going to try to show why it is that selfishness is better than altruism in general. Of course, arguing that selfishness is better for me is easy, so defenders of Ethical Egoism will need to appeal to deeper reasons in order to show why it is that selfishness is ultimately better for everybody.