{"id":683,"date":"2025-03-13T18:56:36","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T18:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/chapter\/7-3-ethical-egoism-whats-in-it-for-me\/"},"modified":"2025-04-02T21:41:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T21:41:20","slug":"7-3-ethical-egoism-whats-in-it-for-me","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/chapter\/7-3-ethical-egoism-whats-in-it-for-me\/","title":{"raw":"7.2\u00a0Ethical Egoism: What\u2019s in it for me?","rendered":"7.2\u00a0Ethical Egoism: What\u2019s in it for me?"},"content":{"raw":"
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But doesn\u2019t it appear that human action\u00a0might be unselfish in some cases, that genuine altruism is at least possible. This doesn\u2019t mean that we are not often selfishly motivated, nor, as Ethical Egoists will argue, that we\u00a0really<\/em>\u00a0have any good reasons to act unselfishly. Is selfishness ethically defensible? If we consider many peoples\u2019 actions, it appears that human beings can be pretty selfish.<\/p>\r\n

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 \u2013 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.<\/p>\r\n

Such behavior seems\u00a0patently 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\u2019d really act no differently than Kozlowski, and we needn\u2019t feel guilty about it either.<\/p>\r\n

Ethical Egoists claim\u00a0that we should<\/em> always put ourselves first and that we should<\/em> refrain from helping other people. <\/a>Ethical Egoism thus differs from Psychological Egoism since Psychological Egoism makes a descriptive claim \u2013 it describes what human actions are really like \u2013 while Ethical Egoism makes prescriptive claims \u2013 it tells us what we\u00a0should<\/em>\u00a0do. 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.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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Ponder if you will\u2026.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

Are the Ethical Egoists correct? Does the fact of human self-centeredness imply that we \u201cshould\u201d act that way? Would it be reasonable to ask that we somehow act against our nature? Is altruism even possible?<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"
\n

But doesn\u2019t it appear that human action\u00a0might be unselfish in some cases, that genuine altruism is at least possible. This doesn\u2019t mean that we are not often selfishly motivated, nor, as Ethical Egoists will argue, that we\u00a0really<\/em>\u00a0have any good reasons to act unselfishly. Is selfishness ethically defensible? If we consider many peoples\u2019 actions, it appears that human beings can be pretty selfish.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

Such behavior seems\u00a0patently 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\u2019d really act no differently than Kozlowski, and we needn\u2019t feel guilty about it either.<\/p>\n

Ethical Egoists claim\u00a0that we should<\/em> always put ourselves first and that we should<\/em> refrain from helping other people. <\/a>Ethical Egoism thus differs from Psychological Egoism since Psychological Egoism makes a descriptive claim \u2013 it describes what human actions are really like \u2013 while Ethical Egoism makes prescriptive claims \u2013 it tells us what we\u00a0should<\/em>\u00a0do. 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.<\/p>\n

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Ponder if you will\u2026.<\/p>\n<\/header>\n

Are the Ethical Egoists correct? Does the fact of human self-centeredness imply that we \u201cshould\u201d act that way? Would it be reasonable to ask that we somehow act against our nature? Is altruism even possible?<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"menu_order":18,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-683","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":903,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1283,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/683\/revisions\/1283"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/903"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/683\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=683"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=683"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}