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Egoism And Ethical Egoism

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Behind every action that a person makes is an underlying question about what that person will get out of it. For this paper, I am going to be using The Fundamentals of Ethics by Russ Shafer-Landau and Psychological Egoism and Hobbes by Hun Chung in order to talk about and give more insight on psychological egoism and ethical egoism. There are many things to know and learn such as what these theories are and how they are different and alike as well as other components supporting each theory. Psychological Egoism states that human actions are based on self-interest, even if the action appears to be selfless. It is a theory that all human actions are aimed at avoiding some personal loss or gaining some personal benefit. Psychological egoism …show more content…

To further understand this concept, here are some examples, an ethical egoist would hold it morally right if you helped in renovating a local sports stadium than donate to a hurricane relief fund elsewhere. An ethical egoist would choose what he wants as a career, rather than what his parents or society wants. For instance, choosing art over the more 'sophisticated' profession of architecture. Psychological egoism and ethical egoism are similar in many ways. They are similar because they both promote self-interest Psychological egoism and ethical egoism are two very different theories but have a lot of similarities. They both have the desire for self-interest and fulfilling their desires. “It might be true that everybody is, in fact, ultimately motivated by self-interest, but such motivation might be so deeply embedded within people’s subconscious states that not everybody is consciously aware that his/her actions are motivated in this way.” This entails that the clear agenda in these two theories is motivation, getting to what they want no matter the cost, this is the sole point of these egoistic theories. Another similarity is that egoism violates core moral beliefs. ‘Ego’ meaning oneself explains the self-interest portion of these theories. “Still if a theory deeply violates common sense, and if there is no compelling argument for that theory then we are justified in rejecting it.”

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