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Should There Be A Proponent Of Egoism Ethical Or Consequentialist?

Satisfactory Essays

Egoism is a theory that bases ethics on how beneficial a situation is to an individual and their interest. A proponent of egoism was Ayn Rand, her government controlled upbringing contribute to her strong believe it is good to look out for one’s wellbeing. Since we are only considering the wellbeing of one individual and not all of the people who were experimented on, a proponent of egoism would consider it ethical to use the information that was gathered from the experiments. If an egoist was infected by a disease and found out that the only cure for it was discovered during the holocaust, they would take the medication. Since the medication it’s going to improve their condition. As a consequentialist theory, they would not have considered the method by which the information was gathered. …show more content…

It also considers the wellbeing of the people who are close to the egoist. Even if they weren’t infected by a disease, an egoist would still argue that it is ethical to have this cure available because it is in their self-interest to have it for the people that you care for. In contracts to egoism, altruism focuses on the wellbeing of others above your own. Not taking the cure because of how it was discovered would be considered altruistic, because you would be putting the suffering of all the Jewish prisoners before their own well-being. Another reason that egoist would argue for using the information in that they were not directly involved in the mistreatment of the Jewish prisoners. The Jewish prisoners were mistreated by someone else, therefor they should not feel guilty for using the information to benefit

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