What would an Ethical Egoist say about this topic? What side would the Ethical Egoist take? What would the Ethical Egoist say to justify their moral position? Is there a conflict between loyalty to self and to community relevant to your topic? If so, how so? Note what you feel is the best course of action.
please see the attached files for instr
Requirements: 3-4 pages
Textbook: Chapter 5, 6
Minimum of 2 scholarly sources (in addition to the course textbook)
Instructions
This assignment is the first step in a three-part project. You only need to focus on part one at this point. Each step will build on earlier steps. However, it is not a matter of providing a rough draft of all or even part of the entire project here in week three. That is, further steps might require completely new and original text. At the same time, completing each step will aid you in completing a future step or future steps. And, you should use the same topic in all steps.
First, select a topic of moral controversy, debate, disagreement, and dispute, Examples of such topics are euthanasia, the death penalty, abortion, cloning, etc. You can pick any such topic. It need not be listed here.
Next, detail the positions of each side of the ethical debate. Note at least two moral reasons each side presents to show their view on the topic is correct.
Now, we want to evaluate these positions using the moral theories we studied this week:
What would an Ethical Egoist say about this topic? What side would the Ethical Egoist take? What would the Ethical Egoist say to justify their moral position? Is there a conflict between loyalty to self and to community relevant to your topic? If so, how so? Note what you feel is the best course of action.
What would a Social Contract Ethicist say about this topic? What side would the Social Contract Ethicist take? What would the Social Contract Ethicist say to justify their moral position? Does your topic involve a collision between personal obligations and national ones? If so, how so? Note what you feel is the best course of action.
Finally, reference and discuss any professional code of ethics relevant to your topic such as the AMA code for doctors, the ANA code for nurses, or any other pertinent professional code. State whether and how your chosen topic involves any conflicts between professional and familial duties.
Cite the textbook and incorporate outside sources, including citations.
Requirements
Length: 3-4pages (not including title page or references page)
Title page
References page (minimum of 2 scholarly sources in addition to the course textbook)
CHAPTER 5
Ethical Egoism
The achievement of his own happiness is man’s highest moral purpose.
AYN RAND, THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS (1961)
5.1. Is There a Duty to Help the Starving?
Each year millions of people die from health problems brought on by malnutrition. Many of those who die are children. Every day, around 14,200 children under the age of five die, almost always from preventable causes. That comes to around 5.2 million deaths each year. Even if this estimate is too high, the number who die unnecessarily is staggering.
Poverty poses an acute problem for many of us who are much better off. We spend money on ourselves, not only on necessities but on luxuries—jewelry, travel, the latest smartphone, and so on. In America, even people with modest incomes sometimes enjoy such things. But we could forgo our luxuries and instead give the money to fight famine. The fact that we don’t suggests that we regard our luxuries as more important than the lives of the starving.
Why do we let people die of hunger when we could save them? Few of us actually believe our luxuries are that important. Most of us, if asked directly, would feel embarrassed, and we might admit that we should do more to help. One reason we don’t is that we rarely think about it. Living our own comfortable lives, we are insulated from the realities of poverty. The starving people are at some distance from us; we do not see them, and we can avoid thinking about them. And when we do think about them, it is only abstractly, as statistics. Unfortunately for the hungry, statistics have little power to move us.
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We respond differently when there is a “crisis,” as when a magnitude-7.2 earthquake struck Haiti in 2021, killing at least 1,400 people and injuring thousands more. Then the horrors are newsworthy, and relief efforts are mobilized. But when the suffering is scattered, the problem seems less pressing. The 5.2 million children who die each year might all be saved if they were gathered in, say, Chicago.
But leaving aside the question of why we behave as we do, what is our duty? What should we do? Common sense might tell us to balance our own interests against the interests of others. It is understandable, of course, that we look out for ourselves, and people can’t be blamed for attending to their own basic needs. But at the same time, the needs of others are important, and when we can help them—especially at little cost to ourselves—we should do so. So, if you have an extra $10, and giving it to charity would help save a child’s life, then common sense would tell you to do so.
This way of thinking assumes that we have duties to others simply because we could help them. If a certain action would benefit (or harm) other people, then that is a reason why we should (or should not) perform that action. The commonsense assumption is that other people’s interests count, from a moral point of view.
But one person’s common sense is another person’s naïve platitude. Some people believe that we have no duties to others. On their view, known as Ethical Egoism, each person ought to pursue his or her own self-interest exclusively. This is the morality of selfishness. It holds that our only duty is to do what is best for ourselves. Other people matter only insofar as they can benefit us.
5.2. Psychological Egoism
Before we discuss Ethical Egoism, we should discuss a theory it is often confused with—Psychological Egoism. Ethical Egoism claims that each person ought to pursue his or her own self-interest exclusively. Psychological Egoism, by contrast, asserts that each person does in fact pursue his or her own self-interest exclusively. These theories are very different. It is one thing to say that people are self-interested and that our neighbors will not give to charity. It is another thing entirely to say that people ought to be self-interested and that our neighbors ought not to give to charity. Psychological Egoism makes a claim about human nature, or about the way things are; Ethical Egoism makes a claim about morality, or about how things should be.
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Psychological Egoism is not a theory of ethics; rather, it is a theory of human psychology. But ethicists have always worried about it. If Psychological Egoism were true, then moral philosophy would seem pointless. After all, if people are going to behave selfishly no matter what, then what’s the point of discussing what they “ought” to do? Whatever it is they “ought” to do, they aren’t going to do it. It might be naïve of us to think that our moral theories can matter in the real world.
Is Altruism Possible? In 1939, when World War II began, Raoul Wallenberg was an unknown businessman living in Sweden. During the war, Sweden was a good place to be. As a neutral country, it was never bombed, blockaded, or invaded. Yet, in 1944, Wallenberg chose to leave Sweden for Nazi-controlled Hungary. Officially, he would just be another Swedish diplomat in Budapest. But his real mission was to save lives. In Hungary, Hitler had begun implementing his “final solution to the Jewish problem”: Jews were being rounded up, deported, and then murdered at Nazi killing stations. Wallenberg wanted to stop the slaughter.
Wallenberg did help persuade the government in Hungary to halt the deportations. That government, however, was soon replaced by a Nazi puppet regime, and the killings resumed. Wallenberg then issued “Swedish Protective Passes” to thousands of Jews, insisting that they all had connections to Sweden and were under the protection of his government. Wallenberg also helped many people hide. When these people were discovered, he would stand between them and the Nazis, telling the Germans that they would have to shoot him first. All in all, he saved thousands of human lives. At the end of the war, Wallenberg stayed in Hungary, amid the chaos, as other diplomats fled. Then he disappeared, and for a long time his fate was unknown. Now we believe he was killed, not by the Germans, but by the Soviets, who imprisoned him after taking over Hungary. Wallenberg’s body was never found, and the Swedish government did not officially declare him to be dead until 2016.
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Wallenberg’s story is especially dramatic, but it is not unique. The Israeli government recognizes over 22,000 Gentiles who risked their lives trying to save Jews from being murdered in the Holocaust. The Israelis call these heroic individuals “The Righteous among the Nations.” And though few of us have saved lives, acts of altruism appear to be common. People do favors for one another. They give blood. They build homeless shelters. They volunteer in hospitals. They read to the blind. Many people give money to worthy causes. In some cases, the amount given is extraordinary. Warren Buffett, an American businessman, gave $37 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to promote global health and education. Zell Kravinsky, an American real estate investor, gave his entire $45-million fortune to charity. And then, for good measure, he donated one of his kidneys to a complete stranger. Oseola McCarty, an 87-year-old African-American woman from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, gave $150,000 to endow a scholarship fund at the University of Southern Mississippi. For 75 years, she had saved up money, working as a maid. She never owned a car, and at the age of 87, she still walked over a mile to the nearest grocery store, pushing her own shopping cart.
These are remarkable deeds, but should they be taken at face value? According to Psychological Egoism, we might see ourselves as noble and self-sacrificing, but really we are not. In reality, we care only about ourselves. Could this be true? Why have people believed it, in the face of so much contrary evidence? Two arguments are often given for Psychological Egoism.
The Argument That We Always Do What We Want to Do. “Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.” So wrote Dale Carnegie, the author of the first and best self-help book, How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936). Carnegie believed that desire is the key to human psychology. If he was correct, then when we describe one person’s action as altruistic and another person’s action as self-interested, we may be overlooking the fact that in each case the person is merely doing what he or she most wants to do. For example, if Raoul Wallenberg chose to go to Hungary, then he wanted to go there more than he wanted to remain in Sweden—and why should he be praised for altruism when he was only doing what he wanted to do? His action sprang from his own wishes, from his own sense of what he wanted. Thus, he was moved by his own self-interest. And because the same may be said about any alleged act of kindness, we can conclude that Psychological Egoism must be true.
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This argument, however, is flawed. There are things that we do, not because we want to, but because we feel that we ought to. For example, I may write my grandmother a letter because I promised my mother I would, even though I don’t want to do it. It is sometimes suggested that we do such things because we most want to keep our promises. But that is not true. It is simply false to say that my strongest desire is to keep my promise. What I most want is to break my promise, but I don’t, as a matter of conscience. For all we know, Wallenberg was in this position: Perhaps he wanted to stay in Sweden, but he felt that he had to go to Hungary to save lives. In any case, the fact that he chose to go does not imply that he most wanted to do so.
The argument has a second flaw. Suppose we concede that we always act on our strongest desires. Even if this were so, it would not follow that Wallenberg acted out of self-interest. For if Wallenberg wanted to help others, even at great risk to himself, then that is precisely what makes his behavior altruistic. The mere fact that you act on your own desires does not mean that you are looking out for yourself; it all depends on what you desire. If you care only about yourself, then you are acting out of self-interest; but if you want other people to be happy, and you act on that desire, then you are not. To put the point another way: In assessing whether an action is self-interested, the issue is not whether the action is based on a desire; the issue is what kind of desire it is based on. If you want to help someone else, then your motive is altruistic, not self-interested.
Therefore, this argument goes wrong in every way it could: The premise is not true—we don’t always do what we most want to do—and even if it were true, the conclusion would not follow from it.
The Argument That We Always Do What Makes Us Feel Good. The second argument for Psychological Egoism appeals to the fact that so-called altruistic actions produce a sense of self-satisfaction in the person who performs them. Acting “unselfishly” makes people feel good about themselves, and that is why they do it.
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According to a 19th-century newspaper, this argument was made by Abraham Lincoln. The Springfield, Illinois, Monitor reported,
Mr. Lincoln once remarked to a fellow-passenger on an old-time mud coach that all men were prompted by selfishness in doing good. His fellow-passenger was antagonizing this position when they were passing over a corduroy bridge that spanned a [swamp]. As they crossed this bridge they espied an old razor-backed sow on the bank making a terrible noise because her pigs had got into the [swamp] and were in danger of drowning. As the old coach began to climb the hill, Mr. Lincoln called out, “Driver, can’t you stop just a moment?” Then Mr. Lincoln jumped out, ran back, and lifted the little pigs out of the mud and water and placed them on the bank. When he returned, his companion remarked: “Now, Abe, where does selfishness come in on this little episode?” “Why, bless your soul, Ed, that was the very essence of selfishness. I should have had no peace of mind all day had I gone on and left that suffering old sow worrying over those pigs. I did it to get peace of mind, don’t you see?”
In this story, Honest Abe employs a time-honored tactic of Psychological Egoism: the strategy of reinterpreting motives. Everyone knows that people sometimes seem to act altruistically; but if we look deeper, we may realize that something else is going on. And usually it is not hard to discover that the “unselfish” behavior is actually connected to some benefit for the person who does it. Thus, Lincoln talks about the peace of mind he got from rescuing the imperiled pigs.
Other examples of alleged altruism can also be reinterpreted. According to some of Raoul Wallenberg’s friends, he was depressed before he went to Hungary, feeling like his life wasn’t amounting to much. So he undertook deeds that would make him a heroic figure. His quest for a more significant life was spectacularly successful—here we are, more than 70 years after his death, talking about him. Mother Teresa (1910–1997), the nun who spent her life working among the poor in Kolkata, is often cited as a perfect example of altruism—but, of course, she believed that she would be handsomely rewarded in heaven. And as for Zell Kravinsky, who gave away both his fortune and a kidney, his parents never gave him much praise, so he was always trying to impress them. Kravinsky himself said that, as he began to give away his money, he came to think of a donation as “a treat to myself. I really thought of it as something pleasurable.”
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Despite all this, Lincoln’s argument is defective. It may be true that one of his motives in saving the pigs was to preserve his own peace of mind. But the fact that Lincoln had a self-interested motive doesn’t mean that he didn’t have benevolent motives as well. In fact, Lincoln’s desire to help the pigs might have been even greater than his desire to preserve his peace of mind. And if this wasn’t true in Lincoln’s case, it is true in other cases: If I see a child drowning, my desire to help that child will usually be greater than my desire to avoid a guilty conscience. Cases like these are counterexamples to Psychological Egoism.
In some instances of altruism, we may have no self-interested motives. For example, in 2007, a 50-year-old construction worker named Wesley Autrey was waiting for a subway train in New York City. Autrey saw a man near him collapse, his body convulsing. The man got up, only to stumble to the edge of the platform and fall onto the train tracks. At that moment, the headlights of a train appeared. “I had to make a split[-second] decision,” Autrey later said. He leapt onto the tracks and lay on top of the man, pressing him down into a space a foot deep. The train’s brakes screeched, but it could not stop in time. People on the platform screamed in horror. Five cars passed over the men, smudging Autrey’s blue knit cap with grease. When onlookers realized that both men were safe, they broke out into applause. “I just saw someone who needed help,” Autrey later said. He had saved the man’s life, never giving a thought to his own well-being.
There is a general lesson to be learned here, about desire. We want all sorts of things—money, friends, fame, a new car, and so on—and because we desire these things, we may derive satisfaction from getting them. But the object of our desire is typically not the feeling of satisfaction—that is not what we are after. What we want is simply the money, the friends, the fame, and the car. It is the same with helping others. Our desire to help others often comes first; the good feelings we get may merely be a by-product.
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Conclusion about Psychological Egoism. If Psychological Egoism is so implausible, why have so many intelligent people been attracted to it? Some people like the theory’s cynical view of human nature. Others like its simplicity. And, indeed, it would be pleasing if a single factor could explain all human behavior. But human beings are too complicated for that. Psychological Egoism is not a credible theory.
Hence, morality has nothing to fear from Psychological Egoism. Given that we can be moved by concern for our neighbors, it is not pointless to talk about whether we should help them. Moral theorizing need not be a naïve endeavor, based on an unrealistically rosy view of human nature.
5.3. Three Arguments for Ethical Egoism
Ethical Egoism, again, is the doctrine that each person ought to pursue his or her own self-interest exclusively. This is not the commonsense view that one should help one’s self in addition to helping others. Ethical Egoism is the radical idea that the principle of self-interest accounts for all of our obligations.
However, Ethical Egoism does not tell you to avoid helping others. Sometimes your interests will coincide with the well-being of others, so you’ll help yourself by helping them. For example, if you can convince your teacher to cancel the assignment, this will benefit you and your classmates. Ethical Egoism does not forbid such actions; in fact, it may recommend them. The theory insists only that the benefit to others is not what makes the act right. Rather, the act is right because it benefits you.
Nor does Ethical Egoism imply that in pursuing your interests, you should always do what you want to, or what gives you the most short-term pleasure. Someone may want to smoke cigarettes, or bet all his money at the racetrack, or set up a meth lab in his basement. Ethical Egoism would frown on all of these actions, despite their possible short-term benefits. Ethical Egoism says that a person ought to do what really is in his or her own best interests, over the long run. It endorses selfishness, not foolishness.
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Now let’s consider the three main arguments for Ethical Egoism.
The Argument That Altruism Is Self-Defeating. The first argument has several variations:
Everyone is aware of his or her own wants and needs. Moreover, each of us is uniquely placed to pursue those wants and needs effectively. At the same time, we understand other people only imperfectly, and we are not well placed to advance their interests. For these reasons, if we try to be “our brother’s keeper,” we will often bungle the job and do more harm than good.
At the same time, the policy of “looking out for others” is an offensive intrusion into other people’s privacy; it is essentially a policy of sticking our nose into other people’s business.
Making other people the object of one’s “charity” is degrading to them: it robs them of their dignity and self-respect, and it says to them, in effect, that they are not competent to care for themselves. Moreover, the message is self-fulfilling: those who are “helped” cease to be self-reliant and become passively dependent on others. That is why the recipients of charity are often resentful rather than appreciative.
In each case, the policy of “looking out for others” is said to be self-defeating. If we want to do what is best for people, we should not adopt so-called altruistic policies. On the contrary, if each person looks after his or her own interests, everyone will be better off.
This argument can be questioned on a number of grounds. Of course, no one favors bungling, butting in, or depriving people of their self-respect. But is that really what’s going on when we feed hungry children? Is the starving child in the Democratic Republic of the Congo really harmed when we “intrude” into “her business” by giving her food? It hardly seems likely. Yet we can set this point aside, for this way of thinking has an even deeper defect.
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The trouble is, this isn’t really an argument for Ethical Egoism. The argument concludes that we should adopt certain policies of behavior, and those policies may appear to be egoistic. However, the reason we should adopt those policies is decidedly unegoistic. It is said that adopting those policies will promote the betterment of society—but according to Ethical Egoism, we shouldn’t care about that. Spelled out fully, the argument says:
(1) We ought to do whatever will best promote everyone’s interests.
(2) The best way to promote everyone’s interests is for each of us to pursue our own interests exclusively.
(3) Therefore, each of us should pursue our own interests exclusively.
If we accept this reasoning, then we are not Ethical Egoists. Even though we might behave like egoists, our ultimate principle is one of beneficence—we are trying to help everyone, and not just ourselves. Rather than being egoists, we turn out to be altruists with a peculiar view of what promotes the general welfare.
Ayn Rand’s Argument. Philosophers don’t pay much attention to the work of Ayn Rand (1905–1982). The major themes in her novels—the primacy of the individual and the superiority of capitalism—are developed more rigorously by other writers. Yet she was a charismatic figure who attracted a devoted following. Ethical Egoism is associated more with her than with any other 20th-century writer.
Ayn Rand regarded the “ethics of altruism” as a totally destructive idea, both in society as a whole and in the lives of those taken in by it. Altruism, she thought, leads to a denial of the value of the individual. It says to a person: Your life is merely something to be sacrificed. “If a man accepts the ethics of altruism,” she writes, “his first concern is not how to live his life, but how to sacrifice it.” Those who promote the ethics of altruism are beneath contempt—they are parasites. Rather than working to build and sustain their own lives, they leech off those who do. Rand continues,
Parasites, moochers, looters, brutes and thugs can be of no value to a human being—nor can he gain any benefit from living in a society geared to their needs, demands and protections, a society that treats him as a sacrificial animal and penalizes him for his virtues in order to reward them for their vices, which means: a society based on the ethics of altruism.
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By “sacrificing one’s life,” Rand does not mean anything so dramatic as dying. A person’s life consists, in part, of projects undertaken and goods earned and created. Thus, to demand that a person abandon his endeavors and give away his possessions is to demand that he “sacrifice his life.”
Rand also suggests that there is a metaphysical basis for Ethical Egoism. Somehow, it is the only ethic that takes seriously the reality of the individual person. She bemoans “the extent to which altruism erodes men’s capacity to grasp . . . the value of an individual life; it reveals a mind from which the reality of a human being has been wiped out.”
What, then, of the hungry children? It might be said that Ethical Egoism “reveals a mind from which the reality of a human being has been wiped out,” namely, the human being who is starving. But Rand quotes with approval the answer given by one of her followers: “Once, when Barbara Brandon was asked by a student: ‘What will happen to the poor . . . ?’ she answered: ‘If you want to help them, you will not be stopped.’”
These remarks form a single argument that goes something like this:
(1) Each person has only one life to live. If we value the individual, then we must agree that this life is of supreme importance. After all, it is all one has, and all one is.
(2) The ethics of altruism regards the life of the individual as something to be sacrificed for the good of others. Therefore, the ethics of altruism does not take seriously the value of the individual.
(3) Ethical Egoism, which allows each person to view his or her own life as having supreme value, does take the individual seriously—it is, in fact, the only philosophy that does.
(4) Thus, we should accept Ethical Egoism.
This argument assumes that we have only two options: Either we accept the ethics of altruism, or we accept Ethical Egoism. The choice is then made to look obvious by depicting altruism as an idea that only an idiot would accept. The ethics of altruism is said to be the view that one’s own interests have no value and that we must be ready to sacrifice ourselves totally whenever anybody asks us to. If this is altruism, then any other view, including Ethical Egoism, might look good by comparison.
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But that is hardly a fair picture of the options. What we called the commonsense view stands between the two extremes. It says that one’s own interests and the interests of others are important, and so we must strike a balance between them. Sometimes, one should act for the sake of others; at other times, one should look after one’s self. Even if we reject the extreme ethics of altruism, we needn’t embrace the extreme of Ethical Egoism. There is middle ground.
Ethical Egoism as Compatible with Commonsense Morality. The third argument takes a different approach. Ethical Egoism is usually presented as challenging common sense. It is possible, however, to interpret it as supporting our commonsense moral view.
This interpretation goes as follows: Ordinary morality consists in obeying certain rules. We must speak the truth, keep our promises, avoid harming others, and so on. At first, these duties seem to have nothing in common—they are just a bunch of discrete rules. Yet there may be a unity to them. Ethical Egoists would say that all these duties spring from the one fundamental principle of self-interest.
Understood in this way, Ethical Egoism is not such a radical doctrine. It does not challenge ordinary morality; it only tries to explain and systematize it. And it does a surprisingly good job. It can provide plausible explanations of the duties mentioned above, and more:
The duty not to harm others: If we do things that harm other people, other people won’t mind harming us. We won’t have friends; we will
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