EGOISM VS

ALTRUISM
 ALTRUISM

• Altruism is the principle and moral practice of concern for happiness of

other human beings and/or animals, resulting in a quality of life
both material and spiritual.
• It is a traditional virtue in many cultures and a core aspect of various religious
traditions and secular worldviews, though the concept of "others" toward
whom concern should be directed can vary among cultures and religions.
• In an extreme case, altruism may become a synonym of selflessness which is
the opposite of selfishness.
 ETHICAL ALTRUISM

• is an ethical doctrine that holds that the moral value of an individual's actions depend
solely on the impact on other individuals, regardless of the consequences on the
individual itself.
• James Fieser states the altruist dictum as:
"An action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than
unfavorable to everyone except the agent.”
• Auguste Comte's version of altruism calls for living for the sake of others.
• One who holds to either of these ethics is known as an "altruist."
 ETHICAL ALTRUISM

• Altruism is often seen as a form of consequentialism, as it indicates that an action is

ethically right if it brings good consequences to others.

• Altruism may be seen as similar to utilitarianism, however an essential difference is

that the latter prescribes acts that maximize good consequences for all of society,
while altruism prescribes maximizing good consequences for everyone except the
actor.
 WHY ALTRUISM?
1. Although we often act selfishly, we also seem to be
wired to cooperate with others.
2. People’s moral judgments are often driven by
emotion. And empathy for others seems to
encourage altruism.Another emotion, called
“elevation,” appears to inspire altruistic behavior,
too.
3. Altruism also builds social connections.
4. So, while altruism leads us to do what’s best for
others, it also makes us feel good in the process.

“a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes

an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and
of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face,
the warmth and wonder of a loving heart ” (Albert Camus”
EGOISM
• an ethical theory that treats self-interest as the foundation of morality

• Ethical Egoism
• Psychological Egoism
• Ayn Rand’s Rational Egoism
PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM
• Psychological egoism is not an ethical theory but a descriptive
or scientific theory having to do with egoism
• Two forms:
– Strong form: people always act in their own self-interest
– Weaker form: people often, but not always, act in their own
self-interest
PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM

• In its strong form

– Does not refute morality
• In its weaker form
– Does not provide a rational foundation for ethical egoism
• What about circumstances in which people do unselfish things, even though
they do not want to do them?
ETHICAL EGOISM

• Ethical egoism is a philosophical-normative, prescriptive theory

• Three forms:
– The individual form (everyone ought to act in my self-interest)
– The personal form (I ought to act in my own self-interest, but make no
claims on what others should do)
– The universal form (everyone should always act in his or her own self-
interest)
 PROBLEMS WITH UNIVERSAL
ETHICAL EGOISM
• Universal ethical egoism is the theory most commonly presented, but still has
problems
• Inconsistency
– It is unclear whose self-interest should be satisfied
• What is Meant by Everyone
– The term “everyone” is unclear
– Everyone’s interests create conflicts and inconsistencies
• Difficulty in Giving Moral Advice
– It is difficult to determine how to give moral advice
PROBLEMS WITH UNIVERSAL
ETHICAL EGOISM
• Inconsistent with Helping Professions
– Ethical egoism in any form does not provide the proper
ethical basis for people in helping professions
– Some people in helping professions do so out of self-
interest
– Others do so to help others
– A highly self-interested attitude would not serve one well
in a helping profession
ADVANTAGES OF UNIVERSAL
ETHICAL EGOISM

• It is easier to determine self-interest

– It is easier for individuals to determine what their own
interests are
• It encourages individual freedom and responsibility
• It works when people operate in limited spheres, isolated from
one another, which minimizes conflict
LIMITATIONS OF UNIVERSAL
ETHICAL EGOISM
• It offers no consistent method of resolving conflicts of self-
interests
– While individuals operate in limited spheres, it is much
easier to maintain self-interest
– As soon as individual or limited spheres start to overlap,
individual self-interests will start to conflict
– Some principle of justice or compromise must be brought
in to address that conflict
 ETHICAL EGOISM
• is the normative ethical position that moral agents ought to do what is in their
own self-interest.
• Ethical egoism contrasts with ethical altruism, which holds that moral agents have
an obligation to help others.
• Egoism and altruism both contrast with ethical utilitarianism, which holds that a
moral agent should treat one's self with no higher regard than one has for others.
ETHICAL EGOISM

• It also holds that one is not obligated to sacrifice one's own interests to help
others' interests, so long as one's own interests 
(i.e. one's
own desires or well-being) are substantially equivalent to the others' interests
and well-being, but he has the choice to do so.

• Ethical egoism does not, however, require moral agents to harm the interests
and well-being of others when making moral deliberation; e.g. what is in an
agent's self-interest may be incidentally detrimental, beneficial, or neutral in its
effect on others.
 AYN RAND

• Ayn Rand
• born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
• February 2 1905 – March 6, 1982)
• was a Russian-American writer and philosopher.
• She is known for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas
Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism.
• She advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge and
rejected faith and religion.
• She supported rational and ethical egoism and rejected altruism.
AYN RAND’S RATIONAL ETHICAL
EGOISM
• Ayn Rand was the foremost exponent of universal ethical egoism (which she
called rational ethical egoism)
– Self-interests of rational human beings, by virtue of their being rational, will
never conflict
“It is not a license to do as he pleases and it is not applicable to the altruist
image of a selfish brute nor to any man by irrational emotions, feelings, urges,
wishes or whims.”
 THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS
• The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of
Egoism is a 1964 collection of essays by Ayn
Rand and Nathaniel Branden
• The book covers ethical issues from the perspective of
Rand's Objectivist philosophy.
• Some of its themes include the identification and
validation of egoism as a rational code of ethics, the
destructiveness of altruism, and the nature of a proper
government.
 THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS
• “The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word “selfishness” is not merely
wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual “package-deal,” which is responsible,
more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of
mankind.”

• “In popular usage, the word “selfishness” is a synonym of evil; the image it
conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve
his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the
gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.Yet the exact
meaning and dictionary definition of the word “selfishness” is: concern with one’s
own interests.”

Excerpt From: Ayn Rand. “The Virtue of Selfishness.” iBooks.

THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS

• “The ethics of altruism has created the image of the brute, as its answer, in
order to make men accept two inhuman tenets:
(a) that any concern with one’s own interests is evil, regardless of what these
interests might be
(b) that the brute’s activities are in fact to one’s own interest (which altruism
enjoins man to renounce for the sake of his neighbors).”

Excerpt From: Ayn Rand. “The Virtue of Selfishness.” iBooks.

 THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS
• What is morality, or ethics? It is a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions- the choices and
actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life. Ethics as a science, deals with discovering
such a code. (Rand 13)
• The concept value is not primary; it presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for
what? It presupposes an entity capable of acting and achieving a goal in the face of an alternative. (Rand
16)
• An organism’s life depends on two factors: the material or fuel which it needs from the outside, from
its physical background, and the action of its own body, the action of using that fuel properly. What
standard determines what is proper in this context? The standard is the organism’s life, or that which is
required for the organism’s survival. (Rand 17)
• What is open to his choice is only whether he will discover it or not, whether he will choose the right
goals and values or not. He is free to make the wrong choice, but not free to succeed with it. He is free
to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not
free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see. (Rand 24)
THE BENEFICIARY OF VALUES AND WHAT
VALUES A PERSON SHOULD REGARD.
• The Objectivist ethics or Objectivism, holds that the actor must always be the
beneficiary of his action and that man must act for his own rational self-
interest. But his right to do so is derived from his nature as man and from the
function of moral values in human life- and therefore, is applicable only in the
context of a rational, objectively demonstrated and validated code of moral
principles which define and determine his actual self-interest. It is not a license
to do as he pleases and it is not applicable to the altruist image of a selfish
brute nor to any man by irrational emotions, feelings, urges, wishes or whims.
(Rand xi)
• One must earn the right to hold oneself as one’s own highest value by
achieving one’s own moral perfection- which one achieves by never accepting
an unearned guilt and never earning any, or, if one has earned it, never leaving it
uncorrected- by never resigning oneself passively to any flaws in one’s
character- by never placing any concern, wish, fear or mod of the moment
above the reality of one’s own self-esteem. And, above all, it means one
rejection of the role of a sacrificial animal. (Ayn Rand 29)
• According to Ayn Rand, the Moral Cannibalism of all Hedonist and Altruist
doctrines lie in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the
injury of another. (Rand 34)

• According to Ayn Rand, Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy – a joy

without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and
does not work for you own destruction. (Rand 32)
CONFLICT OF INTEREST

• Reality.
• A man’s interest depend on the kind of goals he
chooses to pursue, his choice of goals depends
on his desires, his desires depend on his values
– and for a rational man, his values depend on
the judgment of his mind. (Rand 57)
CONFLICT OF INTEREST

• Context
• that is; without relating it to the rest of his
knowledge and resolving any possible
contradictions- so he does not judge what
is or is not to his interest out of context,
on the range of any given moment. (Rand
59)
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
• Responsibility
• men avoid responsibility, they
mentally rouse themselves, long
enough to utter an “I wish,” and
stop there and wait as if the rest
were up to some unknown
power. “What they evade is
responsibility of judging the social
world. They take the world as the
given. A world I never made is the
deepest essence of their
attitude.” (Rand 61)
CONFLICT OF INTEREST

• Effort
• a rational man knows that man
must achieve his goals by his
own effort, he knows that
neither wealth nor jobs nor
any human values exist in a
given, limited, static quantity,
waiting to be divided.
(Rand 63 )
 CONSEQUENCES OF ALTRUISM
1. The first thing he learns is that morality is his enemy; he has nothing to gain from
it, he can only lose; self-inflicted loss, self-inflicted pain and the gray, debilitating pall
of an incomprehensible duty is all that he can expect. He may hope that others
might occasionally sacrifice themselves for his benefit, as he grudgingly sacrifices
himself for theirs, but he knows that the relationship will bring mutual resentment,
not pleasure—and that, morally, their pursuit of values will be like an exchange of
unwanted, unchosen Christmas presents, which neither is morally permitted to
buy for himself.
2. apart from such times as he manages to perform some act of self-sacrifice, he
possesses no moral significance: morality takes no cognizance of him and has
nothing to say to him for guidance in the crucial issues of his life; it is only his own
personal, private, “selfish” life and, as such, it is regarded either as evil or, at best,
amoral.”
 VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS

“The evil of a robber does not lie in the fact that he pursues his own interests,
but in what he regards as to his own interest; not in the fact that he pursues his
values, but in what he chose to value; not in the fact that he wants to live, but in
the fact that he wants to live on a subhuman level”.

• Excerpt From: Ayn Rand. “The Virtue of Selfishness.” iBooks.

AYN RAND’S OBJECTIVIST ETHICS