Egoism

Psychological Egoism

Psychological egoism (sometimes called descriptive egoism) claims that every individual does, as a matter of fact, always pursue his or her own interests. In other words, it claims that people never act altruistically for the good of others or for an ideal. Since psychological egoism claims to state what is the case, it is a descriptive theory and so is very different from a normative theory such as ethical egoism, which purports to say how people ought to act.

Psychological egoism seems to rest on either confusions or false claims. If self-interest is interpreted in a narrow or selfish sense, then psychological egoism is simply false. There are clearly many generous people who often sacrifice their own interests, including their money and time, to help others. Indeed, most of us are generous on some occasions. Some defenders of psychological egoism admit this fact but claim that it is irrelevant because even a person who is generous is acting on his or her own desire to be generous and, hence, is really being self-interested. The problem with this defense of psychological egoism is that it reduces psychological egoism to a logical necessity; the motive for any action must be that agent's motive—this is logically necessary, for obviously it cannot be someone else's motive. Other psychological egoists argue that what appear to be generous motives are always a front for some hidden self-interested motive. For example, Mother Teresa was really, they claim, motivated by a desire for fame [Page 665]or respect or a desire to get into heaven. The problem with this form of psychological egoism is that there is no reason to believe it is true. It is mere speculation and must always remain so since we can never have access to a person's “genuine” motives. It may be believed mostly by people who are generalizing from their own ungenerous character.

A final form of psychological egoism rests on a confusion regarding the nature of desires and motives. Some psychological egoists argue that whatever selfish or generous desire motivates us, what we really want is the pleasure of satisfying our desire; thus, all human motivation is really self-interested. This misunderstanding was laid to rest in the 18th century by Bishop Joseph Butler and others, who pointed out that a person needs to have generous desires in the first place in order to get any pleasure from satisfying them. They also pointed out that supposing we have a second-order desire to fulfill our desires is redundant and involves an infinite regression.

Ethical Egoism

Ethical egoism is very different from psychological egoism. Ethical egoism is a normative ethical theory that claims that every individual ought to always pursue his or her own self-interest and only his or her own interests. An ethical egoist believes that people should never altruistically pursue the good of others and that people should never make personal sacrifices for an ideal. Ethical egoism is not limited to a person's economic interests but applies equally to all types of interests a person may have, such as family interests, love interests, religious interests, and so on.

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