Ethical egoism
is a consequentialist moral theory. A consequentialist moral
theory, says that an action is good if it brings about the best
consequences for all persons involved. Ethical egoism says that an
action is morally correct if it is in accordance with a persons
self-interest. In other words, an action is good if it brings about
the best outcome for a person. Ethical egoism is a normative
statement, meaning as a society this is how we should act. There
are two major categories of ethical egoism, act and rule. Act
egoism determines whether a certain action will produce the most
good for an individual. While rule egoism looks at specific rules
that if a person followed, would be in that persons best interest
(Vaughn). However, the actions or rules that ethical egoism follows
at times may not be in their best interest. There may be situations
that the most good can be accomplished only by performing an
immoral act. In such cases, the theory would then condone for a
person to steal, rape, or murder to promote what is in that
persons best-interest. As a result, ethical egoism contradicts our
moral judgments, because promoting ones own interest, at the cost
of harming another
humanbeing should
not be the only consideration to determining what is morally
correct (Vaughn).
Although ethical egoism says we ought to act in our own
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Psychological
egoism is not a normative claim, but is a descriptive theory that
says people are able to perform only self-interested acts that are
beneficial themselves. If this is true then there can be no such
thing as altruistic acts. People then do not have the ability to be
selfless; because they are always something to be gained that is
otherwise self-serving. However, this has not been proven to be
decisively true, there are people that seem to do things that are
in the best interest of other people without first seeking
self-gratification (Vaughn,
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