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Ethical egoism can be broadly divided into three categories: individual, personal, and universal. An individual ethical egoist would hold that all people should do whatever benefits "my" (the individual's) self-interest; a personal ethical egoist would hold that they should act in their self-interest, but would make no claims about what anyone else ought to do; a universal ethical egoist would ...
Egoist anarchism or anarcho-egoism, often shortened as simply egoism, is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a 19th-century philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best known exponents of individualist ...
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that "ethical egoism might also apply to things other than acts, such as rules or character traits" but that such variants are uncommon. [2] Furthermore, conditional egoism is a consequentialist form of ethical egoism which holds that egoism is morally right if it leads to morally acceptable ends. [1]
Ethical egoists may act in agreement with commonly accepted moral expectations and benefit other people, for example, by keeping promises, helping friends, and cooperating with others. However, they do so only as a means to promote their self-interest. Ethical egoism is often criticized as an immoral and contradictory position. [77]
Legalism is a Chinese political philosophy that holds that self-interest underlies human nature and therefore human behavior. [1] It is axiomatic in Legalism that a government can not truly be staffed by upright and trustworthy men of service, because every member of the elite—like any member of society—will pursue their own interests and thus must be employed for their interests. [2]
Egotism differs from both altruism – or behaviour motivated by the concern for others rather than for oneself – and from egoism, the constant pursuit of one's self-interest. Various forms of "empirical egoism" have been considered consistent with egotism, but do not – which is also the case with egoism in general – necessitate having an ...
Ethical egoism can be understood as a consequentialist theory according to which the consequences for the individual agent are taken to matter more than any other result. Thus, egoism will prescribe actions that may be beneficial, detrimental, or neutral to the welfare of others.
Some early examples of "selfist" thinking are the egoistic philosophies of Yangism in ancient China and of Cyrenaic hedonism in ancient Greece. Yangists followed the teachings of Yang Zhu and might have been influenced by Taoism. Cyrenaics, founded by Aristippus of Cyrene, were skeptics and materialists (but perhaps nominally Greek pagans).