It would be hard to imagine the world that we know today if all of mankind had lived in accordance with the principle that one ought to act only in a manner that promotes one’s best interest. What would have become of hundreds of slaves in the American South in the late nineteenth century had Harriet Tubman reasoned that she stood a much higher chance of avoiding capture and enslavement by leaving others to suffer in bondage instead of risking her own safety and leading them north to freedom? Would the streets of our cities be choked with deprived orphans if there were no generous souls acting not with their own best interests in mind but instead with the welfare and security of the children? It can be reasonably argued that many of the genuinely kind and beneficent acts that this world has seen have been carried out in a generally selfless manner, and anyone convinced of the belief that one’s actions should promote their and only their best interests would have a hard time in denying the positive influences to society as a whole that have come about by said genuinely kind and beneficent acts.
The position held by those who feel that one ought to act only in a manner that promotes one’s best interest is known as Ethical Egoism. Defined by Robert Shaver in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Ethical Egoism claims that it is necessary and sufficient for an action to be morally right that it maximize one’s self-interest. At first thought it might be inferred that there are simply two ways to look at this; either a person does act with the interests of others in mind or they act solely to promote their own best interests. However, this is where the argument becomes more complex and requires a deeper look into what actions can be ...