Talk:Egoism/archive 1

This article is horrible. It's not a true disambiguation. RJII 01:51, 2 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's not an article. Feel free to move it ALL to the subheading "See also:" in Egoism while also leaving Ethical egoism and Psychological egoism here. --Wighson 2005 September 2 (UTC)

Exactly. A disambiguation page disambiguates between different meanings of a term. It doesn't list out topics that may have some relation to the term. RJII 03:14, 2 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You ignored my proposal for compromise. --Wighson 2005 September 2 (UTC)

Ethical egoism is not defined as selfishness. Selfishness implies an impropriety. Look at the definition from Merriam Webster: "concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others." You don't see how that's a POV term? "Excessively" is a moral judgement. Ethical egoism is a normative ethic that says that people are morally obligated to do that which benefits themselves. That's all. Selfishness is very very POV. RJII 03:54, 2 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

And as far as including libertarianis and individualist anarchism, they don't belong because ethical egoism is only one way that someone may justify those philosophies. Most libertarians, in fact, are utilitarians. Trying to explicitly equate Rand with libertarianism is totally bogus. Rand detested libertarians for the very reason that they didn't base their philosophy in the way she did. RJII 03:57, 2 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

And your claim above that "the problem with egoism is it cannot accommodate itself to the existence of others" shows no familiarity on your part with egoism. Ayn Rand for example, advocates that individuals should restrict their actions to those that don't violate the individual liberty of others. If that's not accomodating the existence of others, I don't know what is. RJII 04:00, 2 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

And as far as your claim that "egoism means selfishness" let's have a look at Merriam-Webster: "1 a : a doctrine that individual self-interest is the actual motive of all conscious action b : a doctrine that individual self-interest is the valid end of all actions 2 : excessive concern for oneself with or without exaggerated feelings of self-importance -- compare EGOTISM 2" There you see (1a) is talking about the psychological doctrine and (1b) is talking about the ethical doctrine of egoism ..it's not about "selfishness." But, (2) is the alternative meaning of the term which you may be able to associate with selfishness, but it's clear that that's not talking about the ethical doctrine. Hopefully this clears things up for you. RJII 04:18, 2 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]