Talk:Egoism
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Could someone please define what "one's own best interests" is? At least the evolutionary meaning of the word would differ from the opinion of the general public. An evolutionist would say that could be in the interest of the individual to sacrifice her life for two siblings or four cousins. See Hamilton's rule. Filur 04:13, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
Can someone merge this?
The behaviour and thinking of an individual centered solely on the aforesaid individual and his/her embetterment. Opposite is altruistic.
Example: Jane wants Sam to help her carry out the garbage. The work is light, as Sam is no wimp and he is not doing anything interesting at the moment. Sam however declines, as he does not see himself profitting in this action. Sam is an egoist.
Egoistic behaviour is very natural to any human buing but, sometimes, there are benefits that escape us. In the example, Sam's profit would be that Jane would like him better and would be more eager to help Sam when he asks. from Egoistic
Mgm|(talk) 12:53, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
Somebody please add information about this: What is the difference between individualism and egoism?
"Egoism means extreme selfishness; that is, the total disregard for the consequences of personal actions on others."
I removed this absurdity – it is obviously a very narrow and biased definition of “egoism” that is not appropriate for Wikipedia --GreedyCapitalist 17:44, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- The page you left behind was a trite tract for "ethical egoism" (sic) with all the bias of Friedrich Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, and Max Stirner interwoven. It had no depth either. Forego the unilateral page erasures.
I'm wondering if would be a good idea to remove the paragraph equating the supposed "pure" egoist to being a "sociopath". Anyone vaguely aware of Stirner would note that being a slave to the predilictions thus described in the definition of a sociopath, would violate one's "owness" and thus you would no longer be an egoist. For the same reasons that being greedy invalidate you as an egoist (you are a slave to ones own appetites), so does wanton recklessness and deceit just for the hell of it. Indulging any appetite to the point in which it represents an abstraction in which to chase is not egoism, and no different than the religious man who chases good for no other reason than to do so.
User:SiberioS
Moreover, most, if not all of the recent changes, are of dubious NPOV. They have a decidedly negative slant, and moreover, mischaracterize ethics (which is a system of rules and guidelines, and not necessarily what one might term as ethical in the traditional sense), talk about Ayn Rand (who was not an egoist, but rather espoused rational self interest, based mostly on a natural rights type framework...the idea of which is contrary to the very definition of egoism), and generally being a simplistic contrast betweene goism and traditional moralities, as opposed to explaining what egoism actually is. If anyone wants to argue with me I have a copy of Stirner's the Ego and It's Own right next to me. User:SiberioS
I flagged this article for NPOV because I don't believe that the recent contributions (for the reasons stated above) are in fact neutral. They violate the sympathetic tone cited in the neutrality topic and make statements that are not only factually unsupportable (the sociopath claim) but also have little or nothing to do with explaining what egoism is (comments about egoism being related to child development, weird diversions into comments about altruism and other religions) and also a habit of conflating morality and ethics (which are both systems of right and wrong) with the contributors personal ethics and morality (my morality could state that killing babies is okay...that would, infact, be MORAL by my system, even if it isn't by yours...morality is the term used for such systems of rules and does not equal, atleast in wikipedia, to christian/western/or socially normative systems of ethics and morality).
User:SiberioS
I removed some of the dubious arguments of NPOV in the article, that were more a criticism of egoism than they were an explanation of them. If you want to make criticism flag the points as such (ie:Christianity criticizes egoism because of x, y, and z") rather than simply incorporating them wholesale into the EXPLANATION of egoism.
User:SiberioS
[edit] reworked article
I did a significant reworking of the article. It was a confusing mess that contained profound misunderstandings. The different meanings of the term were not differentiated in the text and one use would be melded with another use in the same sentence. If egoism is going to be talked about it needs to be clear whether you're talking about ethical egoism, psychological egoism, or the colloquial use (egotism). Also, individualism was being confused with libertarianism. Libertarianism is a form of individualism, but not all individualism is libertarianism. It still needs more work though. For example this sentence; "In direct opposition to egoism, Christianity places its golden rule to do unto others as you would have them do unto you." To the contrary, that's an appeal to self-interest. "Do good for others regardless of the effect is has on you" would be in opposition to egoism. RJII 06:55, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
Why do we not just remove the article and redirect to the disambiguation? We have an ethical egoism on this page, and then another link to a disambiguation, and then another set of links on both the top and bottom. I suggest redirect it to egoism as disambiguation and just roll the other links on the bottom into the respective seperate entries.SiberioS 16:09, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit] deletion, partial merging
i think the article should be deleted (redirected to Egoism (disambiguation)), an the latter part should be merged with Ethical egoism --Unkn0wn 07:22, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Isn't the Jefferson quotation more or less a circular argument? He writes, "But I consider our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality", and his following statements are based on this loosely-worded premise. Turidoth 05:00, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Egoism v. egotism
These objects of consciousness are not identical. There is no difference between egoism and individualism in the philosophy of Objectivism, which seems to be the only one that purposely differentiates the subjects. See my user page for the Logic, and for a few valuable external reference links. The summation of the logic is that egotism can be either the sub-altern or the contradictory of egoism. Egotists do not always "walk over graves" to get what they want, and egoists never do. CurtisEdward 14:56, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
