Self-interest

Self-interest generally refers to a focus on the needs or desires (interests) of oneself. By extension, it can mean:

• Individualism, a philosophy stressing the worth of individual selves
• Psychological egoism, the view that humans are always motivated by self-interest
• Ethical egoism, the ethical position that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest
• Hedonism, the school of ethics which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good.
  • Epicureanism, a philosophical system related to hedonism
• Enlightened self-interest, a philosophy which states that acting to further the interests of others also serves one's own self-interest
  • Indirect self-interest, any situation in which the interests of others match one's own, so that serving one will lead to serving the other

See also:

• Altruism
• Egoism (disambiguation)
• Interest (disambiguation)
• Self (disambiguation)
• Selfish (disambiguation)