Introduction. Egoism is derived from ego, a Latin word that means “I” in English (Moseley, 2011). Egoism is the obsession of self-importance and considering one-self the most important person. People are motivated by self-interests and own desires and therefore want the best in their life whether they deserve it or not. Egoism is also a form of complex that is mostly the inferiority complex. Philosophically, egoism is the theory that one individual himself is the motivation and he himself is the goal. In simple words, egoism is the over-evaluation of one-self about himself. People who do not care for interests of others and only of their own are obsessed with high sense of egoism.
- Are people generally selfish? People are generally selfish and they act in their own interest most of the times, however, there are exceptions where people place humanity above the self-interest. For example, an individual who has got a chance to excel in his personal career will never quit a career opportunity for someone who is needy and hard-pressed for the job. He may be his best friend, a close relative or even a brother. The reason is that everyone is selfish for himself and gives himself the top priority over others.
- Does universal ethical egoism acts in self-interest? Universal ethical egoism is inconsistent due to the fact that it varies with the individuals as all humans are not alike. Ethical egoism will not allow moral agents to damage the interests of others while taking care of his own interest (MacKinnon, 2013. One cannot expect an equal response to the same situation from different people. Internal contradiction between group interest and self-interest is natural as people would always keep their self-interest at higher priority, but sometimes there may be exception in case individual interests are not being harmed.
Conclusion. Egoism is a big personality miss and a person with self-ego will always put his personal interests above the interests of others. Egoism brings out the bad of a person and damages the personality of the person.
References
MacKinnon, B. (2013). Ethics: Theory and contemporary issues, Concise Edition (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Chapter 3: Egoism
Alexander Moseley. (2011) Egoism. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A Peer-Reviewed Academic Resource.
