Question One
The tendencies being referred to are the tendencies of human beings to care, help and support each other. Human beings have emotions and are self conscious. They have love for each other and will find it ethical to be concerned about each other. It is true that human beings and other apes have the capacity to be concerned about others. Apes and man belong to the same classification of primates. They have a well developed and high intelligent quotient that they find it logical to be caring about fellow humans or apes. They are all social animals, living as a community.
Question Two
Psychological egoism refers to the psychological or mental feeling of superiority to other people. Psychological egoistic people usually feel they are more intelligent than other people. Psychological egoism is good because it makes people be evaluative, thinkers, cautious and comprehensive in what they do or say. These people will want to do things correctly and, therefore, will seek the right kind of information when they are required.
However, psychological egoism is detrimental because individuals will feel to be so knowledgeable even when they do not know anything. These people become selfish, proud and uncooperative to society. This is adverse to society development and individual values.
Question Three
Ethical egoism is a concept that concentrates on peoples’ egos and how they affect ethics of the society. Ethically, human beings are expected to be good to each other and be social. Therefore, they should do things that affect others positively in order to get similar treatment in return. This approach is very efficient because it helps in cutting down on the egoistic instances, where some people mistreat others. It encourages equality and coexistence in society. However, this approach may be detrimental because, for those people who are egoistic, it will imply that they also receive egoistic responses. This will lead to many egoistic individuals in society which will be bad for ethics and society as a whole.
Question Four
The theory of the selfish gene suggests that human beings or animals always care about themselves more than they care about others. However, this selfishness can be to the good of others. This is altruistic behavior where human beings or animals cater for their interests by helping others. Other humans motivate them. This is not a sufficient explanation because selfish people will not cater for the interests of other people. Midgley’s argument is equally not persuasive because it can not apply in real life situations.
Question Five
Rand’s suggestion that altruism leads to low self esteem and respect is wrong. Selfless people are confident in helping others. Those who are helped will definitely respect the people who assisted them in their hard times.
Question Six
Rand criticizes ideal altruism because she argues that selfless people have low self esteem and no respect. Her assumption is that selfless people do not get anything in return. She does not differentiate between the two since her assumption is that you do not get anything in return. She does not touch on reciprocal altruism.
Question Seven
If that quote was put into practice, the world would be a place full of proud, selfish and cruel people. Social coexistence would be hard because people would only help the people they know and love. Politically there would be a lot of favoritism and nepotism in the political scene since leaders’ agendas will not be in the interest of the public but of their own interest.
Question Eight
Chapter 5 is about maximizing utility. With this chapter in mind, Rand would have argued that people should help everyone they come across if that makes them happy. In this case, people would help any other person, stranger or no stranger for their own good.
Question Nine
Rand would argue that arrogant people act so because they feel they can never need help from other people. He could suggest that these egoistic people were brought up in wrong environments where social ethics were not prioritized. Furthermore, he could suggest that the egoists have been corrupted by the civilization.
Reference
Rosenstand, N. (2008). The Moral of the Story: An Introduction to Ethics (6, illustrated ed.). London: McGraw-Hill.
