Relation to others· Bonds
Ethical egoism
Axis: Self-interest and others — What place should we give our own interest next to that of others?
Each person ought to pursue their own interest and belong to themselves: self-sacrifice for others is not a virtue but a form of alienation. A successful life is built on self-affirmation, not renunciation.
Philosophers 5
Nietzscheexplicit
Nietzsche treats pity and altruism as values of decadence, hostile to life, and opposes to the morality of devotion the self-affirmation of the strong type. The objection against the ideal of self-sacrifice runs through his whole work, even if he advocates not vulgar egoistic calculation but the flourishing of one's own power.
The Antichrist, §2 and §7 · On the Genealogy of Morality, Preface, §5
Spinozaexplicit
Seeking one's own advantage is the very foundation of virtue, but advantage rightly understood, guided by reason, leads man to seek what he has in common with others: nothing is more useful to man than man. Enlightened thus converges on concord, without becoming disinterested altruism.
Ethics, IV, prop. 18, scholium (seeking one's advantage, the foundation of virtue) · Ethics, IV, prop. 35, corollary (nothing more useful to man than man)
Show inferred positions (3)
Epicurusinferable
The starting point is each person's pursuit of his own happiness, which seems egoistic; but friendship, born of utility, becomes for Epicurus the greatest of the goods that wisdom procures and a thing sought for its own sake. Of all that wisdom provides for the blessedness of the whole life, much the greatest is friendship: self-interest rightly understood thus blossoms into a disinterested bond.
Principal Doctrines, XXVII (friendship, the greatest of goods) · Vatican Sayings, 23 and 39 (friendship sought for its own sake)
Benthaminferable
Bentham takes it as a fact that everyone is moved by self-interest, the pursuit of one's own pleasure and the avoidance of one's own pain: a psychological egoism. Yet the moral criterion demands aiming at the happiness of the greatest number: how can a naturally self-interested motive ground a requirement of impartiality? The whole art of the legislator lies in arranging the sanctions so that private interest coincides with the general interest. The norm thus leans toward the altruism of an impartial count, against a backdrop of naturally self-interested motive.
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. III (the four sanctions)
Michel de Montaigneinferable
The exceptional friendship with La Boétie, where "because it was he, because it was I" the two souls merge, shows a Montaigne capable of the most entire gift of self. But his ordinary wisdom preaches "husbanding oneself", keeping a "back shop" of one's own and not lending oneself to others to the point of getting lost in them. Neither egoism nor unreserved devotion: a just distance, giving itself fully where the bond is rare and withdrawing everywhere else.
Essays, I, 28, "Of Friendship" and III, 10
Characters 1
Calliclesexplicit
His principle is that each should pursue their own advantage and that the superior man is right to have more (): to content oneself with an equal share, when one is worth more, is the mark of a slave. Self-sacrifice and moderation are the values by which the weak tame the strong.
Plato, Gorgias, 483c-d · Plato, Gorgias, 490a-491d