Rational egoism

Rational egoism (also called rational selfishness) is the principle that an action is rational if and only if it maximizes one's self-interest. The view is a normative form of . It is distinct from psychological egoism (according to which people are motivated only to act in their own self-interest) and ethical egoism (that moral agents ought only to do what is in their own self-interest).

Rational egoism was embodied by Russian author Nikolay Chernyshevsky in the 1863 book What Is to Be Done?. Chernyshevsky's standpoint was ultimately socialistic, and was criticised by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in the 1864 book Notes from Underground.

English philosopher Henry Sidgwick discussed rational egoism in his book The Methods of Ethics, first published in 1872. A method of ethics is "any rational procedure by which we determine what individual human beings 'ought' – or what it is 'right' for them – to do, or seek to realize by voluntary action". Sidgwick considers three such procedures, namely, rational egoism, dogmatic intuitionism, and utilitarianism. Rational egoism is the view that, if rational, "an agent regards quantity of consequent pleasure and pain to himself alone important in choosing between alternatives of action; and seeks always the greatest attainable surplus of pleasure over pain".

Sidgwick found it difficult to find any persuasive reason for preferring rational egoism over utilitarianism. Although utilitarianism can be provided with a rational basis and reconciled with the morality of common sense, rational egoism appears to be an equally plausible doctrine regarding what we have most reason to do. Thus we must "admit an ultimate and fundamental contradiction in our apparent intuitions of what is Reasonable in conduct; and from this admission it would seem to follow that the apparently intuitive operation of Practical Reason, manifested in these contradictory judgments, is after all illusory".

The author and philosopher Ayn Rand also discusses a theory that she called 'rational egoism'. She holds that it is both irrational and immoral to act against one's self-interest. Thus, her view is a conjunction of both rational egoism (in the standard sense) and ethical egoism, because according to Objectivist philosophy, egoism cannot be properly justified without an epistemology based on reason:

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