Modern Ethical Theories - Essay Example

It suggests that all our acts are motivated by our self interest. People act selfishly to promote happiness and foster their self interest. Thomas Hobbes, a believer of psychological egoism, emphasized that people are selfish unconsciously. They do things for their own interest or for their own survival. With this statement, it cancels its real essence if we talk about doing things for others. If we do things for other people, does it always means that we did it for our own interest That's the big argument now.

According to Hinman, there are two interpretations about psychological egoism, it's either people act for selfishness or they act for their own interest. It may sound the same but between these two interpretations, there is a difference. It actually depends upon one's motive or the consequence the person gets doing things for other people. If we intend to do something good for other people, we did it because it satisfies us inside. It rarely happens for a person to act genuinely for it self. They even sometimes hide what's the real them.

Instead, people act apparently in their self-interest. What is more vocal of a person is when it acts for a certain motive. The essence of psychological egoism cancels out when intentions comes in. It falsifies its real meaning if we consciously do something or intend something. If there are two interpretations of psychological egoism there are also two versions of ethi. l to promote one's good, it is essentially never moral not to do so-that is, there may be conditions in which the avoidance of personal interest may be a moral action.

There are personal, individual, and universal ethical egoism. The first implies that a person does only his self interest and disregards the other person's behavior. The individual ethical egoism states that all people should serve my own interest and universal ethical egoism means that all persons should act exclusively for their self-interest. Among the three, the personal ethical egoism is the weakest. This kind of ethical egoism is not recommendable to others for what is important is your own interest.

The strongest among the three is the universal ethical egoism. This states that you should only pursue your self-interest exclusively.Psychological egoism and ethical egoism is two different things. Psychological egoism emphasizes that human beings are selfish in nature. They don't notice it because it is subconscious. In contrast to this, ethical egoism is a kind of egoism which states that a person's action is done by the person's best self-interest. It may harm or benefit others. Ethical egoism is defined by an inherent desire to perform altruistic acts while psychological egoism is defined by inbuilt selfishness of all acts.

Ethical egoism doctrines states that all persons must act to their own interest while the doctrines in psychological egoism stresses that a human's motivation of every voluntary action is a need for humans own happiness. The difference is between fact for psychological egoism and value for ethical egoism.With the two kinds of egoism we have there is a thin line between what is selfish and what self-interest is. We can say that humans are being selfish because we claim for