Psychological Egoism In Landau's The Fundamentals Of Ethics

In Landau’s book, The Fundamentals of Ethics, Chapter seven focuses on psychological egoism. The backbone of this theory is that all human actions are driven by human’s egotistical desires. Landau defends this theory by stating, “Psychological egoism is a theory about human motivation: it tells us that our only motivation is to make ourselves better off.” (Landau 106) This means in order for someone to adopt this theory they must believe that even trivial events that seem very altruistic are in fact somehow spawned from an egotistical mindset. Landau explains, “…altruism—the direct desire to benefit others for their own sake without any ulterior motive—does not exist.” (Landau 91) It is important to understand that psychological egoism is …show more content…
If you are a psychological egoist then you must accept that fact that no one completes actions out of the goodness of their heart—they base their actions on the sole belief that they will get something in return that will benefit them later. While it may be easy to make snide remarks in regards to the actions someone takes some actions people complete seem to be very altruistic. Most people would believe that holding a door open for someone is altruistic; however, psychological egoism explains that the person holding the door open most likely has a “…small desire for praise or popularity…” (Landau 93) and that is why they held the door open. It is easy to comprehend this action as being void of any altruistic motive when thinking about it in that way. Another example would be if a boss comes by an employee’s desk and says that he or she is very covered up in work and would love for that employee to assist with getting the provision finalized. Since the employee does not have anything to do for the evening and they really want to help their boss they agree to stay late. On the surface, this may seem like a meaningless action out of the kindness of their heart, but when examined it is easy to see that the employee may stay to help boost their acceptance by the boss. This employee may have hopes that one day in the future if they need something the boss will remember how great of a worker …show more content…
McClintock stresses the importance of the fact that there are two different forms of psychological egoism—motive egoism and principle egoism. Examples that signify the difference are listed below.
Motive egoism- “Everyone is so constituted by nature that his motive in acting always is to maximize his own