Talk:Egoism

Older discussion
Nb, older discussions from Talk:Egoism (disambiguation) can be found at talk:Egoism/archive 1. older ≠ wiser 12:55, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Untitled
Can someone merge this? ''The behaviour and thinking of an individual centered solely on the aforesaid individual and his/her embetterment. Opposite is altruistic.

Example: Jane wants Sam to help her carry out the garbage. The work is light, as Sam is no wimp and he is not doing anything interesting at the moment. Sam however declines, as he does not see himself profitting in this action. Sam is an egoist.

Egoistic behaviour is very natural to any human buing but, sometimes, there are benefits that escape us. In the example, Sam's profit would be that Jane would like him better and would be more eager to help Sam when he asks. '' from Egoistic

Mgm(talk) 12:53, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

Somebody please add information about this: What is the difference between individualism and egoism?

Juhtolv

Could someone please define what "one's own best interests" is? At least the evolutionary meaning of the word would differ from the opinion of the general public. An evolutionist would say that could be in the interest of the individual to sacrifice her life for two siblings or four cousins. See Hamilton's rule. Filur 04:13, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

"Egoism means extreme selfishness; that is, the total disregard for the consequences of personal actions on others."

I removed this absurdity – it is obviously a very narrow and biased definition of “egoism” that is not appropriate for Wikipedia --GreedyCapitalist 17:44, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * The page you left behind was a trite tract for "ethical egoism" (sic) with all the bias of Friedrich Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, and Max Stirner interwoven. It had no depth either.  Forego the unilateral page erasures.

I'm wondering if would be a good idea to remove the paragraph equating the supposed "pure" egoist to being a "sociopath". Anyone vaguely aware of Stirner would note that being a slave to the predilictions thus described in the definition of a sociopath, would violate one's "owness" and thus you would no longer be an egoist. For the same reasons that being greedy invalidate you as an egoist (you are a slave to ones own appetites), so does wanton recklessness and deceit just for the hell of it. Indulging any appetite to the point in which it represents an abstraction in which to chase is not egoism, and no different than the religious man who chases good for no other reason than to do so.

User:SiberioS

Moreover, most, if not all of the recent changes, are of dubious NPOV. They have a decidedly negative slant, and moreover, mischaracterize ethics (which is a system of rules and guidelines, and not necessarily what one might term as ethical in the traditional sense), talk about Ayn Rand (who was not an egoist, but rather espoused rational self interest, based mostly on a natural rights type framework...the idea of which is contrary to the very definition of egoism), and generally being a simplistic contrast betweene goism and traditional moralities, as opposed to explaining what egoism actually is. If anyone wants to argue with me I have a copy of Stirner's the Ego and It's Own right next to me. User:SiberioS

I flagged this article for NPOV because I don't believe that the recent contributions (for the reasons stated above) are in fact neutral. They violate the sympathetic tone cited in the neutrality topic and make statements that are not only factually unsupportable (the sociopath claim) but also have little or nothing to do with explaining what egoism is (comments about egoism being related to child development, weird diversions into comments about altruism and other religions) and also a habit of conflating morality and ethics (which are both systems of right and wrong) with the contributors personal ethics and morality (my morality could state that killing babies is okay...that would, infact, be MORAL by my system, even if it isn't by yours...morality is the term used for such systems of rules and does not equal, atleast in wikipedia, to christian/western/or socially normative systems of ethics and morality).

User:SiberioS

I removed some of the dubious arguments of NPOV in the article, that were more a criticism of egoism than they were an explanation of them. If you want to make criticism flag the points as such (ie:Christianity criticizes egoism because of x, y, and z") rather than simply incorporating them wholesale into the EXPLANATION of egoism.

User:SiberioS

reworked article
I did a significant reworking of the article. It was a confusing mess that contained profound misunderstandings. The different meanings of the term were not differentiated in the text and one use would be melded with another use in the same sentence. If egoism is going to be talked about it needs to be clear whether you're talking about ethical egoism, psychological egoism, or the colloquial use (egotism). Also, individualism was being confused with libertarianism. Libertarianism is a form of individualism, but not all individualism is libertarianism. It still needs more work though. For example this sentence; "In direct opposition to egoism, Christianity places its golden rule to do unto others as you would have them do unto you." To the contrary, that's an appeal to self-interest. "Do good for others regardless of the effect is has on you" would be in opposition to egoism. RJII 06:55, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Why do we not just remove the article and redirect to the disambiguation? We have an ethical egoism on this page, and then another link to a disambiguation, and then another set of links on both the top and bottom. I suggest redirect it to egoism as disambiguation and just roll the other links on the bottom into the respective seperate entries.SiberioS 16:09, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be a representation of self not as a struggle against others, but against identities such as id and superego. If not, then how is one who subscribes to egoism not someone who is merely full of egocentricity. At least in the psychology definition, I think there needs to be a representation here.

deletion, partial merging
i think the article should be deleted (redirected to Egoism (disambiguation)), an the latter part should be merged with Ethical egoism --Unkn0wn 07:22, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Isn't the Jefferson quotation more or less a circular argument? He writes, "But I consider our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality", and his following statements are based on this loosely-worded premise. Turidoth 05:00, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Egoism v. egotism
These objects of consciousness are not identical. There is no difference between egoism and individualism in the philosophy of Objectivism, which seems to be the only one that purposely differentiates the subjects. See my user page for the Logic, and for a few valuable external reference links. The summation of the logic is that egotism can be either the sub-altern or the contradictory of egoism. Egotists do not always "walk over graves" to get what they want, and egoists never do. CurtisEdward 14:56, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Reference to Libertarianism?
It's not clear to me why the article on Egoism should include a See Also referring to Libertarianism. Can someone explain?

If not, I suggest the removal of that reference. Usuallylogical (talk) 21:38, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Cleaned up
Per instructions on Help:Disambiguation, Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages, Disambiguation and Disambiguation dos and don'ts. Star767 (talk) 20:48, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Please stop reverting me Snowdad, just because I was targeted as "on a mission" on the Philosophy Project page in a post that told others to follow me around
As posted above on this talk page, I worked hard to follow the practices of Disambiguation as well as Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages, and Disambiguation dos and don'ts. There are guidelines on how to format disambiguation pages, and I studied them carefully and followed them. Please do not revert. Star767 (talk) 01:31, 27 March 2013 (UTC)


 * As far as I can see you removed a lot of material that was helpful to any reader.  I'm not at all sure, I don't think you followed the guidelines you mentioned.  Maybe instead of just asserting your position you could explain why those deletions conform with the stated policies?  Snowded  TALK 02:33, 27 March 2013 (UTC)


 * "I'm not at all sure you followed the guidelines" is not a reason to revert. Perhaps you could bestir yourself to actually become familiar with the disambig guidelines before you revert the hard work of others. Disambig pages are not meant to be a directory or an index. There is a specific format they are to follow. Star767 (talk) 03:16, 27 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I've made a change as you obviously are not familiar with a common English phrase.  "I am not at all sure" is very different from "I am not sure".  I have amended the text to make the meaning clear  Snowded  TALK 03:20, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

can someone explain below why Leo Strauss should be on this page - I think the mention of him here is weak, but im not sure
Leo Strauss saw himself as a scholar, and has inspired scholarship. Some of his students however embraced some form of constitutionalism, or communitarianism, or some kind of egocentric embrace of liberal democratic ideals (kind of like Richard Rorty). In his own writings Strauss lost interest in Nietzsche starting when he is 30, though the problem of the death of god remained pivotal to his thought. but the question was how can a liberal democracy survive the death of God, not individuals. libertarianism is perversion to the republican spirit, stinking of decadence. this doesn't mean that Leo Strauss thinks Machiavellian republicanism is good or great, in fact the opposite. as he seems to resent Machiavelli's misreading of the classical political theory tradition. It was Machiavelli who disavowed us of transcendental politics. politics based on higher aspirations. We can not go back to pre modern thought. we know too much. He lived thru the Weimar republic in Germany and loathed how weak and effeminate it was, and crumbled to Nazi power. he worried this can happen anywhere. so that explains the conservativeness. and his turn to great figures and greatness, he gets from alfarabi and Maimonides. but for west coast straussians that's embodied in Tocqueville, and for east coast straussians that would be embodied in Nietzsche's later writing. but is the point egoism, or to generate vibrant liberal democracy, that can renew itself and avoid decay. blending classical and modern thought together. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Riskshelm (talk • contribs) 15:31, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Egoism
English please 112.198.68.55 (talk) 08:51, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Etymology correction
This is an inaccurate or incomplete etymology of the word. I get it that from Latin ego you take the ism from French, but when you want to be called scientific encyclopedia, you need to mention the origin of the word. That is Greek. In Greek ego means I since ancient times. Latin took it from the Greek and then it passed to the modern European languages. Therefore, except if you want to mislead and conceal the history, the word egoism is not derived from French and Latin only... 2A02:587:812F:D00:8553:2F93:D6BD:2D07 (talk) 16:05, 22 April 2023 (UTC)