Project Director

Plaisted, Dennis

Department Examiner

Ribeiro, Brian

Department

Dept. of Philosophy and Religion

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

It is a common critique of moral theories focused on the agent that they are selfish and immoral. Selfish here typically carries a negative connotation. Morality is supposed to show how we ought to treat people outside of ourselves; and this is true to a degree. But so often it seems, at least to me, that the more “selfless” moral theories seem to forget that the agent is as deserving of the good as those that the agent interacts with are. Egoism, broadly, reverses this and places the agent at the forefront of ethical decision-making. Unfortunately, this has historically led to theories that are perceived as harmful, immoral, and sentimentally repugnant. These reactions to concepts such as hedonistic egoism, psychological egoism, etc are understandable, and I agree with them much of the time. Nonetheless, I maintain that there is a version of Egoism that gets past these personal objections and triumphs as a positive ethical theory.

Degree

B. A.; An honors thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Arts.

Date

5-2020

Subject

Egoism

Keyword

Common Morality; Ethical Egoism; Flourishing Egoism;

Discipline

Ethics and Political Philosophy

Document Type

Theses

Extent

ii, 43 leaves

DCMI Type

Text

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Download

Share

COinS