Egoism a deux

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Chapter Four

Myself or Others?

I f there has ever been a moment when you have found yourself engaged in discuss- ing a philosophical theory, your topic may well have been psychological egoism. Per- haps late at night, after a party, the die-hards were gathered out on the patio or in the kitchen, and somebody brought up the subject of selfi shness, claiming that all acts are selfi sh, or as a character put it in a sitcom, “There are no self-less good deeds.” (You’ll fi nd the sitcom episode at the end of this chapter.) Perhaps you wanted to argue against that view but found yourself at a loss for words because the theory seemed to be disturbingly right. All of a sudden, everything seemed selfi sh! Psycho- logical egoism is a theory that haunts us from time to time—most of us don’t want to believe that everything we do is always selfi sh. And, as you’ll see in the course of the chapter, we need not buy into the theory, because it has severe fl aws. Nevertheless, it has been a seductive and persuasive theory since the days of Socrates, and in this chapter we’ll take a closer look at what it entails. We usually assume that moral behavior, or “being ethical,” has to do with not being overly concerned with oneself. In other words, selfi shness is assumed to be an unacceptable attitude. Even among scholars, though, there is disagreement about what constitutes ethical behavior. Since very early in Western intellectual history, the viewpoint that humans aren’t built to look out for other people’s interests has surfaced regularly. Some scholars even hold that proper moral conduct consists of “looking out for number one,” period. Those viewpoints are known as psychological egoism and ethical egoism, respectively. Both psychological egoism and ethical egoism are examples of absolutist theories; they hold that only one code is the norm for ethi- cal behavior. (See Box 4.1 for an explanation of the difference between egoism and egotism. )

Psychological Egoism: What About the Heroes?

You’ll remember our discussion in Chapter 1 about good and evil. On the day of the massacre on the Virginia Tech campus—April 16, 2007—thirty-two students were killed and twenty-one wounded by Seung-Hui Cho, who then killed himself—to date, the worst mass murder in U.S. history. Apparently, Cho, a resident alien stu- dent with noticeable mental health problems, had chosen his victims at random; he had apparently had no particular grudges against or confrontations with any particu- lar person but took out his self-absorbed anger on professors and students who, in his mind, led a more satisfying life than he did, according to the videos he sent to the media in between two shooting sprees. Many more students would have died had it

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172 CHAPTER 4 MYSELF OR OTHERS?

not been for the heroic efforts of their fellow students who barricaded doors to class- rooms with desks and even with their own bodies. But perhaps the story that most of us remember is that of Liviu Librescu, a professor of aeronautical engineering. Originally from Romania, Librescu was a Holocaust survivor who had immigrated to Israel, and then to the United States, and was still teaching at age 76. When Cho tried to force his way into Librescu’s classroom, Librescu blocked the door with his body so that all the students in his class could escape out the window; the last stu- dent leaving saw Librescu shot and killed by the shooter. He gave his life to save his students, knowing full well the scope of evil that human beings can infl ict on one another—and the day of his death, April 16, was Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel. And as many have observed, during times of great need there will often be ordinary people standing up and doing extraordinary things to help others. Some- times they live through it, sometimes they perish. During the terrorist attacks of 9/11 police offi cers and fi refi ghters died, going far beyond their professional duties to help others survive. At Ft. Hood in 2010, Army civilian police offi cers Kimberly Munley and Mark Todd managed to shoot and disable the gunman Nidal Hasan before more people were killed, and Munley herself was seriously wounded, but recovered. (What hasn’t been extensively publicized is that neither of them had their four-year contracts with the Army renewed.) And on the other side of the world (from an American perspective), in Japan in 2011 more than 300 workers at the Fukushima nuclear plant, admiringly known as the Fukushima 50, elected to stay in the damaged plant, working nonstop in shifts, sometimes standing in radioactive water, trying to prevent an even greater disaster of a meltdown of all three reactors after the earthquake and tsunami, with a near certainty of sooner or later developing health problems related to excess radiation. The news media have used the term “heroes” about such people, and most of us would agree: Risking, and in some cases giving one’s life to save others, especially when one is aware of the danger, is something we generally consider to be heroic and admirable. And that is why the theory of psychological egoism is disturbing for many of us, since it calmly dismisses the act of someone such as Librescu as an expression

The terms egoism and egotism are part of our ev- eryday speech, and people often use them inter- changeably, but do they really mean the same thing? No: Egoists are people who think in terms of their own advantage, generally by disregard- ing the interests of others. Egotists are people who have a very high self-opinion and whose

language often consists of self-praise; praise an egotist for a good result on a test or for looking nice, and you might receive responses such as “Of course I did well—I always do, because I’m very smart” or “Nice? I look great!” An egoist need not fall into this pattern, although he or she might, of course, be an egotist as well.

Box 4.1 E G O I S M O R E G O T I S M ?

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PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM: WHAT ABOUT THE HEROES? 173

of fundamentally selfi sh human nature. This means that even the person with the most stellar reputation for unselfi shness must be reevaluated. From Mother Teresa to Martin Luther King, Jr., from Librescu and the students at Virginia Tech, to Offi cers Todd and Munley, the Fukushima workers, and countless other brave people in- cluding local heroes that the world generally will never hear of, all of them are now reclassifi ed as selfi sh, including ourselves, of course. But what could possibly be selfi sh about acts of self-sacrifi ce? Well, says the psychological egoist, since we are all selfi sh, then the motivation might be any one of a number of things: A person who sacrifi ces himself or herself for others might have a wish to become famous, or might want to atone for something he or she had left undone in a previous situation, or might simply want to feel good about himself or herself. Or perhaps it is simply an unconscious urge. Stories about people who have risked and even lost their lives to save others, stories that seem to exemplify selfl essness, are precious to most people, because they show us what we might be capable of. We like to believe that humans have a built- in measure of courage that allows us to rise to the occasion and give up our lives, or at least our comfort, for others. Of course, few people perform heroic deeds with the intent of getting killed, but if they lose their lives in the process, we only seem to admire them more. (There are those who feel that losing one’s life for someone else

At the Ft. Hood massacre in 2010, military psychiatrist Nidal Hasan man- aged to kill thirteen people and wound thirty-two others before he was shot and disabled by Army civilian police offi cers Kimberly Munley and Mark Todd. Munley herself was seriously wounded, but she recovered.