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How Not to Refute Ethical Egoism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

L. Burkholder
L. Burkholder*
Affiliation:
University of St. Andrew's
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Extract

I wish here to consider a certain type of argument often produced as a refutation of ethical egoism. Such an argument asks us to consider a situation in which the interests of two people conflict. It is then pointed out that the consequence of applying both ethical egoism and some widely accepted conceptual truth concerning the moral words to this situation is in some way ‘absurd’. Ethical egoism is therefore to be rejected. My strategy, in trying to show that this kind of argument is unsound, is this: I will first produce a simple refutation of ethical egoism of my own; I will show why it is unsound; I will try to show that these other arguments fail in the same way.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , June 1974 , pp. 653 - 657
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1974

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References

1 See: Campbell, Richmond ‘A short refutation of ethical egoism’, Canadian journal of Philosophy 2 (1972), pp. 249–254CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baumer, William ‘Indefensible impersonal egoism’, Philosophical Studies 18 (1967), pp. 72–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar (reprinted in a slightly revised version in Problems of Moral Philosophy (Second edition), ed. Taylor, Paul (Encino, Calif.: Dickenson, 1972), pp. 131–134).Google Scholar

2 Something like it is accepted by Campbell, for example (Campbell, p. 250).

3 Kant, foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals,trans. Beck, Lewis White (Indianapolis: Boobs-Merrill, 1959), p. 39.Google Scholar

4 See: Campbell, p. 250-251; Baumer, p. 74-75 (in reprint, p. 132-133).

5 This example is Campbell's (Campbell, p. 251).

6 This is obviously assumed although not made explicit by both Campbell and Baumer. Nothing essential in the argument hangs upon it.

7 Campbell, p. 251.

8 Baumer, p. 74-75 (in reprint, p. 133).