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Psychological Egoism Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Norman J. Brown
Norman J. Brown
Affiliation:
Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario
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Extract

Psychological egoism is, I suppose, regarded by most philosophers as one of the more simple-minded fallacies in the history of philosophy, and dangerous and seductive too, contriving as it does to combine cynicism about human ideals and a vague sense of scientific method, both of which make the ordinary reader feel sophisticated, with conceptual confusion, which he cannot resist. For all of these reasons it springs eternal, in one form or another, in the breasts of first-year students, and offers excellent material for their philosophy instructors, who like nothing better than an edifice of sturdy appearance but with rotten foundations on which to display their skill as demolition experts.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 54 , Issue 209 , July 1979 , pp. 293 - 309
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1979

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References

1 Throughout this paper I use the term ‘egoism’ to refer to some type of psychological (occasionally philosophical) theory, and ‘egotism’ as the name of a trait of character.

2 A distinction borrowed from ‘Desire, Action and the Good’, by Bond, E. J., American Philosophical Quarterly, 16 No 101 1979, 53–59.Google Scholar

3 Lonergan, Bernard, whose great work ‘Insight’ (Longmans, Green & Company, 1957)Google Scholar is not as well known as it deserves, may be said to have rethought Thomism in the light of modern science in much the same way as Thomas rethought Aristotelianism in the light of Christian belief. My own thought on epistemology has been so much influenced by Lonergan that a reference here is inescapable; but the theory sketched here is only a skeletal outline of Lonergan's nuanced account.

4 I am grateful to my colleagues Professors E. J. Bond and A. R. C. Duncan for criticisms of earlier drafts of this paper.