Thomas Hobbes and Egoism in Essay

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Therefore, the welfare of others cannot be relevant to judging what one ought to do. This is a very interesting argument, but it does not establish its conclusion. Although it may be that every human being has a right to preserve his own life, one would like some evidence in support of this key premise. Even if there is a human right to self-preservation, it does not follow that it is always right for a human being to preserve his own life. That someone has a right to do something does not necessarily imply that his act of doing it is right, for one can have a right that one ought not to exercise (von Hayek, 23). For example, one may have a right to free speech when one ought not to speak freely because this is not the time or the place; one may have a right to demand that he be repaid when it would be wrong to force a husband with a sick wife to give up the money at the moment (Hill, 34). Thus the soldier or pilot may have a right to save his own skin even though he ought to sacrifice himself for the welfare of others.

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But even if one never is under an obligation to sacrifice oneself for others, it may not be true that the welfare of others is completely irrelevant. The assumption of Hobbes' argument is that in extreme cases the welfare of others may outweigh the welfare of the agent by so great an amount as to require the agent to lay down his life. But if life is so very precious, then this situation never occurs.

One can always justify the act of self-preservation, no matter how great the interests of others, by ascribing sufficient value to the agent's life. Therefore, this appeal to the supposed right of self-preservation does not prove that ethical egoism is correct. Probably the strongest argument for ethical egoism is the fact that self-regarding reasons seem to be ultimate in a way that other-regarding reasons are not.

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