Episode 5: Rupert – Ethical Egoism

Generous Questions

We talk about ethical egoism, which Rupert seems to feel is dismissed a little bit too lightly, and we hear about how he's going to try to defend it. While Rupert’s talking about ethics and about what determines or fixes ethical truths – where they come from – at the same time in the background there are lot of other issues about political philosophy and authority and freedom and the state. I cut some of that discussion out just to help keep this episode focused on a particular subject, but Rupert's made some reading suggestions for you to follow-up, and they cover some of these broader topics.

So, some things for you to explore:

• An introductory / survey article to get started is this one by James Rachels, 'Ethical Egoism', in Shafer-Landau, R (ed.) Ethical Theory: An Anthology.: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 48-53
• This collected volume of papers on the topic comes hotly recommended: David Gauthier (ed.) Morality and Rational Self-Interest. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1970.
• Rupert mentions Sidgwick's 'rational egoism', which is discussed in his 1872 book The Methods of Ethics.
• A slightly more recent piece that comes up in our discussion is by Jesse Kalin (from 1975) "Two Kinds of Moral Reasoning: Ethical Egoism as a Moral Theory". Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 5 (3), pp.323-356. [publisher's link, probably paywalled, consider tweeting it using the hashtag #icanhazpdf and a burner email address on twitter to get hold of a copy]

As ever, please get in touch to send any thoughts, responses, ideas, reactions, feedback or ideas about this episode or any of the others, it's always great to hear from you, particularly if you want to say encouraging things. To drop me a line you can just head over to the contact page, or tweet at me on twitter (@drjoemorrison)

The theme music is from li_serios05 by TVO on Broken20 records under Creative Commons license BY-NC-SA.

A transcript of this conversation is available from the episode website, just go to this episode and click on the button that says 'transcript'. The transcripts for every episode have been beautifully prepared by Becci. Thanks Becci!