Nice Gals Finish Last: Ethical Egoism

The achievement of his own happiness is man’s highest moral purpose.
AYN RAND, THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS

Children are sometimes brought up to feel guilty for being concerned about their own good. They are taught that self-love is selfishness, a sinful attitude. To do things for oneself is evil.
The proper attitude toward oneself was one of humility and self-effacement. Let’s call this attitude the morality of self-effacement.

Read chapter four for the next meeting--Egoism, Self-Interest,
and Altruism

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xezj7FPddS3dyGF0kbmpF8C4RId_GtCE/view?usp=drive_link

At the opposite extreme is the morality of self-exaltation, or the morality of me-ism, by which we are to love ourselves first. Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness, Robert Ringer’s Looking Out for Number One, advise us to love ourselves first even if it means hurting others.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who taught that we should strive to satisfy our own will to power, even to the extent of exploiting and dominating others before they dominated us:
What is strong wins. That is the universal law. To speak of right and wrong per se makes no sense at all. No act of violence, rape, exploitation, destruction, is intrinsically “unjust,” since life itself is violent, rapacious, exploitative, and destructive and cannot be conceived otherwise.°
Egoism definitions:
1. Psychological Egoism. This is the doctrine that we always do that act that we perceive to be in our own best self-interest. That is, we have no choice but to be selfish.
2. Personal Egoism. This is the state of being selfish by choice. I simply always choose to serve my own best interest, regardless of what happens to anyone else.
3. Individual Ethical Egoism. This is the view that everyone ought to serve my best interest. Unlike personal egoism or phenomenal egotism, this doctrine prescribes that others serve me It also is a version of selfishness, a version that claims moral authority.
4. Universal Ethical Egoism. This is the view that everyone ought always to do those acts that will best serve his or her own best self-interest, even when it conflicts with the interests of others.

A refutation:
The Ayn Rand argument for the virtue of selfishness appears to be flawed by the fallacy of a false dilemma. It simplistically assumes that absolute altruism and absolute egoism are the only alternatives. But this is an extreme view of the matter. There are plenty of options between these two positions. Even a predominant egoist would admit that (analogous to the paradox of hedonism) sometimes the best way to reach self-fulfillment is for us to forget about ourselves and strive to live for goals, causes, or other persons.