Are we, as humans, driven only by psychological egoism?
Bentham had claimed that psychological egoism is natural and universal (Chapter
12-3b) meaning we are mainly interested in our own welfare first and foremost. To
me, this question is rather loaded with a lot of variables that make it a bit
difficult to find a simple answer to.
Going back to the basic statement, before diving in depth
into society aspects of it, I’ll share my own thoughts to answer the question I
posed at the beginning. People seek pleasure for themselves with minimum pain,
is what many philosophers have come to believe. To a degree I think that that
statement is true. We do tend to make decisions, whether subconsciously or not,
that benefit us. Though I don’t believe we are completely driven by our own
psychological egoism. There are people in this world who will sacrifice their
own pleasure, take on the pain, to better someone else’s life.
As a mother, I no longer think about what is best for me. My
children come first and my decisions are to maximize their pleasure with
minimal pain. It can’t be mainly about my desires and not theirs because then I
would fail as a parent. No, in my mind, as I’m sure it is for many other
parents, the pleasure of our children comes before our own no matter the
expense to us it is. As a partner in a serious relationship, it is not purely
about what benefits me. Though I guess in the long run, things could perhaps
benefit me and I cannot consciously see it. Such as my partner is thinking
about joining the military and I can currently only see the pain that will
bring me, however I will be there every step of the way to support my
significant other because it will cause more pleasure for him than his current
situation.
From the standpoint of a society, psychological egoism is
quite a bit different. There are a lot more aspects that go into it. In chapter
12-3b it lists a couple of examples of situations where the benefit to yourself
is more than just the immediate benefit or harm. The one particular example
that stuck out to me is that one may no longer want to pay taxes that support
the school system because either they don’t have children that attend public
schools, or their children are already through with school. So, those people
only see that the taxes paying for the school as negatively impacting
themselves and wanting to get rid of it. However, they do not realize that
without the taxes that go into the schools, there will be less jobs, less
children being educated, which will result in more people needing to be on
welfare and welfare is taken out of everyone’s taxes. So, when it come to the
society point of egoism, there are a lot more aspects to consider if something
is going to bring more pleasure than pain to each individual. Also, when it
comes to the society standpoint, you working toward improving the society, you
must think more about the good for a larger amount of people than just a small
amount, hedonism.