Ethnical Egoism and Utilitarianism

本文主要探究的是民族利己主义和功利主义的paper范文。随着社会经济的日益发达，道德问题已成为人们道德生活中不可获缺的一部分。文章主要从民族利己主义和功利主义进行分析辩论，进一步得出其影响是有利也有弊。
Introduction
Increasingly developed is the whole society so that it has now been a moral one and larger and larger is the number of human beings that have realized the importance of morality for daily life, nowadays it has been an inevitable trend for each and every one of us to know clearly about several moral theories so as to implement the essence of morality in practice. The aforementioned moral theories can roughly be divided into the following ones: ethical egoism, utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, social contract theory (contractarianism), ethics of care, virtue ethics and other moral theories like that. There is no doubt that the comparison and contrast of those moral theories can help human beings better understand the relationship of those theories so as to contribute to the establishment of the moral society more or less in the end. The following will be the comparison of ethical egoism and utilitarianism, hoping that human beings will have a clear idea about those two moral theories and in the meantime know what the better choice is for them when they are confronted with a certain kind of ethnical problem.
Or maybe it can be put in another way that ethnical egoism is a wiser choice for human beings whenever it comes to the idea of the formation of ethnical collective sense of honor and sense of belonging when compared with utilitarianism. In order to justify such opinion, several papers have been looked through and some of them are just to the point, as will be elaborately discussed in the below.
Ethnical Egoism and Utilitarianism
First and foremost comes the analysis of these two kinds of moral theories as will be an inevitable precondition if the comparison and contrast of they two would like to be implemented. It can be easy to understand in that only when the main tenets and definition of these two moral theories have been got across to can the comparison and contrast of them be successfully carried out so as to contribute to the smooth tackling of the ethnical problems. And during this process, reasons will be given for rationally preferring one of the theories over the other, which may make it seem more convincing and more comprehensive. Detailed speaking, ethnical egoism is the normative ethical position that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest. [1] And utilitarianism holds that a moral agent should treat one’s self (also known as the subject) with no higher regard than one has for others (as egoism does, by evaluating self-interests and “the self” to a status not granted to others). [4]
From the perspective of ethnical egoism, each and every person that is within the same ethnic tend to act and perform with their own ethnic’s interest taking into consideration and will not do anything that may endanger the existence of their ethnic under whatever situations. In Epley’s paper, it states that human beings that are with a collective sense of honor and sense of belonging to a certain ethnic tend to get along well with other people that are of the same ethnic as them. [2] Why people that are of the same ethnic can really get along well with other people in the same ethnic as them is that they regard those people as their family members and will always treat them with respect and forgiveness no matter what happens. And in this paper, the author has also mentioned that why people can behave in that way is that they are under the guidance of ethnical egoism. Or maybe it can be explained as that ethnical egoism can be seen as a theoretical support for human beings’ having an ethnical complex and they can always behave for what will benefit to the whole country.
Also, in Szolnoki’s paper, it explains that the ethnical collective sense of honor can at all time unconsciously encourage people to put themselves into the shoes of the whole ethnic and can even sometimes do something that are out of their own normal ability. [7] We can have a fair knowledge that each and every person will make their own potential to the full play when they hold that their own ethnic will be at stake so that they will try their best to help it out of that dilemma. It is apparent that their efforts made to the whole ethnic will later contribute more or less to their own personal development in the long run. So it can easily be understood that human beings will be hard-working and take no notice of the pains they take during the process of winning honor for their own ethnic. As for them, as long as they can win honor for their own ethnic, what they have performed in the past can all be neglected but instead they will feel proud of themselves for what they have performed for the whole ethnic.
Apart from the above, someone’s paper has concretely gives out the divisions of the presenting ways of ethnical egoism, one being the ethnical collective sense of honor and the other being the ethnical sense of belonging. Speaking of the ethnical sense of belonging, what is a must to refer to is that only when human beings realize that they belong to a certain ethnic will they take responsibility for whatever they are engaged in as may matter more or less to their own ethnic. And we can normally imagine that once people would like to take responsibility for a certain matter, then they will have to deal with all the difficulties that they may encounter. When they desire to solve the difficulties, they have to face them directly at the first beginning and brain their minds to figure out what the best method is for them to successfully figure out those dilemmas.
While in Weibel’s paper, it has described a phenomenon of an ethnic that are full of people that are with no the ethnical sense of belonging, in which human beings do not seem to have the opinion of a group. [8] Therefore all the people within the ethnic tend to be indifferent to whatever happens in their ethnic and they just consider those issues none of their own business. While on the other hand, they just pay attention to what they need to do and just do it out of their own interest will be ok enough. It can be predicted that such ethnic can not last forever as they do not have the support of human beings within the ethnic as those people are the primary contributing force for the establishment of a strong ethnic. And what this ethnic whose people are without collective sense of honor and sense of belonging will meet is that it will be put into a situation to separate sooner or later.
The most impressive one is Rachels’ paper, in which it tells us that the ethnical egoism is necessary for the existence of ethnical characteristics as are different for different ethnics. [6] The existence of ethnical characteristics can make the whole nation be attractive in a way or another and can help the whole nation develop better and better in the globalized world so that its comprehensive strength can be bigger and bigger when compared with other nations in which the ethnics do not have ethnical egoism as base. And the reason why ethnical characteristics will be existent under the effect of ethnical egoism is that when human beings are endowed with ethnical collective sense of honor and sense of belonging, then they will tend to cooperate with other people that are in the same ethnic as them and gradually form their exclusive ethnical characteristics. In this way, human beings can make their own ethnic known to other people due to those exclusive ethnical characteristics that have step by step formed in the daily exchanges and communications.
If it is in the way around, an ethnic that is with no ethnical egoism so it is with no ethnical characteristics may seemingly be kind of boring and with no dynamics to a certain degree. It is a common scene that all the ethnics within the same nation seem to be the same or similar as others so that they do not seem to be special for others. We can easily imagine that human beings within this ethnic tend to hold no curiosity toward what will happen to them in the approaching days as they know that what follows the next day will just be the same as the day before. In this way, they may lose enthusiasm toward their future life and just live every day with no particular energy. If such condition continues for a long time, then all the human beings will be endangered and they may not create their own promising future as they just pass days as if they are years.
However, when taken from the perspective of utilitarianism, human beings will only act for the issues that can make them benefit more or less from within but will not take any regard of which ethnic they are involved in. In this case, people will develop to be more and more selfish and the whole ethnic will stop to develop as no one within is willing to contribute themselves to the development of it. What is worse, if such case lasts for a long period, the whole ethnic may be at stake and it needs to be separated at the final last.
In Krister’s paper, it pitifully gives out an example that a person from this ethnic even betrays his own ethnic to transfer information of his own ethnic to other ethnics in order for personal benefits, which has in the end led to his own ethnic being mistreated by other ethnics. [3] We can have a fair knowledge that the ethnic’ being bullied will to a certain degree influence the daily life and happy index so that all the ones within this ethnic will suffer more or less just due to that guy’s selfishness and utilitarianism. Furthermore, this paper has also given out other examples of disadvantages of utilitarianism for the whole ethnic as it is a moral theory that pays attention only to the individual but not regards the whole ethnic as an indivisible group.
Apart from this, Moore’s paper lists out a number of disputes that appear among people of the same ethnic, some of which just appear as those people do not have the sense of belonging to their own ethnic. [5] The author tells us that as human beings do not consider other people in the same ethnic as their own family members and they do not know that they should respect others and treat them in a mild way. What they know is to try their best to gain the highest profit for themselves in whatever way, which will certainly cause disputes with others in a way or another.
Conclusion
To sum up, it is easy to find that ethnical egoism is a wiser choice for human beings to take if they would like to cultivate a collective sense of honor and sense of belonging within their own ethnic when compared with utilitarianism. But what has to be mentioned is that it is hard for human beings to completely avoid the influence of utilitarianism. Thus what human beings should do is to bear in their mind that they should at all time control well of the degree of utilitarianism or apply the ethnical egoism and utilitarianism at the same time.
But what should be noted is that this paper still has some limitations and delimitations that should be kept in mind. The first defect is that the detailed measurement for the comparison and contrast is only evaluated by the author, which may undoubtedly involve much subjective coincidence and accidence and will surely affect the effect of the results somehow. Another shortcoming is the comparatively sample size of the papers being looked through due to the restriction of conditions and the constraints of time limit.
Therefore, future research and continued investigation is recommended to be implemented to further explore the findings of this paper at the precondition of choosing a greater number of papers at various levels by careful sampling and expanding the time for conducting the research in hope to uncover additional in-depth and inclusive findings to this present preliminary research.
References
1.Attlee, Charles M. 1928. Egoism. The Monist, 38(4), pp 549-568.
2.Epley, Nicholas. 2006. When perspective taking increases taking: reactive egoism in social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(5), pp 872-889.
3.Krister, Bykvist. 2009. Utilitarianism. London: Continuum International Publishing. Print.
4.Mill, John Stuart. 2004. Utilitarianism. Project Gutenberg. Print.
5.Moore, G. E. 2005. Utilitarianism. Oxford University Press. Print.
6.Rachels, James. 1978. Can the egoist have it in both ways? Philosophia, 8(2), pp 425-428.
7.Szolnoki, Attila. 2013. Coexistence of fraternity and egoism for spatial social dilemmas. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 317, pp 126-132.
8.Weibel, Christian. 2014. Completed egoism and intended altruism boost healthy food choices. Apptite, 77, pp 38-45.