Two of the most important and most noble purposes of philosophy are to promote intellectual independence and to awaken the thirst for wisdom. Put simply, philosophy aims to get individuals to think, hopefully to ponder deeply about more fundamental issues than those which occupy most of our everyday lives. A brief examination of the issue of freedom versus determinism helps to define the scope of philosophy and related controversies.
Firstly, let’s look at the use of term selfish. Generally speaking, what most pro-selfishness philosophers call “selfishness,” I would just call self-interestedness. To most people, ’selfishness’ generally refers to acting upon especially greedy, uncompassionate or narcissistic motivations. In contrast, ’self-interestedness’ can simply refer to acting out of one’s own interests, including indirect interests. Many people, including myself, argue that all people are inherently self-interested because, by definition, a person desires and values what he or she desires and values. Those desires and values also develop into goals, and the person makes their decisions in an attempt to most fulfill those desires, values, and goals. While everyone is self-interested, the label ’selfish’ is usually reserved only for people whose interests are more greedy, uncompassionate or narcissistic than other people’s interests.
Now let’s look at the use of the term selfless. Generally speaking, what most pro-selflessness philosophers call “selflessness,” I would just call kindness or compassion. Using the term ’selflessness’ seems to absurdly suggest that an allegedly “selfless” person does not have any desires, values or goals or at least that the person does not try to act out of his or her desires, values or goals at all. But that is probably not what most pro-selflessness philosophers mean. When they call a person “selfless,” they probably just mean that the person has compassionate desires, values and goals, in that the person likes to help other people and other people’s happiness makes the person happy.
In contrast to the misnomer ’selfless,’ referring to such people as kind and compassionate more accurately portrays that the people each have kind and compassionate interests which they each act out as opposed to not having interests or not acting out of their interests.
This process of questioning the very foundations of life takes a certain amount of courage and psychological fortitude. Independence of thought is critical for a free society, and philosophy aims to spur us on to deep thought about the things that matter in life
Resource Author Francisco Rodriguez H.
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