Abstract
Many analyses of ethical egoism have the weakness of not distinguishing between ethical egoism and egoism. There is a central difference between the thesis of the former, 'everybody should act in his interest' and the thesis of egoism, 'everybody should act in my interest' . There is no reason why an egoist, characterized by opportunistic behavior, should argue for a controversial theory as ethical egoism at any occasion when others have an adverse opinion. Ethical egoism should be treated as a theory actually suggested and not as the assumed opinion of same opportunistic hypocrites. Ethical egoism should be seen as a suggestion of rule egoism. There are many suggestions why ethical egoism should have fundamental flaws and the major content of this article is to evaluate the strength of these critiques. Do they have a killing bite? Selfcontradiction, incompatibility with human hope, coordination problem and inability to meet the Pareto optimality criterion are same of the accusations. A major problem with much of the criticism is that it takes assumptions of agent neutrality as given condition, but just an assumption deemed to be helpful for competing ethical theories. A common and in my eyes the most reasonable objection is the one I term 'instrumentalist anti-egoism'. It is descriptively in line with much of the analysis of ethical egoism about the conditions in the world, but sees ethics as a countervailing force. The mission of ethics is to agitate against egoism by all possible reasons and arguments. However, I am skeptical also to that objection against ethical egoism and attribute higher value to honesty and realism in ethics. Furthermore, it is reasonable to think that ethical theories that condemn egoism have a stronger link to the opportunistic hypocrite everyone condemns. Is not the best potential of exploitation to tell your fellow man that his duty is to unselfishly serve his neighbor like the one now reminding him of his duties.