You see, people are the same too. Ah, here again there are differences. And the differences have further ramifications, for I cannot take a position on the importance of the self without formulating a view of the role of others. Hence, an apparently innocuous universal quickly brings in its trail a host of philosophical issues. The oldest and most enduring threat to any ethical code which values treating others well is the prospect of egoism, the position that all behavior is done for the sake of the agent s own expected benefit.
People commit crimes in order to get the things they want.
It is even significant that those of you who find yourselves uncomfortable with this suggestion must first entertain the possibility that your discomfort is not a matter of rational conviction of the falsity of egoism, but simply a victory of embarrassment over nerve. Belief in altruism may be but an intellectual pacifier. This semester will provide us the opportunity to examine some important aspects of the role of the self in some meaningful human relationships. Each of us exists in a variety of nested sets of communities, and people from different cultures may organize and experience some of those communities in very different ways, but each culture has some central role for love and for friendship. Aristotle says that we are social animals, and he was not talking only about Greeks.