Rousseau’s Antidote to Egoism

Egoism, Psychological Egoism and Ethical Egoism

Egoism The term “egoism” is ordinarily used to mean “exclusive concern with satisfying one’s own desires, getting what one wants.” Dictionaries tend to support this. They call “egoism”, for instance, “1. selfishness; self-interest. 2. conceit.” The term “egotist” is often a substitute, although it’s defined differently, for example, as “excessive reference to oneself.” The ego is the self. But ...

Psychological Egoism

Impatience as Intertemporal Egoism

We build on a philosophical account of personal identity (Parfit, 1984) which argues that the degree of concern one has for one’s future self may be scaled by the degree of “psychological connectedness”—overlap in properties such as beliefs, values, and ideals—held between one’s current and future self. We pose participants with tradeoffs between consuming a benefit in the near future versus co...

Belladona an Antidote to Opium

grains viij of solid opium, but he did not weigh it. At midnight it was discovered that he was sleeping so soundly that he could not be awaked. Dr. C. M. Smith saw him three-quarters of an hour later, viz., at a quarter to one on the morning of the 19th. lie was then perfectly insensible, his pupils were contracted to the size of a pin's head, and his breathing sterterous. Dr. Smith gave him an...

Student authority: Antidote to alienation

The widespread disaffection of students from school is manifested in academic failure, indifference, and defiance. These problems can be alleviated, I argue, when an authority structure is developed that combines three components – freedom, power, and legitimacy. Authority understood as either power or freedom is apt to subvert students’ school attachment even while attempting to strengthen it;...