I have announced that I am writing an ethics book on those favoring ethical egoism, and I will write about Ayn Rand, Bernard Mandeville, Max Stirner and myself.
I believe that Eric Hoffer could be added to that list, but I will not include him in that book because he is someone that I plan to write about separately as my intellectual grandfather or intellectual godfather but I came across a paragraph recently that convinces me that he is a normative egoist like I am.
I am a psychological altruist and perhaps a rational egoist, and I believe Hoffer shares these views with me. I also concepetualize that The True Believer is Hoffer's indirect account of what evil is, normative altruism. To copy Ayn Rand, Hoffer could have offered a subtitle to The True Believer, naming it the The Viciousness of Selflessness.
I will pull some indirect evidence of Hoffer's normative egoist stance from biographer Tom Shactman's quote from Hoffer's journals on Page 42 of Shactman's biography of Hoffer, American Iconoclast: "'When we engage in a selfless undertaking, we not only rid ourselves of private greed but also of private responsibility. By keeping clear of the guilt of selfishness, we deprive our conscience of its voice and we commit atrocities and enormities without shuddering and without fear of remorse . . . A sense of duty and devotion to an ideal often produces a brand of selflessness more ruthless and harmful than extreme selfishness.' Hoffer would enshrine that sentiment in the True Believer."
Hoffer wrote this theme for The True Believer in the 30s well before he wrote his book, The True Believer.
It is not much of an imaginative leap on my part to suggest that Hoffer, like Ayn Rand, and me, is a normative egoist, that insists that selfless is wicked and vicious, and selfishness is good and virtuous.
Hoffer would agree with me that groupism and extremism, pure hatred, pure violence and maximum malevolence are all traits of true believers killing and dying in defense of their cherished cause that they are insistent about sharing with and shoving down the throats of all humanity.
Implicit in Hoffer's ethics is that rationality as reasonablenss, moral sense, common sense, practical wisdom and temperate judgment is moderate, individualistic and good.
Rand would go along with most of this but she is fanatically Objectivist, pro-individual, pro-reason, so those excesses I cannot countenance, but she is generally on the right track.
I have announced that I am writing an ethics book on those favoring ethical egoism, and I will write about Ayn Rand, Bernard Mandeville, Max Stirner and myself.
I believe that Eric Hoffer could be added to that list, but I will not include him in that book because he is someone that I plan to write about separately as my intellectual grandfather or intellectual godfather, but I came across a paragraph recently that convinces me that he is a normative egoist like I am.
I am a psychological altruist and perhaps a rational egoist, and I believe Hoffer shares these views with me. I also conceptualize that The True Believer is Hoffer's indirect account of what evil is, normative altruism. To copy Ayn Rand, Hoffer could have offered a subtitle to The True Believer, naming it The Viciousness of Selflessness.
I will pull some indirect evidence of Hoffer's normative egoist stance from biographer Tom Shactman's quote from Hoffer's journals on Page 42 of Shactman's biography of Hoffer, American Iconoclast: "'When we engage in a selfless undertaking, we not only rid ourselves of private greed but also of private responsibility. By keeping clear of the guilt of selfishness, we deprive our conscience of its voice and we commit atrocities and enormities without shuddering and without fear of remorse . . . A sense of duty and devotion to an ideal often produces a brand of selflessness more ruthless and harmful than extreme selfishness.' Hoffer would enshrine that sentiment in the True Believer."
Hoffer wrote this theme for The True Believer in the 30s well before he wrote his book, The True Believer.
It is not much of an imaginative leap on my part to suggest that Hoffer, like Ayn Rand, and me, is a normative egoist, that insists that selfless is wicked and vicious, and selfishness is good and virtuous.
Hoffer would agree with me that groupism and extremism, pure hatred, pure violence, and maximum malevolence are all traits of true believers killing and dying in defense of their cherished cause that they are insistent about sharing with and shoving down the throats of all humanity.
Implicit in Hoffer's ethics is that rationality as reasonableness, moral sense, common sense, practical wisdom, and temperate judgment is moderate, individualistic, and good.
Rand would go along with most of this, but she is fanatically Objectivist, pro-individual, pro-reason, so those excesses I cannot countenance, but she is generally on the right track.
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