Egoism Is Altruism

Individualism regard reducing the pain and increasing the happiness of the subject as the standard of value and justice. When we evaluate something, we judge whether it is good for ourselves first.

Human's behavior is dominated by consciousness, but human's consciousness is often self-contradictory. People often like and hate something at the same time, want to do one thing and not to do at the same time. All of people's preferences and behaviors have a common characteristic, that is meet the needs of people. People's needs determine the mood of a person, it often turns into a passion, which can burst a tremendous creativity or destructive power. Many philosophers such as Schopenhauer, Scheler, and Heidegger are concerned with human feelings, but they do not pay enough attention to people's needs.

Carl Marx regarded human's physiological needs such as eating, drinking, living and wearing as the basis of the Historical Materialism. Because of this basis, the Historical Materialism can become a great theory. Sigmund Freud regarded the need of sex as his own theoretical basis, so his theory also became a great one. But man have many other needs. Abraham Harold Maslow said people have five needs: physical, security, affiliation and love, self- esteem, and self-actualization. It is not yet complete. People also need labor, faith, aesthetic, trust and freedom. Meeting these needs all belong to individualism.

Individualism is a truth we must admit. And it is one of the major power to promote the evolution of the world. It is the source of all goodness. Adam Smith explicitly pointed out in The Wealth of Nations that the foundation of all human wealth lies in the selfish psychology that hoping to increase personal interests, and self-interest is altruism.

The ancient Chinese Neo-Confucianism demanded “Knowing the truth, exterminating the desires.” So Lu Xun called it the theory of man-eating.

Mao Zedong put forward in the article