Three Methods, Intuition, and Commonsense

Egoism is the view that the ultimate end of an individual’s acts is that person’s happiness or pleasure, and that one ought to act so that one can accomplish this end (see, for example, ME Bk. 1 Ch. 7 p. 89 and Bk. 2 Ch. 1 p. 119). ‘The ultimate end’ means an end that should be sought in itself, that is, not as a means to any other ends. We should also note that the above view is a normative claim about what one ought to do, and not a psychological claim that one does always seek one’s own happiness in his voluntary actions.