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Selfishness is being concerned excessively or exclusively for oneself or one's own advantage, pleasure, or welfare, regardless of others. "Selfish" , Merriam-Webster Dictionary, accessed on 23 August 2014 Selfishness – meaning, reference.com, accessed on 23 April 2012 Selfishness is the opposite of altruism or selflessness, and has also been contrasted (as by C. S. Lewis) with Egocentrism.C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (1988) pp. 116–17
Seneca proposed a cultivation of the self within a wider community—a care for the self which he opposed to mere selfishness in a theme that would later be taken up by Michel Foucault.G. Gutting ed., The Cambridge Companion to Foucault (2003) pp. 138–
Francis Bacon carried forward this tradition when he characterized “Wisdom for a man's self...as the wisdom of rats”.Francis Bacon, The Essays (1985) p. 131
Adam Smith with the concept of the invisible hand saw the economic system as usefully channelling selfish self-interest to wider ends.M. Skousen, The Big Three in Economics (2007) p. 29 John Locke, along with Adam Smith, was a key figure in early classical liberalism: an ideology that champions notions of individualism and negative liberty. These core themes inevitably relate to the concept of selfishness. Locke, for example, sought for people to exercise "self-government"—the idea that an individual should make his/her own decisions. This inherent right would allow individuals to pursue self-interests, rather than suffer the burdens of any altruistic obligations. Thus, unlike political ideologies such as socialism, Locke and other classical liberals believe that selfishness is engrained in human nature. Locke arguably opened the door for later thinkers like Ayn Rand to argue for selfishness as a social virtue and the root of social progress.P. L. Nevins (2010). The Politics of Selfishness pp. xii–xiii Ayn Rand held that selfishness is a virtue.
Roman Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain opposed the latter view by way of the Aristotelian argument that framing the fundamental question of politics as a choice between altruism and selfishness is a basic and harmful mistake of modern states. Rather, cooperation ought to be the norm: human beings are by nature social animals, and so individual persons can only find their full good in and through pursuing the good of the community.
In Darwinism, species understand the intensity of competition in nature, which requires a degree of selfishness in order to gain limited resources and survive to reproduce.
Explicit selfishness as a desirable end and moral good had diverse manifestations during that period, for example, in the writings of David Seabury, Ayn Rand, and even among some of Rand's near-opposites, such as Erikson and Fromm. Rand called her philosophy Objectivism. Later popularizers of similar positions include Nathaniel Branden, Paul Lepanto, Robert Ringer, Harry Browne, and David Kelley, among others. None of these named the system they espoused "selfism" or characterized it as "selfist", although both Seabury and Rand included the word "selfishness" in the titles of books presenting their views. Many of these figures were pro-Capitalism Secularism ("Atheism capitalists"), but Seabury was a Christians, while Erickson and Fromm were prominent Leftism.
Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan and author of The Satanic Bible, acknowledges Ayn Rand and Objectivism as a source of inspiration for LaVeyan Satanism. This form of Satanism holds the self above all else in similar fashion to Objectivism. Despite some similarities, they remain separate entities, as there are clear differences between the two concepts.
The contrast between self-affirmation and selfishness has become a conflictual arena in which the respective claims of individual/community are often played out between parents and childrenR. D. Laing, Self and Others (1969) pp. 142–43 or men and women, for example.
Psychoanalysts favor the development of a genuine sense of self, and may even speak of a healthy selfishness,N. Symington, Narcissism (1993) p. 8 as opposed to the self-occlusionTerence Real, I Don't Want to Talk About It (1997) pp. 203–05 of what Anna Freud called "emotional surrender".Adam Phillips, On Flirtation (1994) p. 98
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