Editing Egoism (section)

== Theoreticians ==
=== Stirner ===
{{Excerpt|Max Stirner|Egoism}}

=== Nietzsche ===
{{quote frame|I submit that egoism belongs to the essence of a noble soul, I mean the unalterable belief that to a being such as "we," other beings must naturally be in subjection, and have to sacrifice themselves. The noble soul accepts the fact of his egoism without question, and also without consciousness of harshness, constraint, or arbitrariness therein, but rather as something that may have its basis in the primary law of things:—if he sought a designation for it he would say: "It is justice itself."|author=[[Friedrich Nietzsche]]|source=''[[Beyond Good and Evil]]''}}

The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche has been linked to forms of both descriptive and normative egoism.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |title=Friedrich Nietzsche (1844—1900) |encyclopedia=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |first=Dale |last=Wilkerson |url=https://iep.utm.edu/nietzsch/}}</ref> Nietzsche, in attacking the widely held moral abhorrence for egoistic action, seeks to free higher human beings from their belief that this morality is good for them. He rejects [[Christian ethics|Christian]] and [[Kantian ethics]] as merely the disguised egoism of [[slave morality]].<ref name=":15" /><ref name=":3" />

{{quote frame|The word "good" is from the start ''in no way'' necessarily tied up with "unegoistic" actions, as it is in the superstition of those genealogists of morality. Rather, that occurs for the first time with the ''collapse'' of aristocratic value judgments, when this entire contrast between "egoistic" and "unegoistic" pressed itself ever more strongly into human awareness—it is, to use my own words, the ''instinct of the herd'' which, through this contrast, finally gets its word (and its ''words'').<ref>{{cite book |title=On the Genealogy of Morals |first=Friedrich |last=Nietzsche |author-link=Friedrich Nietzsche}}</ref>|author=[[Friedrich Nietzsche]]|source=''[[On the Genealogy of Morals]]''}}

In his ''[[On the Genealogy of Morals]]'', Friedrich Nietzsche traces the origins of [[master–slave morality]] to fundamentally egoistic [[value judgment]]s. In the aristocratic valuation, excellence and virtue come as a form of superiority over the common masses, which the priestly valuation, in ''[[ressentiment]]'' of power, seeks to invert—where the powerless and pitiable become the moral ideal. This upholding of unegoistic actions is therefore seen as stemming from a desire to reject the superiority or excellency of others. He holds that all normative systems which operate in the role often associated with [[morality]] favor the interests of some people, often, though not necessarily, at the expense of others.<ref name=":3">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Nietzsche's Moral and Political Philosophy |encyclopedia=Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |first=Leiter |last=Brian |year=2021 |editor-first=Edward N. |editor-last=Zalta |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche-moral-political/ |publisher=[[Stanford University]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |title=Friedrich Nietzsche |encyclopedia=Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |first=R. Lanier |last=Anderson |year=2021 |editor-first=Edward N. |editor-last=Zalta |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/ |publisher=[[Stanford University]]}}</ref>

Nevertheless, Nietzsche also states ''in the same book'' that there is no 'doer' of any acts, be they selfish or not:
{{quote frame|...there is no "being" behind doing, effecting, becoming; "the doer" is merely a fiction added to the deed—the deed is everything.(§13)|author=[[Friedrich Nietzsche]]|source=''On the Genealogy of Morals''}}

Jonas Monte of [[Brigham Young University]] argues that Nietzsche doubted if any 'I' existed in the first place, which the former defined as "a conscious Ego who commands mental states".<ref name="thinkingisoccurring">{{Cite web |url=http://aporia.byu.edu/pdfs/monte-Sum_ergo_cogito.pdf |title=Sum, Ergo Cogito: Nietzsche Re-orders Decartes |last=Monte |first=Jonas |date=2015 |website=aporia.byu.edu |publisher=[[Brigham Young University]] |access-date=17 September 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220602112713/https://aporia.byu.edu/pdfs/monte-Sum_ergo_cogito.pdf
|archive-date=2 June 2022}}</ref>
{{related|[[Cogito, ergo sum#Use of "I"]]}}

=== Other theoreticians ===
* [[Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevskii]],<ref name=":12" /> a Russian literary critic and philosopher of nihilism and rational egoism
* [[Aleister Crowley]],<ref>{{cite journal |title=Aleister Crowley on Drugs |first=Christopher Hugh |last=Partridge |year=2017 |publisher=Equinox Publishing Ltd. |journal=International Journal for the Study of New Religions |volume=7 |number=2 |pages=125–151 |issn=2041-9511 |doi=10.1558/ijsnr.v7i2.31941 |url=https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/84818/1/Crowley_on_Drugs.pdf}}</ref> who popularized the expression "[[Do what thou wilt]]"
* [[Arthur Desmond]] as Ragnar Redbeard (possibly, unproved)<ref>{{Cite web |title=Arthur Desmond in Explanation {{!}} Ragnar Redbeard |url=https://www.ragnarredbeard.com/arthur-desmond-in-explanation |access-date=2022-09-13 |website=www.ragnarredbeard.com |language=en}}</ref>
* [[Thomas Hobbes]],<ref name=":9">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Psychological Egoism |encyclopedia=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |first=Joshua |last=May |url=https://iep.utm.edu/psychego/}}</ref> who is attributed as an early proponent of psychological egoism
* [[John Henry Mackay]], a British-German egoist anarchist
* [[Bernard de Mandeville]],<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |title=Bernard Mandeville (1670—1733) |encyclopedia=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |first1=Phyllis |last1=Vandenberg |first2=Abigail |last2=DeHart |url=https://iep.utm.edu/mandevil/}}</ref> whose materialism has been retroactively described as form of egoism
* [[Friedrich Nietzsche]],<ref name="Hicks">{{cite journal |last=Hicks |first=Stephen R. C. |author-link=Stephen Hicks |year=2009 |title=Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand |journal=The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies |publisher=[[Penn State University Press]] |volume=10 |issue=2 |pages=249–291 |doi=10.5325/jaynrandstud.10.2.0249 |jstor=41560389 |s2cid=30410740}}</ref> whose concept of [[will to power]] has both descriptive and prescriptive interpretations<ref name=":3" />
* [[Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarev]],<ref name=":11" /> a Russian literary critic and philosopher of nihilism and rational egoism
* [[Ayn Rand]],<ref name="Hicks"/> who supported an egoistic model of [[capitalist]] self-incentive and [[selfishness]]<ref name=":6" />
* [[Max Stirner]], whose views were described by John F. Welsh as "[[dialectical egoism]]"<ref>{{Cite web |title=Max Stirner's Dialectical Egoism: A New Interpretation : John F. Welsh : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming |url=https://archive.org/details/JohnF.WelshMaxStirnersDialecticalEgoismANewInterpretation |access-date=2020-07-18 |website=[[Internet Archive]] |language=en}}</ref>
* [[Benjamin Tucker]], an American egoist anarchist
* [[James L. Walker]], who independently formulated an egoist philosophy before himself discovering the work of Stirner<ref>{{cite book |last=McElroy |first=Wendy |title=The Debates of Liberty |publisher=[[Lexington Books]] |year=2003 |pages=54–55}}</ref>