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TheOtherDave comments on Fake Selfishness - Less Wrong
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I'm a fan of Stirner, but have always found this particular passage disingenuous. Certainly he sings because he is a singer. It's possible that he is unconcerned with the effect of his song on those without the ears to hear it, but I don't find it credible that he had no hope of benefiting those with the ears to hear. So I think he writes, at least somewhat, out of love for at least some men.
Because the usual forms of unselfishness are based in conceptual confusions that make you less useful to me, and often downright dangerous. And, it's both sad and rather distasteful to watch you live your life in such a crippled fashion. Such waste offends my sensibilities.
I would much prefer that my neighbors live for themselves, than live for God, Gaia, Allah, Evolution, Justice, the State, The Volk, The Proletariat, etc.
I can see where this might be true, but I can also see where it might be mere sophistry concealing a fundamental concern for your neighbor's well-being. Can you provide some concrete examples of typical ways in which your neighbors' unselfishness lessens their usefulness to you?
I guess I didn't make myself clear. I'm not concealing a fundamental concern for my neighbor's well being. I have it, and I think Stirner does too, despite his disingenuous denial here. Hence my comment that he writes, at least in part, out of love for some men.
Stirner, The Ego and It's Own:
It's the commandment of love he rejects, not his own love.
Loving other men is no more unselfish than loving your car. You like it shiny and running well, maybe even after you sell it to someone else.
It is perfectly selfish to love what you love, and hate what you hate. To care about what you care about. Why should I limit my concerns to what lies in a 1 inch bubble around myself? It's not what concerns you that makes you an egoist, it's whether you bow to an ideological compulsion to serve an alien concern over your own.
My own take on Stirner's Egoism is that it is best distinguished as the antidote to various forms of Moral Objectivism, not Altruism.
Note that Stirner believed that it is impossible to serve an alien concern over your own. That fact that you are concerned with something makes it your concern. Stirner called people who claim to serve an alien concern above their own "involuntary egoists", and found the entire state of affairs to be laughably absurd.
This makes little sense to me. Other people, unlike cars, have interests; and loving other people tends to have the effect of causing one to adopt those interests as one's own. What exactly is unselfishness supposed to look like, if not that?