butler and Shaftesbury were opposed to Hobbes idea that the beginning
of philosophy is in man’s self interest… self love and egotism is the
beginning of philosophy for Hobbes… we act in our own self interest
but, but this is more of a theoretical idea instead of a practical idea…
for we have plenty of examples including ourselves as parents and our
parents having to sacrifice for us and we for our children…
we see examples of people acting in the best interest of others
instead of themselves from the Priest? or perhaps it was a Rabbi,
not sure, anyway of volunteering to take the place of a person to
be killed in the death camps of Nazi Germany…to task of
helping others even to the point of our determent…
plain old human kindness to others is one example of
how self love, self egotism is not the only path for human beings…
we must place self love, egotism and self sacrifice and love of others
as part of, part of the human experience…not as the whole thing…
at different times in our lives, in our experiences, in our daily life,
we must act upon and know the difference between self egotism
and the acting upon the self sacrifice and love of others…
we are social creatures and this shows when we act for others,
instead of our own personal interest…
this self sacrifice and self love is also a part of, part of being
human…it is in our experiences and our personal knowledge
that determines if we understand the difference between the times
we must act selfishly and the times we must act for the betterment
of others…the times, the experience at the time, the moment determines
if we need to be selfish or altruist and we need to become more
aware of that difference when it is time to be selfish or altruistic…
as we are social creatures, we need to become more altruistic
because we can only succeed if our pack, our species, our group succeeds…
we cannot succeed alone and altruism is one path for our group, our
social group of human beings to succeed…
Kropotkin