Egoism and relativism Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Egoism and relativism - Assignment Example as certainty associated with it because it promotes that individuals should take actions that provide the highest degree of happiness to oneself and the individual should try to avoid actions and decisions that result in unhappiness. The element of certainty exists because an individual can easily be sure about the elements and the outcomes that will make him or her happy and unhappy and thus can easily make decisions. For example: as an individual I may lie to another individual if I perceive that in a given situation lying will result in higher benefits to me as compared to costs. The main weakness associated with egoism is that it ignores the fact that other individuals within a society may end up being impacted negatively if an individual only makes decisions based on his/her self-interest. This means that egoism disregards the idea that those actions are ethical that result in benefiting the overall society and not just a few individuals within the society. For example: a stock exchange agent may lie to its clients that investing in a certain share will benefit them when actually it may result in losses. This means that the agent is hurting others by lying and only benefiting himself in terms of commission he earns from selling certain stocks. The theory of relativism states that actions as well as decisions that may be ethical for a particular society are not necessarily ethical for another society or group (Birsch 18). Relativists are of the position that no actions and decisions are universally ethical or unethical and vary in compliance from one society to another. One of the major strengths of relativism is that it promotes tolerance between different groups and well as different members of these groups (Birsch 28). The theory holds that one cannot simply reject the values of another society or culture if those values are conflicting with values of people from their own society. This in turns helps in ensuring that members from different societies