Love And Self-Interest

Love is an emotion of strong attraction and personal attachment while care is the action of providing something necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance and protection of someone. Psychological Egoists argue that love and care is ultimately a self-interested act as they believe humans are always motivated by self-interest. This means that individuals ' actions only focus on the needs or interests of oneself and ignore the interest of others. However, many people help somebody else and show their love and care for others. From the examples in lectures, Mother Teresa helped the AIDS patients and orphans unselfishly. Many people nowadays are still acting in the interest of someone else, like the volunteers from Doctors Without Borders are staying in the countries with widespread transmission of Ebola virus disease to help the patients. There is no doubt that these persons are helping someone unselfishly and acting in the interest of others. According to the above evidences, this essay will argue that love and care for others is not ultimately a matter of self-interest and the thesis will be supported by the reasons behind human beings’ altruism acts and the effects of loving and caring for others.

For example, blood donors are helping the sick and saving lives. Helping the sufferers should be the only motivation for people to donate their blood. Obviously the donor would not get any benefits and rewards after the donation. However, they need to give his or her own blood to the patients. Blood donation may not consider as making relinquishment but organ donors visibly need to sacrifice to help others. Although donors need to have major surgeries for organ donation, they are still willing to donate the organ to save the sufferers’ lives. Mrs. FAN HSU Lai-tai donated her kidney to her daughter shows the love to her daughter. Mr. Simon Hui Sai-man, an inspector from Customs and Excise Department, donated his liver to his colleague, Mr. Yuen Wai-cheung. These examples show that individuals love and care for someone are not self-interested. In addition, using the example from the lecture, Raoul Wallenberg helped to hide the Jews to prevent them from killing. He was willing to sacrifice himself to save the Jews when the Nazis found them. All these acts are concerning the interest of others and need to self-sacrifice. As the acts to love and care for others needs to sacrifice and would not get any benefits, love and care for others is not motivated by