Hedonistic Egoism is an ethical theory that many people consider unethical.

No, this is not a paradox: Hedonistic Egoism is a theory that belongs to the field of moral philosophy although for many it is the quintessence of immorality. This charge of immorality arises because of Hedonistic Egoism’s claim that, morally speaking, you should pursue your own pleasure. In other words, however you got here, your purpose is to have as much fun as you can, until you die.

Hedonistic Egoism might sound like it was fashioned to describe Donald Trump. But no, that would be fake news. Hedonistic Egoism has a much longer history. The earliest written record of Hedonistic Egoism is represented by the Cārvāka, an Indian philosophical tradition based on the Barhaspatya sutras (7th century B.C.E.) It also existed in Ancient Greece, adhered to by the Cyrenaics, a school founded by Aristippus (c. 435-356 B.C.E.).

But just because some philosophers have endorsed Hedonistic Egoism, doesn’t mean we are saying that you have Philosophy’s approval to be a selfish jerk. Some of you may have come here hoping to find a justification for your past and perhaps planned misdeeds. Sorry! Our goal is not to promote or excuse jerkishness. Our goal is to argue that pursuing your own pleasure and being a jerk do not necessarily go hand in hand.

If you explain to a friend that Hedonistic Egoism advocates the pursuit of one’s own pleasure, the first reaction you may get is: “so why not kill a person, steal his money and buy a new phone?” If you do get this reaction, it may be time to get a new friend. The thing is, for non-psychopaths, killing people doesn’t seem like much fun. Regular people have moral emotions that would generate moral repulsion and soul-destroying guilt if we even tried to kill an innocent person for personal gain. Besides, new phones are getting cheaper all the time. Simply put, the strategy that your former friend advised, would likely fail to maximize your pleasure.

What is striking, in these conversations, is that people seem to assume that maximizing pleasure has to be anti-social: violence and deception for the sake of money and power. Perhaps contemporary exemplars of egoists like Wall Street’s wolves encourage this anti-social image, but they shouldn’t. If regular ALL CAPS tweetstorms mean anything, they mean that the tweeter is not a happy chappy. We humble authors are surely not the only ones enlightened enough to see that happiness lies more in meaningful personal relationships than in money and power. Empirical evidence, by the way, supports us. For example, in reviewing psychological research on happiness, Jonathan Haidt claims that “the condition that is usually said to trump all others in importance is the strength and number of a …

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