Ethics–Comparing Ethical Egoism with Confucius’s Golden Rule

Abstract

Both the Eastern and Western societies have an extensive and celebrated history of ethics education. Although normative ethics have been rigorously studied epistemologically and vigorously debated, abstract ethics theories are very difficult to interpret or apply. On the other hand, applied ethical standards can usually provide more direct guidance on specific personal or business conduct in determining whether it is ethical. In this paper, we will focus on the Ethical Egoism principle. Five examples of real-world personal and/or business conducts will be provided to demonstrate how to apply this ethical standard. We will also apply Confucius’s Golden Rule to the same examples in determining whether the similar ethical evaluations can be observed.