Has Joel Feinberg Refuted Psychological Egoism?

Abstract

It’s roughly claimed by psychological egoism that all voluntary actions are driven by egoistic motives. Joel Feinberg is distinguished for his aggressive refutation against psychological egoism. In his article “Psychological Egoism”, he mainly establishes two arguments: one is against psychological hedonism. Feinberg asserts that pleasure is just by-product of satisfaction of other desires. Another view is that psychological egoism is only an analytical statement. In response to that, the paper intends to formulate two refutations against the arguments respectively to show that Feinberg doesn’t prove pleasure cannot be the ultimate desire and that the psychological egoism is not analytic statement.