What is Ethical Egoism and how to explain it?

There are some judgments that it is not possible to reach the absolute truth and generally accepted moral rules in philosophy. One of the theories confirming these judgments is ethical egoism. This theory, which we can call selfishness at first reading, actually brings a different perspective to morality.

Ethical egoism is the prescriptive conviction that says everyone should act in their self-interest. So what does this mean? First of all, ethical egoism does not endorse us to be completely selfish individuals. Ethical egoism argues that for an action to be right, it must be in our best interest and make us a good person. In other words, in ethical egoism, it is thought that we should look after our well-being while doing good to someone. People know themselves better than other people. In this case, when we think that we are doing good to other people, we need to think that we may be doing them wrong. For example; When we give advice such as “you should diet” to overweight people we see on social media or in real life, we ignore the psychological damage we may have done to them while that person thinks the best for good may be doing a disservice by intervening from the outside. Of course, ethical egoism may not always be explained in such a logical way. There is a lot of discussion going around on this subject. As an example of one of them; Imagine you are entering a job interview. You should get that job, so you should ask your recruiter friend to ignore the better candidate than you. According to ethical egoism, this is a must, because it is the best option for you. However, this would be unfair to others.