ABSTRACT
Egoists have been charged with irrationality because it has been claimed that the logic of the word 'ought' is such that an egoist who says that he ought to act egoistically is guilty of a contradiction. The particularist egoist is someone who has the technical belief, which he thinks is as true of others as of himself, that each person's self-interest will be maximised if everyone pursued it. In addition, any particular such egoist, Ben, wants his own self-interest maximised, being either indifferent or hostile to the self-interest of other people. The anti-egoist will probably accept that, if Ben's self-interest is to be maximised, then everyone ought to do what he believes will maximise his self-interest, but the anti-egoist will also want to know why Ben's self-interest ought to be maximised. Although J. Kalin believes that the particularist egoist holds a self-contradictory principle, he does believe 'universalist egoism' is defensible.
