/lit/ - Literature

Continental philosophy.

>>4212066
I recently quoted this, so here it goes again:

"Egotism, or the concern for one’s well being, is not opposed to the common good, since altruistic norms can easily be deduced from egotist concerns. Individualism versus communitarianism, utilitarianism versus the assertion of universal norms, are false oppositions since the two opposed options amount to the same in their result. The critics who complain how, in today’s hedonistic-egotistic society, true values are lacking totally miss the point. The true opposite of egotist self-love is not altruism, a concern for common good, but envy, ressentiment, which makes me act against my own interests. Freud knew it well: the death drive is opposed to the pleasure principle as well as to the reality principle. The true evil, which is the death drive, involves self-sabotage. It makes us act against our own interests. The problem with human desire is that, as Lacan put it, it is always “desire of the Other” in all the senses of that term: desire for the Other, desire to be desired by the Other, and especially desire for what the Other desires. This last makes envy, which includes resentment, constitutive components of human desire, something Augustine knew well. Recall the passage from his Confessions, often quoted by Lacan, the scene of a baby jealous of his brother suckling at the mother’s breast: "I myself have seen and known an infant to be jealous though it could not speak. It became pale, and cast bitter looks on its foster-brother."