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The Ideas of Nihilism and Rational Egoism

After reading Henry Sedgwick’s The Methods of Ethics, I have been presented with a dark new outlook on life. This paper is about how I am conflicted between two different trains of thought and how I will settle how I fell. At first, I felt that the ideas of nihilism and rational egoism were crackpot western ideals. Yet they have begun to speak to me in a multitude of ways. I myself live in quite despot conditions and find it very hard to keep positive. Everyone seems to reject and forget our class and even the police officers are corrupt and motivated by self-interest. I have been presented with this western idea of nihilism and self-motivation and frankly I am very moved by its meaning. I can certainly relate to its teachings and see it practiced throughout my world. As I see it, there are two types of people in the world: the weak (generally the masses) who are quite happy to accept their fate, and the gifted who have higher values and more virtue. When a common man commits a crime, he does it out of greed and profit. The offender has no morals or scruples to live by and would be classified as a nihilists and an ubermensch. Now is this necessarily a bad thing? Whenever I see something unfair or unjust, it makes me angry. I have to sympathize with the victim and think deeply about what I have seen. Yet it seems that it would be great to feel nothing at all, to walk on with my business without . . . read more.