Selfishness

Selfishness is being concerned, sometimes excessively or exclusively, for oneself or one's own advantage, pleasure, or welfare, regardless of others.

Selfishness is the opposite of altruism or selflessness; and has also been contrasted (as by C. S. Lewis) with self-centeredness.

Divergent views

The implications of selfishness have inspired divergent views within religious, philosophical, psychological, economic and evolutionary contexts.

Classical

Aristotle joined a perceived majority of his countrymen in condemning those who sought only to profit themselves; but he approved the man of reason who sought to gain for himself the greatest share of that which deserved social praise.

Seneca proposed a cultivation of the self within a wider community - a care for the self which he opposed to mere selfishness in a theme that would later be taken up by Foucault.

Medieval/Renaissance

Selfishness was viewed in the Western Christian tradition as a central vice – as standing at the roots of the Seven deadly sins in the form of pride.

Selfish (disambiguation)

Selfishness refers to taking interest in oneself.

Selfish may also refer to:

See also

Selfish (House)

"Selfish" is the second episode of the seventh season of the American medical drama House. It aired on September 27, 2010. House (Hugh Laurie) treats a patient with sickle cell trait, while dealing with the effects of his burgeoning relationship with Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) on his work.

Plot

The patient

The patient of the week is Della Carr, an active and seemingly healthy teenager, who suddenly collapses with heart arrhythmia at a charity function for congenital muscular dystrophy, which her brother Hugo also has. At the hospital, she develops further symptoms of kidney failure and bleeding lung, which requires her to have a lung transplant. The donor lung also fails. After a chance conversation with Hugo, and subsequent questioning of Della, House arrives at the diagnosis of sickle cell trait.

House and Cuddy

This episode marks the first time Cuddy and House go to work after getting together. When House announces to his team and Wilson that he is dating Cuddy, Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) is disbelieving, Chase (Jesse Spencer) is indifferent, Foreman (Omar Epps) is in favor, whereas Taub (Peter Jacobson) is rightly apprehensive about how the relationship will affect the team's working.