The historical evolution of egoism is that with the change and development of private ownership, there have been many forms such as absolute average egoism, group egoism, reasonable egoism and extreme egoism.

Egoism is one of the manifestations of individualism. Its basic characteristics are self-centered and personal interests as the principle of thought and behavior and moral evaluation standard. The word egoism comes from the Latin ego, which means "I"

Egoism, as a long-standing human desire, comes into being with human beings. As a social trend of thought, it came into being in17th century, and was theoretically summarized by early European thinkers Hobbes, Mendeville and helvetius.

Egoism originated from private ownership society. Some scholars think that China's thought of "pulling a dime to benefit the world" by Yang Zhu in the pre-Qin period (2 1 century to 22 1 year) is a typical example of ancient egoism. Although Yang Zhu's thought is flawed, it is by no means "governing by doing nothing".

Reasonable egoism:

A bourgeois egoistic ethical theory that starts from personal interests and tries to combine personal interests with social interests. It came into being during the European bourgeois revolution in the 18 and 19 centuries, with C.A. Hull of France and L. Feuerbach of Germany as the main representatives.

Based on the abstract theory of human nature, reasonable egoism holds that it is human nature to pursue pleasure, avoid pain, love and protect oneself. Egoism is not only reasonable, but also moral. People can only follow their own interests in their own behavior. Therefore, we should not give up egoism, but let people "reasonably" understand their own interests.

Reasonable egoism opposes the opposition between personal interests and public interests, and holds that the pursuit of self-interest itself includes the interests of society and others, and any activity for the interests of others is actually based on self-interest. As long as people organize society according to this "reasonable" understanding of their own interests, personal interests can be coordinated with social public interests.

According to the viewpoint of reasonable egoism, the disharmony between personal interests and social interests in real life is caused by the bad feudal system, and the new capitalist system will unify them so that everyone can pursue personal interests ethically.