The Logical Atheist

It is said that the message of Christianity is Jesus's commandment that we care for the "least" among us because by doing so, you'll really be doing it for him. "Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." (Matthew 25:40) Two thoughts: 1. If he was so smart, why didn't he realize that the "least" stand to gain amazing life-long benefits if the most talented and most entrepreneurial individuals are fully free to pursue their self-interest in the free market? 2. Wasn't it selfish of Jesus to urge us to benefit him, even if indirectly? I thought selfishness was said to be evil.

Implicit in being oneself is the commitment to oneself. One pursues one's life. One doesn't need a reason to pursue it. One pursues it, quite obsessively, because it's one's life. Who else's life is one supposed to pursue anyway? There is an absurdity in even asking for a reason as to why we should care about ourselves. Identity itself explains the self-concern. We don't require any persuasion in taking a special interest in what will befall us. The persuasion we require is to take an interest in others as well. That's the business of ethics, and the business, too of [Spinoza's] The Ethics . Spinoza tries to capture this fundamental fact -- that our commitment to ourselves is unlike the commitment to anything else, since it is tantamount to simply being  oneself -- in his concept of conatus . Conatus  is simply a thing's special commitment to itself....: "The endeavor, wherewith everything endeavors to persist in its own being, is nothing else b...