Pleasure, Pain, Egoism

If Locke revives the Aristotelian concept of Empiricism as a method, he also initiates its undermining in that respect. For, its value as a method depends on the connection between sensory information and not immediately perceivable processes, a connection the severing of which begins with Locke's distinguishing between Primary and Secondary Qualities. The subsequent universalization of that severance, by Berkeley and Hume, thus transforms Method into Ontology, just as Heidegger does centuries later with Husserl's method. As a result, a sensory datum becomes a self-subsistent entity, and, , with Hume, the basis of the 'Self'. Thus, as sense-data, Pleasure and Pain are severed from their causes, thereby reinforcing both Psychological and Moral Egoism, in which Pleasure and Pain are conceived as sufficient grounds of motivation. Consequently, all behavior, including sexual stimulation and parental joy, can be reduced to Egoistic events. Hence, a market economy a significant portion of which, as has been previously discussed, is influenced by the propagation of the species, can, nevertheless, be reduced to an aggregate of self-interests. The adequacy of that reduction is perhaps equivalent to that of an expectant mother's labor pains to a selfish event.