[7] With the emergence of a commercial society, Bernard Mandeville proposed the paradox that social and economic advance depended on private vices—on what he called the sordidness of selfishness.
[8] Adam Smith with the concept of the invisible hand saw the economic system as usefully channelling selfish self-interest to wider ends.
[9] John Locke, along with Adam Smith, was a key figure in early classical liberalism:[10] an ideology that champions notions of individualism and negative liberty.
[14] Roman Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain opposed the latter view by way of the Aristotelian argument that framing the fundamental question of politics as a choice between altruism and selfishness is a basic and harmful mistake of modern states.
[16] In Charles Darwin's theory of biological evolution, species understand the intensity of competition in nature, which requires a degree of selfishness in order to gain limited resources and survive to reproduce.
[17] The term "selfism" was used by Paul Vitz in his 1977 book Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship to refer to any philosophy, theory, doctrine, or tendency that upholds explicitly selfish principles as being desirable.
Later popularizers of similar positions include Nathaniel Branden, Paul Lepanto, Robert Ringer, Harry Browne, and David Kelley, among others.
None of these named the system they espoused "selfism" or characterized it as "selfist", although both Seabury and Rand included the word "selfishness" in the titles of books presenting their views.
[21] Psychoanalysts favor the development of a genuine sense of self, and may even speak of a healthy selfishness,[22] as opposed to the self-occlusion[23] of what Anna Freud called "emotional surrender".