The egoistic, egotistic, hedonistic, and altruistic approaches to ethics stem from different implicit metaphysical assumptions. Rational egoism follows logically from the metaphysical view of man and reality that was developed previously in this course. Specifically, it arises from the principle that an individual's life process exists in order to serve the individual's needs—in other words, each individual is metaphysically an end in himself or herself.

Egotism follows from the belief that the facts of outer reality—and in particular the reality of other people—are not important to a person's life. The egotist recognizes that he or she is an end in himself or herself, but falsely assumes that other people exist only as means to one's own ends. (In this latter respect, the egotist is more akin to the altruist than to the egoist.) Thus the egotist places himself (or herself) in a unique metaphysical category—a view which is of course unsupported by any evidence or objective reasoning.