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Ayn Rand
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The Virtue Of Selfishness
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The precondition of a civilized society is the barring of physical force from human relationships - thus establishing the principle that if men wish to deal with one another, they may do so only by means of reason: by discussion, persuasion, and voluntary, uncoerced agreement.
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The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not "selflessness" or "sacrifice" but integrity.
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America's inner contradiction was the altruist-collectivist ethics. Altruism is incompatible with freedom, with capitalism, and with individual rights. One cannot combine the pursuit of happiness with the moral status of a sacrificial animal.
*** I'm paraphrasing:
Altruism - placing others above oneself; the doctrine that serving others is the standard of the good, and that concern with one's own interest (the definition of selfishness) is evil.
*** end of paraphrase
- The Virtue of Selfishness
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It stands to reason that where there is sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.
- The Fountainhead
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Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others - misfortune is not a mortgage on achievement - failure is not a mortgage on success - suffering is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence - man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone's altar nor for anyone's cause - life is not one huge hospital.
- The Voice of Reason
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Those who start by saying: "It is selfish to pursue your own wishes, you must sacrifice them to the wishes of others" - end up by saying: "It is selfish to uphold your convictions, you must sacrifice them to the convictions of others." This much is true: the most selfish of all things is the independent mind that recognizes no authority higher than its own and no value higher than its judgement of truth.
- Atlas Shrugged
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All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil.
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Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge, and reason is his only means to gain it. Reason is the faculty that perceives, identifies, and integrates the material provided by the senses.
- Atlas Shrugged
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In response to Jim's argument:
Before you disagree with Ayn Rand's views I would recommend that you read a little farther into them. Her conception of morality is NOT the same as the subjectivist view of morality which holds that morality is both absolute AND independent of reality. Instead Rand's philosophy is based on an objective view of morality, that it is in fact dictated by physical reality including human nature. It is absolute because it is based on reality, not because some philosopher or theologian decreed it to be so.
Now, it is true that not everyone chooses a rational morality and Ayn Rand never said that they did. Everyone does choose in one way or another though. For instance, you may decide that you do not need morality of any kind. That is a choice. Or you may decide that you do need morality but that it need not have anything to do with who you are as a human being or what the demands of nature place on you. That is a choice. That does not mean, however, that all choices are going to lead to equally happy consequences. If one is standing in front of a stream of lava one my decide not to move out of its path because one believes that lava isn't real, or that some supernatural being will save them, but the person who uses reason to move out of the way is going to be much better off. THAT is the essence of Ayn Rand's philosophy - using one's brain to make choices for one's own well being.
Now, how do we apply this to social interaction? Well, let's look at your own example:
"Sexual morals don't hold a lot of logic in most societies, especially in the modern world. While my self-interest may dictate that I have sex with a particular person, the morals dictated by society may make the proposition risky. I consider freedom a higher priority in my self-interest, so I will not have sex with that person."
The biggest problem with this example is that "freedom" is not well defined. You seem to equate physical freedom (freedom from being in jail) with mental/moral freedom (the freedom to act in one's interest). These are actually two different forms of freedom. Physical freedom is no good if you are a mental slave.
The problem here is that man lives and dies by his use of the mind/reason. Human beings are not the strongest animal in the jungle, nor do we have a lot of built in physical weaponry or defense mechanisms. Instead we have a mind capable of creating devices to make us stronger and defense systems that are beyond what nature could have given us. Taking away our ability to think for ourselves and produce products to advance our ability to survive is the same as taking away wings and beaks from a bird or the teeth away from a crocodile. Such a thing could only survive with the assistance of humans and so could not be free in the wild. The same is true of man - take away our ability to think and produce and we can only survive by the aid of those who can.
But how does all of this apply to sex? Sex is a reflection of one's own sense of value. One has sex with a partner based on the perceived virtues of that partner. Physical virtues are, of course, part of the equation. Humans like to breed while young because physically it is the most opportune time; we are better able to recover after pregnancies when young, have more energy to keep up with the offspring, etc. As mentioned though, we use our MINDS to survive, and we can use them to override the natural urge to procreate at a young age. We would do this because we find that physically it easier to bear children while young but we have few resources. When we are older we have much more resources with which to raise and educate our children, plus we may have more time to spend with them because we don't have to work as much. There is, however, a third option - we can choose to have sex but NOT procreate through the use of contraception. Why would we have sex without the intent of procreation? Because for humans sex is more than a physical act, it is also mental/emotional. When we have a special mental/emotional connections with someone we wish to express that in physical form. Doing so is mentally and emotionally gratifying and leads to an increased sense of well-being.
On the other hand, humans have the ability to CHOOSE to have sex based off of physical appearance only. This is likely to be a mistake. Part of your argument here is that other humans can prevent us from making such a mistake by making it illegal and threatening to throw us in jail. But here is the problem - humans are not infallible. Humans make mistakes and can make incorrect moral choices. What happens when a person not only makes a moral mistake but forces that mistake on a larger group of individuals? In Rand's view this is not moral. Humans MUST have the ability to make their own choices on what is moral so that those who are better capable of making the right choices aren't subject to those who are less capable.
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“Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egotist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge or act. These are functions of the self.
“Here the basic reversal is most deadly. The issue has been perverted and man has been left no alternative—and no freedom. As poles of good and evil, he was offered two conceptions: egotism and altruism. Egotism was held to mean the sacrifice of others to self. Altruism—the sacrifice of self to others. This tied man irrevocably to other men and left him nothing but a choice of pain: his own pain borne for the sake of others or pain inflicted upon others for the sake of self. When it was added that man must find joy in self-immolation, the trap was closed. Man was forced to accept masochism as his ideal—under the threat that sadism was his only alternative. This was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on mankind.
“This was the device by which dependence and suffering were perpetuated as fundamentals of life.” …
The balancing of altruism and self-service has been a long struggle for humankind, me, and many I know. I say to friends who won't misinterpret my words, "I am the center of my universe and must take care of me above all others; lest I not be there when others need my help." That could be interpreted as selfish, but it does not attempt to defy the laws of nature as the concept of "caring for others to one's own destruction" does.
I am the opposite. I feel like the least important person on the planet, so everyone else comes before me. It doesn't stop me from helping or loving others. I just don't happen to think that I deserve to be helped or loved myself. I don't, why should anyone else?
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Some good men mistake altruism with kindness, good will, or respect for the rights of others.
Such good men should consider why champions of altruism declare that selfishness, i.e. concern with one’s own interest, is evil. Why – when only a man who loves himself could harbor kindness, good will, or respect for the rights of others.
Such good men should very seriously ponder the doctrine that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one’s own benefit is evil - and decide whether to support it, silently oppose it, or actively fight it. Bear in mind that altruism devours youngsters and other innocents – do you care to be their champions?
Concern with loved ones, friends, one’s community and country, are selfish acts. Earning and keeping one’s self-respect is very selfish, and, at times, require courage and enormous loyalty to values. The desire to do good, wanting to defeat evil – these are selfish desires.
Let’s consider the following. Do you deem Bishop Myriel a selfish man or an altruist?
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After years of imprisonment for stealing bread for his starving sister, the peasant Jean Valjean is released. Rejected by innkeepers who do not want to take in a convict, Valjean sleeps on the street. He finds Bishop Myriel who feeds and gives him a bed. In the night, Valjean steals the bishop’s silverware and runs. He is caught, but the bishop rescues him by claiming that the silver was a gift, and then gives him two precious candlesticks as well.
Alone, benevolent Bishop Myriel tells Valjean:
"Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!"
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Does Bishop Myriel’s benevolence make him happy? Does it enhance his self-esteem? Does he think saving Jean Valjean is good for him and the community?
I say yes to these three questions. Bishop Myriel is a good man and he is selfish. I think Bishop Myriel has such profound regard for man that he sees a potential in a thief who has been a convict. The bishop values a man more than silverware and precious candlesticks. To value is a function of the self.
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I have two thoughts regarding this: "I am the center of my universe and must take care of me above all others; lest I not be there when others need my help."
1. It could be uttered by a self-reliant man with enormous generosity and benevolence, who endeavors to earn much more than a comfortable living, so he could share some to others.
2. It could be uttered by a man who loves himself, his family, community, and country, but who dares not challenge a doctrine which he could not practice – so he justifies his love of self by his desire to help others.
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Appeasement is not consideration for the feelings of others, it is consideration for and compliance with the unjust, irrational and evil feelings of others. It is a policy of exempting the emotions of others from moral judgment, and of willingness to sacrifice innocent, virtuous victims to the evil malice of such emotions.
- “The Age of Envy,” Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
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The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser’s intellectual abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture’s dominant trend is geared to irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers. When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst.
When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes.
- “Altruism as Appeasement,” The Objectivist
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It is understandable that men might seek to hide their vices from the eyes of people whose judgment they respect. But there are men who hide their virtues from the eyes of monsters. There are men who apologize for their own achievements, deride their own values, debase their own character—for the sake of pleasing those they know to be stupid, corrupt, malicious, evil.
- “The Age of Envy,” Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
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[Intellectual appeasement] is an attempt to apologize for his intellectual concerns and to escape from the loneliness of a thinker by professing that his thinking is dedicated to some social-altruistic goal. It is an attempt that amounts to the wordless equivalent of the plea: “I’m not an outsider! I’m your friend! Please forgive me for using my mind—I’m using it only in order to serve you!” . . . An intellectual appeaser surrenders morality, the realm of values, in order to be permitted to use his mind.
- “Altruism as Appeasement,” The Objectivist
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http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon...
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- The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
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If he chooses irrational values, he switches his emotional mechanism from the role of his guardian to the role of his destroyer. The irrational is the impossible; it is that which contradicts the facts of reality; facts cannot be altered by a wish, but they can destroy the wisher.
If a man desires and pursues contradictions — if he wants to have his cake and eat it, too — he disintegrates his consciousness; he turns his inner life into a civil war of blind forces engaged in dark, incoherent, pointless, meaningless conflicts (which, incidentally, is the inner state of most people today).
“The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
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The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash—that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value.
- “The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness, 31.
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The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word “selfishness” is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual “package-deal,” which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.
In popular usage, the word “selfishness” is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.
Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word “selfishness” is: concern with one’s own interests.
This concept does not include a moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one’s own interests is good or evil; nor does it tell us what constitutes man’s actual interests. It is the task of ethics to answer such questions.
- “Introduction,” The Virtue of Selfishness
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- “The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness, 32.
Introduction
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In popular usage, the word “selfishness” is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.
Yet the exact meaning and definition of the word “selfishness” is: concern with one’s own interests.
The concept does not include a moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one’s own interests is good or evil; nor does it tell us what constitutes man’s actual interests. It is the task of ethics to answer those questions.
The ethics of altruism has created the image of the brute, as its answer, in order to make men accept two inhuman tenets:
(a) that any concern with one’s own interests is evil, regardless of what these interests might be, and
(b) that the brute’s activities are in fact to one’s own interest (which altruism enjoins man to renounce for the sake of his neighbors).
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There are two moral questions which altruism lumps together into one “package-deal”:
(1) What are values?
(2) Who should be the beneficiary of values?
Altruism substitutes the second for the first; it evades the task of defining a code of moral values, thus leaving man, in fact, without moral guidance.
Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one’s own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value – and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.
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Observe what this beneficiary-criterion of morality does to a man’s life. The first thing he learns is that morality is his enemy; he has nothing to gain from it, he can only lose; self-inflicted loss, self-inflicted pain and the gray, debilitating pall of an incomprehensible duty is all he can expect. He may hope that others might occasionally sacrifice themselves for his benefit, as he grudgingly sacrifices himself for theirs, but he knows that the relationship will bring mutual resentment, not pleasure – and that, morally, their pursuit of values will be like an exchange of unwanted, unchosen Christmas presents, which neither is morally permitted to buy for himself. …
Since nature does not provide man with an automatic form of survival, since he has to support his life by his own effort, the doctrine that concern with one’s own interest is evil means that man’s desire to live is evil – that man’s life, as such, is evil. No doctrine could be more evil than that.
Yet that is the meaning of altruism, implicit in such examples as the equation of an industrialist with a robber. There is a fundamental difference between a man who sees his self-interest in production and a man who sees it in robbery. The evil of a robber does not lie in the fact that he pursues his own interests, but in what he regards as to his own interest; not in the fact that he pursues his values, but in what he chose to value; not in the fact that he wants to live, but in the fact that he wants to live on a subhuman level (see “The Objectivist Ethics”).
If it is true that what I mean by “selfishness” is not what is meant conventionally, then this is one of the worst indictments of altruism: it means that altruism permits no concept of a self-respecting, self-supporting man – a man who supports his life by his own effort and neither sacrifices himself nor others. It means that altruism permits no view of men except as sacrificial animals and profiteers-on-sacrifice, as victims and parasites – that it permits no concept of a benevolent co-existence among men – that it permits no concept of justice.
If you wonder about the reasons behind the ugly mixture of cynicism and guilt in which most men spend their lives, these are the reasons:
- cynicism, because they neither practice nor accept the altruist morality
- guilt, because they dare not reject it.
To rebel against so devastating an evil, one has to rebel against its basic premise. To redeem both man and morality, it is the concept of “selfishness” that one has to redeem.
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