Misleading Moral Assertion

 

 

On Pages x and xi of her book, The Virtue Of Selfishness, Ayn Rand explains why she insists that obsessing about who benefits from a moral choice is a misleading moral assertion: “The choice of the beneficiary of moral values is merely a preliminary or introductory issue in the field of morality. It is not a substitute for morality nor a criterion of moral value, as altruism has made it. Neither is it a moral primary: it has to be derived and validated by the fundamental premises of a moral system.”

 

My response: Rand disavows altruism as failing to provide a sound moral theory to sustain the emphasis among altruists that each moral action must be for the sake of others, not oneself. She also repudiates this moral goal, favoring rational egoism instead.

 

She seems to suggest that it is not enough to feel that all moral actions must be for the sake of others to be worthy. The proponents of altruism have not provided a reasoned, valid argument from solid premises upon which to make their moral claim.

 

Rand continues: “The Objectivist holds that the actor must always be the beneficiary of his action and the man must act for his own rational self-interest. But his right to do so is derived from his nature as man and from the function of morals in human life—and, therefore, is applicable only in the context of a rational, objectively demonstrated and validated code of moral principles which define and determine his actual self-interest. It is not a license ‘to do as he pleases’ and it is not applicable to the altruists’ image of a ‘selfish’ brute nor to any man motivated by irrational emotions, feelings, urges, wishes or whims.”

 

My response: Under her Objectivist ethics, egoism implies that the individual’s self-interest is a noble end, whereas, for the altruists that are emotivists, their Subjectivist ethics causes them to praise self-sacrifice in the service of others as the highest aim.

 

His moral nature and his moral needs drive him look after his own interests, but not in some selfish, whimsical, or irrational way.

 

Rand continues: “This is said as a warning against the kind of ‘Nietzschean egoists’ who, in fact, are a product of the altruist morality and represent the other side of the altruist coin: the men that believe any action, regardless of its nature, is good if it is intended for one’s own benefit. Just as the satisfaction of the irrational desires of others is not a criterion of moral value, neither is the satisfaction of one’s own irrational desires. Morality is not a contest of whims. (See Mr. Branden’s articles ‘Counterfeit Individualism’ and ‘Isn’t Everyone Selfish?’ which follow.)