Rational Selfishness

 

 

Ayn Rand describes her moral system at rational selfishness on Page xi of her book, The Virtue Of  Selfishness: “Just as man cannot survive by any random means, but must discover and practice the principles which his survival requires, so man’s self-interest cannot be determined by blind desires or wild whims, but must be discovered and achieved by the guidance of rational principles. This is why the Objectivist ethics is a morality of rational self-interest—or of rational selfishiness.”

 

My response: Rational egoism allows for discovering the principles to be followed, if man is to survive, and following his self-interest in alignment with these principles will lead to moral success and happiness. If his choices were whimsical, his interest would end up being altruistic. It seems that Rand like others is equation being rational with being an individual following one’s own interests, and being irrational goes along with altruist ethics and collectivists activites and living arrangements.

 

Rand continues: “Since selfishness is ‘concern with one’s own interests,’ the Objectivist ethics uses that concept in its exact and purest sense. It is not a concept that one can surrender to man’s enemies, nor to unthinking misconceptions, distortions, prejudices and fears of the ignorant and irrational. The attack on ‘selfishness’ is an attack on man’s self-esteem; to surrender one, is to surrender the other.”

 

One has a sense with Rand that her absolute epistemic certainty about everything she describes does not fully capture how humans think, operate, and stumble about as best they can in the real world. In some ways, Rand seems simplistic. We are not just rational creatures; indeed, we are born emotional and subjective, fearing knowledge acquisition and progressing in competence and direction.

 

She seems like an ethical and epistemological absolutist, or at least a firm dogmatist.

 

I like the way she links rational selfishness to maintaining one’s personal self-esteem. If one is logical and sensible, and self-disciplining and ambitious, then one has a self to love and esteem, and that self-regard is justified and required.

 

By corollary, it seems implied that altruistic ethics nudge the agent to be more irrational and whimsical and lazy than she would otherwise be, and this will lead to low self-esteem, and that is not the goal of rational ethics.