The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
(c) Responsibility. This last is the particular form of intellectual responsibility that most people evade. That evasion is the major cause of their frustrations and defeats.
Most people hold their desires without any context whatever, as ends hanging in a foggy vacuum, the fog hiding any concept of means. They rouse themselves mentally only long enough to utter an "I wish," and stop there, and wait, as if the rest were up to some unknown power.
What they evade is the responsibility of judging the social world. They take the world as the given. "A world I never made" is the deepest essence of their attitude-and they seek only to adjust themselves uncritically to the incomprehensible requirements of those unknowable others who did make the world, whoever those might be.
But humility and presumptuousness are two sides of the same psychological medal. In the willingness to throw oneself blindly on the mercy of others there is the implicit privilege of making blind demands on one's masters.
There are countless ways in which this sort of "metaphysical humility" reveals itself. For instance, there is the man who wishes to be rich, but never thinks of discovering what means, actions and conditions are required to achieve wealth. Who is he to judge? He never made the world-and "nobody gave him a break."
There is the girl who wishes to be loved, but never thinks of discovering what love is, what values it requires, and whether she possesses any virtues to be loved for. Who is she to judge? Love, she feels, is an inexplicable favor-so she merely longs for it, feeling that somebody has deprived her of her share in the distribution of favors.
There are the parents who suffer deeply and genuinely, because their son (or daughter) does not love them, and who, simultaneously, ignore, oppose or attempt to destroy everything they know of their son's convictions, values and goals, never thinking of the connection between these two facts, never making an attempt to understand their son. The world they never made and dare not challenge, has told them that children love parents automatically.
There is the man who wants a job, but never thinks of discovering what qualifications the job requires or what constitutes doing one's work well. Who is he to judge? He never made the world. Somebody owes him a living. How? Somehow.
A European architect of my acquaintance was talking, one day, of his trip to Puerto Rico. He described-with great indignation at the universe at large-the squalor of the Puerto Ricans' living conditions. Then he described what wonders modern housing could do for them, which he had daydreamed in detail, including electric refrigerators and tiled bathrooms. I asked: "Who would pay for it?" He answered, in a faintly offended, almost huffy tone of voice: "Oh, that's not for me to worry about! An architect's task is only to project what should be done. Let somebody else think about the money."
That is the psychology from which all "social reforms" or "welfare states" or "noble experiments" or the destruction of the world have come.
In dropping the responsibility for one's own interests and life, one drops the responsibility of ever having to consider the interests and lives of others-of those others who are, somehow, to provide the satisfaction of one's desires.
Whoever allows a "somehow" into his view of the means by which his desires are to be achieved, is guilty of that "metaphysical humility" which, psychologically, is the premise of a parasite. As Nathaniel Branden pointed out in a lecture, "somehow" always means "somebody."
(d) Effort. Since a rational man knows that man must achieve his goals by his own effort, he knows that neither wealth nor jobs nor any human values exist in a given, limited, static quantity, waiting to be divided. He knows that all benefits have to be produced, that the gain of one man does not represent the loss of another, that a man's achievement is not earned at the expense of those who have not achieved it.
Therefore, he never imagines that he has any sort of unearned, unilateral claim on any human being-and he never leaves his interests at the mercy of any one person or single, specific concrete. He may need clients, but not any one particular customer-he may need a job, but not any one particular job.
If he encounters competition, he either meets it or chooses another line of work. There is no job so slow that a better, more skillful performance of it would pass unnoticed and unappreciated; not in a free society. Ask any office manager.
It is only the passive, parasitical representatives of the "humility metaphysics" school who regard any competitor as a threat, because the thought of earning one's position by personal merit is not part of their view of life. They regard themselves as interchangeable mediocrities who have nothing to offer and who fight, in a "static" universe, for someone's causeless favor.
A rational man knows that one does not live by means of "luck," "breaks" or favors, that there is no such thing as an "only chance" or a single opportunity, and that this is guaranteed precisely by the existence of competition. He does not regard any concrete, specific goal or value as irreplaceable. He knows that only persons are irreplaceable-only those one loves.
He knows also that there are no conflicts of interests among rational men even in the issue of love. Like any other value, love is not a static quantity to be divided, but an unlimited response to be earned. The love for one friend is not a threat to the love for another, and neither is the love for the various members of one's family, assuming they have earned it. The most exclusive form-romantic love-is not an issue of competition. If two men are in love with the same woman, what she feels for either of them is not determined by what she feels for the other and is not taken away from him. If she chooses one of them, the "loser" could not have had what the "winner" has earned.
It is only among the irrational, emotion-motivated persons, whose love is divorced from any standards of value, that chance rivalries, accidental conflicts and blind choices prevail. But then, whoever wins does not win much. Among the emotion-driven, neither love nor any other emotion has any meaning.
Such, in brief essence, are the four major considerations involved in a rational man's view of his interests.
Now let us return to the question originally asked-about the two men applying for the same job-and observe in what manner it ignores or opposes these four considerations.
(a) Reality. The mere fact that two men desire the same job does not constitute proof that either of them is entitled to it or deserves it, and that his interests are damaged if he does not obtain it.
(b) Context. Both men should know that if they desire a job, their goal is made possible only by the existence of a business concern able to provide employment-that that business concern requires the availability of more than one applicant for any job-that if only one applicant existed, he would not obtain the job, because the business concern would have to close its doors-and that their competition for the job is to their interest, even though one of them will lose in that particular encounter.
(c) Responsibility. Neither man has the moral right to declare that he doesn't want to consider all those things, he just wants a job. He is not entitled to any desire or to any "interest" without knowledge of what is required to make its fulfillment possible.
(d) Effort. Whoever gets the job, has earned it (assuming that the employer's choice is rational). This benefit is due to his own merit-not to the "sacrifice" of the other man who never had any vested right to that job. The failure to give to a man what had never belonged to him can hardly be described as "sacrificing his interests."
All of the above discussion applies only to the relationships among rational men and only to a free society. In a free society, one does not have to deal with those who are irrational. One is free to avoid them.
In a nonfree society, no pursuit of any interests is possible to anyone; nothing is possible but gradual and general destruction.
(August 1962)
5. Isn't Everyone Selfish?
by Nathaniel Branden
Some variety of this question is often raised as an objection to those who advocate an ethics of rational self-interest. For example, it is som
To untangle the intellectual confusion involved in this viewpoint, let us consider what facts of reality give rise to such an issue as selfishness versus self-sacrifice, or egoism versus altruism, and what the concept of "selfishness" means and entails.
The issue of selfishness versus self-sacrifice arises in an ethical context. Ethics is a code of values to guide man's choices and actions-the choices and actions that determine the purpose and course of his life. In choosing his actions and goals, man faces constant alternatives. In order to choose, he requires a standard of value-a purpose which his actions are to serve or at which they are to aim. " 'Value' presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what?" (Atlas Shrugged.) What is to be the goal or purpose of a man's actions? Who is to be the intended beneficiary of his actions? Is he to hold, as his primary moral purpose, the achievement of his own life and happiness-or should his primary moral purpose be to serve the wishes and needs of others?
The clash between egoism and altruism lies in their conflicting answers to these questions. Egoism holds that man is an end in himself; altruism holds that man is a means to the ends of others. Egoism holds that, morally, the beneficiary of an action should be the person who acts; altruism holds that, morally, the beneficiary of an action should be someone other than the person who acts.
To be selfish is to be motivated by concern for one's self-interest. This requires that one consider what constitutes one's self-interest and how to achieve it-what values and goals to pursue, what principles and policies to adopt. If a man were not concerned with this question, he could not be said objectively to be concerned with or to desire his self-interest; one cannot be concerned with or desire that of which one has no knowledge.
Selfishness entails: (a) a hierarchy of values set by the standard of one's self-interest, and (b) the refusal to sacrifice a higher value to a lower one or to a nonvalue.
A genuinely selfish man knows that only reason can determine what is, in fact, to his self-interest, that to pursue contradictions or attempt to act in defiance of the facts of reality is self-destructive-and self-destruction is not to his self-interest. "To think, is to man's self-interest; to suspend his consciousness, is not. To choose his goals in the full context of his knowledge, his values and his life, is to man's self-interest; to act on the impulse of the moment, without regard for his long-range context, is not. To exist as a productive being, is to man's self-interest; to attempt to exist as a parasite, is not. To seek the life proper to his nature, is to man's self-interest; to seek to live as an animal, is not."
Because a genuinely selfish man chooses his goals by the guidance of reason-and because the interests of rational men do not clash-other men may often benefit from his actions. But the benefit of other men is not his primary purpose or goal; his own benefit is his primary purpose and the conscious goal directing his actions.
To make this principle fully clear, let us consider an extreme example of an action which, in fact, is selfish, but which conventionally might be called self-sacrificial: a man's willingness to die to save the life of the woman he loves. In what way would such a man be the beneficiary of his action?
The answer is given in Atlas Shrugged-in the scene when Galt, knowing he is about to be arrested, tells Dagny: "If they get the slightest suspicion of what we are to each other, they will have you on a torture rack-I mean, physical torture-before my eyes, in less than a week. I am not going to wait for that. At the first mention of a threat to you, I will kill myself and stop them right there. ... I don't have to tell you that if I do it, it won't be an act of self-sacrifice. I do not care to live on their terms. I do not care to obey them and I do not care to see you enduring a drawn-out murder. There will be no values for me to seek after that-and I do not care to exist without values." If a man loves a woman so much that he does not wish to survive her death, if life can have nothing more to offer him at that price, then his dying to save her is not a sacrifice.
The same principle applies to a man, caught in a dictatorship, who willingly risks death to achieve freedom. To call his act a "self-sacrifice," one would have to assume that he preferred to live as a slave. The selfishness of a man who is willing to die, if necessary, fighting for his freedom, lies in the fact that he is unwilling to go on living in a world where he is no longer able to act on his own judgment-that is, a world where human conditions of existence are no longer possible to him.
The selfishness or unselfishness of an action is to be determined objectively: it is not determined by the feelings of the person who acts. Just as feelings are not a tool of cognition, so they are not a criterion in ethics.
Obviously, in order to act, one has to be moved by some personal motive; one has to "want," in some sense, to perform the action. The issue of an action's selfishness or unselfishness depends, not on whether or not one wants to perform it, but on why one wants to perform it. By what standard was the action chosen? To achieve what goal?
If a man proclaimed that he felt he would best benefit others by robbing and murdering them, men would not be willing to grant that his actions were altruistic. By the same logic and for the same reasons, if a man pursues a course of blind self-destruction, his feeling that he has something to gain by it does not establish his actions as selfish.
If, motivated solely by a sense of charity, compassion, duty or altruism, a person renounces a value, desire or goal in favor of the pleasure, wishes or needs of another person whom he values less than the thing he renounced—that is an act of self-sacrifice. The fact that a person may feel that he "wants" to do it, does not make his action selfish or establish objectively that he is its beneficiary.
Suppose, for example, that a son chooses the career he wants by rational standards, but then renounces it in order to please his mother who prefers that he pursue a different career, one that will have more prestige in the eyes of the neighbors. The boy accedes to his mother's wish because he has accepted that such is his moral duty: he believes that his duty as a son consists of placing his mother's happiness above his own, even if he knows that his mother's demand is irrational and even if he knows that he is sentencing himself to a life of misery and frustration. It is absurd for the advocates of the "everyone is selfish" doctrine to assert that since the boy is motivated by the desire to be "virtuous" or to avoid guilt, no self-sacrifice is involved and his action is really selfish. What is evaded is the question of why the boy feels and desires as he does. Emotions and desires are not causeless, irreducible primaries: they are the product of the premises one has accepted. The boy "wants" to renounce his career only because he has accepted the ethics of altruism; he believes that it is immoral to act for his self-interest. That is the principle directing his actions.
Advocates of the "everyone is selfish" doctrine do not deny that, under the pressure of the altruist ethics, men can knowingly act against their own long-range happiness. They merely assert that in some higher, undefinable sense such men are still acting "selfishly." A definition of "selfishness" that includes or permits the possibility of knowingly acting against one's long-range happiness, is a contradiction in terms.
It is only the legacy of mysticism that permits men to imagine that they are still speaking meaningfully when they declare that one can seek one's happiness in the renunciation of one's happiness.
The basic fallacy in the "everyone is selfish" argument consists of an extraordinarily crude equivocation. It is a psychological truism-a tautology-that all purposeful behavior is motivated. But to equate "motivated behavior" with "selfish behavior" is to blank out the distinction between an elementary fact of human psychology and the phenomenon of ethical choice. It is to evade the central problem of ethics, namely: by what is man to be motivated?
(September 1962)
6. The Psychology of Pleasure
by Nathaniel Branden
Pleasure, for man, is not a luxury, but a profound psychological need.
Pleasure (in the widest sense of the term) is a metaphysical concomitant of life, the reward and consequence of successful action-just as pain is the insignia of failure, destruction, death.
Through the state of enjoyment, man experiences the value of life, the sense that life is worth living, worth struggling to maintain. In order to live, man must act to achieve values. Pleasure or enjoyment is at once an emotional payment for successful action and an incentive to continue acting.
Further, because of the metaphysical meaning of pleasure to man, the state of enjoyment gives him a direct experience of his own efficacy, of his competence to deal with the facts of reality, to achieve his values, to live. Implicitly contained in the experience of pleasure is the feeling: "I am in control of my existence"-just as implicitly contained in the experience of pain is the feeling: "I am helpless." As pleasure emotionally entails a sense of efficacy, so pain emotionally entails a sense of impotence.