Review of In Defense of Selfishness


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This is not an editing suggestion, but related to a point you make. The first definition for selfish in the second edition of Webster’s Unabridged looks quite close to the one Rand called out (“concern with one’s own interests”) as proper and, though not the popular meaning, as from a dictionary:

“Caring only or chiefly for self; regarding one’s own interest chiefly or solely; proceeding from love of self; influenced in actions solely by a view to private advantage; as, a selfish person; a selfish motive.”

For selfishness this dictionary gives the definition:

“The state or character of being selfish; the exclusive consideration by a person of his own interest or happiness.”

Although these definitions add an element of exclusivity or near-exclusivity in the object of concern, they do not go to say that such exclusivity often or typically means sacrifice of others to self. I gather that Rand would approve of that nonsacrificial near-exclusivity, though not strict exclusivity, due to strategic considerations of self-interest in social contexts. This dictionary mentions advantage, though here too, it does not go on to say such advantage is taken often or typically to entail sacrifice of the interests of others (whether or not by violence).

At least some of this dictionary's definition of selfish is apparently inherited from the first edition in 1828 (online). I think this second edition was issued in 1864, but the earliest copyright I find in my copy is 1955. Searching on selfish in Fountainhead at Amazon gets 23 hits.

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The Webster's 1828 edition definition is shown here as (sic): "Regarding one's own interest chiefly or soley; influenced in actions by a view to private advantage."

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary of 1913 here is: "Caring supremely or unduly for one's self; regarding one's own comfort, advantage, etc., in disregard, or at the expense, of those of others.
Links to these and other definitions of "selfish" are here.
There is a comment in the most recent edition of JARS by Arnold Baise about historical meanings of "selfish". Abstract here.
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Thanks for the references you all.

There are two points: Rand did not follow through on the title of her book of essays, but tried to denature the idea with a jejune definition. Titling it The Virtue of Selfishness, however, was a great rhetorical punch and I appauld her for that. The problem she had to deal with, however (point two), was she didn't know where to place selfishness in the human construct so she used her definition to better match human reality. In that, she fell short. Selfishness is the basic human moral attribute, but more goes into the animal as it goes down the assembly line of growing up and out socially. The analogue is the selfish base of Objectivism, not just in morality and politics, but in the pure sense of a reasoning mind. There is no social existence inside the reasoning brain. Or there shouldn't be. Maybe there is inside a reasoning mind, as differentiated from "brain," but that's far and away too arcane and too unnecessary except for reasoning fun. What all this means is acknowledging human social existence as built on human selfish existence and that covers both morality and politics. Rand put the gist of Objectivism into morality with politics as comparatively insignificant, while the libertarians concentrated on politics, sometimes, not always, to the complete exclusion of morality. Some were and are so anti-intellectual as to replace natural rights theory with an acronym, NIOF.

The Objectivist Ethics seem mostly complete, being basically basic, especially for politics, but not what we may call Objectivist morality, which would likely be more Judeo-Christian than Rand could ever stomach so proud she was at rejecting the moral code of the last 2000 years. Why? Because selfishness as a primary has two main components derivatively blended together: selfish and altruist. What Rand was actually objecting to was the use of altruistic morality as a primary for both justification and control by the religious and political rulers, would be and actual, but she lacked a necessary lucidity and substance and preferred to keep it all simple and binary. What then happened is the rendering out of Objectivism of moral if not practical gravitas, leaving that with the conservatives. It also damaged a lot of the Objectivist oomph more generally, for there was no available traction for hoi polloi.

There is also a more subtle differentiation between Jew and Christian in Objectivism. Jews are more of a life on earth type than Christians seeking the hereafter. Rand was a Jew, so too most of her "Collective," most importantly Nathaniel Branden. This also makes Objectivism more amenable to abortion as in and from common selfisness. A unique human being in the womb absent much of an afterlife after life on earth isn't quite as special as one destined for salvation through Jesus. That's real pseudo glory.

These Jews didn't blend all that well with the Christians, especially Americans--they were Canadians except Rand--too boot. (What I know of Canadian psychology vs. American is they are different, with the Canadians more accepting and passive, which may be only BS inside my head, but not Jewish [and Americans aren't either].)

So, Objectivism culturally needs more Americanism. (?) Maybe that helps explain how so many Objectivists have defaulted into neo-Con war-mongering. They never gave up altruism for Rand never replaced it so it's a natural default and a default without thinking for Objectivism is thinking and they would have had to deal with a contradiction. This even applied to Rand herself in many of her foreign policy views. The topper was her wish in a Ford Hall Forum Q & A for a "just war" with the Soviet Union. Since we were already in a long-running Cold War--with proxy hotspots like Korea and Vietnam--that could only be a hot war. That would be like a complete ethics and morality divergence. Ethics for the rationalization and morality--what's that, Miss Rand?--for the reality. War is simply hell, forget this "just" business until you get into one. That's how the Civil War started--the ethics of keeping the Union together then the justice of the morality of emancipation, however phony. First the practical, then the profane. The morality of freeing the slaves and the profanity of making war to do it. What was "just" was destroyed by the sacrifice of 700,000 lives. War is sacrifice and desperation and destruction and cruelty. You may call for war, but do not call for a "just" one. It's either necessary or not necessary.

--Brant

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What Rand was actually objecting to was the use of altruistic morality as a primary for both justification and control by the religious and political rulers, would be and actual, but she lacked a necessary lucidity and substance and preferred to keep it all simple and binary.

perfect

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There are two points: Rand did not follow through on the title of her book of essays, but tried to denature the idea with a jejune definition. Titling it The Virtue of Selfishness, however, was a great rhetorical punch and I appauld her for that.

[snip]

Because selfishness as a primary has two main components derivatively blended together: selfish and altruist. What Rand was actually objecting to was the use of altruistic morality as a primary for both justification and control by the religious and political rulers, would be and actual, but she lacked a necessary lucidity and substance and preferred to keep it all simple and binary.

[snip]

--Brant

I had to look up the definition of jejune. Well said.

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Yeah well, my old Concise Oxford:

selfish, Deficient in consideration for others, alive chiefly to personal profit or pleasure, actuated by self-interest (of motives etc.) appealing to self-interest (~ theory of morals, that pursuit of pleasure of one kind or another is the ultimate spring of every action).

That last is quite disapproving, in fact quaintly so. It sums up Britain in the 1950's.

I think there's a good case for considering dictionary definitions of ethics and morality as reflective of the zeitgeist of a period and place.

"Concern with oneself/one's own self-interest" is the most neutral of all.

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Tony, we could coin a word to mean exactly “concern with oneself or with one’s own interest”—I’ll offer self-concern—but I think Rand was right to hang onto and defend a concept of selfishness (set out in Fountainhead) connected to her new concept of ethical egoism (set out in Atlas and in VoS). Although there were things commonly condemned as selfishness that Rand also condemned (cases brought forth in Fountainhead), there is also much commonly condemned as selfishness that Rand wanted to commend, rightly so in my view. It is not self, but God or other people (or the earth, nowadays) that belongs at the center of one’s concern, and concern with self is a turning away from the proper center, on those influential views.

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We are all fundamentally selfish as that's the nature of a thinking mind and everybody thinks. Hence, individualism.

We are all social for the need of existential survival and the psychological back and forth cross reach and take and trade so necessary for the continuation of thinking and species propagation through sexual happiness turbo-charged by man's?/woman's?/mankind's? greatest invention: romantic love. Men probably invented it--I'm saying it because of gender bias--for women are much more practical and smart enough to hide their true selves under the covers. But boy!--if those covers get ripped off ("I want a divorce") it's hell on earth, a tsunami of vengeance, anger and revenge that can leave any macho male a quivering bowl of jelly. (This is slightly exaggerated for dramatic effect.)

So, we gotta make up a better word; selfish is too harsh, too much bad baggage and personally inclusive (and altruist too mushy and existentially inclusive). The in of selfishness and the out of altruism have gone spinning away from each other from the Randian collision of her throwing the former at the latter.

My suggestion: "lovefishness." Or, we (oops!) could write a book: The Virtue of Lovefishness. If that's too fishy, maybe "lovefullness."

What are some other suggestions? "Bothfishness"? That's only good for the Romeos and Juliets; not even a menage a trois.

--Brant

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I think Ayn Rand nailed it in VOS. What has always been interesting to me is the admonitions in psychology and spirituality to "find your center". Well, yeah. My boss is an ex Navy SEAL. He was involved in extractions in his past. A few years ago I brought up the hostage issue in the mid east. What can people do? I ask. Don't be a victim he says. Guys like him were killed trying to rescue stupid people who didn't have the situational awareness to look after themselves, or who thought someone was going to come to their rescue. There are a million examples big and small about what happens when people are not "self centered" and don't look after #1. They are a useless drag on themselves and everyone else. The "altruism" mantra is simply a device used by con artists for extracting wealth from productive people. I don't think we need new words to obfuscate the message, 'you are the center of the universe' you are a drag on everyone else if you don't know it.

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I had to look up the definition of jejune. Well said.

Obviously not a Woody Allen fan.

Actually I am a Woody Allen fan and have seen nearly all his movies. I didn't remember that scene. Love and Death is one of his funniest. In one love-making scene he dons oven mittens because she is so hot. :laugh:

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Mike, thanks for the concrete example.

Adam has also noted the article on Aristotle and self-love here.

On the issue in Aristotle, also:

. . .
A colloquium on Aristotle’s Ethics on April 20th (1:00–4:00 p.m.) includes the following paper, with comments from Corinne Gartner.

Self-Love in the Aristotelian Ethics – Jerry Green
ABSTRACT
The Nicomachean Ethics is nearly universally given pride of place in Aristotle’s ethical corpus. I argue there is at least one topic in Aristotle’s ethics where this is a mistake. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle presents self-love as the paradigm form of friendship, using it to explain how love of others occurs and why it is an important component of eudaimonia. But self-love has some theoretical problems, one of which is that it cannot be reciprocated the way Aristotle argues friendship requires. In the Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle addresses this worry, and uses it to motivate a modified view from that of the Nicomachean Ethics this change is difficult to explain if the Nicomachean Ethics were Aristotle’s last word on the subject, but makes perfect sense if the Eudemian Ethics were the revised version. This suggests we should follow Aristotle in turning to the Eudemian Ethics for Aristotle’s considered view.

. . .

. . .

The new issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies includes an essay by Marsha Enright titled "The Problem with Selfishness."

. . .
John Aglialoro, a co-producer of the film Atlas Shrugged Part II was quoted recently in an interview:*

“The left dismisses Ayn Rand,” he says. “The version of her that they attack is childish, it’s a cartoon.” But he understands why. “I wish she didn’t say ‘selfishness’ as she did. That she was for ‘selfishness.’ She was human, and probably meant that in a rhetorical way. But if she was on this earth again, maybe she’d put it another way.”

No. And she would be right to decline that alteration. The center of pure self-interest is pure selfishness. That pure form of selfishness is articulated—expressly, by the name selfishness—in The Fountainhead, where it is contrasted to a variety of conceptions commonly accepted as selfishness. Her novel argues that the latter are incoherent and at odds with pure selfishness, which entails independence and a certain kind of integrity. It is not only those unfitting parts in common conceptions of selfishness that are attacked as immoral in our culture. It is also pure selfishness, as exposed by Rand in Fountainhead, that is daily attacked in moral criticism of behavior by voices such as those speaking Christianity.

Rand was right in the Preface to The Virtue of Selfishness to defend her choice of the term selfishness as naming a core of human being needing to be championed. I would wish only she had added, “See also The Fountainhead.” Yes, selfishness in common parlance entails things excluded and antithetical to the selfishness Rand applauded. That makes for an invitation to further examination of the phenomena and the concept of selfishness. I mean among open-minded readers. Such are not those who understand well enough what is Rand’s ethical egoism and understand well enough the selfishness she was holding up as a glory, but are then smearing it for the sake of religion and politics, in a word, for the sake of old mistaken morality.

I have not yet received this issue of JARS, so I’ve not yet read Marsha’s paper; but I came across and would like to share a passage in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics concerning the derogation “lover of self” parallel Rand’s treatment of the derogation “selfish” in The Fountainhead. The problem of sorting the good from the bad in love of self and in selfishness is ancient, and the different divides made by Aristotle and by Rand are telling of the likeness and difference in their ethics (as of Rand 1943).

If we grasp the sense in which each party uses the phrase “lover of self,” the truth may become evident. Those who use the term as one of reproach ascribe self-love to people who assign to themselves the greater share of wealth, honours, and bodily pleasures; for these are what most people desire, and busy themselves about as though these were the best of all things . . . . So those who are grasping with regard to these things gratify their appetites and in general their feelings and the irrational element of the soul; and most men are of this nature thus the epithet has taken its meaning from the prevailing type of self-love, which is a bad one; it is just therefore, that men who are lovers of self in this way are reproached for being so. That it is those who give themselves the preference in regard to objects of this sort that most people usually call lovers of self is plain; for if a man were always anxious that he himself, above all things, should act justly, temperately, or in accordance with any other of the excellences and in general were always to try to secure for himself the honourable course, no one will call such a man a lover of self or blame him.

But such a man would seem more than the other a lover of self; at all events he assigns to himself the things that are noblest and best, and gratifies the most authoritative element in himself and in all things obeys this; and just as a city or any other systematic whole is most properly identified with the most authoritative element in it, so is a man; and therefore the man who loves this and gratifies it is most of all a lover of self. Besides, a man is said to have or not to have self-control according as his intellect has or has not the control, on the assumption that this is the man himself; and the things men have done from reason are thought most properly their own acts and voluntary acts. That this is the man himself, then, or is so more than anything else, is plain, and also that the good man loves most this part of him. Whence it follows that he is most truly a lover of self, of another type than that which is a matter of reproach, and as different from that as living according to reason is from living as passion dictates, and desiring what is noble from desiring what seems advantageous. Those, then who busy themselves in an exceptional degree with noble actions all men approve and praise; and if all were to strive towards what is noble and strain every nerve to do the noblest deeds, everything would be as it should be for the common good, and every one would secure for himself the goods that are greatest, since excellence is the greatest of goods.

Therefore the good man should be a lover of self (for he will both himself profit by doing noble acts, and will benefit his fellows), but the wicked man should not; for he will hurt both himself and his neighbours, following as he does evil passions. (1168b13–69a14)

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"Selfishness" can be redefined or re-described to the furthest rational degree imaginable, but the common understandings, mostly negative, cannot be displaced in common discourse. If anyone can come up with a better term than "rational self interest," please put it up.

Rand's definition of "concern with one's own interests," while less combative, is too thin to stand up and still implies no concern with almost anybody else. "Self interest" plus "rational" implies something broader than just me, me, me.

"Selfishness" used by hoi Objectivist polloi should be used against collectivists and religionists demanding sacrifice and submission as in an Objectivist's nuclear rhetorical arsenal. If they want to make a big deal about sacrifice, then let us make a big deal about having nothing to do with moral crap. That's what Rand did when she titled VOS.

--Brant

but there is value in examining selfishness in Objectivism and more generally philosophically and historically in an "in house" context for clarity and understanding and concept expansion and overall better integration into the corpus (OL is "in house")

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"..is too thin to stand up"

-No

By "rational" you're injecting you own expectations of other people's behavior onto them. An individualist, like Ayn Rand, expects people to behave rationally according to their own interests and calculation. In a state of nature, uncorrupted by notions such as "altruism" and external coercion, peoples selfish actions end up benefiting everyone. Being selfish does not need euphemisms.

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"..is too thin to stand up"

-No

By "rational" you're injecting you own expectations of other people's behavior onto them. An individualist, like Ayn Rand, expects people to behave rationally according to their own interests and calculation. In a state of nature, uncorrupted by notions such as "altruism" and external coercion, peoples selfish actions end up benefiting everyone. Being selfish does not need euphemisms.

The quote is apropos Rand's weak, mostly neutral, denatured definition of selfishness. She was much stronger everywhere else. My reference to "rational" was to "rational self interest." This last is not abjured by the philosophy.

--Brant

you did a mix and match: naughty, naughty

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"Being selfish does not need euphemisms". Nice, Mike.

Nor does it need defence. It's simply as one sees it (without the mind-warp of altruistic-collectivist influence): A single and separate organism which is the source (fountainhead) of each and all present and future values ~has~ to act for itself. Anything less, it will turn on itself, and seize up.

('Connectivity' of consciousness, first, mystical or spiritual, later, secular-societal, is the fallacy at the heart of all this).

Even selfish actions which "end up benefiting everyone" isn't a justification for rational selfishness - but they are an important secondary causation.

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Being selfish does not need euphemisms. Nice, Mike.

Nor does it need defence. It's simply as one sees it (without the mind-warp of altruistic-collectivist influence): A single and separate organism which is the source of each and all present and future values ~has~ to act for itself. Anything else, it will turn on itself and seize up.

Even the selfish actions which "end up benefiting everyone" isn't a justification for rational selfishness - but they are an important secondary causation.

If you only want to swim in your own juice that's what you're doing. It's a small pool for a big ideas.

--Brant

but why did you put "rational" in front of "selfishness" except you did not really read Mike's post just as he didn't really read mine so we're all really talking past each other in an engagement of dis-engagement?

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Hey Brant, not to worry man. Mike said something that sparked a train of thought for what I had to say. That's what we do here isn't it? You got each other going and as far as I'm concerned something good came out of it.

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Brant,

You're constant playing with semantics misses the whole point. What are you, over educated? You make me feel very tired and lonely sometimes.

Tony,

Thank you, very well said, and succinct.

I'm happy for you guys, but I don't feel well in the head right now.

--Brant

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