The Virtue of Selfishness

## Basic Info

Author - Ayn Rand

* Nathaniel Branden

Date of Publication: 1964

## Main Points/Ideas

### Chapter 1

* John Galt - Major character in the Atlas Shrugged books by Ayn Rand. Seen by Rand as the ultimate example of Objectivist Ethics. He essentially is a super influential and secretive character who works throughout the books to bring down the socialist government.
* Rand questions to value of traditional ethics in the past. Seen them as highly irregular and constantly changing, which is not how a code of ethics should operate. Early "mystics" or religious men defined ethics as whatever God wills. Over time however, this principle has remained relatively unchanged, but instead "society" has replaced God in justifications, and essentially the elite have control over ethics and it can simply change on a whim as time passes. These elite can act on whatever whim they please, and those below them end up being ethically "enslaved" to the ideology of the elite.
* Rand heavily criticizes modern philosophers and moralists, as they deem ethics to be a subjective issue, and that reason, mind, and reality have no place in ethics.
* A sensation is an immediate and shot-term knowledge of the world around them through the sensory organs and the brains responses. a perception, is a collection of sensations.
* Because man can act as his own destroyer, and because man is not naturally built with the instincts to automatically survive and a goal to obtain, it is **necessary** that there exists a code of ethics to guide him.
* Men who act merely by copying what they see others do and never make an effort of learning for themselves or questioning anything only learn because of the efforts of those before them who actually chose to think, and can easily be led by the shallow promises of others to their own demises. Their survive primarily by blind chance, because they cannot really determine what is worth fighting for a who is worth following.
* Values are what we choose to keep and obtain, virtues are the means by which we achieve these values.
* The Three Values of Objectivist Thought and Their Corresponding Virtues:
	1. Reason - Rationality
	2. Purpose - Productiveness
	3. Self-esteem - Pride
* Rationality is the most important of all virtues to Ayn Rand, it means essentially that it is one's responsibility to develop their own judgements, knowledge. and convictions solely within reality, to reject any form of mysticism and religion as they attempt to derive knowledge from that which cannot be seen or felt. We are also to apply the rationality, knowledge, and morals we develop in all areas of life, to be consistent and steadfast if living and applying our beliefs. Responsibility is also key, one must accept the consequences of their actions and never contradict themselves, and also one has to earn all they have, everything one has must be earned.
* Within rationality the virtues of independence, integrity, honesty, and justice must be applied.
	+ Independence - One's acceptance of the responsibility of forming one's own judgements and living by the work of one's own mind
	+ Integrity - One must never sacrifice one's convictions to the opinions or wishes of others
	+ Honesty - One must never attempt to fake reality in any matter
	+ Justice - One must never seek or grant the unearned or undeserved, neither in matter not in spirit
* Productiveness is the application of one's mind to shaping his destiny and environment, rather than being acted upon. It means devoting one's potential and abilities to creating an honest and fully earned living, to reaching one's full potential.
* Within productiveness several human traits are utilized:
	+ Creative ability
	+ Ambition
	+ Self-assertion
	+ To contest affliction and disasters
	+ The reshaping of the earth in one's own image.
* Pride is exercising self-esteem in all things, In being proud and steadfast in one's beliefs, to never accept blame or punishment when it is not due nor to deliver undue punishment. When one does harm another in any way or makes a mistake, they must seek to right their wrongs take responsibility. It further means to seek to improve oneself in all ways
* True happiness can only come about from one's productive work and achievements in life.
* Objectivism holds that men's rational desires and needs do not conflict with one another, and that if all act rational, all can achieve happiness. This is direct contrast with hedonism and altruism, and Ayn Rand holds that human good does NOT necessitate sacrifice.
* A trade - one who earns what he keeps and does not take that which he did not earn nor deserve. They exchange with others without coercion for the mutual benefit of both parties. In spiritual (i.e, emotional) terms, he does not expect to be loved for his flaws and weaknesses, but rather his strengths and virtues.
* According to Rand there are three schools of major ethical morality
	1. Mystic - Feudal and Dark Age Europe
	2. Social - Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia
	3. Subjective - a complete disregard and lack of ethics and morals, modern day

* Immorality is not the biggest threat to human society, but rather the moralities that men are asked to practice

### Chapter 2

* Rand and Nathaniel Branden hold that faith is not a rational feeling or virtue, that is consists of committing one's virtues to that which cannot bee seen not studied in anyway.
* Faith is dangerous in that when one succumbs to it, they will call upon it and depend on it in critical times when they will need their reasoning capabilities most, and ultimately come up short in these times as they will block out reason in favor of faith.
* Rand does not see humility as a virtue, but rather as a fraudulent virtue touted around as the greatest of virtues by mystics. Pride is an important virtue but must be earned, those who are prideful in that which they did not earn are the greatest of fools.
* Rand believes that homosexuality often is a result of hyper-religious parents teaching their children that sex is evil and so is essentially the pursuit of women, that they are not to be desired but worshipped.
* A major weakness of religion is that the majority teach that this life is a time of suffering and trial, and that afterwards everything will be better. This encourages many to accept problems and inadequacies in their life and they just stop trying to improve and solve their problems as they see it as a hopeless pursuit.

### Chapter 3

* People who embrace altruism suffer from
	1. A lack of self-esteem
	2. A lack of respect for others
	3. A nightmare view of existence
	4. A lethargic indifference to ethics
* Rand sees society's views of sacrifice as highly flawed, for example if a man spends a fortune to cure his wife of a serious disease, it is no true sacrifice but rather an extension of his rational selfishness. If a man is willing to spend so much to save his wife, that means he clearly values his wife's life more than the money spent. True sacrifice, which is irrational, consists of trading something of higher value for something of lower value.
* When one helps those one loves, this is integrity, rather than sacrifice.
* Rand believes that only when one develops their own rational regard and respect for their own life can they respect others.
* Emergencies provide situations in which one should volunteer to help others, as long as it's not too great a burden to the one helping and does not cause one to risk their own life unnecessarily. Emergencies include floods, fires, earthquakes, etc., not poverty or loneliness, these do not provide an immediate threat to human life.
* Rand finds what-if and hypothetical scenarios frequently brought up by altruists as useless pursuits to discuss and inaccurate. They represent extremes that the vast majority of people will never find themselves and and just serve as attempts by altruists to make others feel guilty for being rational.

### Chapter 4

* It seems the saying "have their cake and eat it too" is of the greatest annoyance to Rand, that people can people can seriously believe that they can have no downsides to their decisions and get everything they want in life regardless of their efforts and work.
* A common complaint of Rand's regarding emotion-driven and irrational people is that they view many things as having static quantities, such as wealth, love, and happiness. They see the need of those with more love, wealth, or happiness to sacrifice some of their own to help those with less. In reality however there is an infinite quantity of these things, if all gave their upmost efforts in obtaining the above mentioned things, all could have plenty.
* In this chapter, Rand defends her view that there are no conflicts of interest among rational men in a free society. She utilizes the scenario of two men applying for the same job to defend this point. Essentially she argues that in the broader view of things, the fact that tow or more men are applying for the same job shows that this job is in high demand, and that whoever does get it will have a higher pay. Also she argues that the one who gets it was the one who earned it in the end. She doesn't do a great job defending this point however, I feel there are stronger arguments that she could have made to defend her point.

### Chapter 5

* Egoism - Man is an end in himself
* Altruism - Man is a means to the end of others
* Altruism argues that one's actions must benefit all but oneself. and egoism argues that one's actions should only benefit oneself. Branden however argues that often one's selfish ambitions and actions, while not intended to necessarily, benefit others, and that the pursuit of one's self-interests will benefit others indirectly. Essentially the concept of an "invisible hand" is being discussed in the chapter, and Branden further argues that essentially everyone is selfish and will act in their own self-interests, just often they will claim afterwards they were being altruistic and fully intending to help others to get good PR essentially.

## Quotes

### Chapter 1

* "Man is the only living species to act as his own destroyer- and that is the way he has acted through most of his history."

* "Ethics is *not* a mystic fantasy - Ethics is an objective, metaphysical necessity of man's survival - not by the grace of the supernatural not of your neighbors nor of your whims, but by the grace of reality and the nature of life."
* "Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all other values."
* "Rationality is man's basic virtue, the source of all his other virtues."
* "Man's basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know."
* "The virtue of rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide of action."
* "Rationality -- It means one's acceptance of the responsibility of forming one's own judgments and living by the work of one's own mind. It means one must never sacrafice one's convictions to the opinions and wishes of others -- that one must never attempt to fake reality in any manner -- that one must never seek or grant the unearned and undeserved, neither in matter not in spirit."
* "Rationality -- It means one must never desire effects without causes, that one must never enact a cause without assuming full responsibility for its effects."
* "It means the rejection of any form of mysticism, i.e., any claim to some nonsensory, nonrational, nondefinable, supernatural source of knowledge. It means a commitment to reason, not in sporadic fits or on select issues or in special emergencies, but as a permanent way of life."
* "The virtue of Productiveness is the recognition of the fact that productive work is the process by which man's mind sustains his life, the process that sets man free of the necessity to adjust himself to his background, as all animals do, and gives him power to adjust his background to himself."
* "Productiveness -- It means the consciously chosen pursuit of a productive career, in any line of rational endeavor, great or modest, on any level of ability. It is not the degree of a man's ability nor the scale of his work that is ethically relevant here, but the fullest and most purposeful use of his mind."
* "Productive work is the road of man's unlimited achievement and calls upon the highest attributes of his character: his creative ability, his ambitiousness, his self-assertiveness. his refusal to bear uncontested disasters, his dedication to the goal of reshaping the earth in the image of his values."
* "The virtue of pride is the recognition of the fact "that as man must produce the physical values he needs to sustain his life, so he must acquire the values of character than make his life worth sustaining -- that as man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a bein of self-made soul."
* "Pride -- It means that one must earn the right to hold oneself as one's own highest value by achieving one's own moral perfection -- which one achieves by never accepting any code of irrational virtues impossible to practice and by never failing to practice the virtues one knows to be rational - by never accepting an unearned guilt and never earning any, or, if one has earned it, never leaving it uncorrected - by never resigning oneself passively to any flaws in one's character -- by never placing any concern, wish, fear or mood of the moment above the reality of one's own self-esteem. And, above all, it means one's rejection of the role of a sacrificial animal, the rejection of any doctrine that preaches self-immolation as a moral virtue or duty."
* "Facts cannot be altered by a wish, but they can destroy the wisher."
* "The task of ethics is to define a man's proper code of values and thus to give him the means of achieving happiness."
* " The principle of trade is the only rational ethical principle for all human relationships."
* "The man that does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone."
* "The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others." -- "Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use."
* "The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence,"
* "Without property rights, no other rights are possible."
* "Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of future"

### Chapter 2

* "Faith is the equation of feeling with knowledge."
* "The alleged shortcut to knowledge, which is faith, it only a short circuit destroying the mind."
* "To gain the virtue of humility, one has only to abstain from thinking -- nothing else is demanded -- and one will fell humble quickly enough."

### Chapter 3

* "It is only in emergency situations that one should volunteer to help others."

### Chapter 4

* "There are no conflicts of interest among rational men."
* "Somehow, always means, somebody."
* "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."
* "In a free society, one does not have to deal with those who are irrational. One is free to avoid them."