Perfecting Ayn Rand’s Egoism: Setting the Record Straight

Nearly 60 years ago, Ayn Rand published a collection of essays that she famously christened The Virtue of Selfishness.

Objectivist ethics also suffers from certain confusions that hinder its  proper understanding and acceptance.

Indeed, in subtitling her book “A New Concept of Egoism,” Rand signals that her purpose is not just to recycle traditional selfishness, but to make the case for a new, improved egoism. Rand says that this new egoism is emphatically not going to be the culturally discredited, conventional concept of egoism or individualism  associated with Max Stirner or Friedrich Nietzsche, but an enlightened, rational “selfishness” (i.e., “rational self-interest”)—and will be forthrightly opposed to the culturally prevailing morality of altruistic “selflessness,” as well.¹In it, she presented a code of values for living well and being happy. However, her Objectivist ethics also suffers from certain confusions that hinder its  proper understanding and acceptance. In this essay, I offer one way of “perfecting Rand’s egoism,” by showing that her ethics is not fundamentally a kind of egoism in the conventional sense—in which one’s primary justification for any action is the benefit one receives—but instead a kind of eudaimonism or self-perfectionism, an ethics of human flourishing.

This sounds like a tall order and an impressive feat, and we are eager to see how she might pull it off. Yet, curiously, the term “egoism” does not appear in Rand’s book at all except in one of the pieces contributed by her associate, Nathaniel Branden, who states: “Egoism holds that, morally, the beneficiary of an action should be the person who acts…”² The problem is, Branden has defined not a new concept of egoism, but instead just the generic concept. As stated, it does succeed in clearly capturing the self-as-beneficiary perspective in contrast to the other-as-beneficiary perspective of “altruism”: self-ism versus other-ism.  However, there is no statement or definition of Rand’s own “new concept of egoism” to be found anywhere  in her book.

Rand’s way of introducing the book offers a very helpful insight into how altruism has co-opted and distorted the entire field of ethics.

Rand’s way of introducing the book, by contrast, offers a very helpful insight into how altruism has co-opted and distorted the entire field of ethics. Altruism makes the beneficiary issue—who is to benefit from one’s actions— primary in ethics, when really, Rand says, it is not. Thus, she has acknowledged that her book is not centered on a basic issue in ethics, and that egoism aka selfishness is not the essence of her ethics. Instead, as Rand  emphasizes, egoism versus altruism is a subsidiary or secondary issue in ethics: “The choice of the beneficiary of moral values…has to be derived from and validated by the fundamental premises of a moral system.”³

The first half of the essay reads much more like a modernized, carefully argued version of Aristotle’s ethics of eudaimonism—one with two distinctively Randian components.

In her lead essay, “The Objectivist Ethics,” Rand further underscores the non-fundamentality of egoism. She shows clearly that the primary issue in ethics is not who benefits from one’s actions, but instead whether one is going to focus one’s actions on living the life appropriate to a rational being. Not until her essay’s sixteenth page is there any discussion of either the beneficiary issue in a moral context or sacrifice (acting for the benefit of others rather than oneself), and “rational selfishness” is not even proclaimed until the twenty-second page. None of this sounds like her ethics is aimed primarily at enunciating selfishness as a virtue or egoism as a moral creed. Instead, the entire first half of the essay reads much more like a modernized, carefully argued version of Aristotle’s ethics of eudaimonism—moreover, one with two distinctively Randian components.

First, Rand is urging us to take responsibility for living the lives of rational beings by means of our own thought and effort—in other words, an ethics of rational individualism. Branden stresses that “[t]he theory of individualism is a central component of the Objectivist philosophy”; and that “man should think and judge independently, valuing nothing higher than the sovereignty of his intellect.”⁴ Also note that Rand identifies this by the term “independence,” which she conceives as an aspect of the virtue of rationality and which she defines as “one’s acceptance of the responsibility of forming one’s own judgments and living by the work of one’s own mind.”⁵

There is nothing in this Randian perspective of living a good life that hinges on the issue of self-versus-others, either in harnessing oneself to others or others to oneself, or more generally in some kind of balance-of-benefits. Instead, the fundamental ethical concern in judging the moral correctness of a given action is always: What kind of individual are you being and making of yourself by means of your thoughts and your actions? Are you taking responsibility for living the life proper to an  independent, rational individual?

Second, Rand was a staunch advocate of “moral ambitiousness” and “moral perfection.” She counseled us to reject “any code of irrational virtues impossible  to practice” and to “never [fail] to practice the virtues one knows to be moral.”⁶ Branden extolled “the ambition, the farsightedness, the drive to do better and still better, the living energy of creative men.”⁷ This is clearly a vision of the best, fullest life for human beings as the reason-driven pursuit of constant self-improvement—or, more briefly, rational perfectionism.

Rand’s ethics is fundamentally not a variant of egoism, but instead a form of rational perfectionist individualism.

Thus, the fundamental ethical concern of rational individualism can be restated in terms of rational perfectionism: Are you always thinking and acting so as (in Branden’s words) “to do better and still better”? Combining the two perspectives, then, it becomes apparent that Rand’s Objectivist ethics is fundamentally not a variant of egoism, but instead a form of rational perfectionist individualism.⁸

Again, as Rand underscored in her book’s introduction, the beneficiary issue is a derivative issue, and rational selfishness (rational self-interest, rational egoism) is Objectivism’s position on this derivative issue. In other words, the issue of “who benefits”—self or other (or both)—is a secondary matter in ethics. It is relevant, just not primary. What is primary in ethics is not the question of the benefits flowing to the self (or to the other) from an individual’s actions, but the nature of the very actions of the individual.

This suggests, in other words, that Rand was more deeply, fundamentally concerned to conceive of an individualist ethics, one that is fact-centered rather than people-and-relationship-centered—in other words, focused more deeply on taking responsibility for what one makes of one’s own life, than on debating whether the most important relationship determining one’s actions is one’s relationship to others in society or one’s relation to oneself and how best to honor or respect that relationship.⁹

Rand’s ethics, while implied as presenting a “new concept of egoism,” actually pushes both egoism and altruism off center stage by recognizing that “[t]he choice of the beneficiary of moral values is merely a preliminary or introductory issue in the field of morality…Neither is it a moral primary…”¹⁰ This strongly suggests that Rand’s writing about it in her  introduction and vividly highlighting it in the title and subtitle of her book was  not for the purpose of committing her to an ethics that is fundamentally beneficiary-focused, but instead precisely for the purpose of attracting the reader’s interest and attention.

Unfortunately, however, the considerable emphasis Rand puts on the beneficiary issue is the first thing the reader encounters in her book; and this creates the strong first impression that she regards ethics as primarily social (defining your relation to others, determining whether you or others are to be the main beneficiaries of your actions). It further gives the appearance that her ethics is in serious conflict with her overall stance that your main orientation in life should be a reality focus and a factual focus, not a people focus and/or a relationship focus.¹¹

It thus seems, in that introduction, as if Rand is implicitly presenting a view of man not as the rational animal, but as “the social animal.” The point, however, is not that man isn’t a social animal—because he is—but that being a social animal is not his essence. Rand’s ethics is social and relational in a  good deal of its application, but not fundamentally so, and calling it a form of egoism muddies that point considerably.¹²

A closer reading, of course, shows that this initial impression is misleading. Not only does Rand clearly state in the introduction that who should benefit is  a derivative issue, but she then devotes the first twenty pages of the lead essay, “The Objectivist Ethics,” to presenting an essentially eudaimonistic viewpoint, laying out the basis for the actions required by the survival of a rational being as a rational being, one who lives well and is happy. Only then does she finally move back to the beneficiary issue which, though necessitated by our nature as social beings, is nevertheless secondary. Again, the primary issue is: How should I act in order to live as well (as a rational being, whether in relation to other people or not) as I possibly can? How can I act (as a rational being, whether in relation to other people or not) so as to perfect myself as an individual?

Rand’s ethics differs fundamentally from both altruism and conventional egoism by saying that, while the beneficiary of an action is a criterion of moral value, it is neither the only criterion nor the primary one.

In other words, Rand’s ethics differs fundamentally from both altruism and conventional egoism by saying that, while the beneficiary of an action is a criterion of moral value, it is neither the only criterion nor the primary one. We do have to deal with the beneficiary issue, insofar as we are social creatures; but it is a derivative issue, not the foundational one, which is flourishing, living well qua human being.

This difference in how conventional egoism and Rand’s morality of rational self-interest address the social factor of ethics cannot be overemphasized. Conventional egoism treats beneficiary as the ethical primary. That is, it is primarily focused on the relational (social) issue of who should be the main beneficiary of someone’s actions. While this is an ethical issue, it is not a fundamental one. By contrast to conventional egoism, the central focus of Rand’s ethics is not “sacrifice no one” rather than “sacrifice others to self ” (conventional “Stirnerite” egoism), nor even “focus on benefiting yourself” rather than “focus on benefiting others,” but more fundamentally: focus on flourishing and living the life proper to a rational being.

To summarize: Rand’s morality of rational self-interest or rational perfectionist individualism is fundamentally not egoistic, but eudaimonistic. Unfortunately, Rand did not openly connect her theory to Aristotle’s and in addition considerably clouded the issue in her introduction, which talked a lot about beneficiaries, before getting down to brass tacks on the flourishing, self-perfection issue in her main essay. To see Rand’s ethics as fundamentally eudaimonistic (not  egoistic) thus requires careful reading in order to correctly identify the logical relationship of basic-versus-derivative points that are widely separated in the essay. This properly should have been Rand’s responsibility in the first place.

In other words, while the beneficiary is a fundamental concern in altruism and in conventional, defective varieties of egoism, it is not basic to Rand’s eudaimonistic “egoism.” To put it another way: the eudaimonism in her ethical theory simply trumps whatever egoism is found in ethical systems (including conventional egoism) that argue for the Primacy of the Beneficiary.¹³

 
Editor’s Note: For a further exposition, see “How to Locate Cause and Effect in Rand’s Ethics.”
 
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Notes and References

1. Ayn Rand, “Introduction,” The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (New York: Signet, 1964), p. xi.
2. Nathaniel Branden, “Isn’t Everyone Selfish?” The Virtue of Selfishness, pp. 66-67.
3. Rand, ibid., p. x.
4. Branden, “Counterfeit Individualism,” The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 158.
5. Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 28, emphasis added.
6. Rand, ibid., p. 29.
7. Branden, “The Divine Right of Stagnation,” The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 144, emphasis added.
8. Or “individualist perfectionism,” the term introduced by Neo-Aristotelian-Thomists, Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen in The Perfectionist Turn: From Metanorms to Metaethics (Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), a defense of human flourishing and a critique of non – or anti-individualist moral theories, including those rejecting morality grounded in more basic principles.
9. Den Uyl and Rasmussen give these two distinctive meta-ethical perspectives, both containing important elements of truth, the respective labels of “the template of responsibility,” an individual-oriented framework, and “the template of respect,” a primarily relationship-oriented perspective. From this, it is clear that Rand’s ethics properly falls under the template of responsibility, rather than the template of respect.
10. Rand, “Introduction,” p. x, emphasis added.
11. See Branden, “Counterfeit Individualism,” p. 159; and Rand, “Causality vs. Duty,” Philosophy: Who Needs It (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1982), pp. 119-20.
12. This creates a misunderstanding similar to referring to Rand’s metaphysics as “a form of atheism,” or her politics as “a form of capitalism,” neither of which is a fundamental description of that part of her philosophy. Unfortunately, while Rand has emphatically eschewed the former characterization, she has at times adopted the latter.
13. Thus, Den Uyl and Rasmussen are absolutely on target in having raised the question “Why refer to Rand’s ethics as an egoism? Surely this is an inappropriate label.” See their “Life, Teleology, and Eudaimonia in the Ethics of Ayn Rand,” in Den Uyl and Rasmussen, eds., The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), p. 76. A more recent concurring view is by Paul Bloomfield, “Egoism and Eudaimonism: Replies to Khawaja,” in Allan Gotthelf and James G. Lennox, eds., Metaethics, Egoism, and Virtue: Studies in Ayn Rand’s Normative Theory (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011): “In fact I think Rand’s work can be seen as a paradigm of eudaimonism. Eudaimonism begins with the idea of a person having a sense of one’s life as a whole” (p. 81).

This essay (presented in two parts) is an abridged and revised version of the paper titled “Eudaimon in the Rough: Perfecting Rand’s Egoism” published in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, vol. 20, no. 2, December 2020, and appears here with the permission of Pennsylvania State University Press.

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About the Author: Roger E. Bissell

Roger E. Bissell is an independent scholar living in Antioch, Tennessee. A research associate with the Molinari Institute and Associate Editor of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, he has written numerous scholarly essays in philosophy and psychology as well as four books, including How the Martians Discovered Algebra: Explorations in Induction and the Philosophy of Mathematics (2014) and What’s in Your File Folder? Essays on the Nature and Logic of Propositions (2019). A lifelong professional musician, Roger has an M.A. in music performance and literature (University of Iowa, 1971) and a B.S. in music theory and composition (Iowa State University, 1970) and most recently authored an essay on the Great American Songbook for The Dialectics of Liberty: Exploring the Context of Human Freedom, which he co-edited with Chris Matthew Sciabarra and Edward W. Younkins (2019).