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Ayn Rand’s Philosophy Decoded: Replies to Recent Criticisms of the Objectivist Ethics Part 2

By Roger E. Bissell

December 12, 2023

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Part 2: The Mistaken Notion that Rand Undercuts Her Own Theory of Individualism

In part 1 of this essay, I discussed a number of claims that Edward Younkins made about Ayn Rand’s ethical philosophy in comparing it to that of Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl (hereinafter, R&D). Some differences between the two ethical perspectives (Objectivism and Individualistic Perfectionism) seemed to be significant but were found to be either the result of arguing at cross purposes or the result of mischaracterizing Rand’s ideas. Similar points will be made in this part of my essay.[1]

 
 

  • Preliminary points on Ayn Rand and Individualism

As stated in an unsigned article posted to The Atlas Society’s website, Objectivism is “the philosophy of rational individualism founded by Ayn Rand (1905-82).” Rand was an outspoken champion of both reason and individualism for most of her adult life, and there was never any doubt about her sincerity on either count. She positively loathed irrationality and collectivism, including especially the various forms of faux individualism so piquantly described by her associate Nathaniel Branden in his 1962 article “Counterfeit Individualism.”

Rand was an outspoken champion of both reason and individualism for most of her adult life, and there was never any doubt about her sincerity on either count.

Long before this, Rand had found her voice as an individualist. The January 1944 issue of Reader’s Digest included a piece by Rand entitled “The Only Path to Tomorrow,” and it was said to be “condensed from The Moral Basis of Individualism…a forthcoming book to be published by the Bobbs-Merrill Co.”[2] After railing for four paragraphs against totalitarianism and collectivism, Rand finally gets to the point: “The American system is founded on individualism. If it is to survive, we must understand the principles of individualism and hold them as our standard in any public question, in every issue we face. We must have a positive credo, a clear, consistent faith.”

Two years later, through her connections from working in the film industry, Rand wrote a number of small pieces under the title “Textbook of Americanism,” which appeared in The Vigil, the publication of The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. It was republished as a pamphlet in 1959 by The Nathaniel Branden Institute, then again later by The Objectivist. Rand’s opening salvo in the series began thusly: “The basic issue in the world today is between two principles: Individualism and Collectivism. Individualism holds that man has inalienable rights which cannot be taken away from him by any other man, nor by any number, group or collective of other men. Therefore, each man exists by his own right and for his own sake, and not for the sake of the group.”[3]

Rand was just as persistent in her advocacy of individualism in her fiction works. While the “cardinal” value of reason took center stage in her final novel, Atlas Shrugged (1957), her first two novels, We the Living (1936/1957) and The Fountainhead (1943) eloquently addressed the issue of individualism vs. collectivism in politics and in “men’s souls” (i.e., ethics and personal psychology), respectively. Especially telling were her descriptions of the so-called individualists in her villain Ellsworth Toohey’s stable of weirdos in The Fountainhead.

However, neither advocating nor illustrating is proving. Even a ringing, forthright manifesto such as The Textbook of Americanism is just a broadside, a shot across the bow, as it were, not a proof. Rand’s rhetorical and aesthetic prowess and effectiveness notwithstanding, what is at issue here is her logical consistency and conceptual coherence. The question is: did she make her case? Not just state or show that individualism was the superior philosophy, but actually prove her case?

That brings us to the cluster of doubts raised by R&D in their two recent essays (published in Reason Papers and The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies), and by Edward Younkins in his Savvy Street essay to which I have been responding here. I put these doubts under the heading of “Did Ayn Rand undercut her Individualism?” This question is raised by R&D and Younkins in several different ways and in regard to several different issues, each of which deserves consideration.

 

  • Was Rand actually a Relation-ist rather than an Individualist?

    Did her Egoism undercut her Individualism by stressing one’s relationship to oneself as beneficiary, rather than perfecting oneself as an individual? As a corollary question: by her stress on egoism and self as beneficiary, did Rand undercut her advocacy of moral perfectionism? Another corollary question: Did Rand undercut both individualism and moral perfectionism by failing to emphasize the importance of her Objectivist virtues as not simply the means to a good life but as actually constitutive of that life?

Younkins says that “Rand’s rational objective moral theory is based on reality, reason, and egoism.” However, Rand does not refer to her ethics in such terms as “rational objective moral theory,” simply calling it “a morality of reason” or “the Objectivist ethics.” It is indeed based on reality and reason because she derives it by applying reason to the facts of reality (viz., human nature), but more importantly, egoism is not the “base” of Rand’s ethics, nor is it the “essence” of her ethics as some claim. Instead, it is an implication of her ethics. Like Rand’s rejection of hedonism which actually precedes it in her essay “The Objectivist Ethics,” her argument for egoism/rational selfishness is derived from one’s rational self-interest, i.e., from what is required for one to live the life appropriate to a rational being—which in turn is based on reason applied to the facts on which human life depends. To repeat: egoism, as Rand conceives it, is a necessary condition of one’s survival as a human being, a corollary of rational self-interest, but not a synonym for her ethics, and not its base.[4] Thus, we can accurately say that Rand’s ethics is an egoistic ethics, but it is also an anti-hedonist ethics—while also affirming that it is neither of these fundamentally.

Even more concerning is Younkins’s next statement: “The goals of morality for [Objectivism] are that the agent should always be the beneficiary of his actions and that a person should act for his rational self-interest.” Neither of these is a goal of the Objectivist ethics, because ethics does not have a goal. Only people (and other living creatures) have goals. The ultimate goal of a person’s actions, for Rand, is to live (survive and flourish) as a rational being and to be happy—and ethics is the tool to help guide one’s choices and actions in pursuing that goal.

Younkins then cites R&D, saying that they “do not make the relationship to the beneficiary paramount.” But neither does Rand!

Younkins then cites R&D, saying that they “do not make the relationship to the beneficiary paramount.” But neither does Rand! She explicitly says (in her introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness) that egoism vs. altruism, self vs. other, is not the fundamental issue in ethics, and she means it. (That’s why she subtitled her book “a new concept of egoism.” It is an egoism that does not entrap one’s ethics in the beneficiary pitfall that she rails against.)

Well, what then is Rand’s fundamental ethical concern? As already said, it is to make one’s one and only, precious individual life the best it can be, to pursue one’s values with “moral ambitiousness,” to pursue one’s moral perfection in order to earn one’s being one’s own ultimate value (to paraphrase Rand from “The Objectivist Ethics”). As recently as three short years ago, when R&D were defending Rand against the scurrilous insults of Hilary Putnam, they stated that Rand “holds that someone else’s human flourishing should not be as important for a person as that person’s own. The development of one’s own life and character is each person’s primary ethical obligation” (The Realist Turn, p. 175), a statement that Rand would enthusiastically have agreed with.

But where, then, does Rand’s egoism come from? If, under all the “selfishness” window dressing, she’s actually just another individualistic perfectionist like R&D, that doesn’t say or imply anything about who should benefit from your actions, does it? Actually, it does. If your one and only individual life is your paramount ethical concern, every action you take must be done according to how and whether it serves that highest purpose. Any action in which you were not the beneficiary would be an action against that purpose, draining life energy away from fulfilling your survival needs. The more you do for others without considering the impact on your own well-being, the greater the risk you run of undercutting your own fullest life. It is orders of magnitude more crucial of a consideration than the absurd “environmental impact” studies required by the federal government.

However, that does not rule out others also benefiting from your self-benefitting actions.[5] In other words, “always,” for Rand, does not imply “only.” And the problem is, it’s all too easy to make that slide from “always” to “only,” and this results in accusing Rand of “self-only” egoism, when she instead maintains “self-always” egoism, which is not at all the same view. While Younkins avoids this strawman argument, R&D unfortunately do not. In the section of their Reason Papers essay where they distinguish their ethics from Rand’s, they correctly acknowledge her as having said that beneficiary is “not an ethical primary,” but then they immediately say: “However, for Rand to require that only oneself ought to be beneficiary is to adopt the same logic as that of altruism” (p. 35, note 35, emphasis added). Ouch. Rand, of course, does not require any such thing, and she condemns making the beneficiary issue primary for that very reason. As evidenced by the above quotes about moral perfection and moral ambitiousness, Rand would again surely endorse R&D’s very next statement, in which they say that requiring that only oneself ought to be the beneficiary of one’s actions “makes the moral worth of conduct dependent on relationships rather than the perfection of the individual human being.” Amen to that.

Even so, Rand does not make self-benefit the primary in ethics—only a necessary condition for one’s achieving the primary, which is cleaving to the ideal and the life-project of making oneself into the best that one can be. But benefit to others can also support one’s achieving that primary. Both one’s relationship to others and (especially) one’s relationship to oneself must come into consideration when one has to figure out how best to live one’s best life as a rational being.[6] So, neither Rand nor R&D have said that relationships—with others and with oneself (as giving benefits to others or to oneself)—are unimportant, only that they are not the primary in ethics. R&D underscored this issue in The Perfectionist Turn, pointing out that while the Template of Respect holds relationships to be primary, the Template of Responsibility (which they advocate) sees one’s pursuing one’s best life as the primary. By contrast, relationships (and the benefits flowing through them), while a secondary issue in ethics, are nonetheless of very real importance, not only because of the opportunity to share knowledge and trade material values, but also because of the opportunities for companionship and understanding. This is necessarily so, as long as one is living among others, and not as a recluse in the woods or on a desert island.

As for the details about how to balance out the value trading and sharing with others, those are the details that must be dealt with in context by each individual. For the problems in living one’s best life, let alone doing so among others, there are no simple answers written in stone or in a handbook of morality.[7] In this, both Rand and R&D agree.[8] You have to do the heavy lifting yourself. So, as Dr. Laura might say, “Figure it out, and then go do the right thing.”

One more example, this one about Rand’s Objectivist virtues, should suffice to make my point about the consistency of Rand’s individualism with her ethics. Younkins holds that while R&D “make a case that the virtues both causally contribute to and constitute the flourishing of a human being, Rand…views the virtues as only instrumental” (i.e., only as a means to one’s flourishing). Yet, how can this be true? In “The Objectivist Ethics,” Rand clearly states that “The three cardinal values of the Objectivist Ethics—the three values which, together, are the means to and the realization of one’s ultimate value, one’s own life—are: Reason, Purpose, and Self-Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride” (emphasis added). For Rand, virtues are not only means to the value that is one’s life, but also the actions by which one achieves (“realizes”) and continues to maintain (to “realize”) it. (“Virtue is the act by which one gains and/or keeps it [i.e., value].”) Virtue is thus an ongoing, integral part of one’s continued flourishing, as well as the means of achieving it to begin with.

Further, once a pattern of virtuous (value-seeking) action has been habitualized, it becomes a virtue in the additional sense of a more-or-less fixed character trait. It is in this extended sense that virtue becomes not just an act of pursuing value, but also a valuable constituent aspect of one’s personal character—the “how” one creates oneself having been incorporated into the “who” one has created. One’s “self-made soul,” as it were, is that of a person of reason, purpose, and self-esteem, who is further characterized by the stable, enduring virtues of rationality, productiveness, pride, etc. So, since these values and virtues can be incorporated into one’s very character, at least after some degree of consistent, dedicated action, how can it be claimed that Rand views them as “only instrumental”?

What, then, about R&D’s claim that “The idea of teleological self-perfection is not exactly absent in Rand, though it is not much emphasized either” (336)? Not much emphasized? Rand gave it a separate paragraph from the other virtues in “The Objectivist Ethics.” She heavily stressed the virtue of pride or “moral ambitiousness,” which, she said, “means that one must earn the right to hold oneself as one’s own highest value by achieving one’s own moral perfection” (27, emphasis added). Not to mention that she wrote a long novel dedicated to concretizing her vision of a perfect man (Howard Roark in The Fountainhead).

So, what is the relationship between Rand’s egoism and R&D’s individualistic perfectionism? Well, her ethics is an unusual egoism, to say the least, as R&D themselves note as early as The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand (1984). Rand says her ethics presents “a new concept of egoism.” Indeed, this new concept of egoism, it is now clear, is that egoism (and “selfishness”) is not the core or essence of her ethics, but instead a corollary, a derivative issue (which she stresses in the introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness), an implication of making one’s best life one’s central ethical purpose, an implication of rational, individualistic perfectionism. Logically, by the nature of life, for one’s actions to support one’s life requires that one be the primary beneficiary of those actions, but not the only beneficiary. Egoism, in this respect, is a corollary of individualist perfectionism, which clearly seems to be what Rand’s ethics is all about.

 

  • Did Rand undercut her Individualism by failing to keep clear the difference between logic and reality?[9]

    In particular: Did Rand undercut her Individualism by over-generalizing The Good and failing to realize that The Good is individuated for each person? Secondly: Did Rand undercut her Individualism by holding so general a view of one’s interests that rational individuals could never have a conflict—even though it clearly seems that they can?

In their Reason Papers essay, R&D say that one of the issues where their view “is basically different from” Rand’s is the fact that while “the goods and virtues found in the lives and characters of human beings may be [abstractly] regarded as the same…in reality they are and must be individuated” (34). It is clear that they believe Rand has a problem here, and they suggest that she might have conflated “the concept of human good…with the reality to which it refers” (34).

Is this true? Did Rand believe that “the good must be the same for all individuals because it is rational”?

Is this true? Did Rand believe that “the good must be the same for all individuals because it is rational” (34)? Did she fail to consider how the general principles applying to all human beings, as humans, would work out in practice for each human being, as an individual? This is a very drastic suggestion by R&D. We can see in her essay “What Is Capitalism?,” however, that Rand grappled with this issue and resolved it successfully and with several clarifying examples.

In her discussion of “socially objective value,”[10] Rand makes the case that the good depends highly upon one’s individual context of values and experience, a point very similar to the concept of the individual’s “nexus” developed by R&D in their various books and mentioned in their essay. She gives some excellent examples, two of which, I think, suffice to finesse the issue. I call them the “Bicycle” and “Lipstick” examples.

In the Bicycle example, Rand says: “it can be rationally proved that the airplane is objectively of immeasurably greater value to man (to man at his best), than the bicycle….But…there is no reason why his meager earnings, the product of his effort, should be spent…on subsidizing the airplane industry, if his own transportation needs do not extend beyond the range of a bicycle.”[11]

In the Lipstick example, she says: “it can be rationally demonstrated that microscopes are scientifically more valuable than lipstick. But—valuable to whom? A microscope is of no value to a little stenographer struggling to make a living; a lipstick is; a lipstick, to her, may mean the difference between self-confidence and self-doubt, between glamour and drudgery.”[12]

From this, it is clear that any inference or suggestion that Rand held that “the good must be the same for all individuals because it is rational” is simply at odds with the details of her most prominent discussion of this very issue.

Another problem, R&D maintain in their Reason Papers essay, is that Rand’s (supposed) conflation of the concept of “good” and reality somehow “opens the door to the possibility of conflict” (34). Or, as Younkins states it in his essay, “the potential for legitimate disputes between individuals, with respect to their specific individual good, cannot be dismissed.” This is something that Rand denies is possible.[13] She holds, R&D correctly say, that as long as people are “rationally pursuing their own good as understood in terms of the principles, methods, virtues, and values that constitute ‘man’s survival qua man’,” as long as they correctly apply that standard “to the purpose of attaining their own life, then there is no basis for conflict” (29). “Legitimate conflicts between individuals regarding what is their respective good and how they should conduct themselves” (29) simply do not arise, and “there can never be righteous conflicts between what is good for one person and good for another” (42). R&D take issue with this. They hold, in contrast, that “the possibility of righteous conflicts between individuals regarding their respective good cannot be ruled out as a matter of principle” (35).

This seems, however, to involve a confusion between conflict and competition. As we ordinarily understand conflict between individuals, it involves some form of violation of one person’s rights by another, either in the form of physical force or some kind of deception (fraud) that breaches an agreement to interact and pursue values in an informed and voluntary manner. Competition is more general in that it simply involves two (or more) parties pursuing the same goal which only one of them can attain. For instance, two football teams both want to win the game, so they compete with each other to see who can rack up the most points. We would not call this a “conflict of values,” since the attainable value for each player on each team is in competitive play, which itself means having a team to play with and a team to play against. So long as everyone abides by the agreed-upon rules, there will be no conflict between individuals.

Now, do the two teams have a “conflict of interest” (to use Rand’s term)? No. Their “righteous [i.e., rational] interest” is to do the best they can, within the scope of the agreed-upon rules—and to win, if and only if they do better. Competition and even a vigorous struggle are not equivalent to conflict. Wanting to play against the best is a higher value than winning per se, otherwise any ragtag bunch could play against their grandmas and win![14]

In general, your “righteous interest” is not for you to have something you want rather than for someone else to have it (which would be a conflict of interest with anyone else desiring the same thing),[15] but to be able to pursue what you want from what is available and to attain whatever you can get without violating anyone else’s free choice. To be able to pursue and attain—which means: to have the freedom to exercise whatever capacity one has to act for what you want. This does not guarantee that other people’s choices and actions will always be correct or rational, including especially when a “third party” is involved, but Rand carefully qualifies her “no conflict of interests” as pertaining to rational men (and women).

To put it yet another way: whatever conflict two rational people might have on the level of individual values is subordinate to and outweighed by the common value they both have in everyone’s doing their own personal best and letting specific outcomes be determined within the framework of voluntary choice and peaceful interaction. They want their specific individual values to be achieved, but not at any cost—while they want their common higher rational values to be upheld, whatever the cost.

 

  • Did Rand undercut her Individualism by advocating a regime of rights that would “subordinate society to moral law,” rather than allowing the peaceful coexistence of multiple different moral systems?

A corollary question: how does the concept of individual rights provide a logical connection between an individual’s moral code and his society’s legal code? How can you get from “it’s right for me to do X” to “it’s my right to do X”? Isn’t this just verbal hand-waving in lieu of logic?

Younkins states that R&D seek to “abandon the idea that politics is institutionalized ethics. They say that statecraft is not soulcraft, and that politics is not an appropriate method to make men moral. They proclaim the need to divest substantive morality from politics.” R&D point to what I call the Transition Paragraph in Rand’s essay “Man’s Rights” in support of their claim that Rand’s view of the connection between morality and rights “lacks conceptual clarity” (39).

Here is the paragraph in question. I will explain each part of it, beginning with the crucial, final, italicized portion, which is really the key to understanding the preceding points. From this, we will see that Rand’s supposed “easy elisions between morality, rights, and law” (40) are actually more subtle and insightful than perhaps might appear. Rand stated:

“Rights” are a moral concept—the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual’s actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others—the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context—the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law. (92)

“Rights” is the mechanism for placing all individuals under the one and only moral law that may rightly be enacted into a legal code. That is because it is an essential feature of any doctrine that counts as a moral doctrine that your actions are moral only if they are taken by your own self-directed, autonomous choice, and not under duress. (As Rand stated, “Morality ends where a gun begins.”) This is a universal principle of moral human action, a moral law. The only way that everyone in a society can be reasonably assured of being able to act freely—i.e., to act in accordance with this principle, this moral law—is for that rightful equal freedom, for individual rights, to be defined by a legal code and defended by a political institution (government).

This is the sense in which society as a whole—the vast multitude of individuals with their vast diversity of choices and desires—is subordinated to moral law…by individual rights. Granted, this is not a substantive moral law, but it is nonetheless a universal moral law, one that transcends substantive differences between diverse moral codes. On this reading, Rand’s view of the foundation for a proper political system of negative rights is exactly the same as that of R&D’s, that of the need to protect everyone’s moral agency.

“Rights” is one of those bridge concepts that Rand occasionally uses to tie together different parts of philosophy.

We can now see how “rights” is “the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context.” What all these diverse moralities have in common is the need for their practitioners to be able to act in a self-directed way toward their interests, values, and goals, which means that they need to be free from the use of force by, or the fraudulent actions of, others that interfere with such autonomous, self-directed actions, including the use of force or fraud by government. Again, everyone, regardless of their morality, needs this freedom, this recognition of and respect for their individual rights, or their actions do not meet the fundamental necessary condition for them to be moral actions. Thus, while not guaranteeing that any given action will be moral (which is impossible to guarantee), the concept of “rights” preserves the possibility of moral action. The preceding also indicates how the concept of “rights” is the “link” between each individual’s moral code (ethics) and society’s legal code (politics). “Rights” is one of those bridge concepts that Rand occasionally uses to tie together different parts of philosophy.

We can further see that, contrary to R&D’s speculation, Rand is not suggesting that “[s]omething (a right) apparently can have some ethical standing without being specifically directed toward some good” (41). Rights have universal ethical standing, as does their ethical basis, the universal structural moral principle that (to repeat): your actions can be moral only if they are taken by your own self-directed, autonomous choice, and not under duress. The good toward which rights are directed is similarly universal: protecting each person’s freedom to engage in self-directed, voluntary action. This requires that we embrace and actualize the ideal of a society that legislates only structural moral law—universal human autonomy (individual rights)—and its practical corollary, the procedural laws, and the criminal and civil codes to implement and protect those rights.

This means that the purpose of “statecraft” is not for the state (and those running it) to craft our individual souls, but to clear the playing field so that each of us individuals can craft our own souls as we see fit without interference from others—which means: to keep us from getting in each other’s way, so that we can each act morally or not, as we choose. The way this must be done, and the only way it can be done, is to set up a political-legal structure that “legislates” only the one and only moral law that applies across the board to all moralities, namely, an absolute prohibition of force and fraud which interfere with people’s autonomous, informed, self-directed actions.

If a government tries to go beyond the necessary condition for moral action (protection of self-directed action) and impose a purportedly sufficient condition—trying to make people be good, as it were—it abrogates people’s autonomy and the very foundation for their being moral. This is the fundamental limitation on government for both Rand and R&D, and it is why R&D subtitled the second book of their trilogy “A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics.” The ideal government does not engage in perfecting individuals and crafting their souls. It protects our freedom to act as we will in perfecting ourselves and crafting our own souls.

 

  • Conclusion: More careful study needed

Edward Younkins, in speaking of some of Ayn Rand’s more technical philosophical positions, assures us that the purpose of his comparison essay is “mainly descriptive and explanatory.” However, his descriptions of Rand’s ideas are too often inaccurate and his explanations too often flow from misunderstanding of those ideas. In some respects, his attempt to be evenhanded and impartial instead results in a portrayal of Rand that is at easily discernible variance with the facts and reasonable inferences from her statements.

Rand’s ideas deserve better than this.

Rand’s ideas deserve better than this. Whether or not they were derived with all the scholarly rigor and precision that the academic world demands, to say as Younkins does that “her writings lack the attention to detail, contexts, examples, and counterexamples” is demonstrably false. She diligently concretizes her principles and arguments. One may not agree with some of her examples, but then she would have had plenty to say about other people’s examples (not to mention their lack of the same).

Younkins concludes with a comment that I think also applies more specifically to Rand’s positions in ethics and political philosophy. He says that her views “need to be studied in more depth than has been done to date.” I agree, and I would add to this: “…and with more care.” If this were done, it would be clear that the Mack truck of statist ideology has an even harder time driving through the increasingly slender space between Objectivism and Individualist Perfectionism than some might think. Let the careful, deep study begin.
 
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Notes

[1] I will save the particularly tangled issue of “the choice to live” for the concluding part, soon to follow.

[2] This book was never published, of course, but in its place, Rand gave us something immeasurably better: the monumental, game-changing novel, Atlas Shrugged.

[3] See also Jonathan Hoenig’s The New Textbook of Americanism: The Politics of Ayn Rand (2018). Of special interest here are the second section, “Expanding Textbook of Americanism,” in which various contributors address the remaining 29 questions Rand never got to before the series was discontinued in 1946; and the third section, “Further Commentary by Ayn Rand,” especially her answers to questions about self-defense, secession, and forced vaccination and quarantine during epidemics.

[4] Any more than atheism is a synonym or base for the Objectivist metaphysics or romanticism is a synonym or base for the Objectivist aesthetics. It’s vital to keep in mind that egoism, atheism, and romanticism are all implications or corollaries of her theories, not their fundamentals.

[5] Nor does it rule out the possibility that your benefit could be a spiritual (rather than material) one, such as the enjoyment or satisfaction in what you did for those others.

[6] See especially chapter 3, “The Ethics of Emergencies,” in Rand’s Virtue of Selfishness and chapter 1 of R&D’s The Perfectionist Turn. These are vital background reading for understanding how relationships relate to living one’s own best life as an individual.

[7] In their various books, R&D have expressed this point in terms of not being able to read reality for moral guidance as one would read the RDA information on the side panel of a cereal box.

[8] It would be much easier to see this and other commonalities between Rand and R&D if it weren’t for her regrettably disjointed, strewn-about way of making this and other points in The Virtue of Selfishness. (See Bissell 2020 and see especially point 3) below.)

[9] See part 1 of this essay, where I discussed other aspects of the logic vs. reality problem.

[10] Rand defines this as “the sum of the individual judgments of all the men involved in trade at a given time, the sum of what they valued, each in the context of his own life” (“What Is Capitalism?,” p. 17, emphasis in original).

[11] Rand, “What is Capitalism?”, p. 17.

[12] Ibid., p. 17.

[13] See Ayn Rand, “The ‘Conflicts’ of Men’s Interests,” in Rand The Virtue of Selfishness, 57–65.

[14] My thanks to Vinay Kolhatkar for this vivid example.

[15] From the standpoint of IP and the Template of Responsibility, this would be ruled out because it makes relationships with others primary, rather than the seeking of one’s well-being and the creating of one’s best self.

References

Bissell, Roger E. 2020. “Eudaimon in the Rough: Perfecting Rand’s Ethics.” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 20, no. 2 (December): 452–78. Revised sections reprinted in 2021 on The Savvy Street (Nov. 4, Nov. 10, Nov. 15).

______. 2023. “Ayn Rand’s Philosophy Decoded: Replies to Recent Criticisms of the Objectivist Ethics, Part 1: Come, Let Us Beat Our Mountains into Molehills.” The Savvy Street (Nov. 27). Online at: https://www.thesavvystreet.com/ayn-rands-philosophy-decoded-replies-to-recent-criticisms-of-the-objectivist-ethics/.

______. 2024a [under editorial consideration by Reason Papers]. “Individualistic Perfectionism vs. Objectivism: A Distinction Without Much Difference?”

______. 2024b [under editorial consideration by Reason Papers]. “Subordinating Whom to What? Revisiting the Connection Between Morality and Rights.”

Branden, Nathaniel. 1962. “Counterfeit Individualism.” In Rand 1964b, 158–61.

Den Uyl, Douglas J. and Douglas B. Rasmussen, eds. 1984. The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

______. 2016. The Perfectionist Turn: From Metanorms to Metaethics. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.

Hoenig, Jonathan, ed. 2018. The New Textbook of Americanism: The Politics of Ayn Rand. Chicago: Capitalistpig Publications.

n.a. 2004. “Freedom, Achievement, Individualism, Reason: Objectivism” (Dec. 1). Online at: https://www.atlassociety.org/post/freedom-achievement-individualism-reason-objectivism.

Rand, Ayn. [1936] 1959. We the Living. Revised ed. New York: Random House.

______. 1943. The Fountainhead. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Inc.

______. 1944. “The Only Path to Tomorrow.” Reader’s Digest (January), 88–90.

______. 1946. “Textbook of Americanism.” The Vigil. Reprinted as a pamphlet by Nathaniel Branden Institute (1959) and by The Objectivist, Inc. (after 1967) and republished in Hoenig 2018, 2–20.

______. 1961. “The Objectivist Ethics.” In Rand 1964, 13–39.

______. 1964a. Introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness. In Rand 1964b, vii–xii.

______. 1964b. The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. New York: Signet.

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______. 1967. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. New York: Signet.

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______. 2020. The Realist Turn: Repositioning Liberalism. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.

______. 2023a. “On Grounding Ethical Values in the Human Life Form.” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 23, nos. 1–2 (July): 328–40.

______. 2023b. “Three Forms of Neo-Aristotelian Ethical Naturalism: A Comparison.” Reason Papers 43, no. 2 (Fall): 14–43.

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