Notes on The Virtue of Selfishness

I just finished Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness, and I really liked its short essay format covering lots of different topics. I liked how it built upon the topics I saw in the previous fiction and nonfiction books.

The point of the title essay is that "selfishness" has a bad rap and corrupted definition, and the true view of selfishness and individualism is in fact congruent with living a moral life.

Below are my notes on each essay.

0 Intro

• Selfishness definition corrupted
  
• Real def: concern with one's own interests
  
• Altruism provides no moral code and just says sacrifice
  
• Purest evil because does not allow man to work for own survival
  
• Industrialist equated with robbers
  
• Man needs moral code
  
• Man needs to be beneficiary of own moral actions
  
• Man has right to moral existence
  
• Must act for rational self interest and be beneficiary of own actions
  
• not about following whims
  
• About using reason to decide actions consistent with explicit moral code (which is absent in altruism)
  

1 The objectivist ethics

• Code of values to guide man's actions
  
• Why we need such a code
  
• Mysticism, good as "good of society" is circular vague definition; who is society
  
• Ethics viewed as outside of reason, as subjective to man's whim
  
• Value is something to gain or keep, defined for whom and for what in the face of alternatives
  
• No alternatives means no values
  
• One fundamental alternative in universe: existence or nonexistence
  
• For inanimate matter, this is unconditional
  
• For living matter, constantly need to do action to promote existence, life
  
• Only to a living entity can something be good or evil or have value
  
• Ultimate value for organism is life; its life is its standard of value
  
• Other values are lesser values derived from value of life
  
• Man first becomes aware of values and good or evil concept in sensations of pleasure and pain
  
• Sensations are first way of learning evaluation
  
• His life is the standard that determines what will make him experience physical sensation of pleasure or pain
  
• Consciousness is basic means of survival
  
• Animals and plants have automatic code of values and their lives are standard of value; know what actions to take that are good and furthering their lives; cannot destroy themselves
  
• Man has no automatic code of values for survival and many more choices
  
• Man's consciousness uniquely volitional
  
• Man's survival requires perceptual values (which animals have but plants don't) and also conceptual values (which animals lack)
  
• Conceptual knowledge not acquired automatically
  
• Senses become percepts automatically but percepts don't become concepts automatically
  
• Sense is just automatic reaction to stimuli with no memory; percept is grouping and memory of those that animals have
  
• Faculty that directs conceptualizing manual process is reason; process is thinking
  
• Reason is act by choice; man can just drift semiconscious without it. Thinking requires full active awareness and concentration
  
• Man doesn't have instinct for providing food; needs to produce it through thought and action
  
• Nature gives man the potential and the material to run it but man must supply its spark plug; the machine is consciousness and man must supply his own starter and direction
  
• He has to discover how to use it and keep it in constant action
  
• Man must choose between rational being and suicidal animal. Man has to be man by choice.
  
• That which is proper to rational being's life is good; that which opposes is evil
  
• Two essentials of method of survival proper to rational being: thinking and productive work
  
• Those who choose not to think and understand their work and instead just imitate and mimic are parasites of those who did do the work
  
• Looters live off productive men and use force, method of animals. Cannot survive and will destroy themselves
  
• Standard of value = man's life
  
• Purpose = his own life
  
• Value is that which one acts to gain or keep
  
• Virtue is the act by which one gains it
  
• Values: Reason, purpose, self-esteem
  
• Virtues: rationality, productiveness, pride
  
• Productive work is the central purpose of rational man's life; reason is the source and pride is the result
  
• Rationality is basic virtue
  
• Basic vice is unfocused mind, refusal to see
  
• Commitment to active mental focus at all hours
  
• All values and goals based in reality
  
• Constant expansion of one's perception and knowledge
  
• All convictions derived from process of logic
  
• Commitment to live by product of one's own mind (virtue of independence)
  
• Accept the responsibility to form own judgments
  
• Never sacrifice one's convictions to wishes of others (virtue of integrity)
  
• Never attempt to fake reality (virtue of honesty)
  
• Never grant the unearned and undeserved (virtue of justice)
  
• Never seek to get away with contradictions
  
• Rejection of all mysticism
  
• Productiveness virtue is recognition that productive work lets man's mind sustain his life and make his background fit him
  
• Fullest and most purposeful use of his mind, regardless of ability or scope
  
• Virtue of pride recognizes that man is self-made soul as self-made wealth
  
• Moral ambitiousness
  
• Earn right to hold yourself as your highest value by achieving your moral perfection
  
• Never accepting code of irrational values
  
• Never accepting unearned guilt
  
• Never resigning to your character flaws
  
• Never placing any concern or fear of the moment above one's self-esteem
  
• Rejection of role of sacrificial animal
  
• Social: man as end in itself, life as ends, not means for others
  
• Never sacrificing yourself for others or others to yourself
  
• Achievement of own happiness is man's highest moral purpose
  
• Emotions are automatic results of value judgments integrated by subconscious to judge happy or suffering
  
• Emotional mechanism starts as tabula rasa and unlike physical mechanism of pleasure/pain it must be programmed by the values his mind choose
  
• Man must feel good or evil but what e considers good or evil or love or hate depends on his standard of value
  
• Happiness is the state which comes from achievement of one's values
  
• Happiness is no contradictory joy that comes to man with rational values and actions
  
• Happiness can be the purpose of ethics but not the standard
  
• Not hedonism because then just emotional whims
  
• Not true that one man's happiness requires another's sacrifice
  
• Human good does not require sacrifice like brutes
  
• Humans deal with each other as traders, giving value for value
  
• Trade is justice
  
• Men as independent equals
  
• Love, friendship is payment for pleasure one man derives from virtues of another
  
• To love one must have rational self-interest and self-esteem; must value self first 
  
• Benefits from living in human society: knowledge and trade via division of labor
  
• Only rational, productive, independent men can live in human society
  
• No man can initiate the use of force against another
  
• No man may obtain values by force
  
• Self defense not obtaining values
  
• Only Moral purpose Of govt is to protect man's rights, from physical violence, to his property and pursuit of happiness
  
• Capitalism pure laissez faire
  
• Separation of state and economy like state an church
  
• Altruism holds death as ultimate goal
  
• The mystic about supernatural dimension, the social theory about the collective in place of gd, subjectivism about negating reality: all are ethics of altruism and death
  

2 Mental health versus mysticism and self-sacrifice by Nathaniel branden

• Control over reality and mind
  
• Self-esteem
  
• Commitment to reason, no contradictions
  
• Anxiety and guilt are opposites of self-esteem
  
• Conviction of Fundamental efficacy and worthiness
  
• One is right for reality
  
• Impossible with normal morality of faith and self-sacrifice
  
• Faith is feelings = knowledge
  
• Can't have shortcuts of ideas into knowledge without logic or grounding in reality
  
• Reason must be absolute and cannot have its domain while faith has its
  
• Self esteem requires control of reality; can't happen if assume supernatural and ghosts and world haunted house
  
• Only one reality: that which knowable by reason
  
• Going mindless or zen no-mind is death
  
• Take pride in power to think and live
  
• Humility is evil; pride has to be earned through effort
  
• Life and self-esteem require loyalty to one's values, mind, and judgment, not self-sacrifice to anyone who wants
  
• Self sacrifice is mind sacrifice; surrender of higher value for lower one
  
• Mental illness is distorted value structure
  
• Not about renunciation of this earth but focus on it
  

3 The ethics of emergencies

• Altruism as purely self sacrifice leads to bad places
  
• Valuing another person doesn't mean self sacrifice
  
• Can love and enjoy another person for own enjoyment, not as blank check to loved one for sacrifice
  
• Help to others is not man's moral duty
  
• Here focus is on nonsacrificial help to others, which is possible and good
  
• Must have a defined hierarchy of values and never sacrifice higher one for lower one
  
• Love and friendship is personal, selfish value: expression and assertion of self esteem, response to one's own values in the person of another
  
• One gains selfish, personal joy from existence of person one loves
  
• Concern for welfare of those one loves is rational part of one's interests
  
• Payment to cure wife of Illness done for husband's happiness and not a sacrifice because his wife's health gives him higher value than other things
  
• Save your wife instead of 10 others u don't know
  
• Whether one should help another should always be in reference to one's own self interest
  
• Only save drowning stranger if danger to one's own life minimal; can't value stranger's life above self
  
• Willingness to save increases in proportion to how much one values the other
  
• If life unbearable without wife, then can give life to save her
  
• Helping those one loves is integrity not selflessness
  
• Incorporate the welfare of your friends into your hierarchy of values and act accordingly
  
• Grant to strangers generalized respect and good will of a human being until he forfeits it
  
• Other men of potential value to u
  
• Respect and value of others comes from valuing of self and seeing self in others; egoistic in good way; I value them because they are same species as me
  
• View men as innocent until proven guilty
  
• Generalized respect is why one helps strangers and only in emergencies
  
• Emergency is temporary unexpected situation incompatible with life like flood and fire
  
• Only in these should one volunteer to help strangers but not at expense of own life
  
• Poverty, ignorance, illness not emergencies
  
• Maintain life by one's own efforts
  

4 The conflicts of men's interests

• Can there be conflicts between men's interests
  
• In choosing goals and values, man guided by thinking, not feeling
  
• Cannot hold contradictions
  
• All values and interests taken in context always
  
• Context is short and long term spanning his lifetime; doesn't change spur of moment and doesn't do short term stuff to lose long term value
  
• Does not hold desires he cannot achieve with his own effort directly or indirectly
  
• Trades value for value
  
• Deal only with those who are rational, never sacrifice judgment or standards for irrational ppl
  
• Take responsibility for your wishes and their fulfillment instead of empty wishes
  
• can't evade responsibility by saying someone should pay for it or somehow something should work
  
• Somehow always means somebody and that doesn't work
  
• Effort required to produce all benefits and that one man's gain is not another's loss; not static global values or fixed pie
  
• A man's achievement not earned at expense of those who have not achieved it
  
• Never leave interests at mercy of any one individual or one specific concrete thing; never imagines he has unearned claim on any other human
  
• Achievement not due to luck or only chances; no such thing as single opportunity; only thing irreplaceable is ppl u love
  
• Love is not fixed pie but an unlimited response to be earned; love for one doesn't remove love from another
  
• In free society one can just avoid those who are irrational
  

5 Isn't everyone selfish by branden

• Value: to whom and for what
  
• Egoism: beneficiary of action is man himself; altruism: beneficiary others
  
• Man's life as purpose in itself vs as means to end for others
  
• Selfish = motivated by one's self-interest
  
• Selfishness needs hierarchy of values and never sacrificing lower or non value for higher
  
• Other men may benefit but his own benefit is his primary aim
  
• Selfishness determined by why one acts, not by whether he wants to do it
  
• Cannot be called selfish when acting against long term interests
  

6 the psychology of pleasure by branden

• Man needs pleasure as emotional payment and incentive for continuing
  
• Represents value of life
  
• His values that he chooses determine what pleasure is to him
  
• Man programs his values into emotional computer; only by changing his values can emotions change
  
• Values reflect his view of himself (level of self esteem he has) and of existence (whether universe open or closed to his action)
  
• 5 areas allowing enjoyment of life: productive work, human relationships, recreation, art, sex
  
• Productive work: gains sense of control over existence and efficacy
  
• Human relationships: company of intelligent ppl with integrity and self esteem and same standards
  
• Desire for pleasure is celebration of control over reality; irrational pleasure is escape from reality
  
• Recreation: enjoy party when there are activities that are enjoyable like seeing ppl u like and having worthwhile convos
  
• Boredom pleasures vs demanding pleasures/vacations: demanding means using mind
  
• Art can give huge pleasure and what one responds to depends on one's values
  
• Art can be projection of heroic, intelligent, enjoyed through pleasure of admiration of great values
  
• Favorite play cyrano de bergerac vs waiting for godot
  
• Loves person who reflects deepest values, attracted to ppl he can admire, those with self esteem
  
• Pride for self plus admiration for another combine in romantic love
  
• Pleasure as escape vs pleasure as end in itself
  

7 doesn't life require compromise?

• Compromise is adjustment of conflicting claims by mutual concession
  
• Both must have valid claim and value to offer each other
  
• Must agree on basic principle but can compromise on particulars
  
• Example: sales price of good means agree on principal of trade
  
• Can't compromise with burglar with unilateral concessions (us foreign policy)
  
• Cant compromise by giving some govt controls; once lose any individual rights give up on concept of inalienable individual rights (us domestic policy)
  
• No compromise on basic principles on fundamental issues
  
• Desire or whim is not moral primary that demands compromise
  
• Cannot compromise moral principles, between food and poison, good and evil, truth and falsehood, even temporarily
  

8 how does one lead a rational life in an irrational society

• One must never fail to pronounce moral judgment
  
• In society today, not allowed to make moral judgments or pronounce someone or something good or evil--moral agnosticism
  
• Man is judged by judgments he makes
  
• Are they rational or not
  
• Can't be afraid of responsibility to judge
  
• Must be able to answer why, to judge every person and situation, and to make one's moral evaluation available to others when appropriate
  
• Cannot keep silent when values attacked or denounced
  

9 cult of moral grayness

• "no black or white, just white"
  
• No justification for choosing any part of something one knows is evil
  
• Moral guilt, fear of moral judgment, plea for blanket forgiveness
  
• Gray prelude to black

10 collectivized ethics

• Shouldn't one help the poor vs shouldn't one be forced to help the poor
  
• In free society, only individual chooses whether he wants to help another, not society
  
• Is Medicare desirable? Out of context yes, but must consider not only desire but also means (usually fogged up) and costs
  
• In private dealings with other individuals, you can't dictate their lives to suit your desire, so why allow this in public
  
• Human life as fodder for any public project
  
• Progress and science can only come from men's surplus, those who produced more than they consume and can venture out into the new
  
• Cannot fund science or space by stealing labor and money of men who can't afford shoes
  
• Cannot do public projects unless get everyone's voluntary participation
  
• Should we wait until man's death to cut out his eyes when others need them?
  

11 the monument builders

• Socialism
  
• Abolishment of property and govt control of production
  
• Tried on all continents
  
• Not movement of benevolence but motivated by power lust for the unearned of matter and of spirit (prestige)
  
• No such thing as "the public"-- just that interests of some men sacrificed for others
  
• Some gangster says the public is him and defends at point of gun
  
• Building of public monuments wasteful and just way to make mystic seeker of greatness happy
  
• Greatness achieved by productive efforts, not monuments of prestige
  
• Pyramids, marble subway, state dinners just symbols of prestige built by forced labor and extorted money
  
• American monuments not public: skyscrapers built by individuals
  

12 man's rights

• Individual rights define link between moral code and society
  
• Required or else just code of altruism and self sacrifice applicable only to individual and not society
  
• Rulers exempt from moral law and interpret it as wish
  
• USA achieved finally subordination of society to moral law, as opposed to monarchy of France, Rome, nazi Germany, socialist Russia
  
• Limitation on power of state, subjugation of might to right
  
• First moral society
  
• USA held man as end in himself not means to end for others or society
  
• Only moral purpose of govt is protection of individual rights
  
• Right to life is right to do actions to further one's own life and happiness (right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness)
  
• Right to life requires property rights; can't produce if product disposed of by others (slave)
  
• Rights are required conditions for man's survival on earth
  
• Govt serves only to protect men's rights by protecting from physical violence
  
• Govt as servant not ruler
  
• Democratic party of fdr and in 60s changed word rights to include things that are man made like education, medical care, etc without considering the question at whose expense
  
• Any right of one man that takes away from another creates slave labor and is not a right
  
• Man has right to pursue happiness, not right to happiness
  
• Rights are freedoms to action that don't impose obligations on other men
  
• Anything done in group requires voluntary consent of all
  
• Bill of rights protection against govt actions, not private ones
  
• No private action can be censorship, just govt
  

13 collectivized rights

• Subjectivism in ethics is collectivism in politics
  
• Replacement of rights of man with rights of mob
  
• Rights only can be individual, not of group
  
• Individual rights should not be subject to vote by majority
  
• Invasion of enslaved society reasonable when establish there a free society with individual rights
  

14 the nature of govt

• Govt is institution that holds exclusive right to enforce certain rules of social conduct in a geography
  
• Men must deal with each other by reason and voluntarily not by force
  
• Force only for self defense
  
• Can't leave forceful protection to individual choice or else all go armed and attack each other
  
• Task of government is to protect people and their individual rights through force applied by objective rules
  
• Govt is means of placing retaliatory control of physical force under objective control and objective laws
  
• Govt hold monopoly on legal use of physical force so govt must be controlled and completely an automaton based on objective laws and no whim
  
• Private individual may do anything unless legally forbidden; govt official may do nothing unless legally required
  
• American concept of government of laws and not men
  
• Only requirement for man to enter into rational society is to renounce use of force to govt
  
• Subordination of might to right
  
• Separation of force and whim
  
• Govt as arbiter that settles contract disputes among men
  
• Man must plan ahead and use contracts to develop unlike animal or savage
  
• Breach of contract, fraud, extortion all indirect uses of force
  
• Police to protect men from criminals
  
• Armed services to protect from foreign countries
  
• Law courts to settle disputes among men according to objective laws
  

15 govt financing in a free society

• Taxation (payment for govt services) should be voluntary
  
• Rational individuals would pay for it because would want the services like insurance
  
• One method: govt lottery
  
• Another: contracts can be insured by paying fixed percentage of sum involved to the govt and govt only recognizes insured contracts and individuals free to enter verbal agreements if don't want to pay
  
• Credit transactions are all contracts and involve huge sums so percentage to govt would be tiny
  
• Government must be viewed as paid servant whose services are not gratuitous
  
• It's ok if less able benefit from indirect benefits like police force as long as nonsacrificial and no redistribution of wealth
  
• Ppl pay in proportion to their level of economic activity so poor would pay little or nothing yet still get benefits
  

16 divine right of stagnation by branden

• Biologically inactivity is death
  
• Transform environment through productive work
  
• Need of thought never ends as quality of life increases
  
• Must keep learning new skills
  
• Not supporting those who want to just remain as is, not learn new skills, those who think they've thought or learned enough
  

17 racism

• Lowest form of collectivism because ascribes mind to physical chemistry and ancestors
  
• No such thing as collective or racial achievement
  
• One man's crimes or achievements don't rub off on another
  
• Racism is quest for automatic judgment to bypass moral evaluation of another person or quest for automatic self esteem
  
• Racial quotas and special treatment absurd; should be color blind instead
  
• Stand on individual rights but don't violate others' rights
  

18 counterfeit individualism by branden

• Individualism is not just doing what u want regardless of others' rights
  
• Individualist loyal to his own mind and fact-centered
  
• Individualism is not subjectivism or defiance or nonconformity
  

19 the argument from intimidation

• Stating that only immoral would fail to see some argument as false
  
• Arbitrarily claiming argument is false
  
• Like emperor's new clothes story
  
• Entire modern art movement is example
  
• When disapproval of others is most important thing to avoid
  
• One weapon against it: moral certainty

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