Virtue of Selfishness

I began reading Ayn Rand's Virtue of Selfishness skeptically yet I finished it thinking how many of my values were consistent with Rand's. I thought the book was going to be a defense of narcissistic moral relativism; it turned out to be one of the clearest articulation of the best of American values: respect for the individual, self-responsibility, the free market, and rewards based on merit.

Rand argues that rational self-interest should be the aim of ethics. She claims this to be an objective truth, based on the premise that acts that affirm life are good, and those that destroy life are bad, and the way to discern this distinction is through the use of reason. Her radical claim is that this form of ethics is to be contrasted against altruism, which is the more commonly held ideal of morality. It is good to be selfish; it is bad to be selfless.

A lot of this philosophy was written to condemn the totalitarian system of the former Soviet Union, where the self was not an end in itself, but a means subordinate to the ends of the state. This emphasis on the individual would appear excessive in the 21st century where individual freedoms are more taken for granted. And while I cannot argue against the virtues of fairness, responsibility, and reason, one cannot help but feel a sense of emptiness where family, community, tradition, and spirituality would normally be.