The Virtue of Selfishness, Centennial Edition by Ayn Rand (1964-11-01)

Few people in history have stood out as bold and brilliantly as Ayn Rand when it came to standing for personal freedom.She understood the evils of communism - Having lived and left her homeland of Russia behind.The all powerful evil of Central Planning and being told how to live and what to think made her sick to her stomach.Those that don't like her are often both ignorant and close minded.They often deliberately lie or act like they don't understand what she is advocating.Don't be bound by common thinking.Dare to Think for Yourself and live your life according to your own choices.Read and absorb Ayn Rand if you dare.Learn the true meaning of what she says.Ignore the liars and ignorant fools that put her down.

This book is a must have if you are into her philosophy. I go back to it often to study or review for myself. I bought this to have a collection of her ideas instead of a novel telling them in story form. The book is a compilation of journal entries on Objectivist ethics, mostly by her and maybe one or two other authors.

I ordered this book--in its original paperback printing--because: 1) It's a great work; 2) It offers much guidance in how to think ethically about one's own life and happiness; 3) It's ethics is founded on reality, reason and self-interest; 4) And because this printing does not have the misprints that printings of it after 1992 have (that does make a difference). The book came in a timely manner and arrived in excellent condition (especially considered it is a used copy).

If someone asks me to help her, how do I decide whether to comply? Do I carefully assess the virtue of her behavior and her motives? Or do I swipe her credit card and see if it’s approved? Ayn Rand finds the Christian precept “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matthew 7:1) unacceptable, and wants to replace it with a new commandment, “Judge, and be prepared to be judged.” She is opposed to moral neutrality because it inevitably leads to “a progressive sympathy for vice and a progressive antagonism to virtue.” At the same time, Ayn Rand attaches an almost religious significance to money. A giant dollar sign is prominently displayed in the town square of her fictional Galt’s Gulch. This icon receives as much devotion and reverence as the cross in the town square of a medieval village. But what does money represent if not precisely the moral neutrality she despises? A dollar obtained by plunder and fraud is precisely equal to a dollar obtained by diligent and devoted work. A dollar used by a virtuous woman for noble purposes is precisely equal to a dollar used by a vicious man for base purposes. When I accept money as legal tender, I evade the responsibility of judging the behavior and motives of my customer.In _The Fountainhead_, Ayn Rand’s first successful novel, architect hero Howard Roark shocks the dean of the architecture school when he says, “I don’t intend to build in order to have clients. I intend to have clients in order to build.” Roark isn’t studying architecture for the money and prestige. He wants to build. He wants to realize his artistic vision. The heroes of The Fountainhead often show a reflective attitude about money, recognizing that not only the world of politics, but also the world of commerce, is infected by the values of secondhand men. One of the things that perplexes me about Ayn Rand is how this reflective attitude toward money in her earlier work turns into a kind of blind adoration in her later work.Ayn Rand criticizes the “cult of moral grayness,” the tendency in our culture to avoid judging by telling ourselves, “There are no blacks and whites; there are only grays.” This, she says, is our way of rationalizing our failure to strive for moral perfection. There is also, I would argue, a cult of moral greenness, where we avoid judging by telling ourselves a dollar is a dollar no matter where it comes from. This allows us to rationalize the moral indolence we show in failing to decide for ourselves who is worthy of help and who should be ignored.Ayn Rand fervently denounces the tendency to believe things without argument or evidence, merely because others believe. She ridicules the second-hander who instinctively subordinates his own intellect to the intellect of others, who chooses “to submit rather than understand.” Here again, there is an exception. Gold, silver, dollars and euros are valuable. Why do we believe this? Because others believe. Midas is so convinced of the value of gold that he wishes everything he touches would turn to gold. When his wish is fulfilled he belatedly discovers gold has no intrinsic value. Its value is purely subjective. Those who believe in God merely because others believe, with no argument or evidence, Ayn Rand condemns as “mystics.” Those who believe in the value of precious metals merely because others believe are model citizens of Galt’s Gulch.If I want others to help me when I’m old and frail, I must cultivate the virtues that make me worthy of help. This was the reasoning of an earlier age. In our age we’re more cynical. Now, if we want others to help us when we’re old and frail, we better make sure we sock away plenty of money in our 401Ks. The difficult question of who is worthy of help is among the most essential questions of ethics. Ayn Rand, despite her insistence that she advocates striving for moral perfection based on independent reason, answers this question in the same cynical way as the secondhand men she despises.

A must read in today's political and social environment. There's a tremendous amount of common sense throughout the book. More people should bead Ayn Rand today.

I feel that this book should be called the title of this essay, rather than “The Virtue of Selfishness,” because this is what this book is mainly focused. The essays in this book were written in the early 1960s, but they do equally apply today as they did then. They are timeless, but there are issues of that period of time that the author mentions, and there are a few opinions with which I am in disagreement, but overall, this is a book worth reading and pondering.The title of this book can be misunderstood, and I think that was the author’s idea. Ms. Rand’s definition of selfishness is not where someone has something, like a bag of candy, and refuses to share it with someone else. What is meant here is the rights of the individual, and his or her awareness of their rights; the right to think for oneself; the right to choose to live the life he wants, to do the work he wants to do, as long as it is productive; the right to express whatever opinions he has. This is opposed to that of the state, where the only rights they have is to protect individual rights, protect the individual from criminals, and the military to protect the citizens from foreign invasions.This basically is the philosophy of objectivism. There are various essays centered on the individual versus collectivist society and the state. One must remember that Ayn Rand was born in Russia during the Czarist period, where her father was a prosperous pharmacist. She witnessed the Russian Revolution, where the Bolsheviks confiscated her father’s business and Ayn Rand (Elizabeth Rosenbaum) was forced to flee to the United States. This is fictionalized in her first novel, “We The Living.”For all its faults, Ms. Rand felt that the U.S. was (is) the greatest country in the world because of its constitution, but she does point out its faults. As an example, she opposed the welfare system, feeling that no individual has the right to mooch off of other people for their own personal benefit, nor does a man have the right to use force against another for his own personal gain. Individual rights is a two way street. The freedom of one individual ends where another begins, and Ms. Rand does recognize that. In other words, everyone has to pull his weight and respect the rights everyone else.Another writer, Nathaniel Brandon, also contributed to this book. His best essay is, “The Divine Right of Stagnation,” about individual growth, which I highly recommend. He was once Ms. Rand’s lover, but had a falling out. Ms. Rand writes this as a footnote at the end of the introduction.There are a few topics with which I am in disagreement. One is that Ms. Rand opposes taxation, and feels it should be done on a voluntary basis. If that was to be the case, nobody would pay. Taxes are necessary to maintain this society in the form of a police force, a military, and all public services. Our budget is being abused by the government, but the fact remains.Second, Ms. Rand was opposed to Civil Rights. She wrote an essay on racism, saying it’s the “lowest, most crudely form of collectivism.” Her view was that a Civil Right bill wasn’t necessary as long as we respect each person as an individual rather than a member of a race. With society being as it is, I believe we needed that bill to abolish discrimination and hasten the advance of equality.Ms. Rand also opposed Medicare. There are services I feel benefit society as a whole.As a whole, Ms. Rand advocate the individual, but fails to see that we are in a society that in order to function and remain stable, we do need to support some services that will maintain this stability, and paying taxes to support the police, fire, military, and public services is necessary.However, Ms. Rand does hit it on the nail when it comes to the rights and responsibilities (don’t forget responsibilities) of individual and what the true functions of a state should be.