Elan JournoWhat’s in your self-interest? Many will tell you it’s obvious: it means following your desires. But, in Ayn Rand’s view, this perspective is wrong.
To see why, the place to start is Rand’s distinctive concept of “self-interest.” Contrary to the conventional outlook, Rand argues for a new conception of self-interest grounded not in desires (or emotions) but in facts and reason. To identify one’s true interests takes real cognitive work. Rand writes:
The term “interests” is a wide abstraction that covers the entire field of ethics. It includes the issues of: man’s values, his desires, his goals and their actual achievement in reality. A man’s “interests” depend on the kind of goals he chooses to pursue, his choice of goals depends on his desires, his desires depend on his values — and, for a rational man, his values depend on the judgment of his mind.
Desires (or feelings or emotions or wishes or whims) . . . are not a valid standard of value, nor a valid criterion of man’s interests. The mere fact that a man desires something does not constitute a proof that the object of his desire is good, nor that its achievement is actually to his interest.
A rational person, argues Rand, “does not regard ‘because I want it’ or ‘because I feel like it’ as a sufficient cause and validation of his actions.” Instead, he forms a conception of his interests by a “process of reason,” and “does not act to achieve a desire until and unless he is able rationally to validate it in the full context of his knowledge and of his other values and goals.”
This analysis comes up in a timeless article, “The ‘Conflicts’ of Men’s Interests,” in which Rand explains four key considerations involved in a rational individual’s conception of his or her own interests, their full context, and what’s necessary to achieve them. What’s more, Rand argues that, contrary to a widely held assumption, “there are no conflicts of interest among rational men” — neither in the workplace, nor in personal life, nor elsewhere, even in the issue of love.Read the essay in The Virtue of Selfishness or listen to Rand read it aloud.
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Ben Bayer
Ziemowit Gowin
