Flourishing Is Self-Generated: Exclusive Release from Tara Smith’s Book on Moral Psychology

In June 2024, ARI board member and University of Texas philosophy professor Tara Smith published Egoism without Permission: The Moral Psychology of Ayn Rand’s Ethics. New Ideal has interviewed Dr. Smith about the book and also published the book’s introduction. Dr. Smith spoke on the subject of chapter 1 of the book (“The Place of Desire in Rational Egoism”) at OCON 2024 in Anaheim. We are happy now to republish, with permission, a particularly insightful section of the book that sheds light on important integrations in Ayn Rand’s ethics: why her account of self-interest helps us to understand why no one can fundamentally help another human being to achieve his own happiness.

Flourishing Is Self-Generated

By Tara Smith

Implicit in what we have been saying thus far rests another crucial fea­ture of flourishing. Flourishing is self-generated. If happiness results from the achievement of one’s values, both the values and the achieve­ment must be one’s own.[12]

First, consider the values. In order for a person to flourish, the ends that he seeks must be things that he deems worthwhile. His motivation must be first-handed in order for his course of action to be truly self-interested and for happiness to be its possible reward. Indeed, experi­encing desires and choosing ends for oneself are themselves parts of the pleasure that a flourishing life offers.[13]

At various stages throughout our discussion, I have emphasized that values are not subjective inventions created by sheer desire. Correspond­ingly, self-interest is not served by the achievement of simply any random goals that a person might happen to fancy. What is particularly germane here is the fact that neither are values intrinsic; they are not detached from the thoughts and choices of the individual. If something truly is an objective value in a given individual’s life, its being so means that he has embraced it as a component of his larger well-being. That is, he has identified its relationship to his network of values and chosen to include it as part of the network that he seeks to enjoy. It is only the achievement of such autonomously adopted values, however, that can bring a person happiness and contribute to his flourishing.

Obviously, a person’s having ends is not sufficient for flourishing. Realizing what one seeks is critical. This brings us to the second sense in which flourishing is self-generated. Happiness is not an acquisition, but an achievement. And for something to be an achievement, “it must be achieved, at least in part, through one’s own effort.”[14] Achievements are not impersonal goods whose value is readily available to anyone who grabs hold of them. Ends are achieved by distinct individuals, and their value is tied to those individuals. Just as other people cannot desire for a person or supply ends for a person, other people cannot achieve for a person. It is only his achievement of his ends that can contribute to a per­son’s flourishing. Being given the stuffed panda by the guy beside you at the arcade who has just shot the target to win it carries none of the value of winning it oneself.

Bear in mind what life is: a process of self-sustaining, self-generated action.[15] This “process is literally a means to itself.”[16] A person’s flourish­ing, like the flourishing of any organism, can thus be understood as its good functioning. The organism is doing well—flourishing—when it is acting in the manner that best positions it to continue to engage in the activities of living. And the aspect salient here is that it is his life that is served through his actions, and it is his actions that are vital. A person’s flourishing is something that only that person can bring about. Obvi­ously, a person can benefit from the help and gifts of others. The benefit is sometimes enormous. Receiving fruits of the achievements of others does nothing to advance one’s own ability to achieve and to thereby lead a flourishing life, however.[17] Flourishing is a process of realizing life’s positive possibilities. In this way, as one theorist puts it, “becoming . . . is essential to happiness.”[18]

Few people need to be persuaded to understand that one person cannot die for another. At the end of a person’s life, it is he who must die; no stand-in can take the fall on his behalf. It is equally important to appreciate, however, that no person can live for another. No one else can lead his life and no one else can flourish on his behalf. No third party can bestow happiness as a gift.

As we discussed in chapter 1, self-interest presupposes a self. A self is more than a particular type of physical specimen, however; it is not simply a set of human organs. While birth supplies a person with the requisite equipment, a self is not a biological inheritance, but a value that a person must forge. He does that through countless individual choices. What is important for understanding the nature of human flourishing is that, because a self is more than a body, self-interest involves more than satisfaction of the physical needs that a person shares in common with other members of the species. Self-interest is the interest of a unique in­dividual who is not interchangeable with anyone else.[19]

This carries a significant implication. While a person committed to his own well-being will reject a self-sacrificial policy of prioritizing the well-being of others, that rejection alone does not entail that his actions will be self-interested. For a person’s interest consists of something more than “that which is not for the good of others.” Self-interest is not merely the leftovers that remain after a person has refused to make others his ruling concern; it is not a stew of random desires that surface in the newly opened space. The person who is not beholden to others’ interest must still establish what his interest will consist of. Turning away from the demands of others’ apparent interests is not enough to supply one’s own.[20]

We will see more of what this involves when we examine egoism in chapter 6. The principal point here is that flourishing is self-generated; it is, by its nature, homegrown and locally sourced. No one else can think for you, and no one else can want for you. No one else can choose for you, and no one else can achieve for you. No one else can feel for you, and no one else can flourish for you. Flourishing is not transferable. No one can make another person happy.[21]

One person can, undoubtedly, help to alleviate another’s suffering in certain ways, which is no small thing. But flourishing must not be mis­taken for the minimization of pain. No other person can make you feel good about your life or feel good in your life; no one can make what it feels like to be you satisfying. More fundamentally, no one can make an­other person do good—lead his life in a value-achieving, life-furthering way. Flourishing is inescapably a do-it-yourself proposition. At bottom, it comes from within.

Before leaving this point, I should address two possible misunder­standings. First, the self-generated character of flourishing does not imply that flourishing is immune from external events or that it can be successfully pursued regardless of one’s situation. Expectations sur­rounding a person’s flourishing must be realistically attuned to his ac­tual circumstances—his abilities, his resources, his obligations, value priorities, political conditions, and the like. Expectations and associated standards must also reflect what is and is not within his control. The in­dividual controls his pursuit of his ends within the available options, but he cannot control how his pursuits pan out.

Nor does the self-generation thesis imply that happiness is a choice, as people sometimes claim, or purely a matter of perspective: It’s all in your head. Mind over matter. Just choose to be happy.[22] While attitudes and associated choices can certainly make a difference to a person’s flourishing by influencing his outlook, his motivation, or his efforts, for instance, they are hardly sufficient. We solve problems by confronting them—first, in our minds and then through our actions—not by pre­tending that they are not problems. Composing a comforting narrative will not conquer a phobia or shrink a tumor; denial behind a sunny face is not the path to values. Thus, the self-generated character of human flourishing does not entail that it is wholly a creation of a person’s will. Turning an “attitude switch” cannot make one’s values prosper or one’s life go well.

The larger point, again, is simply that flourishing cannot be pro­vided by others. It is self-generated principally in two respects: a person’s ends must be autonomously chosen, and they must be achieved through the person’s own efforts. Indeed, a person has no interest unless he wants particular things, and he can flourish only insofar as he leads his life in the manner that is best suited to advance them.[23]

Excerpted from section 1.3 of “Self-Interest: A Flourishing Life” from Egoism Without Permission: The Moral Psychology of Ayn Rand’s Ethics, by Tara Smith, © 2024. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

[12] I discuss the self-generated character of happiness in Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics, 32–33.

[13] Recall relevant parts of the analysis of the value of independence in chapter 3.

[14] Gwen Bradford, Achievement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 13.

[15] Harry Binswanger, “Life-Based Teleology and the Foundations of Ethics,” Monist 75, no. 1 (1992): especially 92–93. For more intricate technical accounts (distinguishing biochemical, physiological, anatomical, and other senses used in the different life sciences, for instance), see Carl Sagan, Lynn Margulis, and Dorion Sagan, “Life,” Encyclopedia Britannica, updated Jan. 27, 2022, https://www.britannica.com/science/life. Accessed March 2, 2022.

[16] Salmieri, “Selfish Regard for the Rights of Others,” 171.

[17] See Smith, Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics, 32–33.

[18] Ryan Streeter, “Dynamism as a Public Philosophy,” National Affairs 50 (2022): 24.

[19] Cf. discussion in chapter 1, section 3. For some of Rand’s early reflec­tions on what distinguishes a self, see Journals of Ayn Rand, ed. David Har­riman (New York: Penguin, 1997), 78. And for an illuminating discussion of Rand’s view of the role of a person’s conception of himself in the formation and pursuit of values, see Gregory Salmieri, “Prometheus’ Discovery: Indi­vidualism and the Meaning of the Concept ‘I’ in Anthem,” in Mayhew, Essays on Ayn Rand’s “Anthem,” 255–84.

[20] Interestingly, Søren Kierkegaard, a figure with whom Rand had pro­found differences, also appreciated the autonomous authorship essential for a genuine self. Kierkegaard writes that those who “mortgage themselves to the world” may achieve all kinds of temporal success, but “spiritually speak­ing they do not exist—they have no self.” Sickness Unto Death, ed. H. and E. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 35, quoted in John Cottingham, In Search of the Soul (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020), 4. And on the subtle way in which such a lack of self develops, Kierkegaard observes, “A person can go on living fairly well, seem to be a human being, be occupied with temporal matters, marry, have children, be honored and esteemed, yet it may not be detected that in a deeper sense this person lacks a self. . . . The greatest hazard of all, losing oneself, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss—an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.—is sure to be noticed.” Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death, 32–33, quoted in Cottingham, In Search of the Soul, 3.

[21] In her journals during the period of writing Atlas Shrugged, Rand observes that the happiness of others is not within one’s power, Journals of Ayn Rand, 599. And in Atlas, Galt remarks in a conversation with Dagny that “no one’s happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.” Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (1957; New York: New American Library, 1992), 798. In a similar vein, in The Fountainhead,Roark observes that “no man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body.” See Ayn Rand, “The Soul of an Individualist,” in For the New Intellectual, 80.

[22] For views that come very close to this, see, for instance, Edith Eva Eger, The Choice: Embrace the Possible (New York: Scribner, 2017); Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959), especially 65–67, 130–32.

[23] In this distinct sense, we might say that to be capable of flourishing, one must be a self-made man.