Now Online: ‘Altruism as Appeasement’

Why do so many intellectuals, or otherwise very intelligent people, accept and preach altruism? Why do they dedicate their thinking and their work to a social or altruistic goal?

Contrary to conventional thinking, Ayn Rand argued that the explanation is not the intellectual’s sincere humanitarian love, or a conscious conviction that altruism is right, but a deadly psychological compromise. Intelligent young people, she observed, too often feel false guilt stemming from others’ resentment for their intelligence. To be left free to think, this kind of young intellectual attempts to appease those who resent his intelligence by claiming to work for their benefit, thereby abandoning both moral values and himself.

In her essay “Altruism as Appeasement,” now available online for the first time, Rand describes the tragic result of this kind of compromise — especially within the intellectual’s own soul.

In this essay, Rand also draws out the implications of such appeasement for society as a whole. She connects it to trends in politics — such as the widespread sympathy for dictatorships — as well as to trends in esthetics, such as the celebration of “depravity” in modern art and literature. More broadly, she explains how appeasement by intellectuals unleashes the minority of deliberately evil men on society, while abandoning average men to “accept what the culture offers them,” however irrational or anti-rational the culture may be.

Here, we republish a short excerpt from the essay. And thanks to the dedication of ARI collaborating with publishers, you may read the rest of this article online for free, here. You may also purchase the full book of incisive essays, The Voice of Reason, on Amazon today.

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In March 1962, on the occasion of giving a lecture at M.I.T., I met a young student who was earnestly, intelligently concerned with opposing the trend to collectivism. I asked him his views on why so many of today’s young intellectuals were becoming “liberals.” He could not give me a full answer. But a few weeks later, he wrote me a remarkable letter.

He explained that he had given a great deal of thought to my question and had reached certain conclusions. The majority of college students, he wrote, do not choose to think; they accept the status quo, conform to the prescribed code of values, and evade the responsibility of independent thought. “In adopting this attitude, they are encouraged by teachers who inspire imitation, rather than creation.”

But there are a few who are not willing to renounce their rational faculty. “They are the intellectuals — and they are the outsiders. Their willingness to think makes them shine forth as a threat to the stagnant security of the levelers in which they are immersed. They are teased and rejected by their schoolmates. An immense amount of faith in oneself and a rational philosophical basis are required to set oneself against all that society has ever taught. . . . The man who preaches individual integrity, pride, and self-esteem is today virtually nonexistent. Far more common is the man who, driven by the young adult’s driving need for acceptance, has compromised. And here is the key — [the result of] the compromise is the liberal.

“The man who sets himself against society by seeking to be rational is almost certain to succumb to the extent of accepting a strong guilt complex. He is declared ‘guilty’ by his rejection of the omnipresent ‘equality in mediocrity’ doctrine of today. . . . So the intellectual, to atone for a false guilt, becomes today’s liberal. He proclaims loudly the brotherhood of all men. He seeks to serve his escapist brothers by guaranteeing them their desire for social security. He sanctions their mediocrity, he works for their welfare, above all he essentially seeks their approval — to atone for the guilt that they have thrust upon him in the guise of an absolute moral system which is not open to question.”

This young man deserves credit for an extraordinary psychological perceptiveness. But the situation he describes is not new; it is as old as altruism; nor is it confined to “liberals.”

Continue reading the essay here, or find it in Rand’s book The Voice of Reason.