Now Online: ‘Introduction to Virtue of Selfishness’

In popular culture, “selfishness” evokes brutes, gangsters, and dictators — people who trample others in pursuit of their whims. Why, then, did Ayn Rand choose such a loaded word to denote virtues like rationality, independence, and integrity?

That was a question Rand herself was sometimes asked, and she confronts it head-on in her introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness, now available online. She argues this is not merely a semantic dispute, but an issue with profound moral implications. For, as she sees it, “the attack on ‘selfishness’ is an attack on man’s self-esteem.”

Rand contends that the conventional use of “selfishness” rests on a destructive “package-deal” that lumps together fundamentally different types of people. It treats the ruthless thief and the principled, ambitious creator as moral equivalents, simply because both claim to benefit from their own actions.

Once this package-deal is accepted, the moral landscape collapses. Playing into the hands of altruism, it leaves us with the choice between sacrificing oneself and preying on others, leaving no room for a “concept of a self-respecting, self-supporting man” who rationally seeks his own happiness. For Rand, reclaiming the concept of “selfishness” is therefore not a rhetorical stunt, but a necessity for defending the right to your own existence.

Read her introduction to understand why getting this concept right is an important step in reclaiming your own life.

Find a passage from the beginning of the article below.

The title of this book may evoke the kind of question that I hear once in a while: “Why do you use the word ‘selfishness’ to denote virtuous qualities of character, when that word antagonizes so many people to whom it does not mean the things you mean?”

To those who ask it, my answer is: “For the reason that makes you afraid of it.”

But there are others, who would not ask that question, sensing the moral cowardice it implies, yet who are unable to formulate my actual reason or to identify the profound moral issue involved. It is to them that I will give a more explicit answer.

It is not a mere semantic issue nor a matter of arbitrary choice. The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word “selfishness” is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual “package-deal,” which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.

You can read her full essay here, or in her book, The Virtue of Selfishness.