Aaron SmithIf you’ve ever been called “selfish,” you know it’s not a compliment — it’s a rebuke. But, for what exactly? Look up “selfish” in a dictionary, and you’ll find something like this:
“lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure”[efn_note]https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/selfish[/efn_note]
“caring only about what you want or need without any thought for the needs or wishes of other people”[efn_note]https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/selfish[/efn_note]
Such definitions suggest that to be “selfish” is to be anywhere on the spectrum between a thoughtless jerk and a criminal who tramples over others.
But why is our conception of self-interest bound up with thoughtlessness and immorality? What do we call someone who is dedicated to the pursuit of his own interests, who respects the lives and rights of others — and sees his interests as being advanced in doing so?
In the introduction to her book The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand addresses these questions directly. She argues, forcefully, that “[t]he 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.”
[irp posts=”6343″]To understand the profound moral issues at stake — and why Rand fights to redeem the concept of “selfishness” — pick up The Virtue of Selfishness and read the introduction. The perspective offered there, and developed in the other essays in the book, is nothing short of revolutionary.
Ricardo Pinto
