Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Modified Ethical Egoism

After reading Ayn Rand's "In Defense of Ethical Egoism" it became clear to me that although she does make a fairly compelling argument, in order to truly achieve happiness and flourishing one would have to make some alterations to her style of egoism. I agree with Rand that too often we deny ourselves what would give us pleasure because we believe that what is the correct moral action is doing whatever everyone else wants instead of considering our own wishes. I also agree with Rand that "By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man-every man-is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose" (535). However, with this statement, Rand sets up a contradiction. If everyone acts merely in their own interests, then not everyone truly be an end in themselves because others will exploit them and use them as a means to an end in order to further their own interests. Essentially egoism, at least the way that she is describing it here, would fall apart if everyone were to practice it in such a manner because it is more of an individualized philosophy than she is making it out to be. Not everyone can be an egoist or else the philosophy falls apart, due to the fact that if everyone is only concerned with what benefits them, then no one will be able to achieve what they want to achieve to the extent that they will be ultimately fulfilled. I also find it problematic that we are supposed to, in this philosophy, completely disregard other people and only focus on what will further our own interests. I think that ultimately not considering other people would cause us to lead a more solitary and unhappy life than one in which we take into account the other people surrounding us. I think instead of taking such a radical stance as Rand suggests, we should instead act with our happiness in view and include it as a deciding factor in our moral code, but not without considering how our actions will affect others as well.

3 comments:

  1. So to what extent should we be egoists? If we should do what makes us, as an individual looking to promote self-interests, where is the line drawn?

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  2. I would agree with you, Anna. I think when I originally read Ayn Rand, I was very hyper-critical of her espoused philosophy, and indeed, it is a rather extreme form of ethical egoism. I think that if we take Rand's ideas with a grain of salt that we can at least agree that she is right that we must not totally disregard our own wants and desires because to do so would totally disengage the self from morality, and how can there be morality without the self?! I think that the key is to value oneself, which in a sense is a form of ethical egoism, and by doing so, we can better address the needs of others, for part of understanding other is understanding our own selves. There is the old adage that one must learn to love oneself before loving another, and I think that this saying could also hold up in this instance (one must learn to respect one's personal self before one can possibly learn to respect another). With regard to Ashley's question, I think that there is a moderation to it. We must learn to balance our desires with those of others---something that I think Aristotle would greatly approve of.

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  3. But could it be possible to treat others as ends and still fulfill our own interests? If I am correct in her novel Rand does point out the difference (in the different characters) between using people and mutually working with them to achieve a greater good. I do not necessarily think that she believes we should completely disregard others. We sometimes need others (in her case their intelligence, integrity, hard work) as examples of how we should live and as friends or companions.

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