Did Ayn Rand regard selfishness as a virtue?

People who are familiar with Ayn Rand’s writings may consider the answer to this question to be obvious. Rand made no secret of the fact that she regarded selfishness as a virtue. So, why ask the question?

Having recently read “Atlas Shrugged” properly for the first time (rather than skimming through it) the heroes, including John Galt, Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart, did not seem to me to be selfish. By the end of the book they had chosen not to live their lives for the sake of others and not to ask others to live for their sake. But this did not make them selfish in the sense of being deficient in consideration for others. Hank Rearden left his mother without means of support when he went off to start a new life, but it would be difficult for anyone who was aware of the way she repaid the kindness he showed her to argue that he had acted selfishly towards her.

Rand’s view that selfishness is a virtue follows from a narrow definition of selfishness as “concern with one’s own interests” and of individual happiness as the moral purpose of life. In the words of John Galt: “Happiness is the state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values” (p 1014).

Galt explains: “Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy – a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your minds fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer” (p 1022).

Rand’s narrow definition of selfishness enabled John Galt to say: “This much is true: the most selfish of all things is the independent mind that recognizes no authority higher than its own and no value higher than its judgement of truth” (p 1030).

Why did Ayn Rand adopt a narrow definition of selfishness? She could have avoided a lot of confusion by using another term, e.g. “ethical egoism”, to describe the virtuous concern for one’s own interests and accepting the popular usage of selfishness to describe unethical behaviour that involves pursuing one’s own interests at the expense of others. I suspect that Rand adopted a narrow definition of selfishness in order to argue that selfishness is a virtue. And she wanted to argue that selfishness is a virtue in order to draw attention to her opposition to the view that self sacrifice is a virtue.

The view that self sacrifice is a virtue was clearly one of Rand’s main targets. In John Galt’s words: “If you wish to save the last of your dignity, do not call your best actions a ‘sacrifice’: that term brands you as immoral. If a mother buys food for her hungry child rather than a hat for herself, it is not a sacrifice: she values the child higher than the hat; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat, who would prefer her child to starve and feeds him only from a sense of duty” (p 1029).

Postscript: 
Readers might also be interested in a later post on this topic based on a Cato seminar.

Don't restrictions on freedom affect the quality of life?

It is hard to believe that the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress would consider that freedom and personal responsibility have little relevance to the quality of life. However, I haven’t been able to find any discussion of freedom or personal responsibility in their recently published report. The Commission, whose members include Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz along with a list of other prominent academics, was established by the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy.

The Commission’s report seems to have plenty to say about the limitations of GDP, and various issues concerning measurement of quality of life and sustainability, but the closest it comes to recognition that freedom might have some relevance to the quality of life seems to be in a sentence discussing freedom to exercise political voice. While it is good for people to be permitted to complain about restrictions on their liberty, it seems to me that it would be better if they had less restrictions on liberty to complain about. The authors give the impression that they consider that only the latter two words in the call for “liberty, egality and fraternity” are relevant to the measurement of social progress.

I would have been pleasantly surprised if the Commission’s report had endorsed the theme running through this blog that human flourishing must be a self-directed activity and that liberty is necessary for self-direction. (Some posts discussing these concepts are here, here and here.)

However that would have been too much to hope for. Although the relevance of rights is widely recognized in discussions about political institutions, the importance of the right to self-direction is often overlooked when it comes to discussions of the merits and demerits of alternative policies. Rights are routinely overridden when democratically elected governments consider that more important matters are at stake such as “social justice” or even the well-being of the people whose rights they infringe.

I had hoped, nevertheless, that the report would give some recognition to research findings that people value freedom. For example, it could have mentioned John Helliwell’s finding that people tend to have higher life satisfaction in countries in which a high proportion of the population are satisfied with their freedom to choose what to do with their lives (see NBER Working Paper 14720). The Gallup World Poll shows that satisfaction with freedom in France (82%) is somewhat higher than the U.K., but lower than in the U.S. (88%), Australia (91%) and Denmark (96%).

The fact that the vast majority of people in democracies tend to be satisfied with their freedom is related to economic freedom and civil liberties (as shown here). In addition, people would not be expected to feel that their freedom is being unduly restricted unless they are not permitted to do things that they actually want to do. But their sense of personal competence and self-respect must be weakened when responsibility for important aspects of their lives – such as family health care, education and saving for retirement - are taken out of their hands by paternalistic governments.

There is some survey information available to compare the extent that people in different countries feel that they have personal responsibility for what happens in their lives. Data from the World Values Survey shows that French people tend to feel that they have less control over their lives than people in the U.K., U.S. or Australia. The French also scored lower than people in the U.K, U.S. and Australia on the Gallup World Poll question asking whether respondents were proud of something they did yesterday. The Commission seems to overlook such matters.

I am sympathetic to the Commission’s view that more research should be done to assess the links between various dimensions of the quality of life. It is disappointing, however, that the Commission does not recognize freedom as an important dimension of the quality of life.

Postscript, May 2012:
In retrospect, I should have read the report more closely. It contains at least one fairly strong statement of the value of freedom: 'what really matters are the capabilities of people, that is, the extent of their opportunity   set and of their freedom to choose among this set, the life they value'. I am particularly impressed that 'freedom to choose ... the life they value' is not qualified by weazelwords which cast doubt on the ability of people to choose lifestyles that they value.  (See para 29.)

How credible is Rudd's spin on the history of economic reform?

In his comments in “The Australian” (8 Sept. ’09) on Paul Kelly’s new book, “The March of Patriots”, Kevin Rudd attempts to make a distinction between the economic reforms of the Hawke-Keating Labor governments and those of the Howard conservative government. Rudd describes the Hawke-Keating reforms as “modernising our economy to make it more competitive in a rapidly globalizing world”. He describes the Howard reforms as “neo-liberalism” or “a form of free market fundamentalism that has little in common with the philosophy and policy of the reforming centre of Australian politics to which we belong”.

This attempt to associate the Howard government with free market fundamentalism is typical Rudd-speak. This time, however, Rudd seems to have spun himself into a corner by also claiming that the Howard government was lazy. Rudd states: “we would describe our opponents as indolent: perhaps not always opposing the great transformational reforms engineered by Labor during its 13 years in office but hardly adding to that reform agenda during their 12 years in office”. Can an indolent conservative government be guilty of excessive zeal in promoting market-oriented reforms?

Peter van Onselen noted this apparent contradiction (in an article in “The Australian” on 9 Sept. ’09). He also updated a table in a book by Andrew Charlton (senior economic advisor to the PM) to enable the economic reform records of the Hawke-Keating, Howard and Rudd governments to be compared. The table suggests that the Howard government made some substantial reforms and that the Rudd government has tended to roll back previous economic reforms. (Unfortunately the table does not seem to be available on line.)

The table prepared by van Onselen is informative, but it would be nice to be able to compare the economic reform efforts of the three governments quantitatively. This is attempted in the chart below using economic freedom indexes constructed by the Fraser Institute and Heritage Foundation.

The chart confirms that the Hawke-Keating governments had strong neo-liberal credentials, but the two indexes provide a somewhat contradictory picture of the Howard government. The Heritage Foundation index even suggests that the Rudd government has made positive contributions to economic freedom. It might be interesting if someone could investigate why this is so and why two indexes seem to tell different stories about the Howard government.

However, while the history is interesting, the future position of the Rudd government on economic reform will be far more important to the future well-being of Australians. The one hopeful sign in Kevin Rudd’s latest graceless contribution is his praise for the reforms of the Hawke-Keating era. When he was elected to government Rudd seemed to want to be indistinguishable from John Howard in all important respects. Then he wrote an essay in which he seemed to have adopted the attitudes and language of Hugo Chavez. Perhaps he has now recognized that it is not necessary to choose between John Howard and Hugo Chavez (to paraphrase some infamous Rudd-speak).

Would it be too optimistic to interpret Rudd’s latest spin as a signal that he has now adopted Paul Keating as his role model?

What do we know about the neurology of human flourishing?

“Human flourishing is fundamentally a self-directed activity. ... Flourishing does not consist in the mere possession and use of goods that might be necessary for a flourishing life. Rather, human flourishing consists in a person developing the skills, habits, judgements and virtues that will, in most cases, achieve the needed goods. The goods must, in a central way, be made one’s own”: Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl, “Norms of Liberty”, 2005: 86.

Is there a readable book about the neurology of human flourishing? The only book that I am aware of that comes close is “Iconoclast”, by Gregory Berns. This book discusses things that have probably happened at a neurological level when famous people have achieved extraordinary things. The brain functions and processes that Berns writes about, however, seem to me to be relevant to the character development and flourishing of all humans.

What are the factors most likely to prevent individuals from achieving according to their potential? Anyone writing a list from the top of their head would be likely to include such things as: getting one’s thinking stuck in a rut; being constrained by fear of the unknown or fear of ridicule; social environments that reward conformity rather than individuality; and lack of skills in social networking. Gregory Berns discusses these factors.

Points made by Berns include the following:

• In order to think creatively and imagine new possibilities it is necessary to break out of the cycle of experience-dependent categorization. We need novel experiences in order to see things differently.
• Constraints associated with conditioned fear responses can be inhibited through cognitive reappraisal (re-interpretation of information). For example, fear of uncertainty or ambiguity can be inhibited if the situation is viewed as an opportunity to gain additional knowledge by experimenting.
• People have a strong tendency to follow the herd in order to avoid activating their fear systems. But one dissenter is typically enough to break the herd effect.
• Important social networking skills include promoting familiarity with the goods you are selling (because familiarity defines what people like) and establishing a reputation for being trustworthy.
  
  

Do we need a neurologist to tell us such things? Probably not, but it is good to know that there is neurological evidence supporting at least some of the claims made by personal development practitioners.

There is a fair amount of discussion in the book relating to wisdom and knowledge, courage, humanity and justice, but I don’t think there is much discussion of temperance or transcendence. One could hardly have expected all the human virtues to be discussed in the book, however, because Greg Burns did not actually set out to write a book about the neurology of human flourishing.