{"id":868,"date":"2002-08-12T14:18:01","date_gmt":"2002-08-12T22:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2002\/08\/12\/objections-to-objectivism-a-brief-critique-of-ayn-rands-ethical-egoism\/"},"modified":"2002-08-12T14:18:01","modified_gmt":"2002-08-12T22:18:01","slug":"objections-to-objectivism-a-brief-critique-of-ayn-rands-ethical-egoism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2002\/08\/12\/objections-to-objectivism-a-brief-critique-of-ayn-rands-ethical-egoism","title":{"rendered":"Objections To Objectivism: A Brief Critique of Ayn Rand\u2019s Ethical Egoism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stanford.edu\/group\/SOC\/\">Objectivist Club at Stanford<\/a> is pretty active, and so this seemed like an appropriate first entry in our \u201cReasonable Answers to Honest Questions\u201d category.<\/p>\n<p>In case you\u2019re not familiar with it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aynrand.org\/objectivism\/essentials.html\">objectivism<\/a> is the system of philosophy defined by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aynrand.org\/aynrand\/\">Ayn Rand<\/a>. It deals with much more than merely ethics, but that\u2019s what I want to comment on&nbsp;today.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.objectivistcenter.org\/objectivism\/faqs\/wthomas_faq-ethics.asp\">Ayn Rand\u2019s ethical theory<\/a> is of the type known as \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.utm.edu\/research\/iep\/e\/egoism.htm\">ethical egoism<\/a>,\u201d which means that we should always choose to do things that benefit ourselves (we also call this selfishness). A short way to summarize Ayn Rand\u2019s ethical theory would be \u201cselfishness is a virtue.\u201d That\u2019s not a completely fair summary: she argues for a very specific type of selfishness: an enlightened self-interest which recognizes that sometimes acting for the good of others actually benefits oneself. Here\u2019s a more detailed description written by one of her&nbsp;fans:<\/p>\n<p><i>The Objectivist ethics rebuilds morality from the ground up. \u201cYou cannot say \u2018I love you\u2019 if you cannot say the \u2018I\u2019,\u201d wrote Ayn Rand. According to Objectivism, a person\u2019s own life and happiness is the ultimate good. To achieve happiness requires a morality of rational selfishness, one that does not give undeserved rewards to others and that does not ask them for oneself. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.objectivistcenter.org\/objectivism\/faqs\/wthomas_faq-ethics.asp\">source<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<p>I sent an email to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rzim.org\/\">Ravi Zacharias International Ministries<\/a> asking them to provide me with a critique of Ayn Rand\u2019s ethical theory. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gospelcom.net\/rzim\/apologetics\/apologetics.php?personid=8\">Paul Copan<\/a> was kind enough to craft this brief&nbsp;reply:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAYN RAND\u2019S ETHICAL EGOISM (OBJECTIVISM)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Rand\u2019s ethical views presuppose a naturalistic fallacy; that&nbsp;is,<br>\nit moves from the descriptive (that we are naturally selfish) to&nbsp;the<br>\nprescriptive (that we ought to look out for Number One).  But there&nbsp;is<br>\nnothing logically compelling about making this&nbsp;jump.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>What happens if there is a conflict of interests?  How do we adjudicate between conflicting egos?&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>If the rules of morality are really rules of expediency, then&nbsp;they<br>\nwill be obligatory only so long as they are expedient.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>The pursuit of selfish pleasures\/goals eventually leads to anarchy,<br>\nin which everyone does what is right in his own&nbsp;eyes.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>What happens when an ethical egoist turns into a dictator?  It&nbsp;seems<br>\nmorally counter-intuitive to suggest that acting egoistically is legitimate<br>\nfor&nbsp;him.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>The ethical egoistal view is arbitrary.  Why should I opt for my&nbsp;own<br>\ngood as opposed to society\u2019s good (or the good of some other grouping)?<br>\nIt seems that the egoist can give no real reasons for why his view is to&nbsp;be<br>\npreferred.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Egoism presumes a universal relevance (i.e., the egoist presumes<br>\na willingness to see others should embrace this view and act on it, but&nbsp;if<br>\nthe egoist does not, then it seems to be a deficient moral view). However,<br>\nif the egoistic ethic is universalized, then it seems that this would&nbsp;go<br>\nagainst the egoist\u2019s own selfish ends.  That is, the egoist wouldn\u2019t<br>\nwant his ethic universalized.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>The ethical egoist can\u2019t be trusted when offering moral advice<br>\nto others since it will be to his own advantage rather than to that of&nbsp;the<br>\none seeking his advice.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Furthermore, even if pursing selfish ends is legitimate, it&nbsp;seems<br>\nhard to believe that this is the only moral virtue.  That is, one\u2019s good&nbsp;may<br>\nbe an object to pursue, but it need not be the only&nbsp;one.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There is a fuller defense of an objective, divinely-rooted ethic in the book, <a href=\"http:\/\/shop.gospelcom.net\/cgi-bin\/rzim.storefront\/3d58254c03261bca271aac14100105b1\/Product\/View\/BK5\">True for You, But Not for Me<\/a>; this can be ordered through RZIM\u2019s order line at 800\u2013448-6766.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If this topic is of more interest to you, Copan (author of the above critique) also recommends that you read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.desiringgod.org\/library\/topics\/culture\/rand.html\">The Ethics of Ayn Rand: Appreciation and Critique<\/a> by John Piper. Piper takes more space to elaborate on Rand\u2019s theory and points out several elements of it he agrees with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Objectivist Club at Stanford is pretty active, and so this seemed like an appropriate first entry in our \u201cReasonable Answers to Honest Questions\u201d category. In case you\u2019re not familiar with it, objectivism is the system of philosophy defined by Ayn Rand. It deals with much more than merely ethics, but that\u2019s what I want \u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2002\/08\/12\/objections-to-objectivism-a-brief-critique-of-ayn-rands-ethical-egoism\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> \u201cObjections To Objectivism: A Brief Critique of Ayn Rand\u2019s Ethical Egoism\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reasonable-answers-to-honest-questions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-e0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}