The Virtue of Selfishness

A collection of essays setting out the ethics of Objectivism, the philosophy Ayn Rand had dramatised in her novels, some by her then associate Nathaniel Branden. She uses "selfishness" to mean concern with one's own interests. The core essay, "The Objectivist Ethics", first given as a lecture in 1961, argues that values exist only for living beings facing the alternative of life or death, so that man's life, as a rational being, is the standard of value. From this Rand derives the virtues of rationality, productiveness and pride, and the conclusion that each person should pursue his own rational self-interest, neither sacrificing himself to others nor others to himself. She attacks altruism, which she defines as the doctrine that self-sacrifice is the moral ideal. Later essays apply the view to emergencies, compromise, rights, government and racism. Critics argue that the step from life to egoism does not follow and that her account of altruism is a caricature.

It is the clearest short statement of Rand's ethical egoism, a view that remains influential in libertarian politics and is worth understanding, and testing, on its own terms.