Ayn Rand Virtue of Selfishness epub. Ain rand the virtue of selfishness

Virtue of selfishness Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden

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Title: Virtue of selfishness
Author: Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden
Year: 1964
Genre: Management, recruitment, Foreign business literature

About The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden

Today, surely every person versed in literature knows the name of Ayn Rand. Speaking about the fact that this is the largest American writer, it is worth mentioning that she is also our former compatriot. But personal reasons and violent denial of the political system of the USSR did their job. As an incredibly talented author, Rand creates works that are not just fascinating or educational, she creates real masterpieces that have already had and continue to have a powerful impact on the worldview of millions of readers around the world. From under her pen came a mass of brilliant works, the most famous and recognized of which are: "Atlas Shrugged", "Source", "Hymn". Based on them, the author, without exaggeration, can be called a philosopher of a new formation.

Another unique work by Ayn Rand, co-authored with her colleague Nathaniel Branden, was called "The Virtue of Selfishness". This book is a unique collection of articles by authors from different years, united by one, non-standard and unexpected theme - the defense of the concept of "reasonable egoism" as the ethical basis of a free capitalist society. Let's try to analyze and figure out what this means for the average reader.

The book The Virtue of Selfishness, even from its title, already provides a lot of food for thought. In fact, any political system, any country and any society from time immemorial has been propagandizing to its citizen that selfishness, that is, behavior oriented entirely to the interests of the individual himself, is unworthy, incorrect and violates generally accepted norms of behavior in society. If we consider this aspect in a philosophical and political context, then such a model of behavior is primarily beneficial to the system in which a person functions, but not to the person himself. Therefore, Rand, as an unusually talented and insightful author who can look into the very depths of the problem, was able to isolate the main, fundamental messages of why ideas about the concept of selfishness have so far been false.

Of course, Rand and Branden are not the first authors to bring up this topic, but they are certainly one of the first who managed to consider it in such an unusual context, provide an unconventional point of view on the problem and reasonably argue all the true "Virtue of selfishness".

This book will be interesting and useful to all fans of Rand's work, to everyone who is just going to get acquainted with her work, as well as to all those who are interested in the authors' non-standard views on familiar things.

Read the unique book by Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden - "The Virtue of Selfishness", learn new things and analyze your views on the topic. Enjoy reading.

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To rebel against such a destructive evil, one must rebel against its basic principles. To save both man and morality, you need to save the concept "selfishness".

The first step along the way is to approve human right to a moral existence, that is, to recognize that he needs a moral code that would guide and fill his life.

Since any value must be achieved and/or preserved by people, if a person does not benefit from his own actions, this cannot be considered fair, since it means that someone sacrifices himself for the sake of another, and morality is sacrificed for immorality. There is no justification for this and never was.

Choosing someone who benefits from moral values is a preliminary or introductory stage in solving moral problems. It cannot replace morality itself or serve as a criterion for choosing moral values, as in altruism. Equally, he cannot serve source morality: it must, on the contrary, stem from morality and be evaluated by the fundamental provisions of the ethical system.

According to the ethics of objectivism, the person who performs them should benefit from his own actions, in other words, a person should act in his own reasonable interests. But his right to do so derives from his human nature and from the application of moral values in life—thus it applies only in the context of a rational, objectively clear and legitimate code of moral principles that defines and limits his self-interest. Selfishness does not mean "do whatever you want" and is not related to the image of the "selfish" savage created by the ethics of altruism, nor to any person who is controlled by irrational emotions, feelings, urges, desires and whims.

Everything I have said above is a warning to those "Nietzschean egoists" who are actually products of altruistic morality and represent the other side of the altruistic coin: they are people who believe that any action, regardless of its essence, should be considered good if performed for its own benefit. Just like can not satisfaction of the irrational desires of other people cannot be a criterion of moral value, neither can the satisfaction of one's own irrational desires. Morality is not a competition of whims. (See articles by Nathaniel Branden - Chapter 18 "Fake Individualism" and Chapter 5 "Aren't We All Selfish?".)

A similar mistake is made by anyone who claims that since a person must judge everything independently and independently, then everything that he does is moral, if he he makes that choice. But a person's own independent judgment is only way choice of action, but by no means a moral criterion for its evaluation: only an appeal to an intelligible principle can serve as a criterion for evaluating the morality of such a choice.

Just as a man cannot survive by some accidental action, but must develop and apply certain principles that will ensure his survival, so his personal interests cannot be determined by blind desires or random whims, but must be discovered and achieved. through rational principles. That is why the ethics of objectivism is morality rational personal interests or rational selfishness.

Since selfishness is "concern for one's own interests," the ethics of objectivism uses this concept in its precise and purest sense. This concept should not be given to the enemies of the human race, as well as thoughtless misunderstanding, distortions, prejudices and fears, characteristic of the ignorant and unreasonable. Attacks on "selfishness" are attacks on human dignity; to give up one means to give up the other.

And now a few words about the content of this book. With the exception of lectures on ethics, it is a collection of articles that first saw the light of day in The Objectivist Newsletter, a monthly magazine edited and published by Nathaniel Branden and myself. The Objectivist Newsletter deals with the application of the philosophy of objectivism to the tasks and problems of today's culture, striving for the "golden mean" between philosophical abstractions and journalistic specifics. Its purpose is to provide readers with a stable philosophical frame of reference.

This collection is not a systematic discussion of ethical topics, but simply a series of articles on those ethical issues that need clarification in today's context, as well as those that have been most distorted by the influence of altruism. You may notice that the titles of a number of articles are questions. Their source is questions sent by our readers.

Ayn Rand

New York, September 1964

P.S. Nathaniel Branden is no longer related to me, to my philosophy and to The Objectivist(former The Objectivist Newsletter).

Ayn Rand, New York, November 1970

1. The ethics of objectivism

Ayn Rand

Since I'm going to talk about the ethics of objectivism, I'll start with the words of its most prominent adherent - John Galt, the hero of the book "Atlas Shrugged":

“During the ages of suffering and disaster caused by your moral code, you have screamed that your code is broken, suffering is the punishment for breaking it, people are too weak and selfish to shed all the blood that this code requires. You cursed man, existence, this earth, but did not dare to question your code. Your victims accepted the blame and continued to work, rewarded with your curses for their martyrdom, while you screamed that your code was noble, but human nature was not good enough to live by it. And not one of you got up and asked: “Is the codex good? By what standards?“

You wanted to know who John Galt is. I am the person who asked this question. Yes, this is the age of moral crisis. Yes, you are punished for your vices. But now it is not man who stands before the court, and it is not human nature that will be blamed. This time it will be done away with your moral code. It has reached its zenith, a dead end at the end of the road. And if you want to live on, you need not go back to morality - you never knew it - but discover morality for yourself.

What is morality or ethics? It is a system of values based on which a person chooses and acts - this choice and these actions determine the purpose and course of his life. Ethics as a science deals with the disclosure and concretization of this system.

Before attempting to refine, evaluate or adopt any particular ethical system, the question must first be answered: why Does a person need a value system?

I emphasize that the first question that needs to be asked is not: what specific value system should a person accept, but: do people need values at all and why?

Is the concept values, "good or evil", an arbitrary invention of mankind, which has nothing to do with, does not originate from, and is not supported by any facts of reality, or it is based on metaphysical fact, on the invariable condition of human existence? (I use the word "metaphysical" in the sense of reality, the nature of things, being.) Is the fact that human actions should be guided by a set of principles an artificial arrangement between people that exists solely as part of tradition, or a requirement of reality? Does ethics belong to the realm whims- personal emotions, social laws and mystical revelations, or to the sphere reason? Ethics is a subjective luxury or objective need?

"The Virtue of Selfishness" is one of the cult American books that has recently become popular in Russia. But few people know who wrote this book. At the same time, the fate of the author is more than interesting.

Childhood Ann Reid

The future writer was born in St. Petersburg in a Jewish family. At birth, she received Zinovievna Rosenbaum. A warm relationship, full of love and understanding, was kept by the future writer with her father. With his mother, a capricious and demanding woman, it was not possible to find a common language.

Alice had three sisters. But she stood out against the general background by the fact that at the age of four she could read and write. Having no adventures in real life, the girl found them in abundance in books. Alice was also a closed child, therefore she could not boast of a wide range of communication. Her favorite friends were writers and heroes. Among the first, she most of all preferred Hugo, among the second - the French heroine Cyrus, who struck with her courage and determination. At the age of nine for Rosenbaum, there was no more pleasant reading than novels from France.

Even as a little girl, Alice stood for gender equality. She was terribly annoyed when she read or heard somewhere the statement that a woman's place was at home. She was drawn to adventure and distant lands. But Alice's world was destroyed in an instant. When the girl was nine years old, the First World War broke out. Many relatives of the future writer were called to the front. They have not returned home.

Youth

A couple of years after the first tragedy in the Rosenbaum family, a second one happened. The First World War was replaced by the Civil War. And then Alice's father lost everything he had. They turned into a poor working-class family who had to work hard to have at least some food at home.

After school, the girl went to study as a historian. She freely expressed thoughts full of faith in humanity and true heroism. Her ideal was still Hugo. But along with him, Nietzsche appeared in life, with whose works Alice met already as a student.

After graduating, Rosenbaum worked for some time as a tour guide. And then she decided to leave the country and go to America. Everything was presented as a two-week trip to Chicago. But even then, Alice decided that she would not return to her native St. Petersburg.

Life in exile

When the future writer ended up in New York, she had only a suitcase with personal belongings, a typewriter bought by her mother after selling family jewels, and zero knowledge of English. Being practically unfamiliar with the culture of the West, Alice realized that under her real name she could not take place. Then she decided to take a pseudonym.

She took the name Ein (Ain), and looked up the last name on a typewriter called Remington Rand. With a new name, she went to conquer Hollywood. Even then, thoughts were forming in her head that would finally take shape in the book The Virtue of Selfishness. However, then Ein was going to become not a writer, but a screenwriter or actress.

In Hollywood, Rand met young actor Frank O'Connor, whom she later married. So she found not only a true friend, editor and attentive reader, but also US citizenship.

Maturity and death

In the US, Ein found enough freedom to speak, write, and preach what she believed in. Even then, she defended the ideas that would later be set forth in the work The Virtue of Egoism. The writer often spoke to the public, proving the failure of communism. Even at the age of fifteen, she abandoned religion, considering it unreasonable and humiliating.

For many years, Ann's only true friend was her husband. They never had children. The writer devoted all her time to writing and defending her own ideas. At the same time, she had many admirers who fell in love with a woman with her own point of view and burning eyes. This is how everyone remembers her.

Rand died in New York in her own apartment. Her legal husband died even earlier. She never saw the collapse of the USSR. However, I knew that one day that day would come.

Creation

The Virtue of Selfishness is not the only or even the most popular book by the writer Ayn Rand. She began her career in St. Petersburg. Even then, she realized that a word can excite the minds of many people and raise them to a real cause. Inspired by her favorite writers. Reading Hugo, Rand decided to write not about what people are, but about what they should be.

Many books have come out of her pen. She wrote "We are alive", "The Source", "Atlas Shrugs", "The Virtue of Selfishness". Rand also often published in various newspapers and magazines. Her publications attracted no less attention. Being very popular in the West, it remained unknown to anyone in the USSR.

About The Virtue of Selfishness

Ayn Rand, while still Alice Rosenbaum, resented Soviet slogans that called for devoting her whole life to working for the country. She believed that first of all, you should think about yourself. After all, Christianity taught to love your neighbor. Can anyone be closer to a person than himself?

The writer further developed all these ideas in her publications. At one point, there were so many of them that it was decided to put them all together and publish under one cover for all Ayn Rand fans. The Virtue of Selfishness made a splash in the West and remained a popular book for a long time. In the post-Soviet space, the book became famous much later than its publication in the United States.

"The Virtue of Selfishness": reviews and reviews

Rand had many admirers and detractors. All of them could not ignore the release of a new book by the writer. And even years after her death, work still attracts a wide variety of people.

With added articles by Nathaniel Branden

Ayn Rand (1905-1982) - our former compatriot, the largest American writer, whose books had a powerful influence on the worldview of millions of people around the world, the author of recognized bestsellers - Atlas Shrugged, The Source, Anthem, etc.

The book "The Virtue of Selfishness" is a collection of articles written by Ayn Rand over the years and united by one theme - the defense of the concept of "reasonable selfishness" as the ethical basis of a free capitalist society.

The author extremely vividly and convincingly proves that only within the framework of a system that puts the rights of the individual and reason at the forefront, people can freely develop and find happiness without being enslaved by dictators, the state and other people. This means that only such a system can be recognized as moral and corresponding to human nature.

Introduction

The title of this book might beg a question I've heard before:

"Why do you use the word 'selfishness' to denote positive qualities of character, when so many people dislike it?"

To those who ask such a question, I can answer: "Because it scares you."

But there are those who will not ask such a question, for fear of being suspected of moral cowardice, but who will not be able to formulate for themselves what I mean, or precisely define the essential moral issue I am talking about. For them, I have prepared a more detailed answer.

The problem here is not just semantic. The meaning attached to the word "selfishness" in society is not only inaccurate: it reflects a terrible intellectual "complex" which, far more than any single factor, is responsible for the delay in the moral development of mankind.

Usually the word "selfishness" is used by people as a synonym for evil; it is associated with the image of a bloodthirsty savage who is ready to walk over corpses to achieve his own goals, does not pay attention to anyone else and seeks only to satisfy his own base desires.

However, the true meaning of this word, which can be found in any dictionary, is: "care for one's own interests." This concept does not imply moral judgment; it does not tell us whether it is good or bad to look after our own interests; just as it does not define what exactly these interests are. Ethics must answer these questions.

The image of the cruel savage is created by the ethics of altruism; it is an answer that forces a person to accept two inhuman principles: 1) that concern for one's own interests is evil, regardless of what these interests are; and 2) that any activity of the savage is, in fact, something he does solely for his own good (which altruism calls on a man to sacrifice for the good of his neighbor).

The true nature of altruism, its consequences, and the incredible distortion of morality it leads to, you can learn from the book "Atlas Shrugged" or from the many headlines of today's newspapers. Here we will consider the defeat of altruism in the field of ethical theory.

There are two moral questions that altruism fuses together: 1) What are values? and 2) For whose benefit should they be taken? Altruism replaces the first question with the second; thus, it escapes the task of defining a code of moral values and leaves the individual without moral guidance.

Altruism declares any action taken for the benefit of others as good, and any action taken for one's own benefit as bad. Thus, the only criterion of moral worth is who exactly benefits from an action, and therefore, as long as a person's actions are useful to anyone but himself, they must be considered good.

Hence the disgusting lack of morality, constant injustice, double standards, insoluble conflicts and contradictions that have characterized human relationships and human societies throughout history, with all variants of altruistic ethics.

Look how unworthy looks what today is passed off as moral judgments. The industrialist who made his fortune and the bandit who robbed the bank are considered equally immoral, because both sought wealth for their own "selfish" gain. The young man who gave up his career to help his parents and remained a grocer's cashier for the rest of his life is considered to be of higher morals than the one who, as a result of a bitter struggle, realized his personal ambitions in a professional activity. The dictator can be considered virtuous, because the terrible deeds committed by him, he did not for his own sake, but for the sake of "the people."

What is the significance of such a criterion of morality in human life? The first thing a person realizes is that morality is his enemy; he gains nothing from her, but only loses; the only thing he can expect is loss and pain through his own fault and a gray, stupefying veil of incomprehensible duties. He may hope that others will sacrifice themselves for him from time to time, just as he reluctantly sacrificed himself for them, but he understands that such relationships bring with them only mutual rejection, not pleasure, and that, From a moral point of view, such acquisition of values is similar to the exchange of unwanted and unwanted Christmas gifts. With the exception of these moments, when he tries to perform some sacrificial acts, he does not possess any moral values: morality has no meaning for him and cannot in any way give him a guiding line in difficult life situations; because it is his own, private, "egotistical" life, and as such can only be considered an evil, or at best, an immoral existence.

Since nature has not provided man with an automatic mechanism of survival and he must take care of himself in order to exist, then, if we are guided by the principle that concern for one's own interests is evil, then the human desire to live is also evil, and human life in itself - evil. It is impossible to think of a more immoral principle.

But this is precisely the meaning of altruism, which implies equating an industrialist with a bandit. But between a person who sees his own interest in the production of something, and one who sees him in a robbery, there is a huge difference. The sin of the robber is not that he pursues his own interests, but that it is he who considers these interests; not in the very fact of guiding personal ideas about values, but in what these values are; not that he wants to survive, but that he wants to exist on a subhuman level (see Chapter 1, "The Ethics of Objectivism").

If you don't know the source of the disgusting combination of cynicism and guilt in which most people live, then I will tell you this source: cynicism comes from the fact that none of them use or accept altruistic morality; guilt arises because they do not dare to reject it.

To rebel against such a destructive evil, one must rebel against its basic principles. In order to save both man and morality, the concept of "selfishness" must be saved.

The first step on this path is to affirm the human right to a moral existence, that is, to recognize that he needs a moral code that would guide and fill his life.

A brief sketch of the nature and necessity of rational morality is given below in my article "The Ethics of Objectivism". Having found out the reasons for the need for a moral code for a person, you will understand that the main task of morality is to determine the correct values and interests of a person; that self-interest is the essence of moral existence; and that moral actions must benefit the person himself. Since any value must be achieved and / or preserved by people, then if a person does not benefit from his own actions, this cannot be considered fair, since it means that someone sacrifices himself for the sake of another, and morality is sacrificed to immorality. There is no justification for this and never was.

Choosing someone who benefits from moral values is a preliminary or introductory stage in solving moral problems. It cannot replace morality itself or serve as a criterion for choosing moral values, as in altruism. Equally, it cannot serve as a source of morality: it must, on the contrary, stem from morality and be evaluated by the fundamental provisions of the ethical system.

According to the ethics of objectivism, the one who performs them should benefit from his own actions, in other words, a person should act in his own reasonable interests. But his right to do so derives from his human nature and from the application of moral values in life—thus, it is applicable only in the context of a rational, objectively clear, and legitimate code of moral principles that defines and limits his self-interest. Selfishness does not mean "do whatever you want" and is not related to the image of the "selfish" savage created by the ethics of altruism, nor to any person who is controlled by irrational emotions, feelings, urges, desires and whims.

Everything I have said above is a warning to those "Nietzschean egoists" who are actually products of altruistic morality and represent the other side of the altruistic coin: they are people who believe that any action, regardless of its essence, should be considered good if performed for its own benefit. Just as the satisfaction of other people's irrational desires cannot be a criterion of moral value, neither can the satisfaction of one's own irrational desires. Morality is not a competition of whims. (See articles by Nathaniel Branden - Chapter 18 "Fake Individualism" and Chapter 5 "Are We Not All Selfish?".

A similar mistake is made by anyone who claims that since a person must judge everything independently and independently, then everything that he does is moral if he himself makes such a choice. But a person's own independent judgment is only a way of choosing an action, and by no means a moral criterion for its evaluation: only an appeal to an intelligible principle can serve as a criterion for evaluating the morality of such a choice.

Just as a man cannot survive by some accidental action, but must develop and apply certain principles that will ensure his survival, so his personal interests cannot be determined by blind desires or random whims, but must be discovered and achieved. through rational principles. That is why the ethics of objectivism is the morality of rational self-interest - or rational selfishness.

And now a few words about the content of this book. With the exception of lectures on ethics, it is a collection of articles first published in The Objectivist Newsletter, a monthly magazine edited and published by Nathaniel Branden and I. The Objectivist Newsletter deals with the application of the philosophy of objectivism to the challenges and problems of today's culture, striving for a "golden mean" between philosophical abstractions and journalistic specifics. Its purpose is to provide readers with a stable philosophical frame of reference.

Ayn Rand, New York, September 1964

P.S. Nathaniel Branden is no longer associated with me, my philosophy, and The Objectivist (formerly The Objectivist Newsletter).

Ayn Rand, New York, November 1970

Chapter 1 Ethics of Objectivism

Ayn Rand

Since I'm going to talk about the ethics of objectivism, I'll start with the words of its most prominent adherent - John Galt, the hero of the book Atlas Shrugged.

“During the ages of suffering and disaster caused by your moral code, you have screamed that your code is broken, suffering is the punishment for breaking it, people are too weak and selfish to shed all the blood that this code requires. You cursed man, existence, this earth, but did not dare to question your code. Your victims accepted the blame and continued to work, rewarded with your curses for their martyrdom, while you screamed that your code was noble, but human nature was not good enough to live by it. And not one of you stood up and asked: "Is the code good? By what standards?"

Before attempting to clarify, evaluate or adopt any particular ethical system, it is necessary first of all to answer the question: why does a person need a system of values.

I emphasize that the first question that needs to be asked is not: what specific system of values a person should accept, but: do people need values at all and why.

Is the concept of value, "good or evil", an arbitrary invention of humanity that has nothing to do with, does not originate from, and is not supported by any facts of reality, or is it based on a metaphysical fact, on an invariable condition of human existence? (I use the word "metaphysical" in the sense of reality, the nature of things, being.) Is the fact that human actions should be guided by a set of principles an artificial arrangement between people that exists solely as part of tradition, or a requirement of reality? Does ethics belong to the realm of whims - personal emotions, social laws and mystical revelations, or to the realm of reason? Ethics is a subjective luxury or an objective necessity.

In the sad history of ethical systems—with rare and unfortunate exceptions—moralists have viewed ethics as the realm of the arbitrary, that is, the irrational. Some of them proclaimed it openly, others only implied it. “Arbitrariness”, “whim” is the desire of a person who does not understand and does not seek to understand his origin.

None of the philosophers has given a rational, objectively obvious, scientific answer to the question why a person needs a system of values. As long as this question remains unanswered, it is impossible to find and formulate a rational, scientific, objective ethical system. The greatest of philosophers, Aristotle, did not regard ethics as an exact science; his ethical system was based on observations of the actions of noble and wise men of that time, but he did not answer the question why they behave in this way, and why he considers them noble and wise.

Most philosophers take the existence of ethics for granted, as a given, as a historical fact, and do not bother to look for its metaphysical origin or objective evaluation. Many of them attempted to break the traditional monopoly of mysticism in the realm of ethics, and perhaps to formulate a rational, scientific, non-religious system of morality. But in the end, they all limited themselves only to trying to give ethics a social foundation, simply replacing God with society.

Convinced mystics considered the arbitrary incomprehensible "God's will" to be the standard of goodness and the criterion of their ethical systems. Neomystics have replaced it with "public good", thus coming to a vicious circle of definitions like: "Good is that which is useful to society." This, logically and in modern world practice, means that “society” is above any ethical principles, since it is itself the source, standard and criterion of ethics, since “good” is everything that pleases it, everything that it decides to consider it his own welfare and benefit. It turns out that "society" can do whatever it wants, because "good" is all that it decides to do, because it decided so. And, since there is no such real entity as "society", and society is just a set of individuals, this means that some people (the majority or any group that declares itself to be representatives of the public will) have the ethical right to achieve everything that they want, and the rest of the people will be ethically obliged to spend their lives to ensure the desires of this group.

This can hardly be called reasonable, but today most philosophers have decided to declare reason untenable, ethics beyond its power, that there can be no rational ethics. They argue that a person in the field of ethics - in choosing his values, actions, aspirations and life goals - should be guided not by reason, but by something else. With what? Faith, instinct, intuition, revelation, feeling, taste, need, desire, whim. Today, as before, most philosophers agree that the ultimate standard of ethics is arbitrary (they call it "arbitrary demand," "subjective choice," or "emotional commitment"), and break spears only over whose arbitrary it should be - the person himself, society, dictator or God. With all the differences between them, modern moralists agree on one thing: ethics is a subjective thing, and three concepts should be completely expelled from its sphere: reason, thought and reality.

If you can't understand why the world is going down and down the circles of hell, here's the reason.

If you want to save civilization, you must oppose this premise of modern ethics - and all ethical systems that have historically existed.

To oppose the basic premise of any discipline, one must start from the very beginning. In the case of ethics, one must start with the question: what are values? Why do people need them.

"Value" is what a person seeks to acquire and/or keep. The concept of "value" is not primary; it requires a preliminary determination for whom and for what this value is such. It is necessary to identify the entity that will determine the actions to achieve the goal in the presence of an alternative.

Where there are no alternatives, there can be no goals and values.

I will quote from Gault's speech.

“There is only one immutable alternative in the Universe – existence or non-existence, it belongs to only one category of being – to a living organism. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a certain course of action. Matter cannot be destroyed, it changes forms, but does not cease to exist. Only a living organism faces a permanent alternative: a matter of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generating action. If the organism does not reach its goal in its action, it dies; its chemical elements persist, but life ceases to exist. Only the concept of "life" makes the concept of "value" possible. Only for a living organism there are the concepts of "good" and "evil" [Rand A. Atlas Shrugged].

To fully clarify this, try to imagine an immortal, indestructible robot, an entity that moves and acts, but which nothing can influence, which cannot change, which cannot be harmed, maimed or destroyed. Such an entity cannot have any values; she has nothing to gain and lose; for her there is nothing that would be for or against her, that would serve or threaten her well-being, that would meet her interests or go against them.

She could have no interests and no goals.

Only a living being can have goals and create them. And only a living organism has the ability for independent purposeful actions. At the physiological level, the functions of all living organisms, from the simplest to the most complex, from the nutrition of a single amoeba cell to the blood circulation in humans, are actions generated by the organism itself and leading to a single goal: maintaining the life of the organism [In relation to physiological phenomena, such as as automatic functions of the body, the term "purposive" should not be taken in the sense of "intentional" (this is a concept applicable exclusively to the activity of consciousness); it does not imply any teleological principle at work in inanimate nature. In this context, I use the term "purposive" to refer to the fact that the automatic functioning of a living organism is one that, by its nature, leads to the preservation of the life of this organism.].

The life of an organism depends on two factors: energy substances, which must come to it from the external environment, and the activity of its own body, which must correctly use these substances. By what standards is the correctness of use determined in this case? The only standard is the vital activity of the organism, or, in other words, what is necessary for its survival.

In this case, the organism has no choice: what exactly it needs for survival is determined by its nature, by what kind of creature it is. Various options are possible for the organism, various forms of adaptation to the external environment, including the possibility of existing for some time in a state of injury, dysfunction or illness. However, the main alternative to its existence remains the same: if the organism cannot perform the basic functions inherent in it by nature - if the protoplast of the amoeba cell stops absorbing nutrients, or if the human heart stops beating - it dies. In a fundamental sense, immobility is the antithesis of life. Life is possible only with the constant implementation of self-sustaining activity. The goal of this activity, the ultimate value, for the preservation of which it is necessary to achieve it at every moment of action, is the life of the organism.

The final value is that highest goal, for the achievement of which all lesser goals serve as means, and are evaluated on its basis. The life of an organism is a value standard. that which contributes to the continuation of life is good, that which threatens it is evil.

Without an ultimate end, no lesser ends or means can exist: a series of actions turning into an endless progression leading to nothing is a metaphysical and epistemological impossibility. The existence of values is possible only if there is an ultimate goal, the result as such. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that in itself is also a result: a value acquired and preserved in a process of constant uninterrupted activity. Epistemologically, the concept of "value" is genetically based and derived from the concept of "life" that preceded it. Talking about "value" in isolation from "life" is worse than simply allowing a contradiction in terminology. "The concept of 'value' exists only because the concept of 'life' exists."

In response to those philosophers who argue that no connection can be established between the final results or values and the facts of reality, I emphasize that the existence and functioning of living entities inevitably entails the existence of values and one absolute value, which for any living entity is its own life. Therefore, the verification of value judgments must be based on the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity exists determines what it should do. And enough, perhaps, about the connection between “is” and “should”.

Now consider how a person discovers the concept of "value"? By what means does he first comprehend the problem of "good and evil" in its simplest form? Through the physical sensations of pleasure and pain. Sensations are the first stage in the development of human consciousness, both in the field of cognition and in the field of evaluation.

The ability to experience pleasure or pain is given to man from birth; it is part of his nature, the type of entity that he is. This ability is not subject to human choice, and a person cannot himself set a standard that determines what exactly - pleasure or pain - he will experience under certain conditions. What is this standard? His life.

The pleasure/pain mechanism in the human body - as in the bodies of all living organisms with consciousness - serves as a security alarm for his life. The physical sensation of pleasure is a signal showing that the body's activity is carried out in the right direction.

The physical sensation of pain is a warning signal of danger, indicating that the activity will be introduced in the wrong direction - something interferes with the normal functioning of the body, therefore, some action is required to correct the situation. This can best be illustrated by the rare birth defect in which a child is born without the ability to feel physical pain; these children usually do not live long because they have no way of detecting what might harm them, there is no warning mechanism, and the slightest cut can lead to a fatal infection, and a serious illness may go undetected until it is too late. fight her.

Consciousness - for those living organisms that possess it - is the main means of survival.

Simpler organisms, such as plants, can survive by their automatic physiological functions. Higher organisms, such as animals and man, cannot: their needs are more complex, and their scope of activity is wider.

The physiological functions of their bodies are automatically only capable of using energy substances, but they cannot automatically receive these substances from the surrounding world. To receive them, higher organisms need consciousness. The plant gets its food from the soil in which it grows. The animal must hunt for this. Man has to produce it.

The plant has no choice what to do; the ends it pursues are automatic and innate, determined by its nature. The values, the desire for which nature has laid in it, are nutrients, water and light. His life is a value standard that governs his activities. The environmental conditions it encounters in life may be different: for example, heat or cold, flood or drought, and the plant has the ability to perform different actions to deal with adverse conditions: for example, some plants are able to sprout and climb out from under a stone to be in the light. But under any conditions, there is no choice in the actions of the plant: it acts automatically in order to continue its existence, it cannot act for the purpose of its own destruction.

The range of actions necessary for the survival of a higher organism is much wider: it is proportional to the sphere of control of its consciousness. The lowest of the conscious species can only feel, and this is enough to direct their activities and provide for their needs. Sensations arise as a result of the automatic reaction of the sense organ to external stimuli; their duration is limited by the duration of the stimulus and no more. Sensations are an automatic response, an automatic form of knowledge that consciousness can neither seek nor avoid. The actions of an organism, which has only the ability to feel, are controlled by the bodily mechanism of pleasure / pain, that is, automatic knowledge and an automatic system of values. The value standard that determines his actions is his own life.

Within the range of its possible actions, the organism acts automatically to prolong its life; it cannot perform actions leading to its destruction.

More highly developed organisms have a more powerful form of consciousness: they have the ability to store sensations, that is, the ability to perceive. “Perception” is a group of sensations automatically stored and integrated by the brain of a living organism, thanks to which it can capture not individual stimuli, but essences, things. The animal is guided not just by direct sensations, but by an integrated picture of the reality it perceives. It can be aware of objects in its perceptual environment and form automatic perceptual connections, but it cannot go further. It can master certain activities. thus the parents of the higher animals teach their offspring to hunt or hide. But the animal does not choose the knowledge and skills it acquires; generation after generation repeat the same thing. He also has no choice of value standard to guide his activities: his sense organs provide him with an automatic system of values, automatic knowledge of what is good and what is bad for him, what is useful for his life and what is dangerous. The animal does not have the ability to expand its knowledge or to abandon it. Once in a situation where its knowledge is inapplicable, it dies - like, for example, an animal that freezes on the rails in the path of a speeding train. But as long as it lives, it acts according to its knowledge, using an automatic safety mechanism and having no choice: the animal cannot refuse to use its own consciousness, it cannot decide not to perceive, it cannot ignore what it perceives, it cannot act against its own benefit, cannot choose actions to his own detriment and become his own killer.

Man does not have an automatic survival system. It does not have an automatic set of actions, an automatic system of values. His feelings do not tell him what is good or bad for him, what is useful for his life and what is dangerous, what goals he should pursue and what will allow him to achieve them, what values his life depends on, what activity he needs.

It is up to his own consciousness to find the answers to all these questions - but his consciousness does not function automatically. Man, the highest organism on earth, whose consciousness has a limitless ability to receive knowledge, is the only living entity that comes into the world with no guarantee that it will remain conscious. The exceptional difference between man and all other forms of life is that his consciousness is arbitrary.

The automatic values that govern the functioning of the plant organism are sufficient to ensure its survival, but not sufficient for the survival of the animal; in the same way, the automatic values that exist in an animal due to the sensory-perceptual mechanism of its consciousness are sufficient to control its life, but are not sufficient for a person. Human activity and survival require the guidance of conceptual values generated by conceptual knowledge. But conceptual knowledge cannot be acquired automatically.

"Concept", "idea" is the intellectual integration of two or more perceptions, which are isolated in the process of abstraction and combined with the help of a characteristic definition. Each word of human language, with the exception of pronouns, denotes an idea, an abstraction that includes an unlimited number of specific objects of a special kind.

By organizing his perceptual material into ideas, and his ideas into more and more general ideas, a person is able to capture and store, define and integrate into the system an unlimited amount of knowledge that extends beyond the specific perception of the current moment. The human senses work automatically; his brain integrates sensory information into images automatically; but the process of combining images into ideas—the process of abstracting and forming concepts—is not automatic.

The process of concept formation is not only about learning a few simple abstractions, such as "chair", "table", "hot", "cold", and learning speech. It lies in the method of using consciousness, which is best described by the term "conceptualization". It is not a passive state of consciousness registering random impressions. It is an actively maintained process of identifying impressions in conceptual terms, integrating all events and all observations into a conceptual context, identifying relationships, differences, similarities in perceptual information and abstracting it into new ideas, drawing conclusions, drawing generalizations, making decisions, asking new questions and searching for new answers and constant expansion of the limits of knowledge. The faculty which governs this process, which functions by means of ideas, is the mind.

The process itself is thinking.

Intelligence is the ability to identify and integrate the material supplied by the senses. This ability must be exercised by the individual. Thinking is not an automatic process. At any hour of his life, about any problem, a person is free to think or to give up this effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused attention. Focus on something consciousness can be only arbitrarily. A person can direct their thinking towards a full, active, purposefully focused understanding of reality, or can diffuse it and exist in a semi-conscious fog, reacting only to random momentary stimuli, at the mercy of an undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and any unpredictable associative connections that may arise during its use.

When a person diffuses his thinking, we can say that he is conscious in the subhuman sense of the word, since he has sensations and perceptions. But in the sense that applies only to humans—if we consider consciousness as a complete understanding of reality and the ability to interact with it, direct human activity and ensure its survival—undirected, diffuse thinking cannot be considered conscious.

In a psychological sense, the choice to "think or not to think" is the choice to "focus or not focus your thinking." In an existential sense, the choice "to focus or not to focus thinking" is the choice "to be or not to be conscious."

In a metaphysical sense, the choice "to be or not to be conscious" is a choice between life and death.

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Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden

Virtue of selfishness

Introduction

The title of this book might beg a question I've heard before:

"Why do you use the word 'selfishness' to denote positive qualities of character, when so many people dislike it?"

To those who ask such a question, I can answer: "Because it scares you."

However, the true meaning of this word, which can be found in any dictionary, is: "caring for one's own interests".

This concept does not imply moral judgment; it does not tell us whether it is good or bad to look after our own interests; just as it does not define what exactly these interests are. Ethics must answer these questions.

The image of the cruel savage is created by the ethics of altruism; this is the answer that makes a person accept two inhuman principles: 1) that concern for one's own interests is evil, regardless of what these interests are; and 2) that any activity of a savage in fact is something that he does solely for his own benefit (which altruism calls on a person to sacrifice for the benefit of his neighbor).

You can learn about the true nature of altruism, its consequences and the incredible distortion of morality to which it leads, from the book "Atlas Shrugged" [Rand A. Atlas Shrugged: In 3 hours - 6th ed. - M.: Alpina Publishers, 2011.] or from the many headlines of today's newspapers. Here we will consider defeat altruism in the field of ethical theory.

Altruism declares any action taken for the benefit of others as good, and any action taken for one's own benefit as bad. Thus, the only criterion of moral worth is Who exactly benefits from the action, and therefore, as long as a person's actions are useful to anyone but himself, they should be considered good.

What is the significance of such a criterion of morality in human life? The first thing a person realizes is that morality is his enemy; he gains nothing from her, but only loses; the only thing he can expect is loss and pain through his own fault and a gray, stupefying veil of incomprehensible duties. He may hope that others will sacrifice themselves for him from time to time, just as he reluctantly sacrificed himself for them, but he understands that such relationships bring with them only mutual rejection, not pleasure, and that, From a moral point of view, such acquisition of values is similar to the exchange of unwanted and unwanted Christmas gifts. With the exception of these moments, when he tries to perform some sacrificial acts, he does not possess any moral values: morality has no meaning for him and cannot in any way give him a guiding line in difficult life situations; because it is his own, private, "selfish" life, and as such can only be regarded as an evil, or, at best, as immoral Existence.

Since nature has not provided man with an automatic mechanism of survival and he must take care of himself in order to exist, then, if we are guided by the principle that concern for one's own interests is evil, then the human desire to live is also evil, and human life itself is - evil. It is impossible to think of a more immoral principle.

But this is precisely the meaning of altruism, which implies equating an industrialist with a bandit. But between a person who sees his own interest in the production of something, and one who sees him in a robbery, there is a huge difference. The sin of the robber is not that he pursues his own interests, and that what it is he who considers these interests; not in the very fact of leading personal concepts of values, but in the fact that what are these values; not that he wants to survive, but that he wants to exist on a subhuman level (see Chapter 1 "The Ethics of Objectivism").

If you don't know the source of the disgusting mix of cynicism and guilt in which most people live, then I'll give you this one.