THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS IS "THE OBJECTIVIST ETHICS"

Is selfishness a virtue? Ayn Rand chose the book’s title as she was on a mission to overcome centuries of demonization. Rand writes that the word selfishness is a synonym for evil. The image it depicts is of a murderous brute who tramples over the piles of corpses to get their goals. To pursue the gratification of the mindless whims of any rapid or immediate moment.

The exact meaning still says “concerned with own interests” the concept does not tell whether concern with one’s interests is good or evil or what comprises the actual interests. it is wholly the task of the ethics to answer such things. 

Morality demands to choose between sacrificing people to ourselves and sacrificing our values to satisfy other needs. In the book, she rejects both opinions as forms of selflessness and offers the concept of egoism which is the ethics of rational selfishness that rejects sacrifice in all its forms. 

Moral principles are not a matter of personal opinion. They are based on the facts of reality; they must think and act successfully to live properly and be contented. 

The virtues are namely productivity, independence, integrity, honesty, justice and pride. These are the applications of the basic virtue, of rationality. the moral ideal is a life of reason purpose and self-esteem.

The theme of the book is morality, a matter of principle not divine revelation or subjective desire. The properly defined principle is the one that identifies the actual truth for human action. It should be acted consistently and should never be compromised. Rand has written that there can be no compromise on the basic principles or the fundamental issues. Moral principles are a guide to the action in real-life situations if someone wants to attain individual happiness. Unfortunately, principles have gotten a bad name because conventional ideals like self-sacrifice cannot be consistently practised without inviting disaster. As a result, compromise becomes essential to survival, consistency seems dangerous, and philosophers like Rand are marginalized as the dangerous fanatics.

Although the individual is perfectly at home in the society, he recognizes other people hold the power to destroy the value of lies which is all social by starting the physical force against him which is in the form of criminal acts or improper government coercion. 

One of the themes is that morality must identify the principles to identify and guard against the threat. In her essay “Man’s Rights,” Rand presents her case for individual rights — moral principles that spell out one’s proper sphere of freedom — and grounds the rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness that were America’s founding principles. Far from being self-evident, these principles need a new moral defence. In “The Nature of Government,” Rand argues that a constitutional republic on the American model (with certain crucial flaws corrected) is necessary to protect individual rights and that this is the only valid purpose of government.

Sometimes, people take for granted that actions intended to benefit others are good and concerned about oneself are bad. One of the book's themes which is the beneficiary criteria of morality is what makes it impossible to even think of self-interests as moral. 

She has introduced the opposite of selfishness as altruism. She said that the only one who can answer such questions as what are the values? Why do we need them? How do we decide who should be the beneficiary of our actions? Can evaluate egoism and altruism as good or evil. 

Egoists are most of the time assumed to prey on others. In Rand’s view, individuals derive indispensable benefits from exchanging values with other people. “A trader,” she writes, “is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. He does not treat men as masters or slaves but as independent equals. He deals with men utilizing a free, voluntary, unforced, uncoerced exchange — an exchange which benefits both parties by their independent judgment.”

In this broad sense, Rand’s “trader principle” comprise/reference not only economic transactions but all voluntary human relationships. In “The Ethics of Emergencies,” “Collectivized Ethics” and “The ‘Conflicts’ of Men’s Interests,” Rand argues that we need to reconceive the place of the welfare of others and the individual in ethics, and to question the idea that the interests of rational men conflict.