I have found only one instance of Ayn Rand making an assertion that did not take all the facts into account. She made it in her book The Virtue of Selfishness. (I might add that the four words in the title of the book represent a life-changing discovery for me. So my criticism is in the context of recognizing a great achievement.)
Here is the passage containing the error:
Introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness pb vii–xi
The title of this book may evoke the kind of question that I hear once in a while: ‘Why do you use the word ‘selfishness’ to denote virtuous qualities of character, when that word antagonizes so many people to whom it does not mean the things you mean?”
To those who ask it, my answer is: “For the reason that makes you afraid of it.”
But there are others, who would not ask that question, sensing the moral cowardice it implies, yet who are unable to formulate my actual reason or to identify the profound moral issue involved. It is to them that I will give a more explicit answer.
It is not a mere semantic issue nor a matter of arbitrary choice. The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word “selfishness” is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual “package‑deal,” which is responsible, more than any other single‑factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.
In popular usage, the word “selfishness” is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.
Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word “selfishness” is: concern with one’s own interests.
This concept does not include a moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one’s own interests is good or evil; nor does it tell us what constitutes man’s actual interests. It is the task of ethics to answer such questions.
Is Ayn Rand correct that “the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word “selfishness” is: concern with one’s own interests”?
If yes, then the claim, “This concept does not include a moral evaluation” in her next paragraph follows logically. If not, spreading her ideas becomes harder, as Objectivists are operating from a false premise.
As I wrote in my essay “Transforming a Concept” in The Intellectual Activist (available on the Concept Variation website), I give the benefit of the doubt that her particular dictionary may have had such a neutral definition of “selfishness”.
But I have been unable to find it replicated anywhere outside her quotation. And that strikes me as cherry-picking.
She did not say the “exact meaning and dictionary definition—as defined by the xyz dictionary—is as follows…” That would have been accurate but far less persuasive. She said instead “the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word “selfishness” is…” as if it was a universal truth beyond dispute.
In fact, the exact meaning of the word “selfish” (and thus “selfishness”), as defined by all the generally reliable dictionaries, is completely different. Here’s a small selection of what I found typical:
WEBSTER’S NEW WORLD
selfish
adj.
1 too much concerned with one’s own welfare or interests and having little or no concern for others; self-centered
OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY
selfish, a.
- a. Devoted to or concerned with one’s own advantage or welfare to the exclusion of regard for others. 1640.
NEW SHORTER OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY
1 Concerned chiefly with one’s own personal advantage or welfare to the exclusion of regard for others, deficient in consideration for others; actuated by or appealing to self-interest. M17.
Here’s another example from a popular source:
MICROSOFT ENCARTA
selfish
selfish [sélfish] adjective
- looking after own desires: concerned with your own interests, needs, and wishes while ignoring those of others
- demonstrating selfishness: showing that personal needs and wishes are thought to be more important than those of other people
—selfishly, adverb
—selfishness, noun[1]
It is worth remembering that the meaning of a concept is not intrinsic or subjective. It is a human choice, good bad or indifferent. A concept starts out with the meaning given by its originator and until the concept is varied, that is its meaning.
As I set out in “Transforming a Concept”, historically the concept “selfishness” was conceived as a negative one around 1643, subsuming only those instances of allegedly self-benefiting behavior that involved disregard for others.
So it is not true historically, or by objective survey of dictionaries, that the “exact meaning and dictionary definition” of the word “selfishness” is “concern with one’s own interests”.
And, although the definition from the dictionary Ayn Rand quoted doesn’t carry a moral evaluation, the definitions offered by all the other dictionaries do.
Selfish behavior is conceived as wrong, as evidenced by Webster’s definition beginning: “Too much concerned with one’s own welfare and interests” etc. That “too much” is nothing if not a negative moral evaluation.
Nor is it true that the villain is popular usage.
Immediately before citing what she claims as “the exact meaning and dictionary definition” of “selfishness”, she wrote:
In popular usage, the word “selfishness” is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.
But popular usage didn’t invent the original form of the concept. It simply exaggerated it.
In my opinion, Ayn Rand should have challenged the unsatisfactory original form of the concept as her opening move.
She should have proudly announced that she had discovered a moral form of egoism. Then she should have said right away what she said later in her essay:
If it is true that what I mean by “selfishness” is not what is meant conventionally, then this is one of the worst indictments of altruism: it means that altruism permits no concept of a self-respecting, self-supporting man—a man who supports his life by his own effort and neither sacrifices himself nor others. It means that altruism permits no view of men except as sacrificial animals and profiteers-on-sacrifice, as victims and parasites—that it permits no concept of a benevolent co-existence among men—that it permits no concept of justice.
She should have stressed that she had developed a new form of the concept that eliminates the deadly contradiction in its first version. What contradiction?
It is this: we know, from Ayn Rand’s ethical discoveries and confirmed by our own experience that behavior harming others’ interests is not rationally selfish: it will lead to bad consequences for the person doing it.
Studying the concept historically, I am impressed with the huge default that did not come up with a concept identifying what selfishness can be and ought to be.
Until she isolated rational instances of selfishness, we had no variant of the concept to identify a moral form of selfishness.
That is her superb achievement.
That discovery would gain far more credit if the failing of the original version of the concept was openly acknowledged.
No great cause is helped by a myth: in this case the myth of an initial neutral concept of selfishness.
© Tom Minchin 2016
Footnote
I have since discovered a dictionary definition of “selfish” that comes close to the neutral one she spoke of for “selfishness”.
It is from Webster’s Daily Use Dictionary of 1933, a dictionary she possessed. The definition for “selfish” there reads:
adj. Attentive only to one’s own interests; influenced in actions from motives of private advantage; egotistical.–n. selfishness.
Note that this is more narrowly focused than the definition she gave. “Attentive only to one’s own interests” doesn’t sound like there is concern left over for anyone else’s interests. Her definition, “Concern with one’s own interests”, does.
The earliest form of this 1933 definition I can find is from Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language of 1828. It offers the following definition of “selfish”:
adjective Regarding one’s own interest chiefly or sole[l]y; influenced in actions by a view to private advantage
That is much closer to Ayn Rand’s.
What to make of this discovery? It’s clear there was a neutral form of the concept “selfishness”. She reported accurately. But it is not the original form of the concept. As noted above, that dates back to 1643 and its meaning is:
regard for one’s own interest or happiness to the disregard of the well-being of others.
Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition (v. 4.0) by Oxford University Press 2009.
As to her claim that “concern with one’s own interests” is “the exact meaning and dictionary definition” of the word “selfishness,” that asserts too much. The meaning she gave is certainly not the predominant one, nor the original. A word can have more than one meaning.
But Ayn Rand did not think like that. Her explicit view was that there is only one form of a concept.
Let us move on to examine her view on that subject.
August 11 2017
[1]Encarta® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.