Rating: 
Summary: Simply Outrageously Terriffic!
Review: This book is excellent! It is not such easy reading as are Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, but if you liked them, then you will be greatly rewarded by reading "the Virtue of Selfishness". Ayn Rand explains the true meaning of selfishness and how it is corrupted by the altruist's of this world. Alturist's have twisted the concept of selfishness into a distorted, wicked image, when, in actuallity, true selfishness is a beautiful thing. True selfishness is what one experiences when he is rewarded for his own efforts. Yes, even if he earned a billion dollars and kept it all to himself it is beautiful and respectable! Altruist's have corrupted and shielded the beauty of true selfishness by inducing a feeling of guilt in individuals BECAUSE of their very own abilities. Altruist's claim, for example, that millionaire industralists are guilty of exploitation simply BECAUSE they have become rich (RICH! ) while their workers remain at a lower standard of living. The suggestion ( and guilt trip) is that the industralist is guilty because he did not give his money, his earnings away. They forget and ignore the fact and reality of how the industralist's products have benifitted themselves, the plant workers and simply raised everyone's standard of living. Read this book; enjoy it! And stay clear of altruist's and their philosophy!
Rating: 
Summary: Headache? Keep the Motrin handy.
Review: Yep, "critically, sentence by sentence" is exactly how you have to read Rand -- otherwise she'll get away with murder.Take the previous reviewer's first example: "Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action." [That's from "The Objectivist Ethics," in this volume.] Now Rand insisted repeatedly (e.g. in her letters to John Hospers, reprinted in _The Letters of Ayn Rand_) that when she defined a word, she stuck to the meaning she had assigned it. Yet in her argument here, she passes insensibly from "biological life" to "life with integrity," even allowing in _Atlas Shrugged_ that one might commit biological suicide in order to _preserve_ one's integrity. So much for life as an end in itself. In fact biological life is of purely instrumental value -- i.e. as a means to the achievement of values which really _are_ ends in themselves. But what Rand does is to build her own favorite virtues into the meaning of "life as man _qua_ man," and thereby define anyone who doesn't practice those virtues as quite literally _subhuman_. Or take the previous reviewer's second example: "Epistemologically, the concept of 'value' is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of 'life.'" This is just nonsense, as Rand's own example of the "indestructible robot" shows. She wants to insist that an indestructible robot can't have any values -- but she does it by building in to her statement the hypothesis that the robot can't be affected by _anything_ in _any_ way whatsoever (a much stronger condition than simple indestructibility). Her argument that value depends on life (really, on "mortality") is therefore just bad. There's no reason in the world why immortal beings couldn't have values. You'll spot her doing this sort of thing right and left. She'll tell you on one page that "values" make sense only for beings who can make choices in the face of alternatives -- and then turn around and tell you that plants have values that they have no alternative but to seek. She'll tell you that the very first question in ethics is whether we _need_ ethics at all -- and not only ignore the fact that "need" is already an ethically loaded term, but then turn around later in the volume and argue that "need" can't be the basis for any of our claims against one another. This despite her just-as-equivocal argument that "rights" are based directly on needs -- a well-known passage in which she passes without acknowledgement from the statement that "it is right" for man to use his mind, etc., to the statement that "he has a right" to do those things. The woman who allegedly never altered the meaning of her words in fact did it all the time -- she just didn't notice. This volume's worst flaw is, as I've said elsewhere, that Rand tries to alter the meaning of "human being" or "man's life" so that it means, not biological life, but the sort of life she regards as moral. I'm not disagreeing that such a life _is_ moral, but it's a sign of trouble when you try to base an ethic directly on biological life and immediately find yourself distorting that standard to fit your conclusions. There are two standards here, and Rand conflates them; the result is not elevation, but corruption. As a matter of biological fact, a human being is a human being from conception to death, no matter how immoral we may be in between. To equate immorality with subhumanity is to provide a fig leaf of legitimacy for anyone who really _does_ want to get away with murder.
Rating:
Summary: A great motivator
Review: The book is a gem... one that efficiently kills even the last traces of complacency, instills confindence, is a great motivator, a driver of change and progress. It is a must read for any-one and everyone who dreams to make a lasting contribution to the world. Rand does take you to the extreme - you do at times feel it isn't really this binary -- Let that pass as an author's license. Focus on the message, the philosophy -- and that is what makes the book worth its weight in gold.
Rating: 
Summary: A clear explanation of the ethics of objectivism
Review: This book focuses on the ethics of the philosophy of objectivism. Rather than being a book with chapters, it is a selection of articles which cover various questions, such as what selfishness is, the ethics of charity and voluntary help, the false dichotomy of altruism and selfishness, and what the theory of Objectivism actually is. This is a good place to start to learn about the philosophy of objectivism as it concentrates on the philosophy itself rather than applying it to real-world examples. For those who wish to know more about objectivism applied, the books "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal", "The Anti-Industrial Revolution", and "Why Businessmen Need Philosophy" would be more relevant. Whether one disagrees with the philosophy or not, the articles in this book are clearly written, simple to understand, and passionately argued. Some parts are flippant, particularly with reference to the dismissal of the ideas of other philosophers, and Rand does not truly manage to justify why objectivism is actually objective [see Nozick's book Socratic Puzzles). Nevertheless, this book is worth reading if you are interested in this area of politics and philosophy.
Rating: 
Summary: A perversion of Jewish ethics
Review: Our Sages held that each person should keep a piece of paper in one pocket reading, 'The world was created for my sake', and a piece in another pocket reading, 'I am but dust and ashes'. Each statement, it was said, should be taken out and read as a corrective - the first to overhumility, the second to an excess of pride. Ayn Rand (born Alyssa Rosenbaum) had only one pocket. As a result her secular morality is a one-sided perversion of Jewish ethics. There is certainly an important place for what Rand would have called 'egoism' - proper concern for one's own well-being - and Judaism certainly does not advocate what she called 'sacrifice'. However, her contemptuous dismissal of charity and benevolence as of merely marginal ethical importance is altogether at odds with the Jewish emphasis on tzedakah. It should not take much 'Jewish learning' to see that practising the 'Objectivist' ethic leads directly to a hypertrophy of pride and self-concern. That is why the 'Objectivist' cult is so heavily slanted against communal concerns and so thoroughly blind to the goal of interpersonal harmony. But it is also why there will never be an actual 'Objectivist' *community* - and why 'Objectivists' will therefore never find personal fulfillment. According to Judaism, the individual and the community are not opposed to one another, but each finds its proper fulfillment in the other. Not so 'Objectivism', which - following its false Messiah - regards community as of only secondary importance and elevates the 'self' to the status of an idol (as a replacement for the G-d that Miss Rand rejected). As far as interpersonal relations are concerned, 'selfishness', in and of itself, is no more a virtue than is 'altruism'. Genuine virtue is to behave justly toward *both* oneself *and* others (in accordance with the mitzvot), thus fostering both individual well-being and communal harmony. But neither of these goals can be achieved by itself. Miss Rand's personal history is evidence enough of that.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant book?
Review: Mrs. O'Connor's (nee Rosenbaum) "The Virtue of Selfishness" is an unoriginal, hopelessly confused, ruthlessly illogical presentation of a morality that has never been thought legitimate by anyone past adolescence: a morality of pure self-interest, which expressly forbids direct concern for the well-being of anyone but oneself and calls the result "virtue." Many people are incapable of questioning the stale doctrine of false autonomy they learned in O'Connor's books or in Objectivist study groups. It is precisely to encourage that type of mentality that Mrs. O'Connor wrote her "treatise" - which is actually no such thing, but merely a collection of short topical essays by two "giants" who considered themselves not bound by "conventional" morality: Mrs. O'Connor herself, and her adulterous lover Nathan Blumenthal ("Nathaniel Branden"), twenty-five years her junior.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant book.
Review: Miss Rand's "The Virtue of Selfishness" is anoriginal, brilliantly clear, ruthlessly logical presentation of amorality that has never been thought possible: a morality of individualism, which does not require the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. Many people are incapable of questioning the stale doctrine of sacrifice they learned in church or school. It is precisely against that type of mentality that Miss Rand wrote her treatise.
Rating:
Summary: Huh?
Review: Who is this muttonhead from Jacksonville who says, "The negative reviewers below insist that self-sacrifice is necessary"? I just read all of those negative reviews and didn't find a single one advocating "self-sacrifice." I did find several who thought (correctly) that Rand had given a bad definition of sacrifice. Do ALL Objectivists lapse into Randy jargon at every hint of criticism? Can ANY of them represent an opposing position accurately?
Rating:
Summary: Interesting...
Review: If you ever wished to attempt to justify narcissism, this is the book for you. If you look beyond her self congratulatory style, her obvious anti-religious attitude, and her lack of originality, you can see what appears to be some kind of reformed hedonism. I believe initially she truly wanted to attempt the development of a Rational Individualist Philosophy, but she was incapable of the task, and this was the result. If not, she was completely inarticulate. Therefore, if you are a Narcissist, you'll love Ayn Rand. If you aren't, anything by Ayn Rand will most likely look like the rantings of a lunatic. Me, I'm in the latter group.
Rating:
Summary: Rights don't reduce to self-interest
Review: Here's the entire problem in two sentences: "Why not sacrifice others? Because, says Rand in this book, it is *not* to one's self-interest to conduct one's life thusly." I suspect most of us would say that the reason not to sacrifice others is that it's an immoral way to treat _others_. (And please note that it is warmongers, dictators, and tyrants who disagree.) It's genuinely good to know that it's not in one's own "interest" to treat people this way either, but I don't think Rand gave a very coherent account of such "interest." Be that as it may, the suggestion that we should respect other people's rights solely because it is in our _own_ interest to do so is a simple and straightforward denial of the meaning of "rights." Nor can benevolence be reduced to an enlightened form of self-regard (as Rand intimates in this volume and as David Kelley argues at length in _Unrugged Individualism_). Benevolence aims directly at the well-being of someone other than oneself, and it is strictly immoral on an ethic that maintains (as Rand's does) that, morally, the beneficiary of every one of my actions _must_ be myself. There is a curious asymmetry in Rand's (re)definition of selfishness. If selfishness is the rational pursuit of one's own rational good, then altruism, by parallel (re)definition, ought to be the rational pursuit of someone else's rational good. But no: "altruism" is identified with the belief that one person's good requires another person's sacrifice -- even though, by Rand's own account, this view is also part of the common understanding of selfishness. This view should indeed be rejected; Rand is quite right that your rational well-being and mine are mutually reinforcing. But "selfishness" (even in Rand's sense) doesn't follow. The proper conclusion should be that benevolence is rational and safe. Unfortunately this volume is vitiated by its ill-advised attempt to demonstrate (in the lead essay) that anyone failing to practice the Objectivist ethic is not merely unethical but literally _subhuman_ and even _subanimal_. Having spent some time and effort considering the implications of this view, I have reduced my rating of this book from five stars to three.
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