Rating: 
Summary: Rand's ideas are right, but there is just no rationale
Review: I'm yet another countless highschool debater who has read Rand to use as a tool in debate, and to grasp a better concept of her ideas. After I read this book, I realized why there is such a big stigma associated with her name. She presents pretty straightforward ideas, but for most of them, the claims go unwarranted. No wonder why she said she was the only one who could understand her philosophy, I mean, at times she tries to rationalize blaring contradictions in the convictions that she holds do dear. Even if some of her ideas are right on, it's hard to justify them because she makes no sense at times. Granted, I have only read this book and Anthem, unless there is something I am missing it seems to be a leap of faith. People were continuously excommunicated from her cult for questioning her ideals. I now know why they did that. By the way, isn't a postage stamp a sign of the government? I thought they are used to collect revennue....hmm....
Rating: 
Summary: THE MOST ETHICAL VISION
Review: The negative reviewers below insist that self-sacrifice is necessary. So does every warmonger and dictator. Sacrifice means, and always meant, personal loss for others' gain; else it means nothing. Distinctively, all tyranny requires a pro-sacrifice ethics - tyrants want to receive sacrifice. In sharpest contrast to this, Ayn Rand in <The Virtue of Selfishness> upholds man - i.e., the individual person - against tyranny, by defining "a new concept of egoism" (to quote the book's subtitle). It is a no-sacrifice ethics. Evidently, this is so new that reviewers steeped in conventional ethical ideas feel personally challenged enough by it to misrepresent it. They accuse her of advocating the violation of others' rights. What she actually advocates in this book is a principled life eschewing sacrifice, in which one "neither sacrifices oneself to others, nor sacrifices others to oneself." Why not sacrifice others? Because, says Rand in this book, it is *not* to one's self-interest to conduct one's life thusly. She says one might certainly *feel* it is but one's *feelings* cannot determine what one's genuine, long-term interests are. And she goes on to define an ethics based on reason. She calls this morality "rational self-interest" - or "selfishness," which is intended to represent her defiance of the pro-sacrifice approach. (This approach asserts that sacrifice is unavoidable because, it says, self-interested action can include violating others' rights; thus self-interest is maligned. But Rand denied it, and identified this view as being based on philosophical subjectivism or on mental illness.) Philosophical subjectivism is jettisoned from ethics at the outset. Now about a political system based on her ethics. Rand insisted that other people in general are valuable to one because trade with them (in terms both of physical goods and of personal virtues) can be enormously beneficial to one's proper life. Since the fundamental requirement of man's living and thriving in society, she says, is freedom from physical coercion, the imperative of politics is to bar the initiation of physical coercion. Her politics is loud and clear: leave other people alone - allow them to function freely - do not initiate physical compulsion against them or let them initiate it against oneself. In her view, government is an agency of standardizing the retaliatory use of force against those who initiate physical compulsion. (See "Man's Rights" in <Virtue>, and see her book on politics, <Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal>.)All these exceedingly noble - and realistic - ideas, if practiced, would transform the world for the better. That prospect repulses the tyrannical not only because their vocation of collecting sacrifices would be at an end, but also because the unjustified monopoly on morality held by their best helpers - the religious - would then be broken at long last.
Rating: 
Summary: Somebody should have given her a dictionary
Review: This insane woman seems to have been incapable of understanding simple English. She says her 'dictionary' defines selfishness as 'concern for one's own interests', conveniently omitting the word 'excessive' as found in most definitions. She defines 'sacrifice' as giving up a greater value for a lesser one, in blatant contradiction to the standard meaning of the word in both Christianity and baseball. And so forth. Read too much of this woman and you'll never again be able to read anyone else. Of course, maybe that's what her cult *wants* . . .
Rating:
Summary: Wastepaper.
Review: So selfishness is the true basis of benevolence, is it? That must be why the Manhattan telephone directory's Yellow Pages are chock-full of Objectivist charitable organizations. Gimme a break.
Rating:
Summary: Precedented
Review: The chapters 'showing' the effects of government intervention are in CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL, not in this book. And they 'show' it by referring to the work of Ludwig von Mises, so Rand was indeed 'precedented'.
Rating:
Summary: Unprecedented
Review: "Capitalist Excess" was always an unanswered doubt in the back of my mind. The chapters in this book which show that crises and depressions are caused by Government intervention are of particular importance. I felt ten years younger after reading them. "In the name of the best within us."
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Summary: Better yet, read INSTEAD of Atlas Shrugged
Review: - and stop when you reach the point in the introduction at which Rand says she's using the term 'selfishness' to intimidate people. That statement pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the book, indicates the quality of 'philosophy' you can expect, and tells you exactly what you'll find in Atlas Shrugged - so you can skip it too.
Rating: 
Summary: Read before Atlas Shrugged
Review: Read this book (and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal) before embarking on reading Atlas Shrugged. The insight into Objectivist thought that the reader gains from the Virtue of Selfishness will make Atlas Shrugged all the more compelling.
Rating:
Summary: Sheer poison
Review: Rand claims benevolence is based on 'selfishness'. On the contrary, genuine concern for one's own interests is possible only on the basis of benevolence - life in a human society in which respect for the well-being of other persons is built into the very foundations of the regnant ethic. Rand gets this key point exactly backwards - through her insistence that the definition of 'rights' comes *first*. Nonsense. Rights are a bit more fluid and context-dependent than Rand wishes to admit, and defining them in any particular social context is a very difficult task. Indeed there is simply no reason for any of us to respect the rights of others - because there is no reason for us to try to *define* the rights of others - unless we are *already* benevolent. All Rand accomplishes in this slim volume is to obscure the basic fact that, though human beings are undoubtedly *individuals*, our nature is fundamentally *social*. Begin with benevolence and you can arrive at rights fairly quickly; begin with rights and you shall never reach benevolence at all. This is the essential reason why so many 'Objectivists' are socially inept narcissists. Like Rand.
Rating: 
Summary: Weak philosophy, but an OK morale booster.
Review: More than one writer below has commented that Rand's idea of selfishness rests on the idea that "there are no ultimate conflicts of legitimate interest among rational people." A cursory look at the history of philosophy shows that this cannot be true, assuming that by "rational" one means that people will make their decisions according to logic. Logic is a system of thinking based on axioms. Axioms are things we posit to be true. Thus, for instance, Rand proposes the idea that "A=A". But the philosopher David Hume showed that there is no "logical" way to prove that an axiom IS true. The axioms we choose, therefore, determine the structure of the logical system created. Rand must assume, therefore, that everyone will agree upon the same axioms. BUT, there is no RATIONAL reason why two different people should do this. As a result, saying that their will be "no ultimate conflicts of legitimate interest among rational people," can only be true if everyone agrees on the same axioms. In practice, this is no different from a religious community that chooses certain rules (read: axioms) of conduct. Rand has built a huge, quasi-philosophical edifice on an idea which could easily be stated "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This doesn't make her a sublime or original philosopher. I suspect it's for this reason that the academic community doesn't take her seriously. So read her to remind yourself that individuality IS important. But don't buy into the idea that her closed system is the be-all and end-all of philosophy. It isn't.
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