I think you have profoundly misunderstood Ayn Rand’s novels. The position you attribute to her, that even self-proclaimed altruists are secretly selfish, is known as descriptive egoism and is something Ayn Rand fervently disagreed with. Her refutation of this view is actually a major part of both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
There’s a moment where James Taggart realizes that he was never motivated by material greed:
It was not the knowledge of his indifference to money that now gave him a shudder of dread. It was the knowledge that he would be equally indifferent, were he reduced to the state of the beggar. There had been a time when he had felt some measure of guilt—in no clearer a form than a touch of irritation—at the thought that he shared the sin of greed, which he spent his time denouncing. Now he was hit by the chill realization that, in fact, he had never been a hypocrite: in full truth, he had never cared for money. This left another hole gaping open before him, leading into another blind alley which he could not risk seeing.
What this is getting at is that wealth was merely a means for him to achieve admiration in the eyes of others. While this may still seem selfish, the key realization here is that what he sought admiration for was not his real self, but a facade that was constructed specifically for the purpose of being liked and admired, and which was shaped on the basis of the ideals of others rather than his own ideals. That is, he wishes for others to like not his true self, but the character he has constructed in reverence to their values and prejudices, not even his own.
Here’s a second quote where Howard Roark reflects on Peter Keating’s life:
“I’ve looked at him—at what’s left of him—and it’s helped me to understand. He’s paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself that he’s been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness—in other people’s eyes. Fame, admiration, envy—all that which comes from others. Others dictated his convictions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that others believed he held them. Others were his motive power and his prime concern. He didn’t want to be great, but to be thought great. He didn’t want to build, but to be admired as a builder. He borrowed from others in order to make an impression on others. There’s your actual selflessness. It’s his ego he’s betrayed and given up. But everybody calls him selfish.”
You can of course agree or disagree with the reasoning, but she is pretty unambiguously repudiating descriptive egoism.
Ayn Rand’s theory of narcissism is that it stems from a lack of confidence in one’s ability to survive / thrive independently, so that popularity becomes vitally necessary for one’s flourishing. A person confident that he can “make it”, in some sense, “on his own” will have a tendency to only care about the opinions of people whose judgements he respects. Compare the following quote from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:
“I don’t know how to explain to you,” Hermione said in a sad soft voice. “I’m not sure it’s something you could ever understand, Harry. All I can think of to say is, how would you feel if I thought you were evil?”
“Um...” Harry visualized it. “Yeah, that would hurt. A lot. But you’re a good person who thinks about that sort of thing intelligently, you’ve earned that power over me, it would mean something if you thought I’d gone wrong. I can’t think of a single other student, besides you, whose opinion I’d care about the same way—”
(Incidentally, I think Yudkowsky is a lot more influenced by Ayn Rand than he realizes and/or is willing to admit)
Ayn Rand’s position is that people are usually born with a certain love of life and confidence in themselves and eagerness to face the world. Some of them lose this, and acquire a feeling of helpless dependence on others, which in turn leads them to value popularity to an unhealthy extent, leading to a narcissism that erodes their sense of self as they more and more habituate to performing a character act shaped according to the values, prejudices, and whims of others.
For this reason, the Danish translation of The Fountainhead has a title which literally means “only a strong person is free”. She would almost certainly have been infuriated at this title, but I think it actually fits pretty well with her view.
You’re correct to notice that this post is definitely a Death of the Author take; I agree that Rand wouldn’t endorse my interpretation of her work.
That said, I don’t think I’m arguing for descriptive egoism! I’m not just pointing out that Taggart and Boyle’s luxury consumption and corrupt profiteering look conventionally selfish (even though Rand thinks these behaviors stem from a deep selflessness). I’m also pointing out that Rearden further burdening himself to help Mr. Ward (or Dagny supporting Cherryl, or Galt risking himself to protect Dagny, or Roark paying Mallory’s rent, &c.) looks conventionally altruistic (even though Rand wouldn’t use that word).
The fact that Rand’s concepts (e.g., altruism as sacrifice of values) differ from more conventional concepts that use the same words (e.g., altruism as benefitting other people) is lampshaded twice in The Fountainhead. In a conversation between Keating and Roark:
“[...] But egotists are not kind. And you are. You’re the most egotistical and kindest man I know. And that doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe the concepts don’t make sense. Maybe they don’t mean what people have been taught to think they mean [...]”
And between Wynand and Roark:
“You made a mistake on the Stoddard Temple, Howard. That statue should have been, not of Dominique, but of you.”
“No. I’m too egotistical for that.”
“Egotistical? An egotist would have loved it. You use words in the strangest way.”
“In the exact way. I don’t wish to be the symbol of anything. I’m only myself.”
I interpret Roark’s remark that “maybe the concepts don’t make sense” as amounting to the claim that conventional usage of “selfish” as self-benefitting and “altruism” as other-benefitting, doesn’t carve the reality of human psychology at the joints: benevolence towards others flows out of shared values; unconditional regard others-in-general is unnatural. (See also the @InstanceOfClass epigraph at the top of the post.)
Benevolence towards others flows out of shared values; unconditional regard others-in-general is unnatural.
Now there’s a nice quotable quote. I don’t think it’s entirely accurate, unless people with certain kinds of lobe damage or meditation history count as “unnatural”. (Which I suppose they could.) On the other hand, those people arguably have brains that define others as themselves, and thus having shared values with said ohters as a matter of course. (Or alternately, I suppose they have a very expansive definition of “shared values”.)
But as a truism or proverb, this makes a lot of sense, and should be helpful to people who suffer from feeling like they should care more about others-in-general. Knowing that caring spreads by way of shared values makes it possible to find the caring one already has, before trying to extend it further. (Rather than constantly going to a well you’re told should be full, and always finding it dry.)
The term “altruism” was at the time of The Fountainhead’s writing — or at least at the time of Ayn Rand’s youth — used in a much stronger sense than it is now, referring not only to a disposition towards charity, but to something more along the lines of what we’d now describe as selflessness. Since then, memes favourable to self-affirmation have entered the dominant culture from the integration of sexual minorities and especially the black gay scene. Thus, the apparent discrepancy in vocabulary is to at least a certain extent a generational gap.
Setting that aside, I think there is an important distinction between having unnatural categories that lump completely separate phenomena together and having coherent categories that are systematically being used as smears in a case they don’t properly refer to. If for example some culture is in the habit of referring to atheists as idiots, it does not mean they are using the word “idiot” in a sense that conflates these two phenomena, but simply that they are trying to insult atheists.
While that distinction is obvious in this case, I do believe it is often accidentally erased in the name of linguistic descriptivism. The meaning of a word is not merely how it is commonly used, but what people intend to convey by it. When people accuse someone of selfishness, they really do mean someone who is highly egocentric and doesn’t care about other people. In Ayn Rand’s time, it was of course used somewhat more broadly, since it was also considered selfish to care about your own friends, your own family etc. more than your fellow countrymen or indeed the whole human race.
Howard Roark’s line there is indeed alluding to the tendency of people to conflate selfishness with narcissism, which does constitute failure to carve reality along the joints, but a similar conversation with Gail Wynand clearly implies that Roark believes this unnatural category stems from people being mistaken about the psychology behind narcissism. Ayn Rand’s position is that people have a profound antipathy towards selfishness as she uses the term, much more so than they do towards narcissism of the Peter Keating variety, and that when they do on occasion want to decry narcissism, they do it by associating it with selfishness.
I think you have profoundly misunderstood Ayn Rand’s novels. The position you attribute to her, that even self-proclaimed altruists are secretly selfish, is known as descriptive egoism and is something Ayn Rand fervently disagreed with. Her refutation of this view is actually a major part of both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
There’s a moment where James Taggart realizes that he was never motivated by material greed:
What this is getting at is that wealth was merely a means for him to achieve admiration in the eyes of others. While this may still seem selfish, the key realization here is that what he sought admiration for was not his real self, but a facade that was constructed specifically for the purpose of being liked and admired, and which was shaped on the basis of the ideals of others rather than his own ideals. That is, he wishes for others to like not his true self, but the character he has constructed in reverence to their values and prejudices, not even his own.
Here’s a second quote where Howard Roark reflects on Peter Keating’s life:
You can of course agree or disagree with the reasoning, but she is pretty unambiguously repudiating descriptive egoism.
Ayn Rand’s theory of narcissism is that it stems from a lack of confidence in one’s ability to survive / thrive independently, so that popularity becomes vitally necessary for one’s flourishing. A person confident that he can “make it”, in some sense, “on his own” will have a tendency to only care about the opinions of people whose judgements he respects. Compare the following quote from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:
(Incidentally, I think Yudkowsky is a lot more influenced by Ayn Rand than he realizes and/or is willing to admit)
Ayn Rand’s position is that people are usually born with a certain love of life and confidence in themselves and eagerness to face the world. Some of them lose this, and acquire a feeling of helpless dependence on others, which in turn leads them to value popularity to an unhealthy extent, leading to a narcissism that erodes their sense of self as they more and more habituate to performing a character act shaped according to the values, prejudices, and whims of others.
For this reason, the Danish translation of The Fountainhead has a title which literally means “only a strong person is free”. She would almost certainly have been infuriated at this title, but I think it actually fits pretty well with her view.
You’re correct to notice that this post is definitely a Death of the Author take; I agree that Rand wouldn’t endorse my interpretation of her work.
That said, I don’t think I’m arguing for descriptive egoism! I’m not just pointing out that Taggart and Boyle’s luxury consumption and corrupt profiteering look conventionally selfish (even though Rand thinks these behaviors stem from a deep selflessness). I’m also pointing out that Rearden further burdening himself to help Mr. Ward (or Dagny supporting Cherryl, or Galt risking himself to protect Dagny, or Roark paying Mallory’s rent, &c.) looks conventionally altruistic (even though Rand wouldn’t use that word).
The fact that Rand’s concepts (e.g., altruism as sacrifice of values) differ from more conventional concepts that use the same words (e.g., altruism as benefitting other people) is lampshaded twice in The Fountainhead. In a conversation between Keating and Roark:
And between Wynand and Roark:
I interpret Roark’s remark that “maybe the concepts don’t make sense” as amounting to the claim that conventional usage of “selfish” as self-benefitting and “altruism” as other-benefitting, doesn’t carve the reality of human psychology at the joints: benevolence towards others flows out of shared values; unconditional regard others-in-general is unnatural. (See also the @InstanceOfClass epigraph at the top of the post.)
Now there’s a nice quotable quote. I don’t think it’s entirely accurate, unless people with certain kinds of lobe damage or meditation history count as “unnatural”. (Which I suppose they could.) On the other hand, those people arguably have brains that define others as themselves, and thus having shared values with said ohters as a matter of course. (Or alternately, I suppose they have a very expansive definition of “shared values”.)
But as a truism or proverb, this makes a lot of sense, and should be helpful to people who suffer from feeling like they should care more about others-in-general. Knowing that caring spreads by way of shared values makes it possible to find the caring one already has, before trying to extend it further. (Rather than constantly going to a well you’re told should be full, and always finding it dry.)
The term “altruism” was at the time of The Fountainhead’s writing — or at least at the time of Ayn Rand’s youth — used in a much stronger sense than it is now, referring not only to a disposition towards charity, but to something more along the lines of what we’d now describe as selflessness. Since then, memes favourable to self-affirmation have entered the dominant culture from the integration of sexual minorities and especially the black gay scene. Thus, the apparent discrepancy in vocabulary is to at least a certain extent a generational gap.
Setting that aside, I think there is an important distinction between having unnatural categories that lump completely separate phenomena together and having coherent categories that are systematically being used as smears in a case they don’t properly refer to. If for example some culture is in the habit of referring to atheists as idiots, it does not mean they are using the word “idiot” in a sense that conflates these two phenomena, but simply that they are trying to insult atheists.
While that distinction is obvious in this case, I do believe it is often accidentally erased in the name of linguistic descriptivism. The meaning of a word is not merely how it is commonly used, but what people intend to convey by it. When people accuse someone of selfishness, they really do mean someone who is highly egocentric and doesn’t care about other people. In Ayn Rand’s time, it was of course used somewhat more broadly, since it was also considered selfish to care about your own friends, your own family etc. more than your fellow countrymen or indeed the whole human race.
Howard Roark’s line there is indeed alluding to the tendency of people to conflate selfishness with narcissism, which does constitute failure to carve reality along the joints, but a similar conversation with Gail Wynand clearly implies that Roark believes this unnatural category stems from people being mistaken about the psychology behind narcissism. Ayn Rand’s position is that people have a profound antipathy towards selfishness as she uses the term, much more so than they do towards narcissism of the Peter Keating variety, and that when they do on occasion want to decry narcissism, they do it by associating it with selfishness.