Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism

[Ben Davis]

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I recently discoved Ayn Rand and learned about her philosphical views. I found it extremely interesting. The idea that "altruism is immoral" completel goes against all my previous ideas and intuitions, and therefore is quite an uncomfortable idea to entertain, but when I pushed through and read more about what she meant by it, it makes a lot of sense to me. To put it in my own words, she argues that people should not sacrifice themselves for other people if it does not fit with their own needs, because it is equal to suicide. If you help someone, do it because you have a need to do so, not because you think you should do that because you want to be a good person. You are responsible for your own life, and your own happiness. This sounds very healthy to me. I want people around me to live like this, I want my loved ones taking good care of themselves. Most people also have a need to take care of the people around them and to connect with them,  so I don't think that this philosophy leads to people to live self centred lives. It is very counter-intuitive, but it makes sense to me.

What do you think? Do I describe her philosophy well? Is there a flaw in this reasoning? Has this philosophy impacted your ideas as well?

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You summarise her position very well. As an observation of human behaviour, it works well; people behave in that way all the time. The problem for me is when her position becomes a suggested practice because it means that all positive/progressive action is based on a cynical calculation of individual benefit with bias towards one position; net benefit is a secondary consideration and most likely eroded by the bias. Her position is demonstrably less progressive than altruism, even reciprocal altruism, which typically delivers greater net benefit because of the exclusion of the personal benefit. You're right that altruism may require forms of sacrifice but equating that to suicide is unsupportable as a common side-effect of altruism is reciprocation: one good turn deserves another.

For me, it's very much like the Christian promise of heaven and can be criticised in the same way: if you're only doing good because of the promise of some reward, your behaviour is ethically inferior to someone who is good for goodness' sake.