03/24/07
Egoism vs. Altruism vs. Philosophical Interpretation -
Categories: Ethics, Libertarian Theory -
twv
@ 09:23:55 pm
Some wonder at my bitterness towards Ayn Rand. Part of it is simply fear of being found guilty by association. I find her arguments in ethics so appallingly ill-reasoned and substantively perverse that, since we share a general political outlook, I fear being tarred with her nasty brush.
There's a sadness in my revulsion, too. It saddens me to see her admirers frequently miss a great point made by, say, Adam Smith or Herbert Spencer, and miss it by a mile, largely and apparently out of undue interest in and reverence towards the formulations of Ayn Rand.
Take Tibor Machan. He was given the task of introducing a reprint of Herbert Spencer's Principles of Ethics. And in that introduction, he writes this:
It is no secret that the bulk of ethical commentary, whether from the pulpit, editorials, the campaign trails, or the stages from which the oratory of commencement exercises rings forth, urges upon human beings acts of self-sacrifice. In this respect there is nothing revolutionary about Marxism, for example. Marx also places before us the ideals of selfsacrifice — his condemnation of the Lockean human-rights tradition consisted mainly of dismissing such rights as vehicles of selfishness. Spencer, however, advocated egoism. And his ethics could not be faulted for being of the hedonistic egoist variety. such as those of Jeremy Bentham and even John Stuart Mill. Instead, Spencer developed what he called a rational utilitarian moral theory. Omitting from consideration for now the difficulties of Spencer’s fusionist efforts, we cannot deny that the substance of Spencer’s ethical writings deserves extensive study We have here a brilliant theory in which the mutually compatible selfish goals of individuals are demonstrated to be the proper end of human conduct. The principles that would further this goal are the principles of rational utilitarianism, gleaned through a consideration of the self-consistently enhancing course of conduct possible for human beings to undertake.
The trouble with this is that Herbert Spencer did not advocate egoism.
Sure, Spencer wrote a fascinating chapter entitled Egoism vs. Altruism.
He demonstrated the commonplace truth that self-directed behavior must take precedence over all else, and that, in fact, self-directed egoistic
behavior is necessary for life.
But he followed it with another chapter entitled Altruism vs. Egoism,
wherein he showed how life also depends on acts of voluntary self-sacrifice for the benefit of others (chiefly but not limited to offspring). He then spends two chapters dialectically resolving the apparent contradictions. In the end, he comes up with a synthesis which might well be called, as Spencer did put it, a rational utilitarianism,
but which cannot in good conscience be called an egoism.
Now, Machan's own egoism isn't quite as outrageous as his beloved Ayn Rand's. But, apparently because of his obsession with egoism, Machan mistakes — nay; he completely ignores — Spencer's real contribution to the subject of agent-relative ethics.
Chris Sciabarra was quite right to identify* Herbert Spencer as the first dialectical libertarian.
Spencer's contribution was that sophisticated. Much more sophisticated than most later libertarian philosophies, actually.
But Machan misses that. I believe because he is too enamored of Ayn Rand's philosophy, and especially with her chief obsession, egoism. I could be wrong. This could be misattribution. But I don't think so.
. . .
* Note: By the way, in that Sciabarra essay he argues against something I wrote. Here's what I wrote:
This method — I'm tempted to call it "dialectical," but Spencer's prose and position seem so far from Hegel's that the term is almost indecent — confuses many readers. But it is surely his strength.
Sciabarra counters:
It is unfortunate that Virkkala refuses to give into his temptation, because crucially significant aspects of Herbert Spencer's work are, indeed, dialectical.
I suspect Sciabarra actually did understand what I wrote. I was being ironic. I was calling Spencer's method dialectical
in a back-handed way. I see no reason to make every statement in the standard, literalist manner. Even philosophy must have room for some nuance . . . without stooping to the folly of jargon or opacity. Or, ahem, dialectic. Call it rhetorical.
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