"The Psychology of Altruism" by Ayn Rand

The Psychology of Altruism, A panel discussion with Ayn Rand.

Now, from the staff of wkcr, here.

Is your moderator, Arthur Gandolfi.

Good evening. The topic for tonight's discussion will be the psychology of altruism. With us tonight to discuss this topic with Ms. Rand are Mr. Gerald Goodman of the Columbia School of Engineering, Mr. Norman Fox of C.W. post College, and Mr. Alan Gotthelf, a graduate student of philosophy at Columbia University. To begin with, Ms. Rand, would you define what altruism is?

Altruism is an ethical system which claims that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that the sole justification of his existence is the service he renders to others, and that self sacrifice is. Is his cardinal basic virtue, value and duty. Altruism regards man, in effect, as a sacrificial animal. And the word is coined by Auguste comte in the 19th century to mean specifically the placing of the interests of others above your own.

Mr. Gotthe, when you appeared on the Les Crane show several weeks ago, perhaps over a month ago, before you were introduced, Les Crane asked some people in his audience, what do you think of altruism? Are you an altruist? And there were several people who said yes and suggested or implied that what they meant by altruism was benevolence. To say they were altruistic was to say that they were benevolent towards others. Now, this is a very prevalent view, and I know it's one you don't hold. I wonder if you would discuss why to be altruistic and to be benevolent is not the same.

Yes, of course. To begin with, this is a package deal spread and fostered by the altruists. It is to their own interest to suggest to men that altruism merely means kindness or benevolence or respect for the rights of others, which it does not. In fact, most people, I would venture to say an overwhelming majority, do believe that that is all that altruism means. So that, in effect, if you give a dime to a beggar, you are an altruistic. Nothing could be further from the truth, because altruism does not claim that you should help others when and if you can. It specifically claims that you should subordinate your own interests to the interests of others, and therefore that others should take the first place in your life as a moral duty. In that case, kindness is impossible. If it is your duty to give away your last penny to anyone who might need it, you are giving him his due. In fact, altruists would say it is his right to demand your penny. Therefore, it's not an action of kindness or generosity or charity on your part. It is a moral duty. Altruism, in fact, makes benevolence among men impossible. Because if you have to regard all other men as mortgage holders on your life, if their claims have to supersede any interest of your own, then you can feel nothing but fear and hatred toward other men, since they are a threat to your own existence. And if you do not satisfy their claims, you have to take moral blame for it. You have to consider yourself morally guilty. That makes any kind of authentic benevolence among men impossible. It entails other contradictions. There is no reason why you should consider the benefit of others as a value if you do not consider your own benefit a value. Altruism demands that you regard everybody as a value except yourself. And remember that this applies to every human being. Therefore, according to an altruist, no human being has any right to any value, nor to any existence or happiness of his own. He only has the right and duty to serve others. Therefore, altruism does regard men as sacrificial animals, as object of sacrifice for others. That is not a theory of benevolence for men. There can be no benevolence for man unless one recognizes man's basic right, basic moral and political right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor others to himself. Which is precisely what altruism denies.

Mr. Goodman, Ms. Rand, why would anyone.

Accept altruism under your definition of altruism? Incidentally, very few people do, but the theoreticians of altruism certainly do accept it. Most people ignore the question and simply try to get by in a kind of totally amoral attitude. Most people do not have a consistent moral theory to guide them, a theory which they understand, accept, and fully practice. But the reasons why they accept altruism are many. The main one is that men realize, so long as they have to make choices, that they need some kind of code of moral values, that is, a code to guide their choices and the sort of values and goals they will pursue. They realize the need, yet they have not been offered any code of morality other than the altruistic one in one form or another. Altruism has been the dominant moral theory of most societies of history, and such attempts as have been made by philosophers to devise a different code of morality have been so impracticable, so unsuccessful, that they could not. Competition to Altruism the most people are afraid to be left on their own in moral issues. They are more afraid of it than in any other issue. Men are not afraid to be scientists and to stand alone in the face of nature, in cognitive issues, that is, in issues of discovering new knowledge. But they are terrified in issues of values, in having to stand alone and and define what objectively is right or wrong for men. That, I would say, is the most general reason why men accept altruism, or at least pay lip service to it. But there are many other reasons.

One common variant of altruism is the belief that you should give only to those who are less better off than yourself, those who are in need. How do you feel this is in relationship to altruism?

Well, here I would like really to refer you to Atlas Shrugged, because I presented the issue there much better than I could do it impromptu here. But to repeat just the essence of it this, your remark is correct. That is what altruist holds. And the result of it is that it makes need, pain, failure, disaster, the leading purpose and value in life. In other words, it amounts to the following situation which you can see politically coming true today. If a man fails for any reason through his own fault or through accidents, in any case, any failure gives him a mortgage on the lives, the earnings, the property, the services of those who have not failed. And therefore the result is a hierarchy of values of which the 0 is the dominant standard. To the extent to which you lack any value at all, personal or spiritual or material, to that extent you have a claim on your betters. In particular regard to your failure. To the extent to which a man has achieved values, again, material, spiritual, intellectual, to that extent he is the sacrificial animal for any zero holder, any man who can present his lack as a claim against the achievement.

But wouldn't a person who was a full altruist have to give up his possessions, even to someone who is better off than himself?

Well, you see, altruism cannot in fact be practiced consistently. A man who is a full altruist would have to find a cannibal village and offer himself as a meal, because that would be the only way in which he could make a total sacrifice for the sake of others, deriving nothing in return. A total altruist is in a contradiction every time he eats, because that morsel of food may be needed by someone else. Because the altruists get out of it by saying that, well, you should reserve for yourself only the minimum necessary in order to go on serving others. But that in itself is a contradiction. What is that minimum necessary? And the main issue is why should it be that way? Why should the needs of others have a primacy over your own. This question, incidentally, has never been answered by any philosopher of ethics. And the sole base of mysticism has always, excuse me, of altruism has always been mystical. Namely, the issue of self sacrifice to others has to be taken on faith because no rational justification for it has ever been offered and can nor can it ever be offered.

Is it fair to say that an altruist would have to replace his own values by the values held by other people and there, and if this was followed generally, that there would be nobody able to hold the value of his?

Yes, of course. It has been claimed many times, and this is the base of any collectivist dictatorship, that just as you must sacrifice your material possessions or your effort to others, you must also sacrifice your intellectual integrity so that if you hold to your own ideas of what you believe is true, that is a selfish action. You must sacrifice your mind to what others believe, believe or want to be true. Therefore, you must always agree with the majority in all issues because it is selfish to hold out for no better ground than that this is your conviction or the conclusion of your own mind. That, of course, is the basic evil of altruism. It does demand the sacrifice of your mind.

Mr. Fox.

Ms. Rand, what is a man's estimate of himself implicit in the morality of altruism? And consequent to that, what are the psychological consequences of trying to accept such an impractical morality as altruism?

Well, the basic consequence is an almost total lack of self esteem, or as near to total as a man can come and still remain sane and alive. A man who would accept the theory of altruism necessarily has to regard himself as of no value. It is his self esteem that he has to renounce in every issue his self esteem intellectually, his self esteem spiritually, his self esteem in the sense of the desire to make something of his own life, to achieve happiness or to achieve some kind of purpose which he desires, that is what he has to give up. The mere idea of looking at yourself as merely a means to the ends of somebody else, whether it's one other person or the total of mankind, implies lack of self esteem. That is the start of accepting altruism. And to the extent to which you attempt to practice, you would have to destroy your self esteem more and more. Now what most people do is that they abandon morality. They then decide that nobody can be perfect and that will sort the model as best we can. I will not attempt to be a perfect altruist, but I will feel Guilty and give to others once in a while, which really means an amoral kind of existence. The destruction of any firm principles of morality and any firm base of self esteem.

Isn't just the holding of an outrust value a selfish action since he's holding a conviction of his own.

No, here you are mixing two categories. You are really guilty of an equivocation. What you are asking here is known as psychological egoism. In effect, that is the theory that since a man has to act and he cannot act without willing a certain kind of action, anything he does is necessarily selfish because he chose to do it. That is not the standard of selfishness. This merely means a motivated action. But a motivated action is not necessarily a selfish one. A selfish action, in the proper sense of the word is an action consciously aimed at at your own rational self interest. In order to take a selfish action, you have to demonstrate logically why that action suits your own purposes, what it accomplishes for you. That would be properly a selfish action, but a mere desire. The mere fact that you want to do certain action does not yet make it selfish. And most people in fact fact spend their life taking self destructive action, which they do want to take. As observe any neurotic who is bound on self destruction, yet he's acting on his whims, on his emotions, on his subconscious irrational urges. That is not the definition of an action. Emotions are not tools of cognition, nor are they tools of moral criterion. The fact that a man wants to do something does not yet tell us what kind of action it is. Whether it is or is not, in fact for his own benefit, for his own proper benefit.

Mr. Goodman.

Ms. Rand. The choice that an altruist offers is either being selfless, sacrificing yourself to others, or selfish, sacrificing others to yourself. Is there any third choice? Well, you see, it's a false dichotomy right here. Because the assumption behind that dichotomy is that men's interests clash. That the good of one man has to be achieved at the price of the suffering or destruction of another. And therefore it's only an issue of whom you sacrifice. This means, as I have said before, that altruists offer you a choice between sadism and masochism. Either you torture others or you torture yourself. But it is the metaphysical view of man's position in the world that here has to be challenged. And it is the base of altruism that man exists in a kind of malevolent universe where he is constantly threatened with destruction and disaster. That man is in Effect a doomed animal. And that his main concern has to be the avoidance of the doom, the avoidance of disaster, not the achievement of values. And if, on this premise, then one has to live. You know, I would. I was going to say like an animal, but that would be an insult to animals because they do not live that way. One would have to live by eating others. Or turning oneself off over for cannibals to eat. It is not true that one's own happiness or benefit can be achieved by the sacrifice of others. The idea that selfishness consists of sacrificing others Is only a psychological confession of the altruist. They believe that one can achieve one's own benefit by the sacrifice of others. But in fact and in reality, one cannot. And the legitimate rational interests of men do not clash. And no legitimate rational interests can be achieved by infringing the rights or sacrificing the interests of another man. But here I underscore rational interests which are not to be determined by mere emotions, wishes or whims. The fact that a man wants something does not constitute a legitimate rational interest.

Mr. Fox.

Ms. Ryan, pursuant to the questions I asked before, I would like to know what consequences, if any, are there to a man's conceptual abilities in fields other than morality or philosophy. If he tries to practice, to whatever degree, the morality of altruism?

What do you mean here? Do you mean in such fields as economic, for instance?

In any field, any other field of endeavor, does this in any way warp or destroy his ability to think? Since this does involve evasions?

It does, of course, because it robs him of incentive and it places him in contradictions. A man cannot do any kind of work intellectually, in any realm. If his basic standard is, what do others want of me? And in what way can I serve them? In the broadest sense, if you accepted that premise, you could not possibly have any sort of progress in a human society. Because the moment a man, let us say, saved a bushel of potatoes from his harvest. Instead of investing it in a larger harvest next year, he would have to give it away to those incompetent neighbors who were unable to grow their own potatoes. Or more often, unwilling. Because the unable is a very marginal issue in human life. And a very small number of people, predominantly the issue of need. Is an issue of unwillingness. Unwillingness to carry your own weight. Or the desire for the unearned desire to get an unearned share of somebody else's effort. Therefore, a man who would accept that premise. Would never be able to rise above the Lowest morally and intellectually, the lowest elements in the population, he would be constantly have to be concerned with sacrificing himself to them. Well, not only would it be disastrous existentially in, in the sense of stagnation, but it also would be disastrous psychologically. A man could not function on that premise for very long. He would destroy his psychological efficacy for lack of incentive and for being caught in an impossible contradiction.

Mr. Gotthel, many people today, after 20, 30 or 40 years of living by the current popular morality, find that they get the most pleasure or happiness in a comfortable relationship with others. By that I mean if they're with people who are generally nice to them, who approve of what they're doing, and so on. And at this point, the altruist steps in and says, well, you see, follow that up, make others your primary concern, and that's the way you'll achieve happiness and pleasure. Now, would you comment on that?

Well, to begin with, whether people feel comfortable in a certain position or not is not a moral criterion. I'm sure that cannibals feel very happy and comfortable after eating a meal, but that would not be ground to say, you see, this is how happiness is achieved. So follow their example. The mere fact that people feel comfortable in a certain state is irrelevant to the issue of whether that state is moral or immoral, proper or improper to men. Those questions have to be answered cognitively, not emotionally. But more than that, the fact that men want to have a distant relationship with others or enjoy the company of others is not a proof that man is fundamentally a herd animal or a social animal, and that his relationship with others are the primary in his existence, which should then rule his personal view of himself and of morality. Social relationships necessarily are a consequence of your own premises and values, not a primary, because who is is a society. It is only a number of individual men. And you will find theoretically and historically that only to the extent to which men recognize and function on the premise of their own individual selfish rights and their own pursuit of happiness, are they fit to live in society. Only on that basis can they have benevolent, friendly, cooperative relationship with others. But on the collectivist altruist premise, on the premise of placing the interests of the group first, you not only do not achieve your own happiness, but you achieve the destruction of yourself and of the group. Incidentally, there's one journalistic issue that I would like to mention here. Just recently, the New York Times published a survey of the prevalence of dope taking dope among teenagers, and their inquiry concerned predominantly children of well to do families. This was not an issue of the evil influence of the slums, as the humanitarians always hold. This was an issue of what is happening among the well to do people today, youngsters in their teens, college students included. And what they found was a shockingly overwhelming number of cases. In fact, the implication was almost that that's the exclusive reason showing that young people start taking dope for social reasons. Because this is the fashionable thing to do and they want to be in, they want to belong to the group. They are considered squares or outsiders if they do not join that desire to conform in all the cases cited was the dominant reason of why young teenagers acquired the dope habit. Now, I think this is an extreme but very eloquent illustration of what placing the group first would do. I wonder how many people reading that story realize that the training, the education given to young people today, the stress on belonging, on getting along with others, is responsible for this kind of consequence. Because it's a logical consequence. If you're going to place the group first, you are going to accept anything which the group does. And the leaders of such a group will not be able to arrive at any rational standards either. The result will be some such group standard as taking dope. The extreme eloquent example of self destruction.

Mr. Gotthel.

People who find that they can't get pleasure out of certain productive activities or out of the major productive activities in their life. Would this. Could this be due to having accepted the altruist view in any way?

Not necessarily. People who enjoy productive activity.

Who don't enjoy.

Oh, who don't enjoy. Oh yes, who don't enjoy. The idea of altruism can very much be responsible on two counts. From one hand, the idea of independent achievement is so much frowned upon, upon so denounced in the altruist morality, that it would discourage men. Particularly if his own ideas are not too firmly formed, it would discourage him from seeking such a career. More than that, the knowledge that he will be denounced and considered guilty if he succeeds, that also will discourage him. And furthermore, and most important is the fact that he will feel somebody will take care of him. It is not necessary for him to be productive or to take an interest in his own career. To the extent to which he fails, he will become a first mortgage on the life of everybody else. And that will be an incentive. Without altruism, many people, many more than do today, would realize that there is no escape from the response responsibility of carrying your own weight, of providing for your own survival, and of being productive. But what I'D like to add. Here is another aspect. It is not true that everyone who does enjoy productive work or who is intent on the productive career is necessarily anti altruistic. You will find there are people who are very productive, function properly in their own field, yet maintain the morality of altruism and are eager to give away a large part, sometimes all of the result of their productivity give it up to others who are glad to have dependents, worthless relatives and various dubious charity causes to support. Yet in one respect in their careers they are acting on the proper principle. Now ask yourself why do people like that support altruism? And there's a very important issue here. There are two types of unearned values that you can get. One is the unearned in matter, the result of which leads to simple, plain financial parasite who is supported by somebody else's effort. Much more complex and much more important. Here is the desire to acquire the unearned in spirit. After all, productive work is not the only aspect of your life. A man may be very productive, but may be very neurotic, confused, contradictory or evasive in other aspects of his life. He may lack authentic self esteem and he may try to buy it by means of altruistic actions or charity. A rich man who is a self made rich man who is anxious to be an altruist and give away the product of his effort is after gaining unearned admiration or unearned esteem from others. He is a man who lacks self esteem and believes consciously or subconsciously that he can derive a sense of his personal value from the gratitude, admiration or praise of others. That type of man is really psychologically more evil than the plain, crude material parasites. The men who are after the unearned materially are much less less of a threat to mankind than the men who are after the unearned spiritually. Here you get the parasite who either wants power over others, power by force, political power or social power by means of charity. The admiration of others, the alleged respect which in fact nobody feels for an altruist of that type. But it helps him with the delusion of maintaining a self esteem which he does not have and of course cannot acquire in that manner.

I'm sorry, that's all we'll have time for tonight. I would like to thank our panel, Mr. Jerry Goodman, Norman Fox and Mr. Alan Gottheld. Thank you again, Ms. Rand.

Thank you.