On a number of occasions, Rush Limbaugh has spoken of the “invisible hand” described by Adam Smith. It is not out of benevolence, Rush has said, that your grocer sells you food. It is the grocer’s self-interest—his desire to earn a profit—that motivates him. But, Rush has quickly added, self-interest is not the same as selfishness.
Ignoring for the moment Rush’s implication that trade and benevolence are antithetical, Rush holds a conventional view of selfishness. Let’s look at how this conventional view expresses itself in modern definitions. As an example, Dictionary.com defines selfishness as “devoted to or caring only for oneself; concerned primarily with one’s own interests, benefits, welfare, etc., regardless of others.”
This is a multi-part and confusing definition. The middle part—“concerned primarily with one’s own interests, benefits, welfare, etc.”—is a legitimate definition. It is descriptive of a type of action, and avoids piling into the definition an ethical evaluation of that action. The first part—“caring only for oneself”—loads the definition with negative ethical judgments. For example, it inexplicably excludes from the category of self-interest loving one’s spouse (caring only for oneself). This, by itself, should lead one to suspect that something is wrong with this conventional definition. The last part of the proposed definition—“regardless of others”—is a dangerous ambiguity.
On the one hand, one would expect that in considering what is in one’s self-interest, one doesn’t “regard” others, i.e. one judges according to one’s own reason and values, not according to what others value. On the other hand, “regardless” implies that one pursues one’s self interest by harming others. According to this view, to be selfish means to pursue one’s self-interest at the expense of others and to do anything to get ahead.
Let’s collect before us the disparate individuals that the conventional definition proposes to lump together into one concept: The selfish person might be someone who studies for college very hard, maybe becoming the first person in an immigrant family to graduate from college and obtain a professional job. By the same definition, however, the selfish person might be Al Capone, the mafia kingpin. Selfishness, according to the above definition, includes Michael Jordon, who spent enormous time and a superhuman effort pursuing excellence in his basketball career. And it includes Adolf Hitler, who is believed to have pursued his own “self-interest” by murdering millions and devastating the world with military conquest.
Something is very wrong with a methodology that defines a word in a manner that includes one kind of individual as well as its diametrical opposite. The purpose of a definition is to identify the essential characteristics that distinguish one group of things from all other things. Those things are not identical, but they must be essentially similar. If one includes ambitious, productive individuals and mass murderers under the same umbrella, then the definition is meaningless; it is a philosophically useless and dead-end package deal (such a package deal, as we’ll see below, is both a consequence of bad philosophy and helps to perpetuate and rationalize bad philosophy).
The proponents of such package deals often defend this type of definition using quantitative arguments: According to the conventional view, pursuing one’s self-interest is good, but pursuing one’s self-interest to “excess” is selfish, and thus bad. This argument doesn’t remove the fundamental problems with the conventional definition. While individuals may pursue their self-interest to varying degrees, it is illegitimate to say that self-interest includes Steve Jobs at one end of its spectrum and Bernie Madoff at the other end.
The fact is, thieves, murderers and similar individuals are not selfish. Such people do not actually pursue their self-interest. Bernie Madoff is the epitome of the conventional view of selfishness. Madoff offered false promises of fabulous returns. He resorted to fraud and deception to achieve his ends. He depended on the ignorance of his victims, for if they had known the truth, they would not have invested with him. But in the end, Madoff lost everything—his family, his wealth, and his freedom. The conventional view holds that Madoff was selfish—he used any means necessary to pursue his self-interest. But did he pursue his self-interest? Was he really selfish?
While Madoff may have appeared to enjoy the material trappings of his wealth, the fact is, he was a psychological wreck: “‘It was a nightmare for me,’ he told investigators, using the word over and over, as if he were the real victim. ‘I wish they caught me six years ago, eight years ago.’” Madoff later said that he was happier in prison than he had been in years. “I lived the last twenty years of my life in fear,” he said. In other words, while Madoff might have eaten in the finest restaurants and lived in a luxurious apartment, he was miserable. If physical and psychological well-being are in one’s self-interest, then Madoff’s actions were clearly not in his self-interest.
We are not born with an automatic knowledge of which actions and values will be in our self-interest. The experience of a desire does not mean that that desire is in our self-interest. To make such an identification, we must project the long-term consequences of our actions. We must identify the hierarchy of our values and then act accordingly.
Apparently, Madoff desired wealth and was willing to attain it by any means. Apparently, Madoff believed that wealth was in his self-interest, and how he attained it was irrelevant. Obviously, Madoff was wrong.
This leads to a second fundamental reason for why thieves and murderers are not selfish—there is no place for emotion and whim in the identification of what is in one’s self interest. Emotions have no power to identify what is in a person’s self interest. They simply register the feelings that stem from subconscious premises, often unexamined and unintegrated. Properly understood, selfishness is the pursuit of our rational self-interest. Only reason (as opposed to emotion) is capable of determining what is in fact in our self-interest. Placing our interests above the interests of others requires clearly and rationally identifying the hierarchy of one’s values. One must rationally identify what is truly in one’s long-range self-interest. Acting on whim for a short-term “high” or “thrill” is demonstrably not in a person’s self-interest, as the ultimate outcomes of the lives of Hitler, Madoff, Capone and other such individuals unequivocally shows.
Contrary to the conventional view, selfishness does not mean a disregard for others. It is often beneficial to our self-interest to consider the interests of others. For example, one serves one’s economic self-interest by considering and serving the interests of one’s employer and customers. One serves one’s spiritual self-interest by considering the interests of those one values, such as a spouse and friends. One does not build a healthy and meaningful business or relationship by callously disregarding the interests and desires of others, whether they are employees, customers, friends, or a spouse. Nor does one build a healthy business or relationship by sacrificing one’s own interests to the interests of others.
For example, it might be in the interest of a customer for you to give him a steep discount. There may be times such an action is appropriate, but if doing so threatens the financial health of your business, doing so would be a sacrifice, and thus destructive. Similarly, if you have boorish relatives who insult you and your values at every opportunity, attending a family reunion in order to appease your parents is a sacrifice.
The conventional view of selfishness is a result of the morality that dominates our culture—altruism. According to altruism, each individual has a moral duty to place the welfare and interests of others before his own self-interest. According to altruism, we must self-sacrificially serve others. According to altruism, the only alternative is to sacrifice others to ourselves. Such a view holds that life requires sacrifice, and the only issue is: who will sacrifice and who will benefit?
This is the philosophical source of the conventional definition and of the faulty distinction that Rush Limbaugh has been making. If the only alternative besides sacrificing oneself to others is to sacrifice them to you, then it is perfectly fitting that Madoff belongs in the category of “selfish.” Clearly, he didn’t sacrifice himself to others—he certainly wasn’t Mother Theresa.
But life does not require sacrifice (which is the key point that the conventional definition of selfishness obscures). The rational interests of individuals do not conflict (though their irrational feelings often do). Consider your grocer. It is in his interest to sell you food, and it is in your interest to buy the food that you want and need. Neither of you is sacrificing; both of you are pursuing your own self-interest and both parties benefit (which is why voluntary trades are usually infused with a spirit of benevolence—benevolence is not sacrifice, despite what Rush’s statement implies). This is true of all voluntary interactions between individuals, both materially and spiritually.
Selfishness does not require trampling on others, nor can one achieve one’s self-interest by doing so.
So there is a fundamental divide between the kind of individual who pursues his selfish interests and the kind of individual who sacrifices others to himself. The latter person lives by emotion, and “succeeds”—for a short time—by destroying others and ultimately himself. The former lives by rational values and succeeds—for a lifetime—by pursuing rational goals. The two kinds of individuals are fundamental opposites—just as opposite as Steve Jobs and Bernie Madoff—and there is no justification to claim that both pursued their self-interest. Nor can one escape this conceptual fallacy by lumping such opposites together while claiming that Madoff pursued his self-interest to “excess.” Selfishness legitimately refers to those whose “greed” is the ambition to pursue excellence, not those whose “greed” is to steal, rape, and murder. Those who value reason and excellence must defend the proper definition of selfishness, and not to fall prey to the faulty distinctions and conceptual obfuscations inherent in the conventional view.
Authors’ note: This article was co-written with Warren S. Ross. The ideas expressed in this article were originally identified by Ayn Rand, and represent the authors’ understanding of those ideas.