Audio version of my 42-page journal article “Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand.” Table of Contents:
Part One: On Critiquing Altruism [MP3] [YouTube] [64 minutes]
Three Nietzsches and Ayn Rand
Some Intellectuals on Nietzsche and Rand
Egoism, altruism, and “selfishness”
A Nietzschean sketch: * God is dead * Nihilism’s symptoms * Two bio-psychological types * Psychology and morality * Genealogy
Comparing Nietzsche’s and Rand’s critiques of altruism
Rand’s break with Nietzsche’s critique
Part Two: On Egoism
Rand’s egoism
Nietzsche’s rhetoric and system
The Major Differences between Nietzsche and Rand: * Are individuals real? * Do individuals have free will? * What is the source of moral values? * How does the self identify its nature and values? * Are individual selves ends in themselves? * Are fundamental values universal? * Are the relations of individuals win/win or win/lose? * Rights, liberty, equality before the law? * Slavery and freedom, war and peace
Conclusion
Related: The original print essay [pdf], published in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 10:2, Spring 2009, 249-291.
Also related: Nietzsche and Rand in the Philosophers, Explained series.
This is so invaluable. Most critiques of Rand’s ethics try to equate it with Nietzsche’s, Stirner’s or Spencer’s, i.e. merely reversing altruism’s sacrifice of self to others with sacrifice of others to self. Rand of course held BOTH profoundly immoral, and her great achievement was in articulating a non-sacrificial, non-zero-sum ethic.
As she noted, the Enlightenment concept of individual rights had been implicitly based on such an ethic, but it was never explicated and grounded. As she also noted, every political theory is implicitly or explicitly based on an ethical one. Kant’s denial of the ethical concept of the self proved the sine qua non for Hegel’s denial of the political concept of the individual that paved the way for the sacrificial inferno of modern collectivism.
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Awesome overview, I found the section on Nietzsche’s The Geneology of Morals enlightenening. Would it be possible to have the second part uploaded via an MP3. Found this via ThinkSpot.
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