Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy has been touted by her detractors as the philo

Question

Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy has been touted by her detractors as the philosophy of self-interested selfishness.

Her four epistemological principles are:
1. Metaphysics: Objective reality of the world and the objects in it.
2. Epistemology: Reason as the one and only key to understanding.
3. Ethics: Self-interest in what behavior is but also what it should be.
4. Politics: Capitalism through the performance of deeds by individuals who are self-interested.

In the early 1960's, a student asked a spokesman for Objectivism what would happen to the poor in an Objectivist's free society.
The spokesman answered, "If you want to help them, you will not be stopped."

If one reads Rand's works, Atlas Shrugged, or The Fountainhead, one will conclude that this would be the answer Ayn would have given to that student as well.

What do you conclude from the answer given by the Objectivist spokesperson?
Is Objectivism, like Moral Relativism, the opposite of ethics?
And what clue in what she taught leads to your conclusion?

Explanation / Answer

>Rand is claiming that all honest and ethical behavior should be self-interested and only self-interested. Again, notice the shift to the prescriptive words should be Moving forward from that position approaches the whole problem of human relationships. If every action is motivated solely by self-interest so that people are not capable of unselfishness and seek only their own interests, what about that special yet common phenomenon of altruism? Is it unrealistic--or even impossible--that people behave altruistically toward each other?
>If that is true, it suggests that ethics and morality are impossible. The idea continues that acting unselfishly has a benefit to the actor in a feel-good payoff of personal satisfaction; therefore, all altruistic acts are sabotaged in their moral value by the satisfaction that the actor enjoys. Especially for heroic acts, the public acclaim undermines the value of the true altruism which would be an act benefiting others without pay-off as an actor. The objectivist position claims that people do altruistic, noble, and even heroic acts for what is in their own interest, and acting in self-interest undermines all value attached to those altruistic actions
>Having shifted from "is self-interested" to "should be only self-interested," Rand's position also denies that people have any duty or obligation to others. If each person should pursue his or her self-interest exclusively, it follows that one's only duty is to their own self-interest and not to other people or the community at all. Even where people share the same self-interest and may align their efforts toward a common purpose, it remains true that each aligned person seeks their own benefit--that there is no duty to the other persons or to remain aligned with them beyond the current situation

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