Abstract:
Ayn Rand defended egoism. Yet, what Rand meant by egoism is not well-understood. This thesis clarifies the position of egoism within Rand's ethics, and positions Rand within the literature on virtue ethics. It has been assumed that Rand's ethics is a form of ethical egoism. This thesis establishes that Rand's egoism is one aspect of a much broader ethical theory. Egoism, for Rand, means benefiting from one's virtuous actions. It is, therefore, the values and virtues in Rand's ethics that establish which actions we are morally entitled to benefit from. Egoism does little normative work. Rand's concern in ethics is the type of life a person ought to live. This thesis compares Rand's ethics with the ethics of Henry B. Veatch, Onora O'Neill, and Michael Slote, and argues that Rand and Veatch, on the one hand, and O'Neill and Slote, on the other, represent fundamentally different approaches to ethics.