"I swear -- by my life and my love of it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
In her well-known March, 1964, Playboy Interview Rand explains that this maxim "is a dramatized summation of the Objectivist ethics". She adds that Objectivist ethics "hold that man... must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself." Ayn Rand characterizes her Objectivist ethics as "rational egoism", and defends "The Virtue of Selfishness," the title of her 1964 book.
In contrast to the virtue of selfishness, Rand opposed the ethical system of Immanuel Kant which she claimed completely rejects self-interest and deprives it of any and all honor. Kant's rejection of self-interest, she maintains, is a rejection of all values and goals and, indeed, a rejection of human nature itself. In her view, Kant's ultimate motivation was to reinforce the morality of altruism, of self-sacrifice, of self-abnegation. Kant's vision, she maintains, was a morality that consists of total, abject, selflessness. She condemns Kant's philosophy as evil and accuses him of hating life, man, and reason.
One of Kant's ethical insights was the proposal of a test for our ethical maximums to understand whether or not they could be considered moral. Kant expressed this test as three interrelated imperatives that he characterized as categorical. The second formulation of the categorical imperative is known as the Humanity Formula:
"Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end"
We know how Ayn Rand judged Kant. Let us now judge Ayn Rand through an application of Kant's categorical imperative. To live "for the sake of another man" would be to allow one's self to be treated by others only as means to an end, and to give up one's life as an end in and of itself. To "ask another man to live for mine" would be to treat humanity merely as a means to an end, and to deny to others the status of being an end in and of themselves. Thus when Ayn Rand holds "that man... must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself" she is simply providing us with a militant, assertive formulation of Kant's categorical imperative.
It turns out, then, that Ayn Rand is an evil, self-abnegating, altruistic Kantian who hates life, man, and reason!
In truth, Ayn Rand, like most of us, is willing to accept reasonable limitations on what might be the most rational means towards obtaining an end - she would not use means that would require her to treat others without respect for their humanity, and she would not pursue ends that could only be obtained by doing so. This respect is "other regarding", that is, altruistic, and rules out using any and all means towards any and all ends. One's ends do not (necessarily) justify the means, and we are required by morality to limit prudential means-ends rationality. Kant's insight, that when we act morally we are necessarily acting against the dictates of rational self-interest, holds, and even holds in Ayn Rand's estimation.
Ayn Rand's Playboy Interview, March 1964
Ayn Rand's View of Kant
Rational Egoism
Kant's Categorical Imperative (Wiki)
Kant's Categorical Imperative (Stanford)
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