The Tyranny of Need: Second Expanded Edition

Is it morally good to achieve your own happiness?\nFrom childhood, we’re taught that helping others is the essence of morality. We’re told that acting to benefit someone else is praiseworthy but acting to benefit yourself is not. And most people take this code of ethics for granted. They may not always abide by it, but they don’t doubt its validity. They don’t challenge the premise that to live ethically is to live altruistically.\nThis book challenges it.\nIt shows that people do not fully understand what altruism calls for. It shows that what altruism really demands is not that you respect the rights of others or that you display benevolence toward them. Rather, it demands that you subordinate yourself to them—that you elevate their desires above your own—that you sacrifice your own happiness in order to serve them—that you regard another’s need as a claim against you.\nTo which Peter Schwartz simply asks: Why? Why should you be called upon to suffer so that your neighbor might benefit? Why does the fact that someone needs your money somehow create a moral entitlement to it, while the fact that you’ve earned it does not? There is no logical justification for such an ethics. Why, then, must you allow yourself to be ruled by this tyranny of need?\nThe author then presents an alternative—a moral alternative—to the code of altruism: rational self-interest. He explains why genuine selfishness is not exemplified by the conniving duplicity of a Bernie Madoff. Or by the brutal plundering of an Attila the Hun. Or by the mindless do-whatever-you-feel-like-doing lifestyle of a hedonist. Such people are actually acting against their interests. Instead—Schwartz argues—the truly selfish individual is committed to moral principles. He lives an honest, productive, self-respecting life. He renounces the unearned and deals with people by giving them value for value, to mutual benefit, neither sacrificing himself to others nor others to himself.\nThe Tyranny of Need shows you how to uphold, guilt-free, your moral right to the pursuit of your own happiness.\n[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a revised, expanded edition of a book originally titled In Defense of Selfishness. It includes two entirely new chapters, on the meaning of self-interest as applied to a nation, along with a revised Introduction.]