The Moral Issue of Our Time

This essay is the first of a multi-part series that offers an overview and analysis of how two ethical concepts—selfishness and selflessness—have been viewed by philosophers and theologians throughout history. I consider this to be the deepest and most important issue in the history of ethical thought and practice.

***The audio version of this essay is linked below for paid subscribers.

All civilizations are shaped and guided by some view of good and bad, right and wrong, virtue and vice, just and unjust. Across all cultures and through all time, virtually every moral issue can be reduced to one theoretical and practical problem—what we might call the problem of selfishness, which in turn is connected to one’s view of human nature.

The seventeenth-century French mathematician and philosopher, Blaise Pascal, expressed the view of most philosophers and theologians on the selfishness problem in his Pensées (1688), when he wrote that man is “born unjust, for all tends to self. . . . and the propensity to self is the beginning of all disorder, in war, in politics, in economy, and in the particular body of man.” Pascal’s view, which suggests that “selfishness” is man’s original sin, has been the dominant view of philosophers and theologians for millennia, who have condemned selfishness as the heart of human darkness.

There is no doubt that the adjective “selfish” and the noun “selfishness” are amongst the most used and abused words in the English language. They are also terms of opprobrium. These two words typically connote human behavior that is frequently frowned upon in polite company, and many people consider the motivations and actions captured by these words to be the source of all evil.

It is also true to say that the words “selfish” and “selfishness” are the most misunderstood terms in our moral lexicon; indeed, no two words have induced as much intellectual and moral confusion as these two. In fact, there is so much uncertainty about what selfishness is and is not that it sometimes seems that we should use different words or invent new ones to describe what we mean by certain kinds of motivations, actions, and behaviors commonly associated with selfishness. For the moment, though, we are stuck with the word selfishness and its somewhat less abrasive and more palatable version, namely, “self-interest.”

In sum, the existential and moral reality of selfishness is the great problem to be solved in moral theory and practice. This essay and several to follow reopen the debate over the nature and meaning of selfishness and its antipode, selflessness.

My goal is to understand what selfishness and selflessness are, how the concept selfishness (and selflessness) has been perceived and treated philosophically and theologically over time, and then, to suggest a clearer way to think about what selfishness is or ought to be. This means that our study is partly descriptive (i.e., about the nature of human nature and how it has been understood by philosophers and theologians over time) and partly prescriptive (i.e., judging whether selfishness is good or bad).

This first essay serves as an introduction to the series in which I identify the central themes, problems, and questions to be raised directly or indirectly in succeeding essays. The second essay puts the issue of selfishness in a broader historical context, particularly as it has been viewed in contrast to mankind’s highest moral ideal, namely, selflessness or what is sometimes called altruism. Essay three demonstrates how a troika of related concepts—i.e., selfishness, interest, and self-interest—began to be reinterpreted beginning sometime in the seventeenth century. The fourth essay examines how late eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Americans developed a reality-based view of self-interest grounded in a new science of morality. Essay five will examine how and why nineteenth and twentieth century philosophers and theologians reacted against the new-found appreciation for self-interest. Finally, a sixth essay—if there is to be one—will examine the hidden contradiction in America’s philosophic principles, and I will attempt to resolve that conflict by making the philosophic case for self-interest rightly understood.

How we understand the selfishness problem ultimately determines the kind of moral code, society, political institutions, and economic system that will shape and govern our lives. If you believe that a self-regarding ethic is morally proper, for instance, then you will no doubt support a free society with a laissez-faire government. By contrast, if you believe that an other-regarding ethic is morally proper, then you will no doubt support some form of social and political collectivism and statism. While this series of essays will not address and develop the political-economic systems associated with the competing self- and other-regarding ethics, it will certainly indicate in general terms the obvious political and economic forms derived from each moral foundation.

SELFISHNESS VS. SELFLESSNESS

For over 2,500 years, the world’s best moral thinkers have tackled the selfishness question (i.e., Is acting in one’s self-interest moral or immoral, a virtue or a vice?), which has been at the heart of all serious thinking and debate relative to the question of how men should act in a social context. The default assumption of virtually every philosopher, theologian, and modern academic over the course of the last two millennia is that selfishness is the source of all moral vice and the root of all evil, and its antipode, selflessness, is the source of moral virtue and the root of all good. Selfishness, commonly understood, means putting greed before the needs of others, and selflessness most often means putting the needs of others before one’s petty interests.

This all-too-common view is woven deeply and tightly into our cultural DNA. Most children are taught as their first moral lesson to “stop being so selfish” and to “think of others first” as their second. Our moral instructors tell us that man is naturally selfish (i.e., the problem), but selfless is what he ought to be (i.e., the solution).

In standard English usage, the common understanding of the adjective “selfish” and the noun “selfishness” have almost always connoted a pejorative meaning. At the very least, selfishness implies venal motives, greedy grasping, and caring only for oneself over against all others and sometimes even at the expense of others. Indeed, in the historical and contemporary imagination, selfishness is treated as a form of moral retardation that invokes the image of a lying, cheating, and stealing predatory reprobate, who is willing to hurt other people to satisfy his or her immediate, low-rent whims. Selfishness, it is said, leads politically and economically to a society ruled by greed, exploitation, inequality, the dog-eat-dog principle, and the survival of the fittest. To tell someone that they are acting selfishly is always meant as a criticism and a vice and never as praise and a virtue.

By contrast, the definitions of the adjective “selfless” and the noun “selflessness” have almost always connoted a positive meaning. At the very least, selflessness implies altruistic self-sacrifice and caring for others at one’s own expense. Indeed, in the historical and contemporary imagination, selflessness is treated as a form of moral enlightenment that invokes the image of a loving, charitable moral saint (think Mother Teresa), who is willing to sacrifice his or her own interests for the needs of others. Selflessness, it is said, leads politically and economically to a society based on mutual respect and love, sharing, communal fraternity, and universal benevolence. To tell someone that they are acting selflessly is always meant as a compliment and as a virtue and never as criticism and as a vice.

In essential terms, selfishness and selflessness represent mankind’s fundamental moral alternative. And whichever path forward we choose morally will have long-term ramifications for our social relations, our politics, and our economics.

The pro-self, pro-selfish alternative leads socially to individualism, politically to laissez-faire government, and economically to free markets. The anti-self, pro-selfless choice leads socially to any one of several forms of collectivism, politically to statism, and economically to socialism. These are, as I shall demonstrate, objective, historically demonstrable facts.

This is the fundamental alternative we confront; these are our inescapable choices. All other options are variations on these two choices. And choose we must. But let us also be reminded of the fact that just as one should not mix food and poison, so one should not mix good and evil. We must pursue the good relentlessly and always, and though we may not achieve it all the time, it must be our polestar.

For many, though, the choice is not quite so obvious or clear. There is much intellectual fog all around this issue. Let’s consider a few obvious problems.

Selfishness and selflessness obviously represent conflicting moral principles, but is it true that selfishness cannot be reconciled with kindness, generosity, benevolence, sharing, and cooperation with other people? And what about love? Is love selfish or selfless? If selfishness is a vice, is it morally wrong to love one’s life, not to mention one’s love life? If one loves to live and loves one’s own life (i.e., one’s career, family, friends, hobbies, etc.), isn’t that necessarily selfish and therefore a bad thing? But that is surely prima facie absurd. And what about self-knowledge and Socrates’s admonition to “know thyself”? What could be more selfish than self-knowledge, and yet we typically think of self-knowledge as an unadulterated good. How do we square that circle?

Likewise, is it not true that selflessness can be and has been the source of great cruelty, meanness, malevolence, division, and brotherly hate. If selflessness is a virtue, then why have so many atrocities been committed by those who claim to love and speak in the name of others. What are we to think of a philosophy which says that it is more moral to help two people in Africa than it is to help one’s own wife? But surely this prima facie absurd. Hundreds of millions of people have been slaughtered through history in the name of moral teachings that sanctify death and destruction in the name of selflessness. How do we square that circle?

This much seems clear: any understanding and defense of selfishness or selflessness must have good answers to these kinds of questions and many more. By the end of this series, I hope to do just that.

WHAT SELFISHNESS IS AND IS NOT

Let us take a step back and rethink the selfishness problem from the ground up.

The traditional understanding of selfishness—a view that has dominated Western culture for over 2,500 years—can be summed up with two related dicta: the first expressing a certain view of human nature (i.e., “Volo, ergo sum”—“I want, therefore I am”) and the second expressing the related view of moral action (i.e., “Volo, ergo accipio”—“I want, therefore I take”).

This popularly held view means that selfishness is synonymous with simply wanting something and then taking it regardless of whether it is good for you or not or whether you have a moral right to it (e.g., ownership) or not. It is also said that such wants are most often driven by one’s bodily appetites and desires, which means they come from that which is commonly considered the lowest part of the human soul. (On a deeper level, our dicta would be reformulated as: “Cupio, ergo sum”—“I desire, therefore I am” and “Cupio, ergo accipio”— “I desire, therefore I take.”

In recent decades, academic social scientists and evolutionary psychologists have supplemented this claim by arguing that man is naturally selfish—that selfishness is hardwired into man’s DNA—that man has a selfish gene—and that Darwinian natural selection favors selfishness. This allegedly regrettable fact of human nature must therefore be countered, supplemented, or uplifted by morality (and sometimes force), which is most often defined by selflessness.

This is precisely the deterministic view of Richard Dawkins, the author of the bestselling The Selfish Gene (1976). On the one hand, Dawkins claims that “a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness,” which, he claims, gives rise to “selfishness in individual behaviour.” Dawkins is describing scientifically what he thinks is (i.e., a scientific fact of human nature), but he makes it clear that he is not prescribing what ought to be. He is not promoting an ethic of selfishness. Quite the opposite. Such a society, he writes, “would be a very nasty society in which to live.”

Dawkins’ solution to the selfishness problem is education—to educate men and women out of their selfishness. The goal is to make men less selfish and more self-less. Dawkins never says what kind of anti-selfish, pro-selfless education he would support, nor who would do the teaching. Given that he is an atheist, one can safely assume that he would not rely on Sunday Schools to teach children how to be less selfish and more selfless, it is a safe bet to assume that he would turn over that responsibility to the government and its government-run school system.

Dawkins then issues the following challenge in his own name:

[I]f you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to.

Dawkins does not, of course, explain what he means by building a new society, nor does he describe what the “common good” is, or how and by whom people will be re-engineered to be generous and altruistic. Dawkins’ utopian fantasyland is built on the same gobbledygook as every other collectivist-statist regime that has ever tried to overcome human nature by making people nicer and more self-sacrificing!

Dawkins joins a long line of philosophers, theologians, professors, teachers, and so-called “intellectuals” who have shaped public opinion in condemning selfishness. In the public imagination today, selfishness is an all-purpose vice that ranges from vanity, conceit, self-centeredness, and self-love to predatory cupidity or worse. To put it more simply and in the popular vernacular, selfishness means “looking out for number one” and almost always at someone else’s expense. It means exploiting others and not caring about their wellbeing.

No one in Western culture wants to be thought of by others as selfish. It is considered a vice and the social kiss of death. In its most caricatured form, selfishness means the greed and exploitation of businessmen to produce and sell shoddy and unsafe products (See this classic Saturday Night Live sketch titled “Consumer Probe” that makes fun of such unscrupulous businessmen.)

Notice that the culturally dominant understanding of what selfishness is makes no meaningful distinction between the actions of a criminal and a businessman—no distinction between Bernie Madoff and Elon Musk. Both, it is said, are motivated by greed. In other words, a moral equivalency is drawn between honest and productive businessmen and fraudulent and thieving “businessmen” simply because they both appear to be in “business” and allegedly share the same motive, but of course the differences between Madoff and Musk are those of kind and not of degree. (People like Madoff are more appropriately referred to as criminals than as businessmen.) They are not motivated by the same thing, nor do they do the same thing. Musk earned his wealth by producing goods and services valued by millions of people, whereas Madoff made “his” money through fraud and by stealing it from others. Musk is a producer; Madoff was a thief. Any comparison between them, or between any businessman and a thief, is dishonest, which means immoral.

With this common understanding of what selfishness is, is it any wonder that the concept has become a synonym in the public mind for moral vice or worse and has had no philosophic proponents from Plato to Heidegger?

But what if the popular notion of selfishness is not only wrong but tragically wrong? What if our philosophers and theologians have erred in their understanding and assessment of what selfishness is? What if they took a philosophic wrong turn that led Western Civilization down a path that has led to totalitarianism, destruction, and death?

DEFINING THE PROBLEM

Rather than beginning with our culturally preconceived notions of what selfishness is, let us start by defining our terms.

Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language defines the word “selfish” as: “SELF’ISH, adjective Regarding one’s own interest chiefly or soley; influenced in actions by a view to private advantage.” Webster likewise defined the word “self-interest” as: “SELF-IN’TEREST, noun [self and interest.] Private interest; the interest or advantage of one’s self.” Note that these definitions are simply descriptive and not prescriptive. Neither of Webster’s definitions addresses the moral question directly i.e., whether men should or should not be selfish, or, more precisely, whether selfishness is morally good or bad.

A century later, we begin to see a change in the definition of the word “selfish.” The Oxford English Dictionary defined the word “selfish” in 1933 as: “Devoted to or concerned with one’s own advantage or welfare to the exclusion of regard for others.” Notice that the 1933 OED definition starts out similarly to Webster’s 1828 definition in describing selfishness simply as thinking and acting in one’s on own self-interest, but then it ends its definition by smuggling in pejorative language suggesting that selfishness must exclude consideration of others’ welfare. There is no reason to think, however, that one of the central characteristics of selfishness must be “to the exclusion of regard for others.”

Interestingly, the 1917 Concise Oxford Dictionary of Present English defines the word “selfish” in morally derogatory terms: “Selfish: Deficient in consideration for others, alive chiefly to personal profit or pleasure, actuated by self-interest . . . that pursuit of pleasure of one kind or another is the ultimate spring of every action.” Notice that this definition begins with a negative moral connotation, which it then further compounds by stating that selfishness is motivated simply by range-of-the-moment, hedonistic pleasure. By this definition, there can be no rational selfishness, nor can selfishness value other people.

Notice also that the twentieth-century definitions do not explain the kinds of actions that constitute selfishness (i.e., whether they be good, bad, or indifferent), nor who should be the rightful legatee of such actions. We should not be surprised, therefore, that the modern meanings of selfish and selfishness have been infused culturally with an entirely negative moral meaning that serves as an all-purpose social enema. Selfishness is, at best, a vice and, at worst, a mortal sin and the source of all that is evil in the world.

Curiously, the most used antonyms for “selfish,” “selfishness” and “self-interest”—namely, the words “selfless,” “selflessness,” and “self-sacrifice”—do not appear in Webster’s 1828 dictionary. Webster’s dictionary does define the word “self” as signifying “personal interest, or love of private interest; selfishness” and the word “sacrifice” as “Destruction, surrender or loss made or incurred for gaining some object, or for obliging another; as the sacrifice of interest to pleasure, or of pleasure to interest.” It seems likely, then, that Webster might have defined the word “self-sacrifice” as “destruction of self.”

The 1910 Oxford English Dictionary defines the word “altruism,” which had only somewhat recently entered the English lexicon and come into popular usage in the second half of the nineteenth century, as: “Devotion to the welfare of others, regard for others, as a principle of action; opposed to egoism or selfishness. . . . Dispositions influenced by the purely egotistic impulses we call popularly ‘bad,’ and apply the term ‘good’ to those in which altruism predominates.” (By the early twentieth century, the word altruism had subsumed the ideas of selflessness and self-sacrifice under its lexicographic umbrella.) Note that the definition of altruism, unlike selfishness, was encoded with positive moral judgment.

By the time we get to the twenty-first century, the conventional understanding of what selfishness and selflessness (or altruism) are, can be summed up as follows: selfishness is the action of an individual that increases his or her welfare at the expense of someone else, whereas altruism is the action of an individual that benefits another person’s welfare at the expense of his or her own.

But none of these definitions are adequate. The standard definition of selfishness is, at best, inadequate, and, at worst, wrong. For instance, the modern definition of selfishness does not include those actions that serve the wellbeing of individuals but do not harm others, and the standard definition of altruism does not include those actions that serve the wellbeing of some at the expense of others.

We must start over.

Part of our task is to come up with an objective definition of selfishness and selflessness. To do so, however, we must have a clear idea of what a “definition” is. Samuel Johnson’s famous dictionary defined “definition” as a “short description of a thing by its properties.” This means that to know what a thing is and is not (i.e., its qualities and characteristics), we must determine what a particular thing is and is not.

How, then, do we come to know what a thing is and is not? More particularly, the thing that we are attempting to know is the “self,” which is at the heart of selfishness and selflessness.

STAGING THE QUESTIONS

One way, and surely the best way, to know what a thing is independent of a dictionary, is to poke and prod it with a series of questions to reveal its essential meaning. This was the method employed famously by Socrates (also known as the “Redneck Method”), which was a relentless pursuit of the definition and meaning of some thing or concept by a kind of persistent questioning from a variety of angles.

This means that we must drill down further in our attempt to discover the true definition and meaning of selfishness. The following list of questions is by no means exhaustive, but it should get us started.

• What is the “self” in selfishness? What are the ends or purposes of the “self” and how are such ends known?

• What is selfishness? What are its qualities and characteristics? What is the opposite of selfishness?

• Who or what is the “self” in selfishness or self-interest?

• What is the source or cause of selfishness? Does selfishness begin with man’s needs, desires, and wants? What role does man’s mind play in selfishness?

• Does selfishness mean doing whatever one pleases?

• Does selfishness mean the same thing as self-interest? If they mean similar but slightly different things, then how so? Can there be selfish actions that are not in one’s self-interest?

• Are all men naturally or automatically selfish, or is selfishness chosen? Are there different kinds and degrees of selfishness?

• How can we know what is in our self-interest? What are the factors that determine one’s self-interest?

• How should we choose between competing values?

• Can one act selfishly in ways that are not in one’s self-interest?

• Is there a meaningful distinction between acting in one’s short- and long-term interests? How does one distinguish between the pursuit of one’s short- or long-term interests? Should or do individuals have a hierarchy of interests?

• Are one’s selfish interests objective or subjective? What’s the difference? Does the difference make a difference? What would it mean for an interest to be objective or subjective?

• Can other people sometimes understand our interests better than we can?

• Does selfishness mean that any selfish action regardless of how it affects others is good so long as it benefits oneself even if only in the short term?

• Are all selfish interests equal? Can they be ranked hierarchically?

• Is the self-interest of a day laborer the same as that of a welfare recipient? Is the selfishness of a banker the same as that of a bank robber? Is the selfishness of a lover the same as that of a rapist?

• What would constitute morally permissible if not laudable selfish pursuits? What would constitute a morally impermissible “selfish” pursuit?

• What values, virtues, and actions are in a man’s selfish interest?

• What is the relationship between moral character and selfishness?

• Should men act in their self-interest?

• Can selfishness be reconciled with kindness, benevolence, charity, sharing, and cooperation?

• Are fighting to the death in the name of freedom or giving up one’s life for a loved one selfish or self-sacrificial acts?

• What is the relationship between self-interest and man’s inalienable rights, particularly the right to pursue happiness?

• And finally, can selfishness ever be judged as good and morally laudable?

All these questions (and many more) are important and must be answered if we are to understand what selfishness truly is.

To better or more fully understand what selfishness and self-interest are, it is necessary to view these concepts via their differentia. In other words, we can better understand what something is by knowing what it is not or defining its opposite.

Historically (or at least over the last 200 years), the moral antonym of selfishness or self-interestedness is what has come to be called the ethic of altruism, which says that all men have a moral duty to sacrifice their lives, fortunes, and honor for the sake of others or for the sake of something—anything other than the self and its interests.

In its purest form, altruism means sacrifice simply for the sake of sacrificing one’s interests whatever they are. It means self-abnegation for the sake of self-abnegation, obedience for the sake of obedience, and duty for the sake of duty. In other words, the object of the sacrifice is less important than the act of overcoming and the destruction of the self and its interests. This means that altruism’s moral man must derive no benefit from his thoughts or actions. Suffering is the highest form morality by this code.

In its most common form, altruism, or the code of selflessness and self-sacrifice, says that men have an unchosen moral debt that must be repaid to people one does not necessarily know or care about. Such claimants (i.e., those who do not produce or provide for themselves) hold a kind of moral promissory note against their debtors (i.e., those who do produce and provide for themselves). In other words, the needs of some are held as inalienable rights—e.g., the rights to food, clothing, shelter, health care, education, etc.—against the productivity of others. Altruism has been, in one form or another, the dominant moral philosophy of most civilizations throughout human history.

Just as we asked hard questions about the nature of selfishness and self-interestedness, we should ask similar kinds of questions about their philosophic antonyms, namely, selflessness and altruism.

• What is the “self” in selflessness? What are the ends or purposes of the “self” in selflessness and how are such ends known?

• What is selflessness? What are its qualities and characteristics? What exactly does it mean to be selfless?

• What is the view of human nature held by the proponents of altruism? Is man naturally selfless or does selflessness cut against the grain of human nature? Is there a “selfless” gene?

• If one is not naturally selfless, how does one become so? Must education or indoctrination be used to direct people toward selflessness. If education and indoctrination do not work in making individuals selfless, must coercion be used to force individuals to become selfless?

• Why does selflessness require self-sacrifice? How precisely is the “self” to be sacrificed and to or for what? Is there a limit to how much an individual should sacrifice? And what, why, how, and for whom should men sacrifice?

• Who decides what kind of sacrifice is necessary and how much?

• Why should selflessness or the abnegation of self be viewed as a moral ideal?

• Why is sacrifice a virtue? How would we morally evaluate sacrifice that is promoted by guilt or coercion? Is guilt-driven or coerced sacrifice a virtue?

• To whom precisely or to what should one sacrifice one’s own thought, time, labor, and wealth? Does it matter to whom we sacrifice? Is there a hierarchy of sacrifice? Should we sacrifice for the sake of family, neighbors, strangers, humanity? Is sacrificing for one’s own children of the same moral worth as sacrificing for strangers?

• How much of our thought, time, labor, and wealth should we sacrifice, and who makes that determination?

• Why should the moral standard of individuals and society be the needs (i.e., the demands) of others? Is there a limit to the “needs” of the needy? Why do some needs or the needs of some count more than the needs of others? Why should the needs of, say, the poor trump the needs of those who are not poor?

• Who should determine what the needs of some are relative to the abilities or wealth of others? Why should the person who makes that determination—almost always a third party—have the authority and power to do so?

• Should individuals be forced to sacrifice if they refuse to do so, and, if so, how much force should be used?

• Alternatively, why is a self-regarding ethic viewed as immoral by altruists? Do you, or do you not, have a moral right to live for your own sake?

• Why is it that those who yelp the loudest for altruism and the sacrifice of others are often most “selfish” people by the conventional definition?

• How and why is it that political systems based on selflessness and sacrifice always lead to despotism, violence, and destruction?

• Finally, which moral code—altruism or self-interest—is most in accord with the moral principles of the Declaration of Independence or of a free society?

These questions are rarely ever asked and almost certainly never answered. I will not necessarily answer them directly or systematically in the essays that follow (and even less so in my own voice), but I do hope at the very least to raise and address them historically (if only indirectly) in the essays that follow through the views of various philosophers and theologians.

By the time we work our way through these questions, one thing about the idea of selfishness shall become clear: it is a deeply paradoxical concept or series of paradoxes.

Allow me, then, to identify a few paradoxes concerning the concept “selfishness.” First, one can be “selfish” without being self-interested. Second, the economic system based on selfishness also produces the highest standard of living for the greatest number of people. Third, the most capitalist nations in the world (which means the most selfish) are also the most charitable. If any of this is true, then the standard definition of what selfishness is, is deeply flawed, and we must therefore reexamine what selfishness is and is not.

CONCLUSION

To repeat: the question of selfishness is the moral issue of our time. In many ways, the fate of civilization depends on how we address and answer the “selfishness” question. Indeed, no question is more important. We need to get it right.

The essays that follow are directed particularly to conservatives, libertarians, and classical liberals—i.e., those people who claim to be proponents of a free society, of individual rights, of limited government, and of capitalism—but who all too often compromise their political-economic principles precisely because they have bought into the standard definition and moral evaluation of selfishness, and because they have likewise bought into the culturally-dominant belief that selflessness and self-sacrifice are virtues. This translates into moral ambivalence when they try to defend capitalism and guilt when they are confronted by the arguments defending socialism. This is why, for instance, that conservatives have such a difficult time defending the profit motive morally. More importantly, most conservatives have drunk deeply from the well of altruism. Thus, they need these essays more than the Left ever will.