Abstract

Robert H. Bass's proposed opposition between egoism and rights misses its mark insofar as it targets Rand's egoism. Rand's egoism is not consequentialist. Her egoism falls into the "moralized interest" camp, meaning that her understanding of egoism presupposes other moral concepts. There are sound reasons for calling her ethics egoistic based on the characteristics of her ethics. Far from being separate poles of moral thought, her egoism and her rights theory express a unitary moral principle centering around the requirements of man's life qua man