An ethics of rational egoism is untenable. Randian Objectivists are very irritating proponents of it, or so my recent experience leads me to believe. One problem is that they actually make the argument that no agent can benefit from an action that harms another. This is empirically false. Next, they need to decide in what sense self-interest is valuable - absolute or relative. If the former, they fall prey to GE Moore's criticism in Principia Ethica. That is, my own self-interest is the sole good. "What egoism holds, therefore, is that each man's happiness is the sole good - that a number of different things are each of them the only good thing there is - an absolute contradiction!" If the latter, the contradiction dissipates. What is in my self interest is good for me, what is in yours is good for you. However, this also eliminates the supposed requirement of rational egoism to not harm other people.
I was discussing this elsewhere: www.talkphilosophy.org
I can't link directly to it, but it's in the chitchat forum and called "the bigot and the bar."
I was discussing this elsewhere: www.talkphilosophy.org
I can't link directly to it, but it's in the chitchat forum and called "the bigot and the bar."