Watch what I can do with your examples by independently modifying the scope and depth of "personal interest" or "self-interest" presented in those examples.

Using utilitarianism (a form of subjectivity) I can make a good case for any action whatsoever -- simply by shifting my focus. This is not true of ethical egoism (rational individualism, Objectivism) -- which is grounded in foundational aspects such as identity and causality.

To Merlin’s article:

An important part of Kant’s concern to have a standard and motive of morality not of itself including interests and happiness was his concern that we be self-determining, that we not behave as puppets of external factors.

In Rand’s philosophy, there is a rough parallel to Kant’s universalization criterion in her appeal to Man’s Life and Man’s Nature. She put substance into those, which can be more practically helpful than Kant’s imperative-formulas. Even if one were to dispute what all Rand put into those Man conceptions, one might revise the conception and continue to use her approach of making Man’s Life, as particular in one’s own life, as one’s standard of moral decisions.

In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant had claimed we should strive to make ourselves worthy of happiness. In Critique of Practical Reason, (having received criticism on Groundwork) he spelled out that we have an indirect duty to seek happiness.

This distinction of the principle of happiness from that of morality is not, for this reason, at once an opposition between them, and pure practical reason does not require that one should renounce claims to happiness but only that as soon as duty is in question one should take no account of them. It can even in certain respects be a duty to attend to one’s happiness, partly because happiness (to which belong skill, health, wealth) contains means for the fulfillment of one’s duty and partly because lack of it (e.g., poverty) contains temptations to transgress one’s duty. However, it can never be a direct duty to promote one’s happiness, still less can it be a principle of all duty.  (5:93)

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I am writing a book of philosophy. It is my own philosophy, importantly indebted to Rand’s and extending parts of hers. Yet it is also seriously opposed to hers.

This work will be in metaphysics, epistemology (including philosophy of science), and theory of value (including the basic virtues). One thing I will need to come to terms with is the concept of duty and its relation to autonomous personhood. I do not think Rand got things straight about the full nature of social moral obligation in her essay “Causality v. Duty.” She neglected the anthropological origins of our reciprocity norms for one thing. I mention that as tip of the iceberg, tip the reader might expect from my pieces here at RoR on game theory and rights theory. Rand was on a better line when she wrote: “Do you ask what moral obligation I owe to my fellow men? None—except the obligation I owe to myself, to material objects and to all existence: rationality” (AS 1022). I expect to cash that out differently than did Rand, expect to significantly recast from hers the conception of human rationality and of the nature of biological life and, of course, ours.

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Of note:

Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics – Rethinking Happiness and Duty

Stephen Engstrom and Jennifer Whiting, editors (Cambridge 1996)

Underivative Duty – British Moral Philosophers from Sidgwick to Ewing

Thomas Hurka, editor (Oxford 2011)

Dean, I'm wary of the introduction of new words in philosophy. The problem is that it is easy to slip into thinking one has solved some problem simply by coining some sort of bridging word, or by extending the application of a term peculiar to biology or consciousness, say, to inanimate objects, and then think: "There. I've solved that old problem." (The name you've chosen seems fine; it suggests somewhat what will be found and defended in the philosophy, and it invites entry for clarification of the name and content of the philosophy.) I'm more open to giving special definitions to old terms (being up front about that, of course), as Newton did with force or Rand did with reason. And it's certainly alright to pick a set of words and put them into a dynamic with each other, which had not been salient before, such as Rand did with entity, identity, and identification. She had to be explicit about the exact way she meant those terms, the first narrower than in common usage, the second broader than in common usage.

Getting others to accept one's own special theoretical vocabulary goes with persuading them that your philosophy is getting things right. To some extent, we are impressed if a set of concepts mesh together in a cool way, but substantial concurrence would come only when we become persuaded that the concepts and the way they fit together fit the world they claim to fit.

I'll take a look at your site and let you know any quick impressions I have.

Concerning the Kant part of your post, I think you would like to hear of the answers Adolf Eichmann gave for his heinous crimes against Jews in the Nazi era. At first he said he was doing his duty, and he tried to bolster his case by the high reputation of Kant, appealing to Kant's doctrines concerning duty. But then the prosecutor asked him how he could have possibly thought he was treating people as ends in themselves in his murderous acts. He admitted that by the time he had gotten to that stage, he knew he was not following Kant.

The culture of duty to serve one's country, including by war service, was of course already in place in Europe and in England, before Kant. From a writing project I don't expect to get back to until after finishing my book:

As the sun rose at Cape Trafalgar on 21 October 1805, the British fleet was arranged in two successive lines for battle. The Franco-Spanish fleets were silhouettes against the eastern sky. With the two opposing fleets closing for the fury, Admiral Nelson made a signal to all his ships: “England expects every man to do his duty.” This duty was nothing new in human history, and it had no dependence on ideas of the late sage of Königsberg (d. 1804).

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Follow-up from peek into your site:

Well, as you would have already surmised, I'm a no-go on life whereever there is information in the thermodynamic sense of information.

On your front page, you mentioned ability as a virtue. I think it could be interesting to think through the ways in which that is a virtue in contrast and continuity with the way efficiency and ambition are virtues. Attractiveness is a virtue too, in a sense, a sense like when we say scent is a virtue of a rose, but relation of that sort of virtue to volitionally acquired virtues needs to be set out eventually. 

Hope you never stop learning. The vista can become better and better. For me, still is expanding at 65.

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(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 1/24, 7:09pm)

Bob crushes up puppies and makes lots of money by selling the juice as an energy drink. Joe gives money to feed the homeless. So who is more ethical?

Where does Joe get the money? Did Bob give it to him?

Why not compare apples to apples, and take the emotionality of lovable puppies out of the question?
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Bob crushes up poisnous spiders and makes lots of money by selling the juice as an energy drink.
Joe gives money to save the poisnous spiders.

Who is the more ethical
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(Good one Merlin!)

Eva,

You are correct.  I tried to remove emotion.   Because I assume that you want people to make reasoned ethical arguments and not just follow their feelings.  Why cast that as a moral dilemma if you only want to have it be an emotional issue?

If you just want to know that people are upset at the thought of killing puppies, you don't have to cast it as an ethical question.  (Although, there are parts of Asia where they still eat puppies.... you could ask them :-)

You did notice that I tried to balance the the two sides by putting the spiders in both sides?  

Eva,

I'm not clear about where you are going with this? The question, with puppies or even with spiders, doesn't seem to provide much substance to chew on. And that it is supposed to an anti-Rand kind of thing with your classmates - do you think it is anything to be taken seriously?
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For him [Aristotle], ethics is, ultimately, an expression of feeling; the virtuous person is taught to feel the right things

My understanding is that Aristotle's ethics is about virtue and character and they were examples of acting excellently to move from a potential to an actual in area of human flourishing.   Exhibiting bravery, and showing moderation in appetites, for example.  But the statement that it is, in effect, a call for hedonism ("an expression of feeling") that doesn't match what I know of Aristotle's ethics.  The pleasure that he says comes from being ethical isn't the standard or guide. Rather it is the after-effect of being virtuous, but not the driving motivation. He saw virtue as practical - not sacrificial.

People usually aren't taught to feel things, but rather are taught to believe things, and if they do - strongly - the feelings come from that. Aristotle was someone who encouraged thinking, not emotionalism.

In any case, I don't know that Rand bases her ethics on Aristotle's.

Ethos pathein means 'ethics='feelings'. This is what he wrote.

It stands, by intent, in contradistinction to Aristotle's view of law: "Nomos oud'pathein"

'

Eudaimonia' is what all classic philosophy wanted to achieve, not just Aristotle.

In Nicomachius, 'mean behavior' is an important concept, too.

It's not bizarre for Aristotle to have two thoughts going within a large tract-- any particular declaration by fiat as to 'what's important' not withstanding.

EM