RSS
Objectivists Expand Presence
By Jordan Carr — January 8, 2010 — Features — Volume XLIV, Issue 1From a young age, we are told that we should be altruistic. We should care for others, especially when they are at their weakest. We should love one another unconditionally. We have a responsibility for our fellow man’s well-being.
Ayn Rand and her followers, who call themselves Objectivists, disagree. According to Rand, the philosophy centers on the idea that each individual is an end unto himself. Objectivism states that there is an objective reality, and that it can only be interpreted through reason. Rand advocated laissez-faire capitalism as the only truly free political structure, and rejected the idea of God.
Rand developed the Objectivist philosophy in the middle of the 20th Century and popularized it via bestselling novels such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and essays.
On Stanford’s campus, there has been something of an objectivist revival. The Objectivists of Stanford, founded last year by their president Dakin Sloss ‘12 hold weekly meetings, in which their ten or so members gather and discuss Rand’s work. Sloss estimates that he spends 15 to 20 hours promoting each Objectivist-sponsored event. The Objectivists have marketed aggressively, posting fliers, hosting events, and, ironically enough, giving away copies of Atlas Shrugged at the Activities Fair. Sloss is particularly enthused about an upcoming debate between Yaron Brook and Jennifer Morse on whether Christianity is compatible with capitalism.
Not to give away the ending, but the objectivist position is that they are not compatible. Objectivists hold that belief in God is irrational and a sign of mental weakness. Rand kicked off a feud with conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. by notifying him that “you are too smart to believe in God.” Sloss called religion “a poison.” This strident atheism may come as a surprise to those who have mistakenly associated Ayn Rand with conservatism. “Conservatives and Objectivists may appear to share common interests,” say Sloss, “but they remain ideological enemies.”
Rand’s books are critiqued for having archetypal rather than complex characters. Whittaker Chambers’ famously scathing review of Atlas Shrugged that appeared in William F. Buckley Jr.’s conservative journal National Review said that in the world of Atlas Shrugged, “everybody is either all good or all bad, without any of those intermediate shades which, in life, complicate reality and perplex the eye that seeks to probe it truly.”
Rand’s infinite certitude could be either bewitching or unsettling. When she unequivocally accepts the proposition in a 1959 CBS interview that there are “very few in this world who are worthy of love,” it is easy to be put off by her certainty. At Stanford, Sloss has coöpted this distinctive style, saying that the biggest draw to objectivism is that “It is correct.”
Rand’s persona sometimes verged on self-parody. She wore a cape. Her husband traveled with the manuscript of Atlas Shrugged handcuffed to him. She sat down her husband and explained to him that she would be briefly taking another man as her lover—the affair with Nathaniel Branden lasted fourteen years.
Within the context of a philosophy that supposes to provide the framework for a well-lived life, these “quirks” are something much more troubling, indicating Rand’s overwhelming self-regard and dismay at her own unacknowledged greatness. Rand wrote in her journal that, “I think I represent the proper integration of a complete human being.” It is unclear whom she was trying to convince.
Chambers said that in Rand’s world, “resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked.” Chambers’ criticism of Rand’s ideological inflexibility would prove prescient; Johann Hari writes, “Anybody in [the Collective] who disagreed with her was subjected to a show trial in front of the whole group in which they would be required to repent or face expulsion.” Another journalist notes that they would quote John Galt as religiously as “clergymen quote Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.”
Ayn Rand died in 1982 with only a paid nurse by her side, done in by lung cancer—a fatal reminder of her once-held belief that smoking represented “man’s victory over fire.” In the end, people mattered less to Rand than ideas, a point driven home not only by her lack of loved ones, but by the six-foot floral arrangement of a dollar sign at her funeral.
Under the aegis of Sloss, the Objectivists of Stanford will likely have a happier, albeit less polyamorous and interesting, ending than the Collective. But Sloss’ certitude of Objectivism’s righteousness seems dangerous. Sloss avers, “the outlook for Objectivism is in general always favorable because it is correct,” but in looking at Ayn Rand’s matching self-assuredness and ideology, and where it led her, it is hard to agree.
If you are wondering whether or not the Objectivist revival at Stanford is a sign of an attitudinal shift in our generation; simply put, it is not. It is no coincidence that Objectivism’s presence at Stanford and at other college campuses is disproportionate to its national influence. Objectivism’s appeal is greatest to students with minimal responsibilities to others, and it does not work within the context of most adults’ lives. One wonders how many of today’s objectivists will remain when it is their turn to write the tuition checks.
Rand told Playboy that if individuals “place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral.” Altruistic sacrifice is necessary to rear children. So long as that is the case, objectivism will remain, as David Brooks wrote, a college infatuation that “seemed daring at the time, but now the memory of it just makes you feel queasy.”
Tweet This
Digg This
Save to delicious
Stumble it
RSS Feed
75 Comments
Chris Rorke wrote: “Exactly, so what your last comment shows is any ethical system which allows one to steal would be false.”
No, what my last comment shows is that naive self-interest is not necessarily (and usually isn’t) *true* self-interest – that in the calculus of true self-interest, the coefficients for other’s interests are not necessarily zero – that true self-interest is broader and deeper than mere consideration of ’self’.
As Rand wrote:
“The two great values to be gained from social existence are: knowledge and trade. Man is the only species that can transmit and expand his store of knowledge from generation to generation; the knowledge potentially available to man is greater than any one man could begin to acquire in his own lifespan; every man gains an incalculable benefit from the knowledge discovered by others.
The second great benefit is the division of labor: it enables a man to devote his effort to a particular field of work and to trade with others who specialize in other fields. This form of cooperation allows all men who take part in it to achieve a greater knowledge, skill and productive return on their effort than they could achieve if each had to produce everything he needs, on a desert island or on a self-sustaining farm”
It seems quite evident to me that the social existence Rand describes above cannot be derived from a narrow, naive conception of self-interest such as is usually understood in the formulation of ethical egoism.
Consider these words from a review of Smith’s “Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics”:
“Those who think of Ayn Rand as the icon of callow youths rather than a serious moral philosopher are unlikely to recognize the Rand whom Smith presents to us. Drawing on Rand’s novels, lectures, essays, and letters, Smith shows that her ethical theory is a form of naturalistic eudaimonism, which shares some features with the Aristotelian virtue ethics of Hursthouse and Foot, but differs from them in its unapologetic ethical egoism. *** This egoism is, however, as Smith argues, non-predatory and can accommodate helping others, genuine friendship, and even in certain circumstances risking one’s life for another. ***”
http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=8123
I recall a scene near the end of “Atlas Shrugged” where Galt thanks Rearden (who was wounded during Galt’s rescue) for rescuing him. Rearden replies to Galt: “I did it for my own sake”. Galt replies: “That’s why I thanked you.”
That is, acting selfishly, for one’s own sake, sometimes motivates *apparent* altruistic actions.
…
Chris Rorke wrote: “(I give up a small amount of my time to do something that helps someone a lot, and later someone gives up a small amount of time to do something that helps me a lot, so I gain overall). *** This idea is, however, of course, entirely foreign to Objectivism. ***”
Really? That’s news to me and probably most other Objectivists. See above.
Even if it is true that helping someone else can in the long run be in my self-interest, this is no way means that hurting someone else cannot be.
The “narrow, naive” formulation “I always ought to act in my own self-interest” would allow me to help others (like Galt, in the novel) who it would be in my interest to help. Self-interest alone, no matter how broadly construed, would not prevent me from robbing someone. Your “dividing by zero” rests on the assumption that theft can never be in my self-interest in the same that “destroying the universe” cannot be. This is simply not true.
I did not claim that “I always ought to act in my self-interest” does not allow me to help others. I claimed that it does not prevent me from harming others if it is in my self-interest.
The section I quoted at the end is different from what you describe because according to “I ought to act only in my self-interest,” helping another person does not imply that the person will later help me. That is, Rearden can only help Galt if Galt will later do something simply because it is in Galt’s self-interest but happens to also be in Rearden’s self-interest.
For example, imagine two people who will never do anything in each others’ self-interest. If one is injured, the other has no reason to help them out of mere self-interest if they expect the other to act according to the same principle. Only the broader principle “I ought to act in my self-interest, judged by my own actions and what would happen if others acted likewise” would cause them to help each other, generating mutual gain out of a previously neutral relationship.
I’m quite baffled by your refusal to admit that, if I am starving and cannot find employment, it is in my self-interest to steal a loaf of bread. This is not a ridiculous scenario, and, in fact, any scenarios in which it is not in my self-interest are pretty outrageous (e.g., the man from whom I have stolen is also starving, and, if I had not caused him to starve in my place by stealing his food, he would have gone on to do things that are more in my self-interest than me avoiding starvation).
@ Chris Rorke
The more you press your point the clearer it is that you are running in circles, because you have turned the context on its head.
You are trying to invalidate an ethical principle on the grounds of various social consequences that you assert cannot support it. The fallacy in that is that ethical principles are defined solely in the context of the base unit of humanity, the individual.
Ethics is not a social science. Politics is, but that science consists of the application to social contexts of ethical principles that are already validated independent of any social considerations. If that ethics is properly validated then it could not possibly be diminished in any way by any consequence of its application to the social context.
The ethical principle that one should act in his rational self interest is established by two facts: 1. Life qua man is the proper goal of men and the standard of all value. 2. Reason applied to action is man’s only means to achieve it.
If you want to challenge acting in one’s rational self interest as an ethical mandate you must challenge the factuality of those two conclusions first. Nothing else is relevant to the validity of rational egoism.
After agreeing on those two points, we can proceed to discuss the values man must seek in order to flourish and then the virtues that are the kinds of actions by which one can gain those values.
Only after that entire process is concluded, and everyone is in complete agreement would it be appropriate to raise the issue of how one would apply all of that to stealing and “getting away with it.”
Michael, it is entirely logically sound for me to use the argument:
A implies B
Not B
Therefore, Not A
If the principle “I ought to act only in my own self-interest” is true, then it is ethical to murder just because it is in my self-interest.
It is not ethical to murder just because it is in my self-interest.
Therefore, the principle “I ought to act only in my own self-interest” is false.
It is also possible, as you said, to challenge the principle on its derivation from first principles. I have already done so by posting this link: http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/rand5.htm
Given how long it’s taken to argue with each individual faulty inference (e.g., “I must often act according to general principles” does not imply “I must always act according to general principles”), I think it’s understandable that I opted eventually for the route I did with theft/murder. Unless you really want to bite the bullet and say “It is ethical to murder just because it is in your self-interest,” then the argument must end here. If you accept this argument, then my only way of disproving Objectivism would be to work through all of Rand’s attempted proof, which I may not have the time to do.
So the question is: Do you believe it is ethical to murder just because it is in your self-interest?
In other words, it’s as if you were to claim “The sum of two prime numbers is always even,” and would not accept it as a disproof if I were to say “2 + 3 = 5″ and demanded a general proof from first principles, which is, of course, possible, but less convenient.
Chris Rorke wrote: “I’m quite baffled by your refusal to admit that, if I am starving and cannot find employment, it is in my self-interest to steal a loaf of bread.”
To be at once a self-declared expert on Objectivist ethics while being evidently unfamiliar with Rand’s “The Ethics of Emergencies” strains credulity.
Moreover, why do you, in your latest response to MichaelM, continue to paraphrase Michael Huemer’s argument against ethical egoism?
On more than one occasion here, I have, citing Rand’s and other’s writings, shown that Objectivist ethics is not “I ought to act only in my own self-interest”.
Huemer writes:
“Central to Rand’s ideal of benevolent egoism are the following two principles:
P1: I should never sacrifice myself for the benefit of others.
P2: I should never sacrifice others for the benefit of myself.”
Huemer ‘gets’ it, why can’t you?
This was fun for awhile but I’m quite convinced now that you are not being quite honest here. You should lay your cards on the table.
P1: I should never sacrifice myself for the benefit of others.
P2: I should never sacrifice others for the benefit of myself.
P1 only means that I ought to avoid harming myself because it helps others. It does not mean that I ought to avoid harming myself in order to harm others, such as is the case if I act out of spite.
P2 only means that I ought to avoid harming others because it helps me. It does not mean that I ought to avoid harming others even if it isn’t in my self-interest, such as irrational murder that sentences me to the death penalty.
This is even worse than the formulation “I ought to act in my own self-interest.”
If you want to avoid absurd conclusions about harming everyone including yourself, you need to phrase it in a positive manner. However, having two claims of such as:
P1: I ought to act in my own self-interest.
P2: I ought to avoid harming others for my own self-interest.
is self-contradictory.
You cannot avoid this problem with a statement involving both your own self-interest and the self-interest of others.
*You cannot avoid this problem without a statement involving both your own self-interest and the self-interest of others.
An example would be: “I ought to act in my own self-interest unless it harms others.”
This is contrary to Objectivism’s egoism, though.
The ethical conclusions you are describing are best matched by the criteria:
1.) I ought to help myself unless it harms others (this includes helping others if it ends up helping me)
2.) I ought to not harm others for any reason
3.) I ought to not harm myself for any reason (understood in its long term context)
The “unless it harms others” clause in 1 is necessary to avoid it being inconsistent with 2.
These certainly do not seem like the axioms that Objectivist ethics start with.
I’m going away for the weekend and will be away from this, but in the meantime, in order to salvage rational egoism, you need to find a set of premises that:
Require me to help myself unless it harms others
Require me to help others if it helps me
Forbid me from helping others if it does not help me
Forbid me from harming myself for any reason (whether it is in the interest of others or the interest of noone at all)
Forbid me from harming others for any reason (whether it is in my own interest or the interest of noone at all)
So far I have shown that:
“I ought to act in my own self-interest” allows hurting others.
“I ought to avoid hurting others because it helps me and avoid hurting myself because it helps others” allows hurting others if it hurts me and hurting myself if it hurts others.
However, “I ought to act help myself unless it hurts others and help others unless it hurts myself” solves the problem if we toss the requirement that I cannot help others unless it helps me. In principle all of the required actions listed at the start could be premises, but that seems like an absurd number of premises. What smaller set of premises proves the complete set and can be said to be proven by Rand?
I, of course, am ignoring the case of emergency situations when I say one cannot harm others for any reason at all (the case of someone breaking into my house, for example, should allow me to harm the person in self-defense). This changes it to “I should not harm others except in certain emergency cases.”
I’m sorry for the multiple posts. This is my last.
“Michael, it is entirely logically sound for me to use the argument:
A implies B
Not B
Therefore, Not A”
Yes, except that A — “I ought to act only in my own self-interest” — does not imply B — “it is ethical to murder”.
Your problem is not logic. It is identity. You don’t have a grip on the concepts you are juggling, so your logic is wasted effort. You consistently misrepresent the Objectivist ethics by dropping Rand’s qualification of self-interest as “rational”. Usually, that doesn’t matter, because everyone familiar with the text of Rand knows that when not stated, it is implicit.
If one does not state or imply it and mean it, the statement “I ought only to act in my own self-interest” could condone subjective assessments of self-interest that could easily include theft and murder. But “rational self interest” requires that all values pursued to that end be consistent with objective identifications of what constitutes life and value to it.
This further supports my contention in Jan14 3:21pm that your arguments are taking place in a context that is divorced from the context of the Objectivist ethics, in particular the sequence in which it is derived within the philosophy as a whole system. The necessity for objectivity is an epistemological conclusion that is presupposed in any discussion of ethics. The necessity to act in one’s rational self-interest is an ethical conclusion that is presupposed in any discussion of social interrelationships. That you cannot logically integrate subjective evaluations into that structure is your flaw, not one of Rand or her ethics.
I only have time for point one right now:
Initiating action that is likely to result in my death or incarceration is not in the interest of my life.
Your response I believe says “Well my death on the bank floor would simply be a consequence. I will die happy knowing I stuck to my Objectivist moral imperative to rob since that was in My Selfish Self Interest.”
Unpacked version: “Well my death on the bank floor would simply be a consequence. The harm done to the bank is also only a consequence as is the death of the guard I shot. These did not enter into the a priori evaluation of the morality of my act. I acted without inclination and I did my duty. The consequences are of no concern. I will die happy knowing I stuck to my Objectivist moral imperative to rob out of non-inclined duty since that was in My Selfish Self Interest.”
Thie peculiar world-view that humans think this way is something I have long watched in those attempting to see the world through Kant’s eyes.
John- It is not that the consequences are of no concern. It is that the consequences are the result of your own failure to properly carry out your action. If I try to drive to the grocery store and crash into a tree on the way there, it doesn’t mean it was in my self-interest to go to the store. The problem is that I didn’t drive to the store (I drove into a tree). If I try to rob a bank at night and set off a security alarm, then I haven’t done the thing that’s in my self-interest.
The Kantian point is that I cannot totally control what actions I perform, since I can’t control every external event. I cannot prevent crashing into a deer that runs out into the street on my way to the store (Instead of going to the store I crashed into a deer – I can’t control that). Thus, we have to push the moral principle back to the intent of the action and not the action itself.
Chris, your continued attempts to cast Rand’s normative ethics into a single normative principle, divorced from the context of Objectivism as a whole, reveals how little you ‘get’ Objectivism.
At least Michael Huemer has made some effort to understand Objectivism. You, evidently, have not.
But, a program to ‘disprove’ Objectivist ethics without actually understanding it is the program of an arrogant fool.
While MichaelM and John Donohue may find some value continuing this thread with you, I no longer do.
It’s now clear to me that your program is to take a complex set of ideas (Ayn Rand’s normative ethics) and, without making the effort to understand these ideas in their proper context, cast them into some kind of ’sound-bite’ form, devoid of context, that you can then claim to disprove.
At the very least, take the time to read and re-read “Viable Values” to get some understanding of the foundation, the context, upon which Objectivist ethics is constructed.
Alfred, the only reason I am hanging in here is that I am studying the Categorical Imperative. This discussion has not been about Ayn Rand, as you pointed out. Great to meet you in passing.
“The Kantian point is that I cannot totally control what actions I perform, since I can’t control every external event. I cannot prevent crashing into a deer that runs out into the street on my way to the store (Instead of going to the store I crashed into a deer – I can’t control that).”
Gibberish.
An inability to control external events has nothing to do with controlling your own actions. You cannot alter the results of external events that affect you if and when application of your reason to your actions does not suffice to alter or prevent them.
Consider the moral principle that you must think and act rationally. The exercise of that action produces the knowledge that deer cross roads at night without stopping for oncoming cars. Applying that knowledge when you drive at night, you drive slower and with extreme attentiveness and don’t hit any deer.
If you choose to take the risk of driving at a speed at which you could be unable to stop and subsequently hit a deer, it will not be because you cannot control your actions. Your choice to take the risk was entirely controlled by you. Even ignorance that there are deer in the area is a deficiency of rational actions you could have chosen, even if only for a lack of time. But it is not for a lack of control of your actions.
” Thus, we have to push the moral principle back to the intent of the action and not the action itself.”
And now are you suggesting that we should abandon exercising reason as the primary virtue and means to gain the values necessary for a successful life and instead join you in maintaining that just the mere intention to be rational will suffice in that task?
Alfred, I am not trying to reduce it to a “sound bite.” All I am asking for is a clear expression of the ethical principle by which Rand claims to derive all of these moral claims. In the Objectivist Ethics, Rand argues along the basic lines:
All values relate to an organism’s ability to live or die
The organism can live or die
It ought to value its life and try to live
Therefore it ought to act in its self-interest
Since this ethical “proof” rests on the fact of reality that one can live or die and ought to live, then its moral content is reduced to the extraordinarily crude “I ought to always act in the way that most increases my chances of living.” It is true that it does not condone apparently selfish actions that actually harm you, but this still seems contradictory to the line of argument that “You can still sacrifice your life for the life of your child because all Rand is saying that you should not sacrifice a higher value for a lower value, and you are allowed to value your child’s life.” In The Objectivist Ethics, values are rationally determined and relate only to your ability to survive. Either your child will or will not in the long term help you to survive, and you ought to act accordingly. Sacrificing your life for your child is obviously not helping you survive, so it is not allowed.
So, in The Objectivist Ethics, the only value is your own life. Yet, somehow you are supposed to be able to prove that you ought to respect the lives of others. How do you prove such a claim? Objectivists try to argue “Well, it’s actually not in your self-interest to murder,” why it is entirely possible that it is. Re-interpreting the scenario “What if I steal when I am starving” as an “emergency scenario” in no way proves that it is never in my self-interest to steal in “non-emergency situations.”
Then, we have claims from Atlas Shrugged that imply that it is ethical to kill human beings who are too cowardly to make decisions:
“Calmly and impersonally, she, who would have hesitated to fire at an animal, pulled the trigger and fired straight at the heart of a man who had wanted to exist without the responsibility of consciousness.”
Rand does not argue systematically or rigorously. Self-interest is the obvious foundation of Objectivism, but when asked why it is not in your self-interest to lie, Objectivists argue that you need general principle for it to really be in your self interest. When this is shown to not work, they claim well Rand really says that it’s not okay to sacrifice others to yourself, without showing how it is possible derive “I ought to not sacrifice others to myself” from “The only thing I ought to value is my own life since it is a presupposition of all of my values.” If you ask if it’s allowable for a mother to sacrifice herself for the life of her child, suddenly value isn’t the only value; all Rand is claiming is that you oughtn’t to sacrifice a higher value for a lower value. How these values are themselves determined is unknown, though presumably it must be a different criteria because it is never in the interest of my survival to sacrifice my life.
I have done nothing more than compile the ethical claims that Rand makes:
My life is the basis of all of my values and I should therefore always act in my self-interest.
I should never harm others to help myself.
I should never harm myself to help others.
It’s okay to harm myself for my child if it is a high enough value for me.
These are mutually contradictory and are not all derivable from The Objectivist Ethics. Pointing out that Rand made certain assertions about how people ought to act does not make those ethical claims fits into her system. As a system, it is not consistently constructed, which is why I have asked for a formulation that would prove all of the ethical claims she makes. Asking for such a formulation does not oversimplify anything. If we need to decide to determine whether an action is ethical or not in Objectivism, how do we determine? Going through everything Rand wrote and finding her claim about it does not make it fit into a rational framework. I have focused on “I ought always to act in my own self-interest” as the formulation because that seems closest to what she was trying to prove in the Objectivst Ethics. Pointing out her claims about not harming others does not mean she was saying something different in that work. Furthermore, how does one deal with statements like:
“Calmly and impersonally, she, who would have hesitated to fire at an animal, pulled the trigger and fired straight at the heart of a man who had wanted to exist without the responsibility of consciousness”?
This is my last comment on this thread.
Failing any questions from others, I too will close out my participation in the thread. It is actually not a bad ending. Chris’s summary position in closing is remarkably closer to a good understanding of Rand’s ethics than any comment he has made heretofore. There is still the deeper problem of the attempt to smuggle in false a priori evaluations of self interest. There is no solution to that other than to devour “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” and the sections on epistemology and ethics in Peikoff’s “Objectivism: The Philosophy Of Ayn Rand”.
In the comment at hand his assumptions concerning the parent-child relationship are askew. The primary value to a parent’s life to be derived from raising a child is the fulfillment of the obligation to take responsibility for one’s actions — to raise the helpless creature one has created to self-sufficiency. Additionally there is the value of productivity, and the value of externalizing (concretizing) one’s relationship to oneself in the extension of oneself that children can be. In no case is anything a parent does in the rearing of a child under any but the most extreme circumstances to be considered as a sacrifice. As I have said, rational love is not a gift. It is payment for shared values manifested. Parent-child love must be earned by each just as any love must be.
Given the enormous value one could amass for one’s child per the above, it should not be too hard to grasp the rationality of a parent’s willingness to take equally enormous risks to protect and preserve the child’s life. That does not get anywhere near sacrifice. The extreme and remote possibility that one could be in a situation in which that effort would migrate from being a monumental risk to being certainty of death in order to preserve one’s child is a situation requiring emergency ethics. But that situation does not change the deepest base of ethics, only the nature of the actions required.
The only rational judgment that could justify that action for a child or any other human being who is one’s highest value next to oneself is the judgment that life is not worth living without that person. A plausible situation would be if you were in part the cause of the danger they are in.
If your child is trapped in a burning building, the choice to go in to the rescue has to involve a judgment of the chances one or both will come out alive that would make the attempt a selfish act at enormous risk instead of a willful sacrifice. But failing the judgment that one would not be willing to live without the child, going to one’s certain death on the oft chance one could pull out a (badly burned) child from the flames would be irrational. You would be attempting to rescue a value by an act that would end your ability to value.
————————–
Re the question of the starving man who steals the food to survive, the social application of the requirement to act in one’s rational self interest also must remain intact. If you are caught without food in a blizzard in the mountains and come upon a cabin, your ethics applied to politics would under normal circumstances require you to honor the owner’s property rights and move on. If, however, your best judgment says that death from freezing and hunger would be certain if you continue, then ethically, you must break in and eat enough food to survive the storm. Afterwards you must find the owner and reimburse him for the food and any damages.
The principle here is that the purpose of defining an ethic is for the sake of extending and perfecting your life. That purpose requires you to sustain the political principle guaranteeing the property rights of others. But in an emergency situation the choice (as in the fire above) is suddenly different. It is between honoring rights for the sake of your life by taking an action that will end your life. That is the same irrational contradiction as in the case of the child and the fire.
Thus, the ethical caveat is:
one may not ever define an ethical or political principle to enable the perfection of one’s life in such a way that sustaining it would result in the destruction of that life. The ethics of emergencies is that part of ethics that prescribes the proper actions in just such situations.
Chris Rorke wrote: “Rand argues along the basic lines:
All values relate to an organism’s ability to live or die
The organism can live or die
It ought to value its life and try to live
Therefore it ought to act in its self-interest
Since this ethical “proof” rests on the fact of reality that one can live or die and ought to live, then its moral content is reduced to the extraordinarily crude “I ought to always act in the way that most increases my chances of living.”
This is not correct, Chris.
(1) “It ought to value its life and try to live”
No, the choice to live is a fundamental, pre-rational, pre-moral choice. There is no “one ought to choose to live” because that implies the question “why?”. It is the *fact* that one chooses to live that establishes one’s life as an end unto itself, life as the standard of value. (What “choose to live” actually means is itself also a complex issue).
Smith writes:
“When it comes to human beings and moral value, however, it is important to understand that life is the standard of value *if* a person seeks life.”
(2) “Therefore it ought to act in its self-interest”
No, if one chooses to live, reality *demands* the pursuit of values.
Smith writes:
“*If* a person seeks life (embraces that purpose), then, given the facts of human nature and needs (reality), he *must* pursue certain values.”
Let’s make sure this is clear – if one chooses to live, one *must* (not ought) pursue certain values.
The normative aspect, the moral code, the “ought”, is based in value.
Smith writes:
“A proper moral code sets forth the values and virtues essential to human life. It identifies values that *must* be achieved in order to realize one’s highest end, and it identifies the kinds of actions that are most productive of those values. On that basis, it provides principles to follow and virtues to cultivate.”
(3) “its moral content is reduced to the extraordinarily crude “I ought to always act in the way that most increases my chances of living.””
Not even close. Something closer is “I ought to live well” where I use well in the sense of adeptly, expertly, proficiently.
Smith writes:
“Self-interest refers to a person’s psychological well-being as much as his physical well-being. … A person’s well-being is, at core, a matter of *how* he leads his life rather than how much he acquires.”
Chris, *if* understanding Objectivist ethics is important to you, you really, really need to read “Viable Values”.
Last post. Really.