Objectivist ethics

The Objectivist ethics is a subset of the Objectivist philosophy formulated by Ayn Rand. Rand defined "ethics" as "a code of values to guide man's choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life." She sometimes referred to the Objectivist ethics in particular as "selfishness," as reflected in the title of her primary book on ethics, "The Virtue of Selfishness". However, she did not use that term with the negative connotations that it usually has, but to refer to a form of rational egoism.

Rand summarized her ethical theories by writing [Rand, Ayn. "Atlas Shrugged," Dutton, 1957/1992, p. 1018 (Galt's speech)] :

Unlike many other philosophers, Ayn Rand limited the scope of ethics to the derivation of principles needed in all contexts, whether one is alone or with others.

Meta-ethics

The Objectivist ethic begins with a meta-ethical question: why do human beings "need" a code of values? The Objectivist answer is that humans need such a code in order to survive as human beings.

Objectivism maintains that human beings cannot act automatically to further their own survival. For man, the conceptual faculty is his tool for survival. An organism that possesses a faculty of sensation relies on its pleasure-pain mechanism; an animal that operates at the level of perception can use its perceptions to instinctively go through its essentially cyclic life; but a human being must rely on an integrated whole of his perceptual (rooted in sensations) and conceptual faculties.

Ayn Rand also recognized that in humans, who are "conscious" organisms, the motivation to pursue life is experienced as the pursuit of a "conscious state" - the pursuit of "happiness." Indeed, in her one-sentence summary of Objectivism (see Objectivism (Ayn Rand)) Ayn Rand condensed her ethics into the statement that man properly lives "with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life." According to Objectivist epistemology states of mind, such as happiness, are not primary; they are the consequence of specific facts of existence. Therefore man needs an objective, principled "standard," grounded in the facts of reality, to guide him in the pursuit of this purpose. Rand regarded happiness as a biological faculty evolved from the pleasure-pain mechanism of pre-human animals. This faculty functions as an instrument providing a continuous measurement of how successful one is at meeting the challenge of life. As she wrote in "The Virtue of Selfishness" (23, pb 27)

Just as the pleasure-pain mechanism of man's body is an automatic indicator of his body's welfare or injury, a barometer of its basic alternative, life or death - so the emotional mechanism of man's consciousness is geared to perform the same function, as a barometer that registers the same alternative by means of two basic emotions: joy or suffering.

Values

Since Objectivism holds that operating at the conceptual level remains volitional for the duration of one's life, it follows that human beings require a code of values—an ethic—in order to guide them in making the choices and taking the actions that will not only keep them biologically alive but preserve and enhance their status as fully human beings. For Objectivism, a "human being" who is not operating at the conceptual level is not, in the proper sense of the word, conscious, and indeed is not even properly human: by lapsing from the conceptual level, a human being "can" turn himself into a subhuman creature."

The purpose of Objectivist ethics, then, is to guide human beings in becoming and remaining "fully human"—or, in Rand's language, in promoting their survival as "man "qua" man". In so doing, it adopts life—the specifically human form of life—as its standard.

"Value" is understood as anything which a living organism seeks to gain or keep. The purpose of Objectivist ethics as applied by any particular human agent is the attainment of this human agent's own happiness, by preservation and enhancement of the agent's own life. Proper or "rational" values, therefore, are those values that one reasonably expects will preserve and enhance one's life. Thus, Objectivism contends that "value" is meaningless except as "my value," which makes no sense apart from the pursuit of "my life". Here the Objectivist trichotomy reappears: Objectivism rejects both "intrinsicism" and "subjectivism" with regard to values just as with regard to concepts. On the Objectivist account, value (or the "good") is not "intrinsic" to external reality, but neither is it "subjective" (again meaning "arbitrary"); the term "good" denotes an objective "evaluation" of some aspect of reality with respect to a goal, namely, the preservation and enhancement of one's own life. In making this argument, Rand claimed to have solved David Hume's famous is-ought problem of bridging the gap between empirical facts and moral requirements.

Values proper to the pursuit of the individual's life include, as a proper subset, values that are universal in the sense of being indispensable for "life qua man." These universal human values must include the preservation of one's own "individual rights," which Rand defined as "conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival." [Rand, Ayn. "Atlas Shrugged," Dutton, 1957/1992, p. 1061 (Galt's speech)] This concept of universally human "individual rights" is one of the foundations, in Objectivist ethics, of Objectivist politics. Conversely, if something is "not" a condition necessary for life qua man (that is, if it is not an individual right) then it may be a value to some individuals, but not to everyone. Leonard Peikoff calls these non-universal values, that is values specific to the particular individual, "optional" [Peikoff, Leonard. "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand," Meridian 1991/1993, p.323] (this term is not found in Ayn Rand's own published writings.)

Objectivism defines a "duty" as a moral obligation to an external authority that is to be obeyed independently of one's own judgement. Objectivism therefore maintains that the notion "duty" divorces value from its context in life (and therefore is an "anti-concept"). Under the ethics of rational egoism, one has no obligations other than those one has "voluntarily" chosen. According to Objectivism, not even the direct needs of one's own life are mandatory obligations as the "voluntary" "choice to live" is the fundamental choice from which all other ethical requirements flow.Fact|date=September 2007

Virtue

In Objectivist terminology, a "virtue" is a principled habit by which one actually gains or keeps one's values. It is in this sense of the word that Objectivism speaks of the "virtue of selfishness:" adopting one's own happiness as one's ultimate moral purpose, pursuing one's own "life" as the standard by which one acts to achieve that purpose, and then making the specific choices and taking the specific actions that implement one's "fundamental choice to live," is an achievement worthy of moral respect. It is in this sense that Rand wrote, "Man is a being of self-made soul."

In fact, Rand does not list "selfishness" among Objectivism's primary values. The "primary values" of Objectivism are "reason, purpose, and self-esteem," and the "virtues" by which these are achieved are said to be "rationality", "productiveness," and "pride." According to Rand, it is "productiveness" (the principled habit of working to create values that maintain and enhance one's life) that is the virtue most central to a rational human being's life, "reason" is its precondition, and "pride" is its outcome.Fact|date=September 2007

Rejection of altruism

Objectivism rejects as immoral any action taken for some ultimate purpose external to oneself. In particular, it rejects as immoral any variant of "altruism." By "altruism" Rand means any doctrine according to which one must justify his or her existence by service to others. According to Objectivism, to be ethical or moral, an action or choice can only have the "acting or choosing agent" as its primary intended beneficiary. Any claim that "you should/must do this" is open to the objection, "Why should I?"—and if the proposed imperative is of no benefit to oneself, then that objection is unanswerable.Fact|date=September 2007 Objectivism especially opposes any ethical demand for sacrifice, where sacrifice is considered the giving up of a greater value for a lesser one.

An ethic of "existential" self-interest is espoused; that is, of choices and actions that are rationally optimized to promote one's life qua human being "in reality," not of choices and actions that one merely "presumes" or "hopes" will further their self-interest. The Objectivist ethic can be called one of "rational self-interest" (rational egoism) on the grounds that only by the exercise of "reason" can one discover what is truly of value to oneself in reality.Fact|date=September 2007

See also

* Objectivist movement
* Objectivist philosophy

Footnotes

References

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External links

* [http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Ethics_Main.html The Importance of Philosophy] and [http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Evil_Main.html] : sections on Objectivist ethics