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| Objectivism maintains that, alone among all the species of which we know, human beings do not automatically act to further their own survival. A plant seems to have no awareness of any kind and simply grows automatically; 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 muddle its way through its essentially cyclic life; but a human being, who at least potentially operates at the conceptual level, lives a life that consists of an integrated whole. | Objectivism maintains that, alone among all the species of which we know, human beings do not automatically act to further their own survival. A plant seems to have no awareness of any kind and simply grows automatically; 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 muddle its way through its essentially cyclic life; but a human being, who at least potentially operates at the conceptual level, lives a life that consists of an integrated whole. | ||
| Objectivism recognizes, of course, that biologically a human being can survive in a physical sense without operating at the conceptual level at all. Indeed, Objectivism regards the conceptual level as a volitional achievement that not everyone in fact attains. In speaking of "survival" here |
Objectivism recognizes, of course, that biologically a human being can survive in a physical sense without operating at the conceptual level at all. Indeed, Objectivism regards the conceptual level as a volitional achievement that not everyone in fact attains. In speaking of "survival" here Objectivism is speaking of survival ''as'' a "human being" — that is, as a being that ''has'' realized its cognitive potential and attained the conceptual level. It is at ''this'' level, Objectivism says, that a life is the sort of continuous whole proper to a human being. | ||
| 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 ]) 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 ] |
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 ]) 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 ] 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 '']'' (23, pb 27)<blockquote>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.</blockquote>That is, the faculty of happiness continuously provides one's consciousness with a current measurement of one's success on the continuum between full life and actual death (by analogy with the barometer, which continuously provides the current measurement of atmospheric pressure.) The measurement provided by the faculty of happiness is experienced as emotion on the continuum between joy and suffering. To achieve happiness (the ''purpose,'') one must recognize, choose, and pursue that which preserves and enhances one's life (the ''standard.'') | ||
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This article is about Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy. For information about the general ethical position that certain acts are objectively right or wrong, see instead Moral objectivism.
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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:
To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason, Purpose, Self-esteem.
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, alone among all the species of which we know, human beings do not automatically act to further their own survival. A plant seems to have no awareness of any kind and simply grows automatically; 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 muddle its way through its essentially cyclic life; but a human being, who at least potentially operates at the conceptual level, lives a life that consists of an integrated whole.
Objectivism recognizes, of course, that biologically a human being can survive in a physical sense without operating at the conceptual level at all. Indeed, Objectivism regards the conceptual level as a volitional achievement that not everyone in fact attains. In speaking of "survival" here Objectivism is speaking of survival as a "human being" — that is, as a being that has realized its cognitive potential and attained the conceptual level. It is at this level, Objectivism says, that a life is the sort of continuous whole proper to a human being.
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.
That is, the faculty of happiness continuously provides one's consciousness with a current measurement of one's success on the continuum between full life and actual death (by analogy with the barometer, which continuously provides the current measurement of atmospheric pressure.) The measurement provided by the faculty of happiness is experienced as emotion on the continuum between joy and suffering. To achieve happiness (the purpose,) one must recognize, choose, and pursue that which preserves and enhances one's life (the standard.)
Values
Main article: Objectivist theory of valueSince 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." 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" (this term is not found in Ayn Rand's own published writings.)
Objectivism regards the concept of "duty" as one that divorces value from its context in life (and therefore is an "anti-concept"). On its Objectivist definition, a "duty" is a moral obligation rooted in nothing more than obedience to an external authority and independent of one's goals and desires. Such a supposed moral obligation Objectivism sees as particularly destructive; according to Objectivism, one has no obligations other than those one has voluntarily assumed. Even obligations rooted directly in the needs of one's own life count as "voluntary" in this sense, for Objectivism regards the "choice to live" as the fundamental choice from which all other ethical requirements flow.
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:" the Objectivist view is that 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 virtues. 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.
Rejection of altruism
Objectivism rejects as immoral any action taken for some ultimate purpose external to oneself. In particular, Objectivism 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.
Objectivism especially opposes any ethical demand for sacrifice. Objectivism uses this term in a special sense: a "sacrifice", according to its Objectivist definition, is the giving up of a greater value for a lesser one. (In other contexts, for example in baseball or chess, the term "sacrifice" is used to mean the giving up of a lesser or shorter-term value for the sake of a greater or longer-term one. Objectivism does not regard such an exchange as a genuine "sacrifice" in the moral/ethical sense.)
According to Nathaniel Branden's interpretation of Objectivist ethics, rejecting "altruism" does not entail rejecting benevolence, which he defines as "mutual helpfulness and mutual aid between human beings". He adds that an "ethic of self-interest logically must advocate the principle of benevolence and mutual aid", and asserts that it is a virtue to "assist those who are struggling for life" and to "seek to alleviate suffering".
Not all superficially self-interested actions count as moral, however. Objectivism espouses an ethic of existential self-interest; 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 do so. 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.
"Social ethics"
Because of the root of the concept ("polis" means "society," not "government") Ayn Rand considered all issues of social relations and institutions (including, but not limited to, the proper functions of government) to be the subject of politics rather than of ethics as such. Accordingly, discussion of harmony of interests (or "conflict" of interests,) of the principle of non-initiation of force, and of "emergency situations" are treated by Objectivists as pertaining to Objectivist politics.
See also
Footnotes
- Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged, Dutton, 1957/1992, p. 1018 (Galt's speech)
- Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged, Dutton, 1957/1992, p. 1061 (Galt's speech)
- Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, Meridian 1991/1993, p.323
- http://www.nathanielbranden.com/catalog/articles_essays/benefits_and_hazards.html
References
- Rand, Ayn (1964). The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. New York: New American Library. ISBN 0-451-16393-1.
- Rand, Ayn (1992). Atlas Shrugged (35th Anniversary Edition). New York: New American Library. ISBN 0-451-19114-5.
- Smith, Tara (2000). Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-8476-9760-6.
- Biddle, Craig (2002). Loving Life: The Morality Of Self-Interest And The Facts That Support It. Glen Allen, Virginia: Glen Allen Press. ISBN 0-9713737-0-1.