Objectivist ethics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
-
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.
| Part of the Philosophy series on Objectivism |
|
Important groups Important figures Special topics Related |
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. Her philosophical principles for dealing rationally with others are derived in Objectivist politics.
Contents |
[edit] 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, however, 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, however, 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.)
[edit] Values
Since operating at the conceptual level remains volitional for the duration of one's life, Objectivism holds, 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 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.
However, the purpose of Objectivist ethics as applied by any particular human being is the preservation of that person's own life (again, as man qua man). In this context, Objectivism seeks to differentiate between the "standard" and the "purpose" of ethics, adopting "life" as its standard and "one's own life" as its purpose.
"Value", again, is understood as anything which a living organism seeks to gain or keep. Objectivism contends that values make no sense without a single "ultimate value" — and argues that this ultimate value is, for each person, that person's own life.
Objectivism contends that "value" makes no sense apart from the context of "life". Here the Objectivist trichotomy reappears: Objectivism rejects both "intrinsicism" and "subjectivism" with regard to values just as with regard to universals. 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 life of the human being with respect to whom the evaluation is made. 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.
Objectivism regards the concept of "duty" as one that divorces value from its context in life (and therefore as 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.
[edit] Criticism
Critics have responded that the Objectivist argument does not solve the is-ought problem or prove that one's life is the ultimate value. For example, Robert Nozick argues that there is nothing, a priori, irrational about taking something other than life as the ultimate value. However, Objectivism does not say there is moral requirement to choose to value life. As Allan Gotthelf points out, for Rand "It is in choosing life that a man establishes his own life as his ultimate value...Moral 'imperatives' are thus all of them hypothetical. There are no 'categorical imperatives,' no unchosen duties. Morality rests on a fundamential, pre-moral choice."[1] In the Objectivist argument, it is simply assumed that the purpose of ethics is to preserve one's status as a human being (in the Objectivist sense), but many people predicate their ethical thinking on other premises, and Objectivism makes only very vague attempts to explain why they are wrong, if they are. For instance, Rand claims that the concept of life is "metaphysically prior" to the concept of value, and so values must aim at preserving life. But, as Nozick points out, this argument would need significant additional material to be logically sound. Pain is prior to the concept of pain relief, but that does not entail that the aim of pain relief should be to preserve pain. Thus, many mainstream philosophers hold that most of the substantive content of Objectivist ethics is merely asserted in its premises, and that it does not deduce its controversial conclusions from premises acceptable to most philosophers.
The cognitive psychologist Albert Ellis was a noted critic of Objectivist ethics, writing Is Objectivism a Religion? in 1968.
[edit] Virtue
In Objectivist parlance, a "virtue" is any act by which one gains or keeps a value. 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 life as one's ultimate ethical purpose, and then making the specific choices and taking the specific actions that implement that 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, Objectivism does not list "selfishness" among its official virtues. The "values" officially recognized by Objectivism are "reason," "purpose," and "self-esteem," and the "virtues" by which these are achieved are said to be "rationality", "productiveness," and "pride." Objectivism maintains that productiveness — work productive of objective value — is the central purpose of a rational human being's life, reason its precondition, pride its outcome.
[edit] Rejection of altruism
Objectivism rejects as immoral any action taken for some other ultimate purpose. In particular it rejects as immoral any variant of what it calls "altruism" — by which it means, essentially, any ethical doctrine according to which a human being must justify his or her existence by service to others. According to Objectivism, every ethical or moral action has the agent as its primary beneficiary.
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 worlds of discourse, for example baseball and chess, the term 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.")
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". [1]
Not all superficially self-interested actions count as moral, however. Objectivism espouses an ethic of genuine self-interest — that is, of choices and actions that genuinely do promote one's life qua human being, not merely those that we think or hope may do so. The Objectivist ethic can be called one of "rational self-interest" (rational egoism) on the grounds that human beings must discover, through reason, what genuinely is of value to them.
[edit] "Conflicts" of interest
Objectivism rejects the possibility of a conflict of interest between two rational individuals under normal circumstances (though it may happen in emergencies). Ordinarily, if human beings behave rationally, do not claim what they have not earned, and recognize that rational, productive human beings are of tremendous value to one another as trading partners, no irresoluble conflicts will arise.
[edit] Non-initiation of force principle
This claim is the one on which the Objectivist political theory is largely founded. On the premise that no such conflicts are possible and that a world of peaceful trade is of benefit to all rational agents, Objectivism supports a "principle of nonaggression." This principle is one of the most important moral rules of Objectivism. "Whatever may be open to disagreement," wrote Rand, "there is one act of evil that may not, that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate — do you hear me? No man may start — the use of physical force against others."
Rand's reasoning is that since man's mind and capacity for free will is necessary for morality to exist at all, to take that from him with an immediate threat of force is to prevent and co-opt him from acting morally. Initiation of force is seen by Objectivists as a negation of morality as it precludes choice by interposing the threat of physical destruction between a man and his desired ends. Furthermore, Objectivism holds that physical force is the only kind of force; that is, it holds that physical harm (or threat of physical harm) is the only way a person may be coerced to take an action against his or her will. All actions which are taken in the absence of such threats are voluntary according to Objectivism, and, as a result, they are subject to moral judgment.
[edit] "Emergency situations"
In The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand argues that emergencies should not form the basis, or be a test of one’s moral system, since the purpose of morality is to be a practical guide to life, not deal with improbable scenarios. Actions taken under threat of physical force are considered immune from moral judgment, as they occur in a special type of "emergency situation". A man's actions under initiation of force — for instance, if one man points a gun at another man and instructs that man to kill a third man — are neither moral or immoral, as he is not free to choose his actions. In the words of Ayn Rand,
- "No rights are applicable in such a case. Don't you see that that is one of the reasons why the use, the initiation of force among men, is morally improper and indefensible? Once the element of force is introduced, the element of morality is out. There is no question of right in such a case."
This particular emergency situation can only be interpreted literally — as Rand also said,
- "For instance, you couldn't claim that the men who served in the Gestapo, or the Russian secret police, [...] that they were merely carrying out orders, and that therefore the horrors they committed are not their fault, but are the fault of the chief Nazis. They were not literally under threat of death. They chose that job. Nobody holds a gun on a secret policeman and orders him to function all the time. You could not have enough secret policemen."
Ayn Rand objected to ethicists' discussions of "lifeboat" hypotheticals. Presumably, if there are two Objectivists on a sinking ship, and one space left in the lifeboat, one of them will make a self-sacrificing choice. But this possibility doesn't validate self sacrifice, Rand said, because such circumstances are "metaphysically abnormal." Some critics, such as Robert Nozick have regarded her brief discussion of lifeboat hypotheticals as evasive in a way indicating a more general problem with her ethical philosophy.
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Gotthelf, Allan. On Ayn Rand, Wadsworth, 2000, p. 84
[edit] 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.
