Historical Background: Renaissance, Reformation, Catholic Counter-Reformation

Rand: Introduction to Objectivism: Ethics—The Good © Susan Fleck

1) Metaphysics and Epistemology, like natural sciences, are factual subjects; Ehics or morality, is an evaluative subject

a) Ethics concern is not only to describe, but also to prescribe for man

b) Rand: Ethics is the branch of philosophy that provides 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.

c) Three basic, interrelated questions: For what end should a man live? By what fundamental principle should he act in order to achieve this end? Who should profit from his actions?

i) Answers to these questions define the ultimate value, the primary virtue, and the particular beneficiary upheld by an ethical code and reveal its essence

ii) Concise answer: The ultimate value is life. The primary virtue is rationality. The proper beneficiary is oneself.

2) Ethics—a unique problem to philosophers throughout the ages, even those who never doubted man’s power to reason or to know the facts of reality

a) How can value-judgments ever be proved?

b) How can facts, any or all of them, lead logically to estimates, such as “good” or “evil,” “right” or “wrong,” “desirable” or “undesirable”?

c) How can a knowledge of what is validate a conclusion stating what ought to be?

d) Since the atrophy of the religious approach to philosophy centuries ago, the consensus among ethicists has been that these questions are unanswerable

i) Ethics, according to general consensus, is arbitrary: it is a field ruled by subjective feeling, dissociated from reality, reason, science

ii) logical conclusion from this: there can be no disputing about value-judgments; there are no objective grounds on which to choose between production and theft, thought and evasion, Jesus and Judas, Jefferson and Hitler

iii) Objectivism, as name suggests, denies this denial of morality: facts, certain definite facts—do lead logically to values; What “ought to be” can be validated objectively.

(1) Ethics is a human necessity and a science, not a playground for mystics or skeptics

(2) Principles of morality are a product not of feeling, but of cognition

3) LIFE as the Essential Root of “Value”: “Value” is the central concept in ethics: “Value’s” existential basis and cognitive context:

a) Starting point to study ethics, precedes Ethic’s three main questions (above): First question to ask is not: what values should man accept? but rather: does man need to judge and select values at all? Is morality necessary or not, and if it is, why?

b) The concept value: What facts of reality give rise to this concept? What are the observations of reality to determine this?

i) Crucial data here is the fact of goal-directed action: Definition: Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep.

(1) This, in turn, presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what?

(2) It presupposes an entity capable of acting to achieve a goal in the face of an alternative

(a) Where no alternative exists, no goals and no values are possible

(i) One will fall if he steps off the roof (no alternative exists)—he cannot value walking on air

(ii) The metaphysically given (what simply is) must be accepted without evaluation

(b) Goal-directed behavior is possible only because an entity’s action (pursuit of certain end) can make a difference to the outcome

(3) Living organisms are entities that make value possible (capable of self-generated, goal-directed action)

(a) They are the entities which face the fundamental alternative of life or death—the only kind that can (and must) pursue values

c) Realm of existence is the metaphysical fundamental—this is what every concrete and every issue presupposes

i) The alternative of existence or nonexistence is the precondition of all values

(1) If an entity were not confronted by this alternative, it could not pursue goals of any kind

(2) Rand’s thought experiment: The immortal robot: not facing alternative of life or death: assume it requires no action to sustain itself and it cannot be damaged, injured, or destroyed: Imagine this kind of entity were possible

(a) What values could it act for? What goals could you recommend, if asked?

(i) It has no need of food or health services; it has no emotions—thus no frustrations, etc.; no sensory incentives—no pleasure or pain is felt

(ii) What about intellectual level: can abstract knowledge be of value to it? –What for? . . . so far, it has no ‘ends.’ Money? –to buy what (it needs no material objects)?

(b) Nothing makes any difference to it; it would be unable to initiate a step in any direction: the fundamental alternative—the value-generating alternative—does not apply in this case: “to be or not to be.”

(3) Only an entity capable of being destroyed and able to prevent it has a need, an interest, a reason to act

(a) Reason: to prevent its destruction—to remain in the realm of reality (ultimate goal)

(b) Goal-directed entities do not exist in order to pursue values; they pursue values in order to exist

(i) philosophically speaking, the essence of self-preservation is: accepting the realm of reality: existence exists

d) Any code of values must hold life as the ultimate value: All of Objectivist ethics and politics rests on this principle

i) Rand: An ultimate value is the end-in-itself which sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated.

(1) An organism’s life is its standard of value: that which furthers its life is the good, that which threatens it is the evil.

(2) Without an ultimate goal or end, there can be no lesser goals or means.

(3) Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action.: It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible

(a) This viewpoint is not that life is a precondition of other values—not that one must remain alive in order to act. (That idea is a truism, not a philosophy)

(b) Objectivism says that remaining alive is the goal of values and of all proper action

4) Man’s Life as the Standard of Moral Value

a) Plants and animals initiate automatically the actions their life requires. (Some higher forms must teach their young certain things, then it becomes automatic with them)

i) They can be destroyed but they cannot pursue their own destruction; life is their inbuilt standard of value, which determines all their goals and actions

b) Man—a being with a volitional, conceptual consciousness—has no inbuilt goal or standard of value; he follows no automatic course of action

i) He does not automatically value or pursue self-preservation: evidence: suicide, self-destructive behavior, asceticism

ii) The desire to live and the knowledge of what life requires are an achievement, not a biological gift

iii) Man is not born knowing what course of action to take in order to survive (at any given moment)

iv) Rand: He has to hold his life as a value—by choice; he has to learn to sustain it—by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues—by choice

5) How does man discover values and virtues his life requires? That is the purpose of morality (ethics)

a) Morality is a code of values accepted by choice: man needs it for one reason—in order to survive

i) Moral laws are principles that define how to nourish and sustain human life: they are no more and no less than this

ii) Plants and animals pursue values, but not moral values: they have goals, but not ethics

b) Moral values are chosen values of a fundamental nature in that they shape a man’s character and life course

i) Other kinds of value are specialized—e.g., a man’s estimates in regard to government or art; those constitute not his moral, but his political or aesthetic values

c) Man needs to act long-range—allowing for or extending into the more distant future

i) a man is long-range to the extent that he chooses his actions with reference to such a future (go to college, save money)

(1) goals are set that demand action across a significant time span; weighing consequences—future consequences—of current actions

(2) Man’s life is a continuous whole: Man has to choose his course, his goals, his values in the context and terms of a lifetime

ii) a man is acting short-range if indifferent to the future—he seeks merely immediate satisfaction of an impulse, without thought for any other ends or results

(1) An animal has no need or capacity to be long-range, not in the human sense: animals do not choose their goals, nature takes care of that—they can act safely on ‘impulse’ because that impulse is programmed to be pro-life

(a) Higher-level animal does and must project the future to some extent—a series of separate cycles, repeated over and over—breeding, storing food, migrating—but it does not grasp or deal with the total of its lifespan

(2) man cannot rely safely on random impulse: he has to assess any potential action’s relationship to protection of his life. (Don’t drink one more and then drive, etc.)

(3) An impulsive action may lead accidentally to a beneficial result. Impulsively, meaning—without reference to reasons, purposes, or effects.

(4) The short-range, viewed long-range is self-destructive

d) The problem: Man must be long-range. He must know survival significance of every action he takes, and know it in relation to timespan of an entire life: What can make such a cognitive feat possible?

i) The same kind of consciousness that makes it necessary: by the method of unit-reduction: only by use of concepts

(1) Man must conceptualize the requirements of human survival (long-range survival of mind and body—the standard is not “staying alive by any means”)

(2) Out of the complex array of human choices and actions, he must ask: what are the fundamental choices—the ones which shape all the others?

(a) These become the principles of his ethics. (A principle is a general truth on which other truths depend.)

(i) Once this is done, he quickly decides in any particular case: whether or not to tell a lie, or to give to charity, or to fight an advancing dictatorship—not by assessing each new situation without context, but by the application of his earlier formed moral concepts

ii) Moral principles are not duties: they are a practical, earthly necessity to anyone concerned with self-preservation

(1) By code of values, Rand means an integrated, hierarchically structured, noncontradictory system of principles—which enables a man to choose, plan, and act long-range

(2) Being a conceptual entity, he cannot follow a specific course of action (to use his free will correctly in order to sustain and nourish his life) except by the guidance of concepts

6) What are the principles of human survival? What must man hold as values if he is to preserve his life, and what virtues must he practice in order to achieve them?

a) Rand: three basic values “which, together are the means to and the realization of one’s ultimate value.”

i) To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem.

(1) Reason, as his only tool of knowledge

(2) Purpose, as his choice of happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve

(3) Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living.

(4) These three values imply and require all of man’s virtues

b) The cardinal value is reason: it makes the others possible

i) understanding the vital role of consciousness: one awards reason the fundamental place in one’s personal value structure

ii) Rand: The noblest act you have ever performed is the act of your mind in the process of grasping that two and two make four: this is not mere hyperbole

(1) Rand’s fiction and nonfiction—inspiring affirmations of man the hero, creative work, selfish joy, individual liberty—all are derivatives—the root is the primary moral estimate of Objectivism, its estimate of reason

iii) Rationality is the virtue—the action—that develops, preserves, and applies the faculty of reason

(1) It is the recognition and acceptance of reason as one’s only source of knowledge; and one’s only judge of values; and one’s only guide to action

(2) It means choosing and validating one’s opinions, one’s decisions, one’s work, one’s love, etc., in accordance with the requirements of a cognitive process—the requirements of logic, objectivity, integration

(a) stated negatively: this virtue means never placing any consideration above one’s perception of reality—never attempting to get away with a contradiction, a mystic fantasy, or an indulgence in context-dropping

iv) The cardinal vice, therefore, which is the root of all other human evils: irrationality

(1) The deliberate suspension of consciousness—the refusal to see, to think, to know

(2) Either as a general policy; or in regard to some specific issue because facts conflict with one’s feelings

v) Rationality demands continual mental activity—to integrate and expand one’s knowledge into an ever-growing sum

(1) Whatever heroes in Rand’s novels deal with—including work, romance, art, people, politics, and philosophy—they seek to understand it, by connecting the new to what they already know

(2) Their commitment to thought leads them to a sustained growth in knowledge—maximizes success in action

(3) Point is—not that one must be a genius or even an intellectual: reason is a faculty of human beings, not supermen

(a) Expand the power of one’s consciousness to the extent one can—whatever the degree of one’s intelligence

vi) existential side of rationality: policy of acting in accordance with one’s rational conclusions

(1) No point in using one’s mind if knowledge gained is not one’s guide to action

(2) One must choose his abstract values and specific goals (to obtain them) by a process of rational thought

(a) requires that one know what one’s motives are—as against ‘drifting,’ being ‘pushed’ by impulses

(3) Choose the means and enact them, accepting the law of causality in full—vs. seeking effects without causes

(a) not merely wishing or praying for a specific thing or effect—not placing an “I wish” above an “It is.”

(b) don’t attempt to reverse cause and effect: Rand cites people who want—

(i) unearned love (unconditional) as if love, the effect, could give them personal value, the cause

(ii) unearned admiration as if admiration, the effect, could give them virtue, the cause

(iii) unearned wealth as if wealth, the effect, could give them ability, the cause

(i) taking a certain action while evading and expecting to escape its consequences (alcoholism, drug addiction)

(ii) people who want more favors from government while ignoring escalation of controls and taxation

7) In epistemology—concluded that emotions are not tools of cognition: The corollary in ethics is that they are not guides to action

a) Error: My head (rationality) tells me to one thing, my heart (emotions), another

i) When there seems to be a clash—defer action (if possible), introspect, analyze, resolve conflict

ii) if crisis, one must act without full self-knowledge, but guided by his mind—best conscious judgment at the time

b) Rand: A whim is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover it cause—such a person does not wish to introspect or to analyze: he simply wants it because he wants it. (Rand calls this whim-worship)

c) Proper approach is not reason vs emotion, but reason first and then emotion—leads to harmony (normal state of rational man)

i) emotions are consequences of rational, explicitly identified value-judgments

ii) One with this kind of psychology and self-knowledge does not repress desires—eager to feel

8) The Individual as the Proper Beneficiary of His Own Moral Action (the last of the three basic ethical questions)

a) Distinction between the standard of ethics and the purpose of ethics:

i) Rand: An ethical standard means an abstract principle that serves as a measurement or gauge to guide a man’s choices in the achievement of a concrete, specific purpose. ‘That which is required for the survival of man qua man’ is an abstract principle that applies to every individual man. The task of applying this principle to a concrete, specific purpose—the purpose of living a life proper to a rational being—belongs to every individual man, and the life he has to live is his own.

b) Each individual must choose his values and actions by the standard of man’s life—in order to achieve the purpose of maintaining and enjoying his own life

c) Objectivism advocates (rational) egoism—the pursuit of (rational) self-interest—the policy of (rational) selfishness

i) egoism does not tell us what acts a man should take, but who should profit from them

ii) each man’s primary moral obligation is to achieve his own welfare, well-being, or self-interest (synonyms here)

iii) egoism by itself does not specify values or virtues

iv) egoism does not define interests or self-interest in terms of “power” or “pleasure” nor of anything else

d) Alternative view: altruism: man’s primary moral obligation is to serve some entity other than himself (God, society—others, State)—at the price of subordinating or denying his own welfare or happiness.

i) Essence of this is unselfisheness which involves some form of self-sacrifice

e) Validation of this concept (egoism) as a standard of ethics: needed context of all we have concluded thus far (hierarchy)

i) validation: show that it is a corollary of man’s life as the moral standard, and that it is rational egoism

ii) (a) only the alternative of life vs. death creates context for value-oriented action; (b) only self-preservation can be an ultimate goal; (c) The alternative with which reality confronts a living organism is its own life or death; (d) The goal is self-preservation

(1) Goal of all automatic biological processes (except reproduction—to which every organism owes its existence)—organism is pursuing values its survival demands (food, sleep, shelter, waste-elimination, etc.) (not moral actions)

(a) each necessarily acts for its own sake; each is the beneficiary of its own (amoral) actions

(2) Moral actions apply only to an entity with the power of choice (actions in the face of an alternative)

(3) Man: self-sustaining behavior is not preprogrammed: he must decide to accept life as his moral standard

iii) Sacrifice is the surrender of a value, e.g. money, career, loved ones, freedom, for the sake of a lesser value or nonvalue.

(1) Life requires that one gain values, not lose them

(2) A rational man chooses his values and their hierarchical ranking by a process of cognition: to tell him to surrender his values is to tell him: surrender your judgment

(a) each man must be sovereign in regard to the function and product of his own brain: impossible if morality demands that man “place others above self”—that one surrender his conclusions and values to satisfy unchosen obligations to others

(b) if one believes one’s self is rightfully a mere means to the ends of others and that one’s mind, therefore, is their property—then one cannot guide one’s own faculty of awareness by the dictates of one’s own independent judgment

(c) if a man’s brain, like an industrialist’s factory, is not his to profit from, then it is not his to control—the entity viewed as the proper beneficiary in this case—others or society—moves to take over the prerogatives of ownership

(i) if a factory: takeover is called socialism—leads to destruction of the factory

(ii) if a brain: it’s called “faith in the leader” and leads to the cessation of thought

iv) rational self-interest means the ethics of selfishness, with man’s life as the standard of value defining “self-interest,” and rationality as the primary virtue defining the method of achieving it.

(1) Within the Objectivist framework the term “rational self-interest” is a redundancy, but one that is necessary in today’s world: there is not any “self-interest” for man outside the context and absolute of reason.

(2) principle of egoism subsumes all the values and virtues discussed (and yet to be discussed)

(a) noncontradictory goals; long-range thought; principled action; full acceptance of causality

(b) any default on rationality is harmful to one’s well-being

9) Corrupt versions of egoism—advocated through the ages mainly by subjectivists

a) most people regard one (or more) of these versions as the self-evident meaning of the concept (i.e. selfishness is bad/evil)

i) the notion that selfishness means doing whatever you feel like doing—it may be incompatible with your well-being

ii) an egoist is indifferent or hostile to everyone but himself

iii) violating the rights of others in order to satisfy one’s own needs or desires

iv) policies of a brute, a con man, or a beggar; or of turning others (by clubs or tears) into one’s servants

10) Objectivist egoism does not mean one should isolate himself from others or remain indifferent to them

a) instead, identify and evaluate the role of others in one’s own life; others are necessary for one’s well-being

i) when men evaluate the moral character of others—an emotional response (e.g. esteemè affection, friendship, love)

ii) all such response to others are selfish—they rest ultimately on self-preservation; on the value to one’s own life of others who share one’s values

b) Often told (by ‘society’) that love is selfless: A “selfless love” would be one unrelated to the lover’s own life, judgment, or happiness—such a think defies the very nature of love

i) Rand: A ‘selfless,’ ‘disinterested’ love is a contradiction in terms: it means that one is indifferent to that which one values

ii) Roark: To say ‘I love you,’ one must know first how to say the ‘I.’

c) two great values from social existence: knowledge and trade

i) men transmit knowledge from one generation to the next a vast store of knowledge (one could not gain himself)

ii) in practicing the division of labor—individual can achieve a degree of skill and material return on effort far greater

d) Best formulation of Objectivist view—oath taken by John Galt: I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

i) human sacrifice is evil no matter who is the beneficiary—man, every man, is an end in himself

ii) Ethics of altruism: sacrifice yourself to others; subjectivist version of egoism: sacrifice others to yourself

(1) either version requires martyrs: that some men are mere means to the ends of others

(2) Altruism: the doctrine that man should place others above self as the fundamental rule of life

(a) Rand has covered this concept thoroughly in Atlas Shrugged, and many other writings

(3) What about soldiers who die or are maimed in war? Or “sacrifices” of population at large a leader calls for during time of war?

(4) What about helping others? –for one thing, this is a marginal issue with Objectivism

(a) If suffering were the metaphysical norm—if the essence of human life consisted in rescuing victims, it would mean that man is not equipped to survive

(b) Don’t confuse altruism with benevolence: selflessness vs. kindly acts given [freely] out of generosity

(i) Extending help to, say strangers, is an act of generosity, not an obligation

(d) A person will certainly help a person in trouble whom he loves, even to the point of risking his own life—this is not a sacrifice. E.g. what happens to one’s mate makes a life-and-death difference to him personally

(e) One must not help, let alone love, his enemies . . . not: Matthew 5:44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

(i) (Rhetorical questions: what if nations followed this principle? or—how is this humanly possible?)

(ii) remember, love is an (automatic) emotion—it is not a floating abstraction: what does it mean to say ‘I love him as a person, but hate his philosophy and actions?

11) Values as Objective: integrating this ethical knowledge with its roots: Objectivist metaphysics and epistemology

a) Connection is evident in general terms—a morality of rational self-interest presupposes a philosophic commitment to reason

b) Specifically—identify how Rand’s theory of concepts, which is the essence of her view of reason, relates to morality

c) Values, like concepts, are not intrinsic or subjective, but objective

i) just as concepts do not represent intrinsic features of reality, but presuppose a mind that performs a certain process of integration, so values are not intrinsic features of reality

ii) Value requires a valuer—therefore, moral value presupposes a certain kind of estimate made by man—an act of evaluation

(1) Such an act is possible only because man faces a fundamental alternative

(2) It is possible only if man chooses to pursue a certain goal, which then serves as his standard of value

(3) Therefore, good is not good in itself: Objects and actions are good to man and for the sake of reaching specific goals

iii) neither are values arbitrary decrees (subjective)—the realm of facts (reality) is what creates the need to choose a certain goal (he lives in reality; he is confronted by fundamental alternative; requirements of survival are set by reality)

(1) evaluations—in regard to ultimate purpose and to means that foster it—do not have source in baseless feelings

(a) they are discovered by a process of rational cognition (steps of reason already covered)

iv) Moral value does not pertain to reality alone or to consciousness alone

(1) it arises because a certain kind of living organism—a volitional, conceptual organism—sustains a certain relationship to an external world

(2) Both of these factors—man and the world, or human consciousness and reality—are essential

(3) The Good, therefore, is neither intrinsic nor subjective, but objective

(a) Rand: the good is an aspect of reality in relation to man—and it must be discovered, not invented, by man

d) Moral knowledge, therefore, follows the basic pattern of all conceptual knowledge

i) i.e., integration occurring within a cognitive hierarchy that is based on sense perception—tied to reality

e) The “demands” of reality are not commandments, duties, or “categorical imperatives”—reality does not issue orders, such as ‘you must live,’ or ‘you must think,’ or ‘you must be selfish’

i) Reality does, however, confront man with a great many ‘musts’—but all of them are conditional. Rand: the formula of realistic necessity is: “You must, if—” and the “if” stands for man’s choice: “—if you want to achieve a certain goal.”

(1) You must eat, if you want to survive. You must work, if you want to eat. You must think, if you want to work. You must look at reality, if you want to think—if you want to know what to do—if you want to know what goals to choose—if you want to know how to achieve them

ii) Rand: The principle replacing duty in Objectivist ethics is causality, in the form of the memorable Spanish proverb “God said: Take what you want and pay for it.”

(1) Morality, too, is a must—if; it is the price of the choice to live.

12) Non-Objective, opposing ethical views:

a) Intrinsicism: a common belief: Without God, there can be no morality: God (or something like Kant’s noumenal self) has issued commandments (or categorical imperatives), and it is man’s duty to obey them

i) Rand: Duty means the moral necessity to perform certain actions for no reason other than obedience to some higher authority, without regard to any personal goal, motive, desire or interest.

(1) This severs ethics both from reason and from values

(2) Kant explicitly states that when a man acts to achieve his values, he is amoral—outside the field of ethics

(a) To deserve moral credit, a man must do his duty without reference to any personal goal or to any future effects on his own life and happiness—not even because it would make one feel good about one would do

(b) Kant: “acting from duty:” One must do one’s duty as an act of pure selflessness, simply because it is his duty

ii) deontology: the branch of ethics dealing with duty, moral obligation and moral commitment

(1) By its nature, duty ethics detaches virtues from values, it offers man no guidance in the job of living—daily decisions men must make in regard to goals---work, love, friendship, freedom, happiness

(2) Ethics defines man’s obligations to the supernatural: it transcends what the vulgar call “real life.”

iii) Result of Duty Ethics is a moral code that is worse than useless for guiding one’s life in the midst of reality

(1) Duty advocates not only ignore the fundamental duty that real life demands—a continual course of rational, selfish action—they seek to overturn it

(2) It dooms man to an unendurable dichotomy: virtue versus pleasure; one’s character versus one’s welfare; the moral versus the practical; ethics versus survival

(3) Most people who think Duty Ethics is the correct approach to morality know enough to resent it: The Good now is associated with psychological conflict or pain

b) Subjectivism: values, like concepts and definitions, are creations of consciousness independent of reality

i) in this view, values are related to goals of men or other acting entities

(1) But goals per se cannot be rational—cannot be based in the realm of fact

(2) The Good, accordingly, is divorced from reason: it is whatever the arbitrary desires of consciousness decree it to be

(3) Thus, no such thing as moral knowledge—there is merely subjective preference

(4) Also use a duty approach in the social variety of subjectivism—a human group of some kind (a tribe, a state, a nation, a specific culture or ethnic group)

(a) Since this group is the creator of (subjective) reality, its leaders’ arbitrary wishes or decrees are the standard of right and wrong.

(b) The individual must conform: self-sacrifice for society becomes the essence of virtue, replacing self-sacrifice for God

(5) Subjectivism of the personal variety leads to equally false ethics: the irrationalist or whim-worshiping version of egoism. This is typified by most Nietzscheans in the modern world.

(a) The consciousness of each individual is the creator of its own reality

(i) Each man must be guided by his own arbitrary feelings—he must act to gratify his desires, whatever they happen to be and whatever the effects on other men

1. Others are assumed to be acting in the same fashion

2. It follows that every man is a threat to every other (it’s a dog-eat-dog world)

3. The essence of human life is a clash of senseless passions—one’s only hope is to cheat, crush, or enslave others before they do it to him

(ii) This is the theory that makes “selfishness” in the public mind a synonym for “evil”—it is a theory that divorces “selfishness” from every intellectual requirement of man’s life

1. Selfishness becomes the ultimate cry: “The Good is whatever I feel is good for me, murder not excluded.”

(b) In reason and reality, such an attitude is the opposite of what self-interest requires: the individual subjectivist jettisons reason and reality from the outset

c) Intrinsicists and subjectivists agree on fundamentals in both ethics and in epistemology

i) ethical principles are rationally indefensible—there is no logical relationship between the facts of this world and value-judgments

(1) morality requires a message from beyond, or—rejecting this claim—the whole field of morality is thrown out as noncognitive

ii) Neither approach grasps man’s need of morality—neither can be practiced without pitting man against reality

iii) Both insist that no third alternative is possible

(1) Objectivist reply: Ethics is conditional, i.e., values are not intrinsic. But values are not subjective, either. Values are objective.

d) Because of the influence of religion, the code of sacrifice (altruism) has dominated the field of morality in the Western World

i) A small number of Western thinkers did reject this code. Two with the best and fullest ethical systems were Aristotle and Spinoza—each sought to uphold the value of life, the virtue of rationality, and the principle of egoism

(1) even these rare dissenters were influenced by Platonic and subjectivist elements

(2) there was no solid intellectual base to support their rebellion—it was always partial, compromised, short-lived—defeated by its own contradictions and moral concessions

ii) Rand is the first moralist to say NO to the dogma of self-sacrifice, of altruism: the first to identify in completely rational terms what that dogma is doing to the human race and what the alternative to it is

(1) Her view offers the moral liberation of man—his rescue from the torture chamber of the “humanitarians”

(a) It means the possibility of man’s life on earth, his life in the pure sense of the term—uncontradicted and unconflicted

13) Rationality: Its Derivative Virtues of Rationality: Applying broad abstraction of “rationality” to concrete choices in human life

a) Virtues are logically interconnected, both in theory and in practice—none can be validated apart from the others; man cannot practice any one of them consistently while defaulting on the others

b) “Virtue” is a whole: Rand abstracts elements of this whole for purposes of specialized study

i) Objectivist ethics are not disconnected rules, but an integrated way of life

ii) Virtues are differentiated from one another according to the particular metaphysically given facts they identify

iii) Atlas Shrugged: Rand identified six major virtues derived from virtue of rationality

(1) not necessarily an exhaustive list—but most important; no order of importance of these six is logically mandatory

(2) independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, and pride

(3) The vice, which represents the destruction of all of them is the initiation of physical force against other men

iv) Since man is an integration of two attributes, mind and body, every virtue reflects this integration: None can be practiced intellectually but not materially (existentially), or vice versa

14) Independence as a Primary Orientation to Reality, Not to Other Men

a) Rand: Independence is one’s acceptance of the responsibility of forming one’s own judgments and of living by the work of one’s own mind . . .

i) Classic statement of this virtue in The Fountainhead when Roark contrasts the creator with the second-hander

(1) i.e., not feeding on dependence of others for one’s opinions and values (needs)

ii) Others can and do properly offer one many values, but they cannot become one’s means of survival or basic frame of reference—the essence of one’s learning and one’s work is the process of thought

iii) The primary in one’s consciousness—that which comes first in any issue—is not other men, but reality as perceived by one’s mind

iv) The opposite policy consists in dropping one’s mind and accepting as one’s guide a different primary: people—such a person is oriented basically not to reality, but to other people---

(1) what they believe, what he can wheedle out of or pump into them, what he can do to, with, or for them

(2) he gains his sense of self worth from prestige—from reputation in the mind of others (regardless of their standards)

(3) he gets ahead not through creative work, but through pull

b) Independent man grasps the distinction between the metaphysical (the given facts of reality) and the man-made (at least implicitly): he knows how, by reference to what absolute, to form his ideas and choose his actions—for his survival and happiness

i) Second-hander—detached from reality—has no standards by which to judge others; whose ideas to follow

(1) need for authority, religious or secular, who will ‘take over’ their lives—make their value judgments and tell them what to do

(a) Power-luster (second-handed because he is oriented to ‘others’ in need for control)—glad to take on role

c) Independent man understands the role of reason as man’s means of knowledge: practices virtue of rationality

i) To Rand: the ego, or self, is the mind. The independent man, is the only genuine egoist

d) existential aspect (material/practice): recognition of the fact that the mind is an attribute of the individual and that no person can think for another

i) “independent thought” is a redundancy: If one accepts the conclusions of others without regard to facts. logic, and understanding—this is a state of dependence and of nonthought.

(1) even if conclusions thus accepted happen to be true, they are of no cognitive value to the parasite: he either does not understand the conclusions, or they are merely arbitrary conclusions in his mind

ii) Independent man actively learns from others past or present: engages in cognitive process, not parroting

iii) Thought is not an end in itself, but a means to action: If life is the standard, man must think in order to gain knowledge, then use his knowledge to guide him in creating the material values his life requires

(1) he must accept the responsibility of implementing his conclusions in practice, i.e., he must pay his own way—he must be self-reliant in the mental world and in the physical world

(2) division-of-labor society: no one produces by himself all the goods and services that his life requires

(a) What he does produce (earn) by whatever form of work he chooses, is an economic value (money) he can offer to others in exchange for things he wants—a value-equivalent of the goods and services he seeks

(b) Independent man performs one’s work with an active mind—understanding the job and finding ever better ways to do it—e.g., producing more efficiently, or discovering superior products or means of service

(i) Every job, from ditch digging to philosophy, needs these kinds of innovation

(c) In a free society, intellectual independence and material wealth tend to exist together—generally, the more a producer exercises his own best judgment, the more economically successful he becomes (assuming demand)

(d) saying: no one is independent because we all rely on others: do you pay your grocer who gives you bread? do you pay your dentist who fixes your teeth? We trade value for value—important distinction

iv) Not all independent men are great creators/inventors; but all great creators are independent men—at least to the extent of their creativity

(1) These are the people whose achievements—from logic, mathematics, science, concertos, power looms, rockets—have lifted mankind out of raw nature and into a human mode of existence

15) Integrity as Loyalty to Rational Principles: Integrity is loyalty in action to one’s convictions and values

a) It is one’s recognition of fact that man is an integrated being, a unity made of matter and consciousness

i) One may permit no breach between body and mind, between action and thought, between his life and his convictions

b) To keep one’s value-judgments operative amid the ups and downs of life is a volitional task

i) One must act in focus—holding full context of one’s knowledge , retaining perspective of long-range purpose

ii) Context of this sweeping kind can be held only if man functions by the guidance of principles

c) Others may disagree and plead/demand that one follow their ideas—or, a person may experience something that tempts him to contradict his own considered value-judgments

i) Integrity is the virtue of acting as an absolute on (rational) principle: It is the principle of being principled

ii) It is the policy of practicing what one preaches (regardless of emotional or social pressure)

iii) Often, breaches in integrity occur with the help of some rationalization—and some form of evasion: a person ‘blinds’ himself to what he already knows and pretends it is not true

d) One must, however, change one’s views (and values) if one finds some idea he holds is wrong

e) One must have convictions; one must hold explicit ideas and values—otherwise one is moved by one’s feelings, or by others

i) Integrity, being a derivative of rationality, means loyalty to conclusions one can prove logically

16) Honesty as the Rejection of Unreality: Honesty is the refusal to fake reality—to pretend that facts are other than they are

a) a corollary (obverse) of the virtue of rationality—which is the commitment to reality

b) The honest man may commit many errors, but he does not indulge in illusions

c) Tie to rationality (method): Intellectual honesty means developing an active mind; Rand: knowing what one does know, constantly expanding one’s knowledge, and never evading or failing to correct a contradiction

d) Motive for intellectual honesty: seeking knowledge because one needs it to act properly; one intends to practice an idea one accepts as true

e) Honesty in action: a dishonest man may believe he can profit by faking reality; an honest man recognizes that the unreal can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud

i) Classic ethics textbook question: Why should a man not execute a well-planned swindle to enjoy the advantages of money without the need to work? Example: sell stock in a fake gold mine, then escape to an ‘unknown’ place.

(1) think of all the kinds of lies it takes to pull this off: each lie clashes with one or more facts—each becomes a threat to be dealt with by further lies. If he succeeds and loot runs out—he embarks on another schemeèmore lies

ii) Philosophy can tell us: reality is a unity—to depart from it at a single point, is to depart from it in principle and thus to play with a lighted fuse. The liar may win a particular battle (scheme) but he has to lose the war

(1) First thing he loses is his independence: he counts on his ability to manipulate others: People become to him more real than fragments of reality he still recognizes; People are his means of survival (worse kind of second-hander)

(a) parasite on people who are ignorant, blind, gullible

(b) Liar thinks he has turned others into his puppets, but his course makes him their pawn: Rand: Such a man is a fool—a fool whose source of values is the fools he succeeds in fooling

(2) Integrity? his method of action consists in eschewing moral principle

(3) Productive? his policy is to live not by his own creative work, but by bilking others of fruits of theirs

(4) Just? His goal is to obtain the unearned

(5) Self-confident? Not if this term means confidence in one’s ability to deal with reality

(6) Happy? Not if happiness presupposes moral character (later discussion)

(7) Proud? only in depraved sense—proud of his ability to delude others, to break the laws of human life, to cheat on reality and escape the consequences (which, he does not succeed in doing)

f) Virtue, as Socrates held, is one; to cheat on any of its aspects is to cheat on all: Rand: the dishonest man betrays every moral requirement of human life and thereby systematically courts failure, pain, destruction: the fundamental avenger of his life of lies is not the victims, or the police, but that which one cannot escape: reality itself

g) Jesus’ question: “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” is admirably exact.

i) But not valid if read to imply a dichotomy between the world (profit by honest, creative means) and soul (one’s mind).

ii) Valid interpretation: man’s principled harmony with existence is the precondition of man’s benefitting from any of the splendor the world holds out to him.

h) Whenever an object, spiritual or material, is obtained by behavior in conflict with moral principle—fraud, improper compromise, initiation of force, or any other evil—the means employed clash with reality and thereby deprive the object in that context of any evaluative standing.

i) The end justifies the means: Objectivism rejects this license to immorality: an immoral means invalidates the end.

i) Recognize that virtues are not their own reward or a species of self-torture, but a selfish necessity in the process of achieving values

j) Honesty in context: Honesty is not a Kantian moral imperative: lying is not wrong “in itself” and thus under all circumstances

i) when the Nazis asked where Jews were hiding

ii) Lying is absolutely wrong when one does it in an attempt to obtain a value; but not wrong in protecting one’s values from criminals: victim has obligation to lie and to do it proudly (this is not endorsing any anti-reality principle)

iii) It is moral to lie to protect one’s privacy from snoopers

17) Justice: Rationality in Evaluation of Men: judging men’s character & conduct objectively—grant to each that which he deserves

a) If a man is good by Objectivist standard—rational, honest, productive, etc.—then one can expect to gain values in dealing with him; if he is evil—irrational, dishonest, parasitical—one can expect not value, but loss in dealing with him

b) Judging is a rational process of seeking out and cherishing the virtuous traits one needs in others, while being alert to opposites of these traits and their destructive potential

c) “Judge not that ye be not judged.” Objectivist policy is opposite: “Judge, and be prepared to be judged.”

i) Rand on neutrality: so long as men have to make choices, there is no escape from moral values; so long as moral values are at stake, no moral neutrality is possible. To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims.

ii) Only the good can lose by a default of justice and only the evil can profit.

iii) More broad than just direct dealings with others; this principle works more broadly: Justice works to sustain all men who think and who support human existence; chastening and counteracting those who are destructive—opposite result

(1) injustice works to sustain the destroyers, while undermining the valuable men of the world

d) Intellectually, justice is the use of reason to reach one’s moral estimates. In judging an individual’s character and conduct, one uses the same epistemological principles as a scientist: one is ruled by concern to discover the truth—identify the facts of a given case, then evaluate by reference to objective moral principles

i) Is he the victim of an error or frame-up? Does your friend say bad things about you behind your back, as someone has suggested, or is charge itself malicious? Does you child’s teacher punish him for no reason, as your child claims?

ii) Blindfolded statue symbolizing justice is not blind to the facts of reality: the blindfold shuts out any feeling detached from facts; shuts out the subjective and the arbitrary—leaving individual free to engage in a rational process of cognition

e) Action:granting to each man that which he deserves. (Just deserts)

i) Value given in payment for his virtue or achievement: positive—such as praise, friendship, money, trust

ii) Punishment in payment for vice or fault: negative—condemnation, ostracism, loss of money, freedom, or life

iii) All should be appropriate within the context and scale of a particular case—the nature and merits of the case

(1) “An eye for an eye” (in case of evil) is the truth symbolized by the scale in the hands of statue of justice: one weight represents the cause—the behavior, the other, effect—payment appropriate to it.

iv) Conventional view: justice is primarily for punishing the wicked

(1) Objectivism: the order of priority is reverse: justice consists first in acknowledging the good

(a) intellectually—reaching an objective moral verdict

(b) existentially—defending the good—speaking out, making one’s verdict known, championing publicly the men of value, men who are rational: What counts in life are men who support life, who achieve values

(i) Evil must be combated, but then brushed aside (it should not be the focus of justice)

(c) It is important to tell Kant (Kantians) that he has rejected reality and is wrong; it is more important that Aristotle (Aritotelians) find someone who understands that he has recognized reality and is right.

(d) It is important that one votes certain politicians out of office; it is more important to cherish and install an opposite kind of leadership

(e) It is important that a robber be caught, if property rights are to be preserved; it is more important to the same goal that great industrialists not be vilified as “robber barons”—but somewhere, hear the words “Thank you.”

(f) Atlas Shrugged is a historic act of justice—it is an act of homage; it bestows recognition, gratitude, and moral sanction to the world’s thinkers and creators, which many rarely receive but abundantly have earned

f) Virtue as a whole: Justice is fidelity to reality in the field of human assessment; it is the act of acknowledging that which exists. Injustice, like all vices, is a form of evading reality—it consists in faking the character not of nature, but of men.

g) Trader Principle: if rational, rewards and punishments are not undeserved gifts or penalties: they are payments.

i) What one gives to a man in exchange for what one gets, whether the value sought be material or spiritual

(1) Man of justice is man who gives in return for what he receives and who expects to receive in return for what he gives: he neither seeks something for nothing nor grants something for nothing

(a) If he seeks something from another, he must gain title to it—come to deserve it, by offering a just payment

(b) Two men, accordingly, must be traders—exchanging value for value by mutual consent to mutual benefit

ii) presupposes foundations of Objectivist ethics: role of reason in human survival, and role of egoism

(1) man is the basic creator of values, man is not a sacrificial animal—individual has right to demand payment for values he creates (leaving aside claims of children on their parents)

(2) A man deserves from others that and only that which he earns

(3) no value without virtue—no escape from justice: Rand: nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in matter nor in spirit—and if the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it

iii) The innocent should pay is a demand of those who reject the Trader Principle

(1) Such people claim that values and rights are the product of God or society—to which the individual owes service

(2) In this view, certain men, such as the needy, become “deserving” in a new, invalid definition of the term

(a) They “deserve” to receive (food, houses, health care, income, etc.) simply because they lack and wish for them—as a recompense for no action, as a payment for no achievement, in exchange for nothing

(i) concept of deserve is corrupted and virtue of justice is swept aside—it is replaced with “Social Justice”

(b) policy of Social Justice consists in expropriating from the creators in order to reward the noncreators

iv) Opposing the Trader Principle: The Christian approach:

(1) Mark 13:31: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself . . .” (second of two most important commandments)

(2) Sermon on Mount (Matthew 5 & 6): turn the other cheek; if forced to go a mile, go two miles; give to others what they ask of you; Love your enemies—do good to them that hate you; (God is the avenger of evil); Take no thought for your life—what you shall eat, drink, or clothes—God will take care of you if you seek Him first; which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature?

(3) In effect, love others regardless of desert, apart from their character and even because of their vices

(a) Those who want unearned things, should be given them just because they ask for them (they want them)

(b) Those who want causeless love, love “for themselves” (unconditional) are staging a fraud: they demand that love be divorced from values and pretend that love, the effect, can create in them personal worth (the cause)

(d) Is there evidence to support claim that returning good for evil works to melt the heart of the wicked?

v) Opposing the Trader Principle: egalitarianism (Kantian version of Christianity)

(1) in this context, egalitarianism does not mean that men should be equal before the law, nor that men should be granted “equal treatment” in the sense of principled treatment (vs. a double standard)

(2) What it does mean is that “equality” supersedes justice: In essence, it is the “Fairness Doctrine”

(a) The most heroic creator on earth to the most abysmal villain, and every one in between should share equally in every value—love, prestige (no grades), money, important jobs, college degrees etc.

(i) without any regard to character, achievements, ability, talent, flaws, vices, virtues

(3) Altruists have implied as much—even Communists were too civilized to admit it: explicit advocates now reside in ivory towers of many Western Universities

(4) Rand’s essay: “The Age of Envy” (The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution)

(a) It is obviously impossible to live by such a philosophy—if rewards of virtue were methodically siphoned in this way into the lap of the underserving

(b) therefore: egalitarian proposal can have only one purpose: destruction—it is not to benefit the evil, but to smash the good

(c) Egalitarianism is the act of kicking the scale from the hands of statue of justice while stripping off its blindfold—living by the prejudice of the “hatred of the good for being the good”

18) Productiveness as the adjustment of Nature to Man: Productiveness is the process of creating material values—goods or services

a) Necessity of human survival at any age—from bearskins & clubs, to skyscrapers, brain surgery, and farms

i) other living species survive by adjusting themselves to their background (nature)—consuming ready-made values (leaving aside primitive activities like nests, ant tunnels)

ii) Man survives by adjusting his background (nature) to himself—irrigation canals, dams, Constitution of U.S.

(1) For a conceptual being, the only alternative to creativity is parasitism

b) Intellectually, every discovery contributes to human life; new knowledge increases ability for creativity and wealth

c) Existentially, material achievement contributes to human life—making it increasingly secure, prolonged, and/or pleasurable

d) No such thing as a man who transcends the need of progress, whether intellectual or material

i) no human life that is “safe enough,” “long enough,” “knowledgeable enough,” “affluent enough,” or ‘enjoyable enough”—not if man’s life is the standard of value

e) Practical benefits of productiveness are self-evident—too obvious to be debated

f) Its spiritual meaning and necessity has been ignored or denied by previous philosophies

i) Rand: Productive work is the process by which man’s consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one’s purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one’s values . . .”

ii) Like every virtue, it involves two integrated components: consciousness and existence: thought and action; or knowledge and its material implementation

(1) It is a product of consciousness to be applied to reality: first comes the discovery of knowledge: the purpose of knowledge is to make possible an existential value (to act), such as a new type of machine; a scientific treatise, or how to work to produce an existing product—to earn a living

iii) Francis Bacon: Knowledge is power

(1) Science is related to technology as theory is to practice: the first apart from the second is purposeless; the second apart from the first is impossible

(2) Whoever creates anything of value out of natural resources has to rely on his mind: a context of conceptual knowledge and a specific idea to guide his action

g) Source of today’s wealth was the Industrial Revolution: within a few generations, men moved form subsistence to plenty

i) It’s cause: Renaissance, the philosophic and scientific revolutions; and political revolution of eighteenth century, the discovery of man’s rights—the cause was reason and freedom, which made possible knowledge and action

(1) Modern science and the modern entrepreneur

(2) ‘bad philosophy’ ascribes this progress in wealth to biological drives, natural resources, or physical labor—all of which, however, had existed from beginning of human history

(3) Only one “drive” was new: liberated human thought

h) The Businessman, the Industrialist, are often condemned by society as “selfish materialists;” and producers of art (movies, music, novels, TV shows) are regarded as idols

i) Objectivism: commercial or technological ability, like any form of life-sustaining efficacy, is not an amoral “know how” or “can do,” nor is it merely a “practical” asset—it is a profound moral value

(1) Productive ability is a value by the standard of man’s life: like all values, a course of virtue is required in order to gain and keep it (one’s life)

(2) One must gain knowledge and skills that give rise to greatness or even competence in any creative field

(3) Rand: Whether it’s a symphony or a coal mine, all work is an act of creating and comes from the same source: from an inviolate capacity to see through one’s own eyes . . .”

(4) All proper fields require thought and action (Arts, science, business, law, governing, etc.): All exemplify the integration of mind and body

(a) Splitting apart thought and action—doctrine of the mind-body dichotomy—has subverted every rational virtue

(i) perhaps its most corrupting influence is in regard to productiveness—the doctrine brushes production aside as morally meaningless—it is merely practical, a “necessary evil” to satisfy material needs of man’s “lower nature”

19) Pride as Moral Ambitiousness: Pride is the commitment to achieve one’s own moral perfection (don’t confuse with arrogance)

a) Rand: Just as man has to produce the material values he needs to sustain his life, so he has to acquire the values of character that enable him to sustain it and that make his life worth living. . . . He has to . . . survive by shaping the world and himself in the image of his values.

i) A producer struggles to create the best material products possible to him. A proud man struggles to achieve within himself the best possible spiritual state—a state of full virtue

(1) All the virtues are forms of rationality: the commitment to achieve moral perfection reduces ultimately to a single principle and policy: the commitment to follow reason

b) Rand: Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality—not the degree of your intelligence, but the full use of your mind; not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute

i) If man’s life is the standard by reference to which virtue is defined, then vice is not a temptation, but a mortal threat—moral imperfection, in any area, means movement toward destruction

ii) “Flaws” does not mean errors of knowledge, which involve no evasion; it means breaches of morality, which do involve evasion

c) Moral ambitiousness: If man is a being of self-made soul, then pride is the process of making it properly

i) Intellectually: one must work to grasp the truth in moral issues—not settling for unvalidated bromides or feelings—but by explicitly using the method of logic

ii) Existentially: once one knows the right moral principles, one builds them into one’s soul by repeated rational action—one makes them “second nature” –an automatic way of functioning

d) Rand describes pride as “the sum of all virtues.” Aristotle calls pride “the crown of the virtues” and notes that it presupposes all the others

e) Pride leads a man to the third of the “supreme values”: self-esteem

i) Unbreached rationality produces self-confidence: his policy of unbreached rationality, gives one a sense of efficacy, a conviction of one’s power to deal with reality and achieve one’s goals

(1) the moral character he creates is admirable—so the proud man has a sense of his own worth

(2) This sense includes the feeling that he has a right to be the beneficiary of his actions—that he has earned the position of being his own highest value

(3) Expressed as: I am right and I am good; I can achieve the best and I deserve the best I can achieve; I am able to live and I am worthy of living

f) An animal does not need self-appraisal: it is unconcerned with moral issues and cannot question its own action

i) Man, who survives by a volitional process, needs a moral code and the awareness that he is conforming to it

(1) he needs the knowledge of how to live, and knowledge that he is living up to this knowledge

(a) Rand: man knows that he has to be right; to be wrong in action means danger to his life; to be wrong in person, to be evil, means to be unfit for existence

(b) Self-esteem or its absence is an individual’s verdict in this fundamental issue

(i) A positive verdict is a reward for having lived properly: it gives a man the strength to persevere in his course; to rely on his judgment, to fight for his goals, to pursue his happiness

(ii) A negative verdict—self-doubt or self-hatred—is a punishment for having lived one’s days out of focus, and turns one into a spiritual cripple and virtually unable to pursue goals while coping with fear and guilt

g) Most people seem to grasp that man needs self-esteem, but not why

i) Conventional moralities, such as altruism, actually devote themselves to fighting the need

(1) Bible: one of several verses about the evil of pride: 1^st John 2, 15-17: Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world-the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the pride of what he has and does -comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

(a) Pride is worst of the seven deadly sins (early Church Fathers): the Capital Virtue to combat Pride is Humility

(b) Augustine of Hippo wrote that it is “the commencement of sin because it was this that overthrew the devil, from whom arose the origin of sin.”

(c) Aquinas called it “the first sin, the source of all other sins, and the worst sin.”

ii) In our culture, every moral requirement of intelligence is relentlessly attacked

(1) Rationality—heartless; intellectuality—arid; egoism—exploitative; independence—antisocial; integrity—rigid; honesty—impractical; justice—cruel; productiveness—materialistic

(2) The sum of this approach—is the tenet that pride is evil

(a) if pride is evil, then virtue consists in recognizing how vicious one is—then true virtue is impossible, and the trap is closed on the human race—leads to despair

iii) Only the ethics of rational selfishness identifies the root of the need: The root is biological, or metaphysical

(1) a volitional being cannot accept self-preservation as his purpose unless, taking a moral inventory, he concludes that he is qualified for the task—in terms of ability and value

(2) The state of man’s self-esteem depends on his moral theory—on the standard (usually only implicit) that he uses to gauge self-esteem

(a) There are those who gauge self-esteem by the standard of rationality (commitment to full consciousness)

(b) . . . and those who judge their worth - - -

(i) based on other moral codes of a professed religion: obedience to God or authority

(ii) by the approval they receive from others

(iii) based on their willingness to sacrifice—to give time, money, etc., to others in return for no personal benefit

(c) Improper standards (from improper, if implicit, theory) pit the requirements of one’s self-esteem against the requirements of one’s life: insolvable conflict, usually resulting in intractable inferiority complex

iv) One may undercut himself by demanding of himself the impossible; implicitly expecting to be omniscient or omnipotent in some area—leads to chronic unearned guilt

v) Self-esteem requires only a functional intelligence, on any scale, and freedom

20) The Initiation of Force as Evil: the antithesis of virtue of rationality—therefore of every other virtue

a) one can be evil, yet refrain from physical force, by trying to destroy others by psychological means

b) example of an indirect use of force would be the gaining of someone’s property by fraud (or identity theft)

c) Two basic methods by which one can deal with a dispute: reason or force: persuasion or coercion

i) Some persuaders are manipulators—bypass logic and play on others’ feelings; but victims are free to think logically

ii) Man of force attacks a person’s body or seizes his property

d) Rand: A rational mind does not work under compulsion . . . a gun is not an argument: symbol of this attitude is Galileo

i) Ordering one to accept a conclusion (or recant) amounts to ordering one to believe a contradiction

ii) Therefore, victim has only one recourse (if no escape possible): to cease functioning as a thinking person

(1) A rational mind has no way to proceed

(2) This is why the greatest eras and countries of human history have always been the freest

(3) and why science, art, invention, and other expressions of fresh human thought fail to arise in a dictatorship

e) Consider force that aims to get from the victim not thought or belief, but specific action: “I don’t care what you think, hand over your wallet”

i) Force makes a man act against his judgment: force makes one’s judgments useless in practice: your money or your life

ii) This applies to individuals’ conclusions who has to act contrarily under threats issued by a governmental agency

iii) In all forms—private crimes, incursions of a welfare state, to full dictatorship: physical force, to the extent it is wielded or threatened, denies its victim the power to act in accordance with his judgment

iv) If one does not act on the conclusions of his mind, he is doomed by reality; if he does, he is doomed by the forcer

f) The brute attacks in his victims every aspect of the moral life, while at the same time rejecting each in regard to his own life

i) acts to nullify his victims’ independence—while himself becoming a second-hander (conquest of men)

ii) prevents men from remaining loyal to rational principles—seeking not on grounds of a principle, but without grounds

iii) he is unjust: he throws out the concept of “desert”

iv) deals with men by extracting the unearned for the sake of benefiting the undeserving, whether himself or others

v) Productiveness: Dictatorships and welfare states: replaces the creators in society with the kind of men who believe that what counts in life is not brainpower, but firepower. Rand: Then the race goes not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. . . And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

vi) Rand: Morality ends where a gun begins: whatever destroys virtues necessarily destroys values as well

(1) Because force and mind are opposites, force and value are opposites, too

g) The task of defining the many forms of physical force, direct and indirect, including variants of breach of contract, belongs to the field of law

h) To use force in retaliation, against individual(s) or nation(s) that started its use, is completely proper—to stop criminals or aggressors: ethical difference is the same as that between murder and self-defense

i) forcible retaliation does not mean “sinking” to the brute’s view of morality; it means recognizing the facts of reality and acting accordingly

ii) Altruism demands the initiation of physical force . . . and rejection of retaliation

(1) when representatives of the needy use coercion: it is their only means of ensuring that recalcitrant individuals, whose duty is self-sacrifice, carries out his moral obligations—ensuring that he gives to the poor the unearned funds he is born owing them, but is trying wrongfully to withhold. (The Fairness Doctrine, Communism, Welfare States)

(2) Sermon on the Mount: resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. . . And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. . . . Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you (Matthew 5)

21) The Pursuit of Happiness: that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values

a) We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

i) Rand would have substituted “their creator” with “nature”— this is the essence and correct order of Objectivist Ethics

(1) One’s own LIFE is the standard; Liberty (freedom) is necessary for rational selfishness; Happiness (the good man’s experience of life) is the only moral purpose of one’s life

b) The moral man’s reward is life—in emotional terms the reward exiting concurrently with life is happiness

i) with most common ethical view, that which has so far ruled the world, men associate morality with pain or sacrifice

(1) the transfusion of value from those who earned it, the deserving, to the undeserving (who have not earned it) is regarded as the essence of virtue

(a) The virtuous man therefore must work to bring about the success of parasites

(b) This theory is the formal demand for the arming of evil: Rand’s identification:
the demand for the sanction of the victim.

(i) The moral man’s approval of his own martyrdom—when one feels guilt for not doing enough to help others; when one accepts, in return for one’s achievements—curses, robbery, and enslavement

ii) Objectivism: concept of the good and happiness is a man’s fundamental standard of practicality: he experiences no conflict between what he thinks he ought to pursue (self-preservation) and what he wants to pursue (based in reality)

(1) Virtue is not automatically rewarded, but it is rewarded—it minimizes risks inherent in life and maximizes chance of success

(2) Just as the virtuous is the efficacious, so the evil is the impotent. (Evil: willful ignorance or defiance of reality.)

(a) The anti-life is barren: It achieves only the anti-life

(b) Rand: No thought, knowledge, or consistency is required in order to destroy; Every error, evasion, or contradiction helps the goal of destruction; only reason and logic can advance the goal of construction

(i) The negative requires an absence (ignorance, impotence, irrationality); the positive requires a presence, an existent (knowledge, efficacy, thought)

(3) Achievement of any human value require the use of the mind; its destruction requires the opposite

(a) To become rational and self-confident takes a sustained effort of thought and will

(i) To turn oneself into a stuporous puppet takes only, say, some snorts of cocaine

(b) To build a happy marriage, one must identify each partner’s values, cooperate, communicate

(i) To wreck one’s marriage, one need merely take it for granted; give one’s partner no thought at all

(c) To sculpt the David, one needs the genius of Michelangelo; to smash it, only some rampaging barbarians

(d) To create the United States required the intellect and the painstaking debates of the Founding Fathers

(i) to run it into the ground, only a crew of anti-intellectuals known as politicians (and professors)

c) Pleasure is an effect. Its cause is the gaining of a value (meal, necklace, promotion).

i) Success of goal-directed action (required for self-preservation) leads to pleasure in conscious animals

(1) Metaphysically, pleasure is concurrent with life; Pain is the opposite—its cause is an organism’s failure or injury

(2) On physical level, pleasure-pain mechanism is a “barometer” of one’s basic alternative—life or death

(a) Pleasure: biological needs are being satisfied; pain is a warning of something needing corrective action

(b) A sensation does not necessarily indicate long-range consequences (too many sweets, too much alcohol, etc.)

ii) Body has pleasure-pain sensations to protect it; Consciousness has two emotions, joy and suffering, as a barometer of the same alternative, life or death.

(1) Joy: result of gaining a chosen value, one held on the conceptual level (vs. innate, physiologically set value)

(2) Suffering: result of loss or failure on this level (death of love one; lose job and income)

(3) A man can avidly pursue irrational values and thereby gain pleasure (of a sort) from the process of harming himself

(a) he is inverting his emotional barometer: the mechanism becomes a siren urging self-destruction.

(b) life of crime, drugs, idleness, gambling, power lust, being accepted—or any form of being out of focus

iii) Only the moral man uses his cognitive faculty to make the countless decisions involved in choosing values and pursuing goals: Only he refuses to sabotage his person or his goals by indulging in out-of-context desires or fears

(1) Only he can reach the emotional result and reward of such achievement

(2) The moral, the practical, and the happy cannot be sundered: by their nature the three form a unity

(a) He who perceives reality is able to gain his ends and thus enjoy the process of being alive

(3) The evil, the impractical, and the unhappy form a unity

(a) he who evades renders himself impotent in action and thus experiences life as suffering (needs to escape)

iv) If happiness proceeds from the achievement of one’s values, this does not mean that it follows from the gaining of any ends, rational or otherwise.

(1) If one achieves rational values—one’s happiness will reflect the fact that his course of action is pro-life

(2) The irrational man is inevitably tortured: “success” of his kind (at blanking out reality) is a threat, attainment brings anxiety, desire is guilt, self-esteem is self-loathing, pleasure is laced with hangover, joy is overcome by pain

(a) Happiness is not some pleasures that serve merely to lessen anxiety

d) Ability to achieve values (and happiness) is useless if one is stopped from exercising that ability—e.g., if caught in a dictatorship, or if suffering from a terminal illness, or (at least during grieving process) if one loses an irreplaceable person essential to one’s very existence as a valuer (say, a beloved spouse, parent, or child)

e) Intrinsic religious view: Whatever is promised in the after-life, this life is one primarily of suffering

i) enjoyment/pleasure as such is suspect: it is animalistic, unspiritual, immoral

(1) a probable sign of selfishness (ethical dereliction), ambition, “materialism”

ii) One’s moral destiny is the opposite: duty, loss, sacrifice

iii) this philosophy urges on men the adoration of pain: of martyrs

f) Subjectivist philosophy of Hedonism: at first, does not appear to be opposite of Objectivism

i) Hedonism: the theory that pleasure (or happiness) is the standard of value

(1) To determine values and virtues, one must ask whether a given object or action maximizes pleasure (one’s own or that of others): this is out-of-context, spur-of-the-moment value setting—not forming values within the long-range context of one’s whole life

(2) The emotion of pleasure is a consequence of a man’s value-judgments—so this theory is circular

(a) amounts to advice: value that which you or others, for whatever reason, already value

(b) in practice, it amounts to: do whatever you feel like doing

ii) Happiness is properly the purpose of ethics, but not the standard

(1) One must choose values by reference not to a psychical state, but to an external fact: the requirements of man’s life—in order to achieve the state of enjoying one’s life

(2) self-defeating to counsel the pursuit of pleasure as a primary ethical guide: only the pleasure resulting from the achievement of rational values leads to happiness

g) Both opposing views: just as, in epistemology, the two theories lead mankind away from the road of knowledge, in ethics they lead mankind away from the road of joy and to the gutter of suffering

i) Objectivism: Happiness (resulting from pleasure) is not only possible, it is the normal condition of man

(1) the “benevolent universe” premise essential to the Objectivist world view

(a) in this context benevolence is not a synonym for kindness: Universe has no desires; it simply is

(i) Man must care about and adapt to it, not the other way around

(ii) this premise has nothing to do with “optimism” if that means Leibniz’s idea that “all is for the best.”

(iii) nor is benevolence the attitude of a Pollyanna: that there is always a chance for success, even in those situations where success is not possible

(b) if man does adapt (rationality), Universe provides favorable circumstances for human life: if one recognizes and adheres to reality, then he can achieve his rational values in reality

(c) For the moral man, failures, though possible, are an exception to the rule of success: the state of consciousness to work for and expect is happiness

(d) One does not expect disaster until one has specific reason to expect it: When (if) disaster is encountered, one is free to deal with it (e.g. natural disasters) or to fight it (e.g. aggressor nations)

ii) The “malevolent universe” premise—or “tragic sense of life”—states that successes, though possible, are an exception; that the normal rule of human life is failure and misery

h) Rand—summary: Happiness is a state of noncontradictory joy—a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind’s fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer.