Objectivist ethics

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

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.

Related Topics:
David Hume's - Is-ought problem

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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. In the Objectivist argument, it is simply assumed that the purpose of ethics is to preserve one's status 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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~