Did Rand Implicitly Implement the Concept of Duty in Her Moral System?

[Lukon]

Did Rand Implicitly Implement the Concept of Duty in Her Moral System?

Written June 14, 2007

Rand explicitly denounced the notion of duty in her formulation of ethics. But I here hope to show that she implicitly relied on duty in spite of her explicit rejection of the concept. And the essence of my argument is this: Ethics is a system of justification. We use ethics to justify our actions (and the drives behind our actions). There exist but two mutually exclusive standards for justification. And they are motivation (desire and aversion), and duty. Since Rand rejected motivation as a standard of justification, she implicitly embraced duty as the standard.

So let me elaborate on all this, beginning with ethics as a system of justification.

Ethics is a system of justification. It answers a common psychological need (and frequently by extension, survival need) for deciding whether to act pursuant to some desire or aversion or sense of duty. Many desires, aversions and “senses of duty” arise in us with doubts as to whether to pursue their satisfaction. These we call “unjustified.” We use ethics to discover whether satisfying these unjustified drives can in fact be justified.

Ethics are by no means the only system of justification. There also exist strictly motivational justification systems in which the satisfaction of desires and aversions are justified only in terms of other desires and aversions. Senses of duty are excluded.

Given what I’ve just explained, all ethical systems therefore rely on a duty to supply justification, as opposed to motivation (desire or aversion). This would include Rand’s Objectivist ethics. However, I don’t want to rely on what I’ve just explained. Instead, I want to offer a category-neutral analysis that doesn’t presume Rand’s ethics rely on duty just because it is the type of justification system I categorize as “ethical.” Let’s see what happens if we give Rand’s system the benefit of a doubt. Perhaps she’s developed an ethical system that doesn’t rely on duty. So let’s just say she’s got a system of justification, for now, and let the other evidence show what it will.

And if we’re gonna do a category-neutral analysis of her justification system, we’ll need to examine the nature of justification in a category-neutral way. Unfortunately, this involves acquainting ourselves with several definitions that may seem a bit off-topic at first.

To understand justification, we must first understand several other concepts upon which justification depends. Among these concepts are “motivation,” “volition,” “duty,” “sacred object,” “drive,” “ultimate drive,” “fundamentality,” and “(auto-)actionality.”

So please bear with me as I define these terms. But more than bare with me, I hope you’ll try to integrate these definitions into an understanding of what justification means, as I myself understand it. So here we go.

“Motivation” means either desire or aversion. It’s a wider category subsuming both desire and aversion, including all the sub-categories of each such as “like” “love” “wish” “fear” “revulsion” “hate” and so on. Motivation can be used to decide what action to take, e.g., “pick the action you desire the most.” In this essay, we’ll be concerned with whether Rand justified her moral system against a special motivation called an “ultimate” motivation, particularly an ultimate desire.

“Volition” is one’s capacity to select an action in complete disregard of one’s motivations. Many would contest this definition, saying that volition is more precisely “the capacity to select an action in complete disregard of any antecedent facts.” But of all the antecedent facts that Rand claims we have the power to disregard, motivation is the one she particularly insists on escaping. In fact, I’ll venture to guess that when any moralist promotes volition, their intent is to establish that we can act in accordance with something other than our motivations. In a moralist context, volition is meant to “liberate” us from doing as our motivations would dictate. With volition, we are free from acting on our crude desires and aversions. Consider what you’re likely to hear if you do something offensive just because you want to: “What? You did that just because you wanted to? Shame on you. You could have used morality to guide your free choices instead and chosen otherwise!” (I won’t discuss volition outside this glossary, and I only address it here for those who concern themselves with it, as many Objectivists do.)

“Duty” is a drive towards an action prescribed for reasons other than the actor’s motivations. When we are told to do our duty, we are told to do so precisely in opposition to doing what we want (what we are motivated to do). Duty therefore implies that we have the capacity to act according to something other than motivations, i.e., that we have volition as described above. (Rand has a different definition of duty, and this difference is important to discuss. So I shall discuss it later. But in the meantime, I ask you to accept my definition of duty for the present discussion.) In this essay, we’ll eventually be concerned with whether Rand justified her moral system against a special duty called an “ultimate” duty.

A “sacred object” is that to which duty is meant to achieve, i.e., it is an object that commands that we act to obtain it for reasons other than our motivations about it. Sacred objects and duty go together. And in philosophical discussion, they are often used interchangeably since demonstrating the relevance of one will demonstrate the relevance of the other.

A “drive” is a wider concept subsuming both motivation and duty, and comprises the characteristics common to both. As such, a definition for “drive” can be as follows: A drive is a phenomena which selects a behavior from a set of alternative behaviors where these alternatives are comprehended in the focused mind of the acting agent (as opposed to “instinct,” in which the sense of alternative is absent, or, “reflex,” in which conscious focus is also absent). Motivations, such as desire and aversion, are one type of drive. Duty towards a sacred object is another type of drive. To keep this term straight in our minds, it helps to think of ourselves as “being driven” to act, and being driven as such by something that could be either motivation or duty.

An “ultimate drive” is a drive regarded as one that automatically causes pursuant actions without further consideration. Once possessed of an ultimate drive, no further consideration is needed to decide whether the drive will cause its pursuant action. The answer is always affirmative. Indeed, ultimate drives are seldom even questioned. Most people experience their ultimate drives yet fail to notice that any kind of decision about them could even arise.

Ultimate drives therefore have two key properties: fundamentality (or “ultimacity”), and auto-actionality.

“Fundamentaluty” means the drive does not consist of other, more basic drives. It is NOT a drive, the satisfaction of which is achieved for the sake of satisfying some more basic drive. The opposite actually applies. An ultimate drive is the basic drive, the satisfaction of which often requires the rise of other drives requiring satisfaction.

“Auto-actionality” means the drive automatically causes its possessor to seek its satisfaction, when possible. Aside from external frustrators, there is no further cause for doubt or deliberation impeding the agent from acting pursuant to the drive’s satisfaction. (However, most people are prompted to have doubts and deliberations pertaining to strategies of gratification. But such strategizing only happens as a consequence of trying to satisfy the drive. Provided the satisfaction of an ultimate drive seems possible, the attempt at such satisfaction can be challenged in terms of “how”, but not in terms of “whether.” The “whether” has automatically been affirmed.)

It is at an ultimate drive that a chain of justification ends, because an ultimate drive is, by definition, the one that requires no further justification.

Ultimate drives can be either ultimate motivations or ultimate duties. In this essay we shall be concerned with whether Rand uses one or the other to justify her moral system.

And one more thing: remember what I said about sacred objects and duty. They go together. This is true for all the drives and their corresponding objects. Demonstrate the relevance of one and you also demonstrate the relevance of the other. So let’s consider all the drives related to their objects so you get the idea. See the chart as follows:

BEHAVIOR CAUSER ----------------> OBJECT

Drive --------------------------------> Value

Motivation -------------------------> Motivation Object (the wanted or aversed)

Duty --------------------------------> Sacred Object

Ultimate Drive --------------------> Ultimate Value

Ultimate Motivation -------------> Ultimate Motivation Object

Ultimate Duty --------------------> Ultimate Sacred Object

Now, finally, we are ready to define justification or, “to justify.”

“Justification” means explanation showing how a drive (or its satisfaction) supports the satisfaction of an ultimate drive and to thereby extend actionality from the ultimate drive back to the drive in question (or its satisfaction). We justify, as such, because we find that many of our drives lack “actionality,” meaning that we have doubt and deliberation over whether to act towards the satisfaction of such drives. Perhaps it is a wish to be very careful about unforeseen consequences that prompt us toward such doubt and deliberation. But for whatever reason, many drives come to us with a kind of built in doubt factor. These we call “unjustified” and therewith seek to justify. If we succeed, we will have established that satisfying the drive in question does in some way satisfy an ultimate drive. Once this logical connection is made, a corresponding psychological connection also happens, wherein the auto-actionality of the ultimate drive will extend actionality back to the logically connected drive in question. We will then feel our drive in question has been justified and can seek its satisfaction with a clear conscience.

This psychological transfer of actionality is important. It is the basis of justification. If no actionality is transferred, the drive in question remains unjustified, by definition, because we are still in doubt as to whether to act pursuant to that drive in question. If you’re not sure this is true, please take time to meditate on this idea until you comprehend it. The crucial parts of this essay rely on understanding justification as a transfer of actionality.

Rand posits an ultimate drive against which all other drives are to be justified: The drive for one’s own human life qua human. For her, the drive for one’s own human life qua human is auto-actionable, and can supply actionality to any drive that supports its satisfaction. She doesn’t use the term “ultimate drive.” She uses the term “ultimate value” instead: “An ultimate value is that final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means - and it sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated.” (Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, p17) And this terminology difference is trivial in this context. So long as Rand agrees that values are “that which one acts to gain and/or keep,” I say that drives are the corresponding causes of our acting to gain and/or keep such values. Both can loosely be said to have the properties of needing justification, unless they are of the ultimate sort. As I’ve said, they go together.

And now the crucial question arises: Does Rand propose that the ultimate value is a sacred object, the corresponding drive for which is duty? I say “yes”.

She embraced duty implicitly by rejecting motivation explicitly.

Rand expressly objected to justifying anything in terms of desire-motivaton.

The mere fact that a man desires something does not constitute a proof that the object of his desire is good [justified], nor that its achievement is actually to his interest.

(Ayn Rand,

The Virtue of Selfishness

, p.50)

And her boldest statement as to why desire cannot serve as an ultimate drive in justification amounts to the fear that conflicts among desires will translate to contradictory justifications, as follows:

When a "desire," regardless of its nature or cause, is taken as an ethical primary [ultimate drive], and the gratification of any and all desires is taken as an ethical goal (such as "the greatest happiness of the greatest number") - men have no choice but to hate, fear and fight one another, because their desires and their interest will necessarily clash. If "desire" is the ethical standard, [ultimate drive] then one man's desire to produce and another man's desire to rob him have equal ethical validity [justification]; one man's desire to be free and another man's desire to enslave him have equal ethical validity; one man's desire to be loved and admired for his virtues and another man's for undeserved love and unearned admiration have equal ethical validity. And if the frustration of any desire constitutes

sacrifice

, then a man who owns an automobile and is robbed of it, is being sacrificed, but so is the man who wants or "aspires to" an automobile which the owner refuses to give him - and these two "sacrifices" have equal ethical status [equal actionality]. If so, then man's only choice is to rob or be robbed, to destroy or to be destroyed, to sacrifice others to any desire of his own or to sacrifice himself to any desire of others; then man's only ethical alternative is to be a sadist or a masochist.

(Ayn Rand,

The Virtue of Selfishness

, p.30)

While the reason may be a fear of conflict among people who hold differing desires as standards of justification, the important thing is that she rejected desire at all, for any reason. The bottom line is, she rejected desire as a standard of ethics, as an ultimate drive.

We can safely assume that when she used the term “desire” like this, she meant to include all motivations generally. Therefore, we can assume she objected to justification in terms of motivations generally. For her, there can be no ultimate motivations. The only ultimate drives left are those other than motivations, i.e., ultimate duties. Here’s the logic: If you reject ultimate motivations, and you still insist on ultimate drives so you can justify other drives, then you embrace ultimate duties. There are no other options. It’s either motivation or duty. Reject one, embrace the other.

That is the essence of my argument.

But now I want to address the evidence that many say would contradict my conclusion.

The first is this: My argument cannot be true because duty, according to Rand, is a command issued by some authority. And there is no authority commanding us to pursue that ultimate value: life qua human. Therefore the corresponding ultimate drive cannot be duty.

My reply is that Rand’s definition for duty is too narrow to be useful in real life, and that the real definition of duty more objectively includes phenomena other than authorities. People regard many non-authority-based things as sacred objects that arouse our sense of duty. So let’s examine this issue more closely.

Observe Rand's definition for duty:

The meaning of the term "duty" is: 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.

(Ayn Rand,

Philosophy Who Needs It

, p.96)

The sacred object cited here is "some higher authority." The term "authority" implies the sacred objects have consciousness, the consciousness needed to "author" judgments. This means the sacred objects are basically social - one relates to them socially. The objects can be either mystical conscious beings, such as deities and animzed objects, or real conscious beings, such as other people - dictators, gurus or committees. In either case, the sacred object being rejected is a conscious being other than oneself, to which one relates socially. Hence, Rand applied her notion of duty only to social sacred objects.

But she left open the notion that one can have "moral necessity to perform certain actions for no reason other than obedience to some higher NON-SOCIAL phenomena,..." such as one's own life as a human. And this she would not regard as duty [she attacks Kant for regarding it so (Ibid p.96)]. But I do regard it as duty.

My concept of duty/sacred object is much broader than Rand's. I subsume any object regarded with the same sacredness that drives those who apply it to only social objects. Those who see a duty to non-social sacred objects are no less duty smitten than those who see a duty to social phenomena. Both see a duty as I define it.

Rand's narrower concept of duty may be useful to distinguish social from non-social objects to which one owes some relations, but I think it makes it harder to distinguish truth from falsehood more generally. Both social and non-social sacred objects are still sacred objects to which one is said to feel a duty. If she’s against duty, it is folly to argue against one without arguing against the other. But that’s precisely her folly.

And it is precisely this folly that left the door open to implicitly embrace duty in the form of non-social sacred object. Life qua human is that sacred object.

Another argument that contradicts mine comprises several passages in her writing where she upholds the importance of desire-motivation.

The first of these passages is an attack on deontological moral theories, such as the one most strongly proposed by Immanuel Kant.

In a deontological theory, all personal desires are banished from the realm of morality; a personal desire has no moral significance, be it a desire to create or a desire to kill. For example, if a man is not supporting his life from duty, such a morality makes no distinction between supporting it by honest labor or by robbery. If a man

wants

to be honest, he deserves no moral credit; as Kant would put it, such honesty is "praiseworthy," but without "moral import." Only a vicious represser, who feels a profound desire to lie, cheat and steal, but forces himself to act honestly for the sake of “duty,” would receive a recognition of moral worth from Kant and his ilk.

This is the sort of theory that gives morality a bad name.

(Ayn Rand,

Philosophy: Who Needs It

, p.97-98)

From this passage, we can see that Rand apparently regards desire (as in wanting to be honest) as having moral import. What does it mean for desire to have moral import? Does it mean desire can be an ultimate drive and justify? No, she’s already forbidden that. (She worries that chaotic conflict would result.)

The problem is, the capacity to supply actionality through justification is the only moral import that ANYTHING could have. Observe the following analysis:

Consider the vicious represser she mentions. Suppose this vicious repressor practiced the Objectivist ethics perfectly, in spite of his desire not to. He’s acting according to perfect reason, choosing his goals according to his life as a rational being, never selling himself out, and so on. But for some strange reason, he’d rather lie, cheat, and steal. Why would this bother Rand? Why does motivation matter?

I suspect she would say it matters because, for her, such a hypothetical vicious represser would not be possible. She would insist that paracticing Objectivist ethics would make him happy, and he’d lose his desire to lie, cheat and steal. A valid re-statement would be this: Pursuing the ultimate value will cause you to be happy.

So there’s a causal link between pursing the ultimate value and happiness. And so it looks like a kind of justification. It looks as if happiness is the justification for pursuing the ultimate value. But this is contrary to the function of an ultimate value. An ultimate value needs no justification. An ultimate value is, in fact, the auto-actionable drive that justifies all else. So the attempt to justify pursuing an ultimate value by reference to the happiness that will result is, frankly, backwardly absurd.

Kant’s deontological moral theory may seem psychologically absurd for kicking motivation out of justification, but at least it’s logically consistent on the issue. Rand’s alternative is just logically absurd.

For Rand to be logically consistent on THIS issue, she’d have to admit that life qua human was an ultimate motivation object instead of a sacred object, and that people pursued it for no other reason than they wanted to. But if she admitted this, she could no longer object elsewhere about using desire-motivation as an ethical primary for justifications. She can’t have both.

Yet another passage tries to give motivation a role in the Objectivist ethics.

“Happiness” can properly be the

purpose

of ethics, but

not

the

standard

. The task of ethics is to define man’s proper code of values and thus to give him the means of achieving happiness.

(Ayn Rand,

The Virtue of Selfishness

, p.29-30)

Yes, so long as we grant that “happiness” implies motivation, we can see that she’s trying to give motivation some role in Objectivist ethics. And it therefore becomes important to investigate whether “happiness” does imply motivation or not. There is some controversy over this. And I’d like to cover it later.

But for now, I want to see what happens if we assume that “happiness” means “motivation”.

OK, so motivation can be something called a purpose. Now, the common understanding of the word “purpose” is that it is the reason one does something, i.e., a justification. But in the context of her writing, this is supposed to be the meaning of the word “standard,” as in the standard by which one measures all action, and thereby determine whether the action is actionable (justified). But now, if purpose and standard both indicate justification, how can something be one, but not the other? Answer: she means to reserve the job of justification for her ultimate value, a duty to maintain one’s life qua human, but deny that job to motivation. Remember again her rant against using desire as an ethical primary. So she has a very confusing and frankly bizarre notion of “purpose.” It is purpose without the power to justify. Which seems to me: purpose without purpose.

So Rand might claim that ethics itself can have something mysteriousy called a “purpose”, but this purpose is somehow something other than a justification. (And to divorce “purpose” from “justification” seems contradictory to me, which is why I find it very mysterious.) Your quest for happiness may be the “purpose” of ethics, but this fact should never be the justification for practicing the ethics, i.e., it should never supply the Objectivist ethics with the actionality required to make you practice it. No, the real actionality must propagate back from the ultimate drive, for the ultimate value of human life qua human, whether or not you actually want it. And this ultimate drive is duty.

Rand apparently has a bizarre view of motivation’s role in ethics. Objectivist ethics will make you happy, but that’s not why you should practice it. You must practice it out of duty. The only real justification for practicing it remains duty, i.e., a motivationally void pursuit of life qua human. The resulting happiness is like some kind of beneficial accident (an epiphenomenon) that cannot even be considered a reward for obeying. Reward is just another perspective on motivation-oriented justification. Your happiness can never justify anything. Your happiness cannot reward you. On this view, happiness is literally just a lucky psychological accident of no consequence to justification, to the entire edifice of justification that is morality. Which means: misery could have been the accident instead, with no more or less justification to offer than does happiness. Neither are of any justificatory relevance. It STILL boils down to: just do your duty. Your happiness or misery have no justifying power.

And THIS, to me is just as deontological as Kant’s theory. BOTH give morality a bad name or, more precisely, both reveal the bad name within morality.

But the bottom line is: To give motivation a place in an ethical system, but then deny motivation any power of justification, is to reserve justification for those drives which are not motivation, i.e., duty.

Now, let us consider then whether Rand actually equated “happiness” with “motivation.”

If such an equivocation were a crime, a good lawyer could easily get her acquitted, because Rand is a crafty one when it comes to suggesting something without explicitly saying it. She makes the reader come to conclusions for her, without ever stating those conclusions herself, or worse, by logically stating the opposite.

The truly relevant instance of this surrounds her use of the word “value.” The way she defines value makes it ambiguous as to whether she’s talking about motivation or duty. Remember, value is that which one acts to gain or keep. It doesn’t mention why we so act. It doesn’t mention motivation or duty. We are free to imagine either as drives for the act. Thus, if she defines “happiness” as “that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values” (Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, p28), we can’t tell whether happiness comes from gratifying ones motivations or from satisfying one’s duties. The way she uses the term “value” makes it a sort of “package deal” where you get to imagine pursuing a sacred object such as life qua human, at the same time as gratifying your motivations. Happiness appears to result from doing this packaged mixture at some times, but from doing one or the other at other times, depending on what Rand is trying to say, or worse, what the reader wants to see in Rand.

I find it frustrating how Rand can produce the occasional “glowing moment of clarity” about her stance on desire and duty, only to surround those passages with confusing double-talk package-dealing via the term “value.”

Recall the passage about Kant’s deontological moral theory. That was a “glowing moment of clarity.” I consider it conspicuous that the essay/chapter containing that passage is called “Causality Versus Duty” rather than “Motivation (or Desire) Versus Duty.” If we look elsewhere in that essay for an explanation of desire’s importance to ethics, we’ll be disappointed, because what we get instead is Rand’s conspicuous use of the term “value” instead of desire (and the usual admonishments to pay attention to how things relate causally). Remember, the term “value” for Rand (and for me) is category-neutral, meaning that it does not always refer to matters of motivation. Rand often uses the term “value” in referring to the things one pursues by reasoned, volitional choice, as distinct from what one pursues by motivation. Why then did she talk explicitly about desire in just one paragraph, but then switch back to the ambiguous term “value” elsewhere? I suspect she did so to make it seem as if she were promoting desire precisely when she wasn’t. It is a trick. If first she promotes desire using the actual word “desire” and then switches to using the word “value,” she hopes we’ll consider “value” as just another term for “desire”, and that subsequent support for “value” means she’s supporting desire. But look closely. She’s actually NOT supporting desire anymore. She’s supporting choices made ultimately by motivationally void reason, not made by desire.

It is precisely because of this package deal surrounding value and happiness that one must develop a more exact vocabulary for analyzing her theory. And that precisely what I’ve tried to do at the start of this essay.

Edited October 5, 2008 by Luke Turner

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Luke,

That's a very long post and it is good to see you trying to work your way through all this. You make some rather interesting observations. (btw - It is "bear with me" not "bare with me." I will let you make the edits.)

On an initial skim, I see one real problem that is easy to fix. You start out by claiming: "But I here hope to show that she implicitly relied on duty in spite of her explicit rejection of the concept." You then go on to explain that you reject Rand's definition of duty and use your own instead. That makes for a double standard in judging Rand. It would have been more accurate syllogism-wise to say: "Rand relied on my definition of duty and should not have used the word "duty," since her definition is not valid."

I don't think you will find many who will agree with that, but it seems to get to the heart of what I read so far.

I have a suggestion. Instead of predicating your thoughts on trying to prove Rand was right or wrong, and starting an essay with the explicit intent of showing that Rand did not know what she was talking about, why not just discuss the issue from the ground up?

For instance, you call value a drive. I see a very interesting discussion right there, on what you consider to be the meaning of both value and drive. Why bother to attack Rand as a theme when you have good stuff like this to talk about? Is getting at the truth your aim, or is debunking Rand?

I suppose I am asking what your value and drive are in examining this issue. They come off as political (proving someone wrong at all costs), not ethical (seeking wisdom and truth).

Michael

[Lukon]

Thanks for your critique

I like your suggestions. I think enacting them would make my essay stronger. But I would still prefer to let the essay stand as is for now.

-Luke-

[BaalChatzaf]

I detect (perhaps in error) in Rand's works a duty to flourish. I consider flourishing a choice once can make or attempt to do, not a moral obligation. One's time, energy and talents are his to use or squander.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[John Tate]

I detect (perhaps in error) in Rand's works a duty to flourish. I consider flourishing a choice once can make or attempt to do, not a moral obligation. One's time, energy and talents are his to use or squander.

You could use the term duty to flourish. However this essentially is duty towards oneself. Ayn Rand dismissed duty towards others/society. You could use duty to ones own self-interest to describe the ethics of rational selfishness. Choosing to squander and live behind your potential certainly isn't rational self-interest even if one is interested in doing it.

[Selene]

Folks, can we use this one as a place to modify from?

duty is "conduct based on moral or legal obligation, or a sense of propriety one's duty to vote."

Adam