Settling the debate on Altruism

[Brant Gaede]

Sacrifice and altruism obviously have multi-meanings in varried contexts. They all boil down to the old objective-subjective argument.

--Brant

[Xray]

I wrote that the author Jennifer Burns called Objectivism a creed and Xray responded:

Do you think the term "creed" is an apt choice? If yes, why? If not, why not?

end quote

A creed refers to a religion. Even if an outside observer, who considered “the collective” (those who were in her inner circle, most of whom were true students of Objectivism,”) as a “cult” that is still short of a religion. Everyone who greatly admired her and had access to Ayn curried her favor.

I think all were afraid to offend her, with a capital, HER, and not afraid of violating some tenet of their new philosophy, Objectivism. Not deities, not inner Thetans, or the gods – rather, they feared Ayn Rand as a force of nature. Second-Handers need not apply to Objectivism. You must think for yourself, and that placed Ayn’s personality, that demanded obedience and accolades, on a collision course with everyone who studied and approved of her philosophy.

Imo the idea of individualism can't be reconciled with a movement leader's personality demanding obedience and accolades. I think Burns was right on the money in calling Objectivism a creed.

G.H. Smith wrote a very intertesting article about this topic: "Objectivism as a Religion".

http://web.archive.org/web/20041217041217/http://www.dailyobjectivist.com/Spir/ObjectivismasaReligion.asp

I wish he had applied 'Smith's Scalpel' more radically: while he clearly sees that fervent followers can and have indeed assumed a religious attitude, imo he has not sufficiently examined Rand's own role in it.

PT: According to Objectivism, if you Angela, are benevolent towards others that would be a virtue, if you are not sacrificing your own family and productive potential.

But this was not Rand's opinion, Peter. For she was of the opinion that friendships, family life and human relationships are not primary in people's lives:

“If [people] place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man’s life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite.” (Rand)

http://exiledonline.com/atlas-shrieked-why-ayn-rands-right-wing-followers-are-scarier-than-the-manson-family-and-the-gruesome-story-of-the-serial-killer-who-stole-ayn-rands-heart/

Here we have it again: deciding arbitrarily what is and what is not important in others' lives. This is as far removed from any individualism as it can get.

PT: As portrayed in Atlas Shrugged, the Starnes were psychological parasites living on the misery of others.

I didn't get this impression at all. I'll see if I can find quotes to illustrate further.

PT: If Ayn in real life were being spied upon she would have “whopped the peeker upside the head” or called the cops (certainly at some point in her life, after an unromantic menopause.)

"Unromantic menopause" - what a word combination, lol.

Do you think a "premenopausal" woman would not call the cops if stalked?

PT: Now, I can only speak for myself, but what if the “person intent on watching you” were a good looking person that intrigued you? Darn it, I saw that person recently. Are they putting themselves in my path so that we might meet? Now, that is a romantic, and intriguing hypotheses for a “benevolent universe.”

What you refer to I would not call stalking at all. What you mean is trying to get to know a person that interests you by arranging to be where he/she is is, and using socially acceptable means in doing so (which excludes the frightening things that stalkers like Galt do!).

PT: Would you fear them or avoid them if you were single and they were good looking and you were “looking?” I think romanticism and evolution would win out.

See above. It is essential to differentiate stalking from the other approach.

In the case of actual stalking, you bet "evolution" would win out with me. Since stalking is frightening, it signals "danger". Therefore a "fight or flight" response would kick in on my part.

It is creative fictional writing by means of which Rand gives us revealing insights into her psychological universe.

I'd be very careful about using art as a psychological tool or about reading art works as pieces of psychological biography. This isn't to say they reveal nothing or can be of no service in understanding the artist behind them, but I'd be cautious about what they reveal.

Rand was crystal-clear as to how she wanted her fiction to be understood. She verbatim said e. g. about Roark that she created him "as man should be", which indicates that she had no psychological distance toward her heroes.

The same goes for the type of sexual encounters described in TF and AS, which reflect her own preferences.

The ardent wish to bring her fiction to life in reality finally became so strong that she tried to live out the fantasies of a Randian hero/heroine relationship in her affair with NB.

B. Branden, The Passion of Ayn Rand, p. 272:

"The sexual affair between Ayn and Nathaniel had begun early in 1955. Years later, Nathaniel would acknowledge that their relationship was not truly lived in reality. Rather, it was theater - no, not theater, it was a scene from a novel by Ayn Rand, full of sexual dominance and surrender and the uncontrollable passion of two noble souls. Ayn, so desperate to live in the real world, not merely in her novels and in a future that never came - could not, after all, be content with reality. Once more, she was struggling to turn base metals - the painful, unsatisfactory fact of a woman having an adulterous affair with the too young husband of her closest friend - into the gold of a great and exalted romance. She succeeded in her fiction. She did not succeed in her life." (end quote)

It was bound to end in a disaster. I have often felt sorry for Ayn Rand, for example when thinking of her attempts to 'bring to life' characters from her novels in that way.

Which leads straight to a key question: How "rational" was Ayn Rand, the self-proclaimed advocate of "rationality"?

Edited May 2, 2010 by Xray

[anthony]

Which leads straight to a key question: How "rational" was Ayn Rand, the self-proclaimed advocate of "rationality"?

Xray,

Far more rational than most of us.

It's something my inferior intellect can appreciate only occasionally - that capacity to view the entire 'elephant' of Existence, ALL the time - instead of little bits, here and there, now and again.

Here was the rub, in Ayn Rand's case. The confident vision of that intellect, focused by intense rationality, led her to over-reach, imo.

I call it over-confidence, others might see it as arrogance: her conviction that her rationality could do it all, unsupported by, and unintegrated with, emotion - and that that is the full extent of one's consciousness, or at least all that really matters.

What a brilliant and courageous mind. In certain areas of her own life, I believe she aimed too high, and fell short.

For us, we have the luxury of taking Rand's Objectivism, coupled with the further teaching of N.B., B.B., D.K., to each find our own extended heights.

(Xray, I don't think you appreciate the distinct possibility that demonising Rand is the flip-side of the same coin of idolizing, and idealizing, her. )

Tony

[imurray]

Xray and Daniel,

Let me help you both out. This is an excerpt from a famous essay by Stanley Fish: "Why No One's Afraid of Wolfgang Iser" (in Doing What Comes Naturally, 1989). It's an elegant essay and, I think, you'll immediately see why your arguments reminded me of it.

But the asking of hard questions is not something the theory encourages, and indeed its weaknesses from one point of view are its strengths from another. By defining his key terms in a number of ways, Iser provides himself in advance with a storehouse of defensive strategies. A theory that characterizes reality in on place as a set of determinate objects, and in another place as the product of "thought systems," and in a third place as a heterogeneous flux will not be embarrassed by any question you might put to it. It is a marvelous machine whose very loose-jointedness makes it invulnerable to a frontal assault (including, no doubt, the assault I am now mounting). It is in fact not a theory at all, but a piece of literature that satisfied Iser's own criteria for an "aesthetic object"...

I think you can see how this, after swapping out a few terms, would work rather nicely with your arguments against Rand. I think it's ironic that the same argument Fish launched against Iser, whose theory revolves around subjectivity and pluralism, has been made against Rand.

Switching gears.

Regarding morality: do you agree with Rand's definition?

Rand: "What is morality, or ethics? It is 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." (TVOS, p.13)

If yes, then this implies all kinds of moral codes of values out there, since they all have the purpose of "guiding man's choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life."

I'd agree, this definition does imply all kinds of moral codes and values, but I don't think it's correct to conclude that Rand intended it to mean that any code of values is moral and ethical. Seeing as this was on page 13, I think it's more accurate to say that she was simply defining what constitutes morality or ethics - not what makes a moral code of values moral or ethical.

The question is if there exists such a thing as a "wrong" definition. Either it is a definition or it is not.

For example, it I told you the definition of "fork" is "a round object soccer players use to score goals", this is not a "wrong definition" - it is simply no definition of the term 'fork'.

Agreed, but this isn't an analogous example. The correct term, of course would be soccer ball, in the context of soccer. However, I could write a book and decide that I'm going to call a soccer ball a "fork" and choose to define it as such. In that case, you'd be wrong to imagine a fork (the kind with tines that you eat with) when you come across the word in my book. It would be confusing, of course, but not wrong.

I don't think Rand called for universal, absolute, definitions for words. I could be wrong, but I don't think her theory necessitates that concept.

More later, have to go judge a debate!

[Peter]

Xray wrote and quoted:

But this was not Rand's opinion, Peter. For she was of the opinion that friendships, family life and human relationships are not primary in people's lives:

“If [people] place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man’s life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite.” (Rand)

end quote

“Others first” Xray, others first. The following excerpt from an old Roger Bissell letter discusses the virtue of *benevolence*. I put some ***** around the relevant quote, if any reader is pressed for time, or does not like long letters, ignore what follows the asterisks.

Peter

******************

> What about David Kelley's argument that Benevolence is an 8th, distinguishable objectivist virtue (as presented in his “Unrugged Individualism: The Selfish Basis of Benevolence”)? Or is Benevolence merely an application of the virtue of Justice, as is claimed by some objectivists, like the ARIans?

I think that Benevolence is a corollary of Justice. It is an aspect of "giving each man his due." This means judging them and treating them accordingly. As Rand points out in "The Ethics of Emergencies", "a rational man regards strangers as innocent until proved guilty, and grants them that initial good will in the name of their human potential. After that he judges them according to the moral character they have actualized....If he finds them to be virtuous, he grants them personal, individual value and appreciation, in proportion to their virtues. It is on the ground of that generalized good will and respect for the value of human life that one helps strangers in an emergency -- AND ONLY IN AN EMERGENCY." (VOS, p. 47) For people one knows and values personally, however, one helps them because and to the extent that doing so is a "practical implementation of friendship, affection and love," i.e., one incorporates "the welfare (the ~rational~ welfare) of the person involved into one's own hierarchy of values, then act accordingly." (VOS, p. 46) This are applications of the virtue of benevolence, which clearly seems to be a corollary of the virtue of justice.

*************************

From: PaleoObjectivist@aol.com

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

Subject: Re: ATL: Objectivism's values and virtues

Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2003 18:55:38 EDT

. . . . > Some questions:

> Bill, I wonder if you believe that Rand's 3/7 Credo is exhaustive, such that any other value/virtue is merely derivative of the first 3/7. (Rand has stated that there's really only one primary value: Reason, and one primary virtue: Rationality; all other values and virtues are derivatives and expansions.)

Monart, while it's true that Rand viewed ~Rationality~ as the primary ~virtue~ of the Objectivist ethics, I don't think it's correct that she said that ~Reason~ was the one primary ~value~. If you'll check out "The Objectivist Ethics" in ~The Virtue of Selfishness~, you'll note that she said that Reason, Purpose, and Self-Esteem were, together, the three ~cardinal~ values of the Objectivist ethics. Also, there were three virtues which corresponded to them: Rationality, Productiveness, and Pride. This means that Rationality is the virtue by which man achieves the value of Reason, Productiveness is the virtue by which man achieves the value of Purpose, and Pride ("moral ambitiousness") is the virtue by which man archives the value of Self-Esteem.

However, it is unclear from Rand's writing exactly how she viewed the relationship between the values and the virtues. In ~Atlas Shrugged~, she said: "These three values [Reason, Purpose, and Self-Esteem] imply and require all of man's virtues" (p. 936), but in ~The Virtue of Selfishness~, she said: "Rationality is the source of all [man's] other virtues" (p. 33). This suggests that Reason, Purpose, and Self-Esteem ~together~ "imply and require" Rationality, which in turn is the "source" of the rest of the virtues -- and thus that Reason, Purpose, and Self- Esteem are the source (of the source) of the rest of the virtues. Yet, as noted in the previous paragraph, the three cardinal values and virtues are paired, each virtue being the means by which the corresponding value is achieved.

I think the way to resolve this apparent confusion is to realize, as Rand points out, that the ~results~ of exercising the virtue of Rationality are the additional (in this case, ~concomitant~) virtues of Productiveness and Pride ("Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work -- pride is the result." VOS, p. 25). So, achievement of the value of Purpose requires the exercise of the virtue of Productiveness, which requires the exercise of the virtue of Rationality. Similarly, achievement of the value of Self-Esteem requires the exercise of the virtue of Pride, which requires the exercise of the virtue of Rationality. And since you are exercising Rationality in order to achieve the values of Purpose and Self-Esteem, you are concomitantly achieving the value of Reason. Thus, as Rand says, the three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics really ~do~ work together as "the means to and the realization of one's ultimate value, one's own life..." (VOS, p. 25)

For this reason, I don't agree with you that Reason is the "primary value." Reason is not the ~source~ of Purpose and Self-Esteem, but their ~concomitant~. It is ~Rationality~ that is their source. Again, ~together~ they are "the means to and the realization of one's ultimate value, one's own life..." That is why Rand calls them the "cardinal" values of the Objectivist ethics; they are the values that are ~most important~ in achieving one's ~fundamental~ value, one's life.

As for where Rand got these three cardinal values for Objectivism, I think that the best explanation is found, oddly perhaps, in her esthetics essay, "The Psycho-Epistemology of Art" (~The Romantic Manifesto~). Rand says there are certain "metaphysical questions," i.e., questions about "man's fundamental view of himself and of existence." (TRM, p. 19) The answers to these questions determine a great deal about one's life, not only one's sense of life and one's preferences in art and human relationships, but also "the kind of ethics men will accept and practice; the answers are the link between metaphysics and ethics." (TRM, p. 19) (Note, here, that Rand says the ~kind~ of ethics, not all the details or nuances that distinguish, for instance, one form of egoism from another.)

So, what are those questions, and how do they relate to the cardinal values of Objectivism? Refer to the first full paragraph of p. 19 in VOS:

1. "Is the universe intelligible to man, or unintelligible and unknowable?" Objectivism's answer is: The world is intelligible, and my mind is competent to gain knowledge of the world. Plus, life/survival is my standard of value. Plus, I need to gain knowledge in order to survive. Plus, being rational is my means to gaining knowledge. So, because I want to survive, I should value reason (i.e., exercise rationality in order to achieve reason and thus survive).

2. "Can man find happiness on earth, or is he doomed to frustration and despair? Does man have the power of ~choice~, the power to choose his goals and to achieve them, the power to direct the course of his life -- or is he the helpless plaything of forces beyond his control, which determine his fate?" Objectivism's answer is: Man can find happiness and choose and achieve values and direct the course of his life. Plus: life/survival is my standard of value. Plus: I need to be happy and choose and achieve my values and direct the course of my life. Plus, being purposeful is my means to becoming happy and to choosing and achieving my values and to directing the course of my life. So, because I want to survive, I should value purpose (i.e., exercise productiveness in order to achieve purpose and thus to survive).

3. "Is man, by nature, to be valued as good, or to be despised as evil?" Objectivism's answer is: Man by nature is to be valued as good. Plus, life/survival is my standard of value. Plus, I need to feel that I am good and worthy in order to be motivated to survive. Plus, esteeming myself is my means to feeling that I am good and worthy. So, because I want to survive, I should value self-esteem (i.e., exercise pride aka moral ambitiousness in order to achieve self-esteem and thus to survive).

Note that it is possible for a person to adopt all three, or just any two, or any one, or ~none~ of the cardinal values (and their corresponding virtues) in their explicit philosophy (if they have one). However, it is a fact that, in order to survive, they must either smuggle them in to their actions at least to ~some~ extent and/or exist parasitically off of those people who do accept them. It might be interesting to evaluate the various other ethical philosophies in such terms, but the important point here is the general form of one's ethics being a derivation of one's general view of the relationship between man and existence.

[Historical note: I presented this insight during a question-answer session at the 2001 Objectivist Center Advanced Seminar in Johnstown PA, which was moderated by Will Thomas. The following month, on 7/29/01, I presented a short paper "The Metaphysical Source of the Cardinal Values of Objectivism" in a discussion at Nathaniel Branden's apartment. Some time later, Will Thomas present similar thoughts in a short piece in TOC's ~Navigator~, so this somewhat obscure view of Rand's is finally receiving proper attention.]

> What about David Kelley's argument that Benevolence is an 8th, distinguishable objectivist virtue (as presented in his “Unrugged Individualism: The Selfish Basis of Benevolence”)? Or is Benevolence merely an application of the virtue of Justice, as is claimed by some objectivists, like the ARIans?

I think that Benevolence is a corollary of Justice. It is an aspect of "giving each man his due." This means judging them and treating them accordingly. As Rand points out in "The Ethics of Emergencies", "a rational man regards strangers as innocent until proved guilty, and grants them that initial good will in the name of their human potential. After that he judges them according to the moral character they have actualized....If he finds them to be virtuous, he grants them personal, individual value and appreciation, in proportion to their virtues. It is on the ground of that generalized good will and respect for the value of human life that one helps strangers in an emergency -- AND ONLY IN AN EMERGENCY." (VOS, p. 47) For people one knows and values personally, however, one helps them because and to the extent that doing so is a "practical implementation of friendship, affection and love," i.e., one incorporates "the welfare (the ~rational~ welfare) of the person involved into one's own hierarchy of values, then act accordingly." (VOS, p. 46) This are applications of the virtue of benevolence, which clearly seems to be a corollary of the virtue of justice.

> What about (moral) Courage, having the strength of will to do the right deed? Should that be another distinctive virtue, or should courage remain implicit and embedded in each of the main seven?

Although Rand did not speak explicitly of courage in "The Objectivist Ethics," she did in "Galt's Speech" in ~Atlas Shrugged~. There, in a paragraph expounding on the virtue of integrity, she said that "courage and confidence are practical necessities, that courage is the practical form of being true to existence, of being true to one's own consciousness." (AS, 937) She also, in that paragraph, made a comparison between integrity and honesty: "Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence..." (AS, 936-7) For that reason, (moral) courage is a essential moral/emotional attribute of both integrity and honesty. Consistent integrity and honesty require moral courage. In this respect, courage is a subsidiary virtue to integrity and honesty.

> The objectivist ethics is not yet being widely accepted and practiced, even though Rand's books continue to be bestsellers. Is that still because of lack of knowledge, or because of cowardice, or because of evil intent, or because of political disincentives, or what?

It is easier and less risky to buy and read than it is to put into practice what one learns and accepts from what one has read. The latter takes ~work~ and has ~consequences~, each of which can be unpleasant. Also, people can misinterpret Rand's ethics and thus misapply it. And many people read and ~reject~ Rand's ethics. So, I'd say it's a combination of all of the above.

> Is there a direct proportionate relationship between consistent practice of objectivist ethics and achieving financial wealth, a la Hill's "Think and Grow Rich"? How significant a factor is the predatory government and its beneficiaries upon an objectivist's creation of wealth? Or, should one's rational intelligence be capable of overcoming any predation, a la Ragnar Danneskjold?

>From my own perspective, all you need is one or two significant screw-ups in your personal life to set you back years, if not decades, in achieving financial wealth. By the time you crawl out from underneath the emotional and financial rubble, you're older and have less energy and fewer years left in which to make

your pile. But suppose you ~don't~ make any bad mistakes, and still don't end up rich. The reason is that there are no guarantees in life. Wealth is not an inexorable consequence of Rationality.

> While there are some objectivists who are wealthy from being successful in one business or another, are there any objectivists who are wealthy *qua* objectivists, except for Rand herself? (and maybe Peikoff, via inheritance, and perhaps Branden, too). Considering that objectivism is a philosophy that should radically benefit all human beings, there are very few professionals who have even made a successful living from teaching or selling objectivism -- just a handful at TOC and at ARI. Why?

It's a market problem. You have to identify customers and present them with a superior product. Not everyone will succeed in that marketplace, whether as an artist (Rand's novels are the only financially significant esthetic product of the Objectivist movement, to date) or as a teacher/author of Objectivist philosophy.

Having said all that, I must say that my life has been ~enriched~ by Objectivism, both in my personal relationships (I wouldn't have the wonderful wife and two of my absolute best friends, if it weren't for Objectivism) and in my career and hobbies (especially writing in the areas of philosophy and psychology). While I would not turn up my nose at an ethically acquired mound of moolah, I am much more concerned with the spiritual riches that come from the satisfaction of a personal and productive life well lived, and O'ism has helped me to do that.

I hope these comments are helpful to you and others on the list, Monart. Thanks for posing such an intriguing set of questions!

Best 2 all,

REBRoger E. Bissell, musician-writer

From: "William Dwyer" <wswdwyer@attbi.com>

Reply-To: wswdwyer@attbi.com

To: <atlantis@wetheliving.com>

Subject: ATL: Objectivism's values and virtues

Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 16:11:18 -0700

Very little if any mention is ever made on this list of Objectivism’s values and virtues, so I thought they might be worth a brief discussion for those who are not especially familiar with them. There are three cardinal values and seven cardinal virtues in the Objectivist ethics.

The values are: reason (as one's only means of knowledge), purpose (as the choice to pursue happiness), and self-esteem, (as the belief that one is able to achieve happiness and worthy of achieving it).

The virtues are understood as the principled _means_ of gaining and keeping these values. As Rand puts it, "'Value' is that which one acts to gain and keep, 'virtue' is the action by which one gains and keeps it." [FNI, 147' pb 121] "Virtue," she says, "is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward... [Rather] _Life_ is the reward of virtue -- and happiness is the goal and the reward of life." [FNI, 156, pb 128]

For Rand, virtues involve a relationship between existence and consciousness and therefore entail the recognition of certain facts. Accordingly, Objectivism's virtues are:

1) Rationality, which is the recognition that existence exists and that nothing can take precedence over the act of perceiving it;

2) Independence, which is the recognition that you must think independently and not subordinate your judgment to that of others;

3) Integrity, which is the recognition that you must remain true to your convictions;

4) Honesty, which is the recognition that the real is (and the) unreal can have no value and, moreover, that respect for truth is not a social duty but a selfish virtue.

5) Justice, which is the recognition that you must judge other people as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, condemning their vices and praising their virtues;

6) Productiveness, which is the recognition that productive work is the process by which your consciousness controls your existence, and that you must choose a line of work that is commensurate with your abilities;

and

7) Pride, which is the recognition that you are your own highest value, that a virtuous character has to be earned, and that the result of earning it is self-esteem.

The difference between pride and self-esteem may not always be clear and is admittedly a subtle one, but for Objectivism, pride consists of recognizing the importance of a good character and what it takes to earn it. When someone says, "Take pride in your job," he is saying, consider it important enough to do well. By the same token, when someone says, "Take pride in yourself or in your character," he is saying, consider a good character important enough to be worth acquiring. Self-esteem, on the other hand, is the _consequence_ of earning a good character; it is the experience of efficacy and self-worth that comes from having earned it.

Of course, these virtues offer a very general guide for living one's life; they don't give a detailed blue-print, but they do provide an indispensable foundation for "gaining and keeping" Objectivism's cardinal values of reason, of purpose (defined as one's own happiness) and of self-esteem (defined as a sense of personal efficacy and self-worth).

It should be noted that Rand gives a more elaborate definition of these virtues in _For the New Intellectual_, starting on page 157; pb, p. 128).

-- Bill

[Peter]

RAK’s are random acts of kindness. I got a big kick out of the following, when I searched for the word “benevolence” on my computer. Would it be stalking if I said, "If you need change for a dollar, I will trade you three quarters for it, or four, if Xray will show me her beautiful smile?"

I tend to follow the benevolent universe theory, but the internet can put that theory to the test.

Peter

From: Walter Foddis <wfoddis@home.com>

To: objectivism@wetheliving.com

Subject: OWL: Are RAKs self-interested?

Date: Sun, 06 May 2001 13:40:37 -0600

I've been sitting on this post for many, many months, but given our current discussion on charity, now seems a good time to submit it. Regrettably, I don't know I'll have the time to get into a heavy debate, if it does lead to that.

On Atlantis many moons ago, Dave Thomas was explaining how, as a hypothetical(?) Objectivist, he would have handled the situation in which a fellow wanted 4 quarters (to purchase a bus ticket) for Dave's dollar:

> From what I understand of Objectivism, the moral thing to do would have been to give him only two or three quarters for his dollar. That way, both of us would have benefited from the exchange.

Mike Hardy wrote:

"This is an exceedingly simple-minded caricature of objectivist morality."

I would have to agree that is an overly simplistic view. Of course you'd give someone change equal to the value of the cash. Where in Objectivism is it stated or implied that you need to make a material profit with every exchange?

What is the self-interest in such an exchange? Perhaps not much of anything except knowing you've helped out some other guy get a bus ride. Self-interest seems insufficient to explain the morality of this exchange, which I would classify as a "random act of kindness" (RAK). I think the ~primary~ value in performing RAKs is not out of personal gain (psychological or otherwise), but the fact that someone ~else~ is better off! That you are helping the person so that person gains a value, and that is ~why~ you do it. RAKs do not have to entail sacrifice, and for the most part, I don't believe they do.

Here is another RAK example, which is actually true. I was leaving a parking lot with a practically unused $1 parking stub. I saw this woman about to purchase a ticket, so I rolled down my window and offered her my stub, which she gladly accepted. Would the Objectivist ethics require that I ask her to pay me for the ticket? I think if I were low on cash, as was common in my early student days, I might have asked for the dollar. But given I was not a "starving" student, and a dollar means very little in the big scheme of things (especially a Canadian dollar), I'd take a grateful smile over a dollar any day.

Now someone may say, "Ah ha! You gave this woman your ticket because you wanted to enjoy her smile. Therefore, it was selfish!" But can you imagine telling a person that the main reason you helped them out was because you wanted a smile, not because you wanted them to be better off? I think you'd get many a confused look in stating that that is your ethical reason for helping. I think there is a danger in explaining all acts of benevolence as ~primarily~ selfish, as they can lead one into some very twisted explanations into justifying one's actions. Or in Dave's case, it could lead to a gross misrepresentation of what the Objectivist ethics entails in practice.

I believe it is important to make the distinction of a primary and secondary values in explaining RAKs. I see the primary value as the main goal or end being sought. The secondary value is a by-product of the primary value, a side benefit. However, I would argue that it is the primary value that is your main motivation, or ought to be.

Do I think this contradicts the Objectivist ethics? Yes and no. I think the Objectivist ethics, in terms of its value structure, is sound. (Although some published empirical work would help matters, at least academically.) I also believe that self-interest ought to guide our need to actualize our potentials. However, when it comes to some benevolent acts, I think self-interest fails as an explanation. And no, I don't believe altruism is the only alternative to this. I think the above real-life examples show that a person can act to further

the values of another person without sacrificing one's own values and ~as well~, ethically hold, without appealing to altruism or self-interest, that the value gained by the other person is one's primary reason for helping.

In RAK situations, I sometimes see Objectivists appeal to psychological egoism as the reason for behaving ethically. Is this what Objectivism necessarily entails? I think Joel Feinberg makes the point against this position quite clear in his essay, "Psychological Egoism." To say that all motivated action is selfish, one "is not asserting a synthetic empirical hypothesis about human motives; rather, [one's] statement is a tautology roughly equivalent to 'all motivated actions are motivated.'" I especially see the appeal to psychological egoism coming from those new to Objectivism. Might it be that Rand is not clear as to what self-interest entails that this conclusion is sometimes (often?) arrived at?

Interestingly, I think people have a good memory for RAKs as they tend to be rarity rather than the norm. For example, I once parked (Why are my RAK examples car related? Who knows?) in front of a woman's driveway, as I was late for work and couldn't find a regular parking spot. Luckily, she didn't have me towed and left a note asking me not do this again. I then paid her for this kindness by giving her a cheque to compensate for the inconvenience (a parking ticket & being towed would have been much more expensive). She used the money to buy her daughter a few swimming lessons. 4 years later, not seeing each other during this time, it was the first thing she remembered when I approached her in casual conversation. My point: It was a minor event, but it was well remembered.

Sure, there is long range benefits in performing RAKs, such as those elucidated by Kelley in “Unrugged Individualism” (e.g., modeling ethical behavior for others to follow, thus providing potential future benefit for oneself). But I think it is quite a stretch to state it is a self-interested reason as one's primary motivation in helping. I believe that empathy is a much more accurate and plausible motivation for performing a RAK and that the primary value being sought is the benefit incurred by the helpee.

Walter

[George H. Smith]

G.H. Smith wrote a very interesting article about this topic: "Objectivism as a Religion".

http://web.archive.org/web/20041217041217/http://www.dailyobjectivist.com/Spir/ObjectivismasaReligion.asp

I wish he had applied 'Smith's Scalpel' more radically: while he clearly sees that fervent followers can and have indeed assumed a religious attitude, imo he has not sufficiently examined Rand's own role in it.

In that essay I made the point that most of the problems relating to Objectivist religiosity have to do with Rand's style rather than with the substance of her philosophy. I still stand by the following passage:

Quote from Ghs, "Objectivism as a Religion":

Ayn Rand is a passionate writer, and passionate writers tend to attract passionate readers, both rational and irrational. If some of Rand's readers, confusing style with substance, revere her as a secular pope, then she cannot be held accountable. Rand repeatedly stresses the value of independent judgment—the "sovereign consciousness," as she calls it. This passage is typical: "Truth or falsehood must be one's sole concern and sole criterion of judgment—not anyone's approval or disapproval...." The virtue of rationality, the centerpiece of Rand's moral theory, entails "that one must never place any value or consideration whatsoever above one's perception of reality....It means that one must never sacrifice one's convictions to the opinions and wishes of others...."

Intellectual passion is the creative engine of philosophy, indeed, of all abstract disciplines. Every philosopher, while etching ideas on that paper mirror known as the printed page, must make a decision: How much emotion should I inject into my arguments? Conventional academic wisdom dictates: none at all, especially if you wish to be published in a professional journal or by a university press.

Ayn Rand chose another path; she was an academic pariah who cared little for academic etiquette. Acerbic and arrogant, she rarely footnoted or quoted anyone except herself. This attitude sometimes got the better of her, as when she based her critique of A Theory of Justice by John Rawls on a review published in The New York Times Book Review, rather than on the book itself. "Let me say," she proclaimed, "that I have not read and do not intend to read that book." Having herself been victimized by such tactics, one would have expected better from Ayn Rand.

Despite her fondness for pronouncements from on high, Rand's philosophy is just that—a philosophy, not a religion. She labored hard on her theories; and if they sometimes become entangled in rhetoric and prejudice, then surely the reader can exert a little labor to untangle them. Critics who fail to do this call her dogmatic; admirers who fail to do this succumb to religiosity.

Ghs

[imurray]

From: "William Dwyer" <wswdwyer@attbi.com>

Reply-To: wswdwyer@attbi.com

To: <atlantis@wetheliving.com>

Subject: ATL: Objectivism's values and virtues

Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 16:11:18 -0700

> What about David Kelley's argument that Benevolence is an 8th, distinguishable objectivist virtue (as presented in his “Unrugged Individualism: The Selfish Basis of Benevolence”)? Or is Benevolence merely an application of the virtue of Justice, as is claimed by some objectivists, like the ARIans?

I think that Benevolence is a corollary of Justice. It is an aspect of "giving each man his due." This means judging them and treating them accordingly. As Rand points out in "The Ethics of Emergencies", "a rational man regards strangers as innocent until proved guilty, and grants them that initial good will in the name of their human potential. After that he judges them according to the moral character they have actualized....If he finds them to be virtuous, he grants them personal, individual value and appreciation, in proportion to their virtues. It is on the ground of that generalized good will and respect for the value of human life that one helps strangers in an emergency -- AND ONLY IN AN EMERGENCY." (VOS, p. 47) For people one knows and values personally, however, one helps them because and to the extent that doing so is a "practical implementation of friendship, affection and love," i.e., one incorporates "the welfare (the ~rational~ welfare) of the person involved into one's own hierarchy of values, then act accordingly." (VOS, p. 46) This are applications of the virtue of benevolence, which clearly seems to be a corollary of the virtue of justice.

Peter,

I'm not sure this addresses Xray's assertion that friendship, family life, and human relationships are not primary to a rational (and by extension moral) person and the implications of conceptualizing morality in that way. Like Xray, I struggle with this, but I think I am more generous in my assessment of Rand's intentions. Perhaps you can parse this quotation out for us and show us where you think it addresses Xray's comment? I for one would appreciate if you took the time to do that.

Ian

[Peter]

Panoptic wrote:

Perhaps you can parse this quotation out for us and show us where you think it addresses Xray's comment? I for one would appreciate if you took the time to do that.

end quote

Gosh Ian, I was already writing Xray when I saw your post. I hope the following letter addresses the subject satisfactorily.

George H. Smith wrote:

In that essay I made the point that most of the problems relating to Objectivist religiosity have to do with Rand's style rather than with the substance of her philosophy. I still stand by the following passage:

end quote

We are in agreement. Excellent reasoning George. One sticking point for me is that we are beings with volitional consciousness and can change how we *feel,* according to Objectivism. I think that ability is prematurely assigned to Objectivism. I went and found some quotes from NB in the notes section at the end of this letter, if anyone is interested. Barbara and Nathan both have exceptional insight into Objectivist Psychology. “Good job,” to you both.

Are the following two quote’s of Xray’s what you are talking about, Ian? It did not come across in your post, forwarded to my mail box.

Xray wrote:

Here we have it again: deciding arbitrarily what is and what is not important in others' lives. This is as far removed from any individualism as it can get.

End quote

Not necessarily. It is NOT deciding what SHALL BE important, it was Rand creating archetypes to describe ideal peoples’ hierarchy of values.

Now that’s a mouthful. Let me try again. I wish I could write like George.

It is not determining or dictating what WILL BE (or in actuality IS) important to any individual, it was Rand insisting that an *Objectivist* did not place anything above their own creative productivity. (People who are not Objectivists are not as good as Oists, like all you wretches who do not bow down to SHE who is magnificent – just kidding 8-)

Xray quoted Rand as saying:

If [people] place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man’s life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite.

End quote

Can a person be an individual and be like Howard Roark or John Galt? Sure. As long as the feelings of efficacy coming from productive work are real and not conforming to some *ideal* then it is individualistic and rational.

It sounds like Ayn would not condemn *normal* people who are not Objectivists but second handers like a stage mother reliving her life through her child’s life. Or someone like Paris Hilton who inherited money. Or Royals. And, of course a person cannot cease to be productive by retiring, or as it is phased in Latin, you must “die inharness” 8-)

(an aside: Now, I believe in inheritance, but I think a good parent will disperse smaller amounts throughout their own lifetime to their children. My reason for a moderate, temperate, and even random dispersal of funds is so that a child’s life is not ruined. Waiting for a big chunk of cash can be disabling. A big chunk of cash can make a person do foolish things and leave an adult child destitute in a few years. A Trust Fund can leave a child with no ambition.)

(another aside: In an emergency situation Rand considered it moral to risk one’s own life for a loved one. But she did not consider it objective to live daily for another’s sake, though in a contrary fashion, Rand also thought a parent had a moral obligation to correctly raise a child.)

After all that has been said, I agree that Rand was deficient in the realm of Psychology. Her archetypes embody character traits that are good, but not if those traits are divorced from loved ones.

I think Barbara Branden summed it up best:

From 3/10/01 atlantis@wetheliving.com

Re: ATL: RE Godlike‏

My own difficulty with John Galt is not that one COULD NOT be like him, in essence -- that is, a person of great accomplishment who embodies the Objectivist virtues, the apotheosis of the human potential -- but that in certain respects one SHOULD NOT be like him. Galt, like Howard Roark and like Rearden, (Francisco is the exception to this) is a man who deals with people, even people whom he loves, in an almost totally cerebral way; one knows by other means that he is a man of great emotional passion, but one sees it only in his sexual encounter with Dagny. One understands deductively the passionate commitment that has driven him all the years of his strike, but one rarely hears it in his words.

I believe that the emotional repression of Ayn Rand's heroic male characters is one of the reasons that so many of her admirers came to see repression almost as a virtue and not to fight it in themselves.

Ayn Rand further buttressed this error in her male characters by having her people make remarks to the effect that they would never allow a woman they love to see them in pain. This was Rand's own philosophy; she told me that when she first had met Frank O'Connor, she did not tell him of all the miserable and mindless jobs she had to work at -- because she never wanted to face him in pain. It seemed she felt that to show her suffering to the man she loved would be the equivalent of demanding his help, even his pity. Why she believed that, I do not know. And perhaps it was all the hidden and repressed pain in her life that caused her, in later years, to talk about little except her suffering.

Barbara

www.BarbaraBranden.com

Notes:

From: William Dwyer <wsdwyer@home.com>

To: objectivism@wetheliving.com

Subject: OWL: Re: Ban on cloning (Jason)

Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 21:21:48 -0700

TanTrung LeTran asked (8/4) "if human life is the standard of value, then isn't creating a new life 'more ethical' than none?"

Barbara Branden replied, "By 'life is the standard of value,' Ayn Rand was stating that one's own life is the standard, not the lives of others."

According to Rand, one's own life is the ~purpose~ of morality (which may be what Barbara intended), not the standard. In her essay, "The Objectivist Ethics", Rand states:

"The Objectivist ethics holds man's life as the ~standard~ of value -- and ~his own life~ as the ethical ~purpose~ of every individual man.

"The difference between "standard" and "purpose" in this context is as follows: a "standard" is 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."

I don’t think Nathan will mind if we reprint this, which I found on the web. I just don’t feel right printing just the “hazards” section without printing the whole thing, and as always I suggest cutting and pasting this to a word sheet and then creating the style and size for easy reading. I hope everyone will read the following - Peter

The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand

A Personal Statement

by Nathaniel Branden, Ph.D. (nathaniel@nathanielbranden.com)

Copyright © 1984, Nathaniel Branden, All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 1984, Association for Humanistic Psychology

Abstract: For eighteen years I was a close associate of novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand whose books, notably The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, inspired a philosophical movement known as objectivism. This philosophy places its central emphasis on reason, individualism, enlightened self-interest, political freedom — and a heroic vision of life's possibilities. Following an explosive parting of the ways with Ayn Rand in 1968, I have been asked many times about the nature of our differences. This article is my first public answer to that question. Although agreeing with many of the values of the objectivist philosophy and vision, I discuss the consequences of the absence of an adequate psychology to support this intellectual structure — focusing in particular on the destructive moralism of Rand and many of her followers, a moralism that subtly encourages repression, self-alienation, and guilt. I offer an explanation of the immense appeal of Ayn Rand's philosophy, particularly to the young, and suggest some cautionary observations concerning its adaptation to one's own life.

This article is reprinted from the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, where it appeared in issue number four of volume twenty-four in the Fall of 1984 on pages thirty-nine through sixty-four. It is an adaptation of a speech first delivered at the University of California at San Diego on May 25, 1982, which is available on cassette tape.

Contents:

Background

The benefits

The hazards

Confusing reason with "the reasonable"

Encouraging repression

Encouraging moralizing

Conflating sacrifice and benevolence

Overemphasizing the role of philosophical premises

Encouraging dogmatism

Closing

Background

I was fourteen years old when I read Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead for the first time. It was the most thrilling and emotionally powerful reading experience of my life. The only rival to that event might be the experience, some years later, of reading Atlas Shrugged in manuscript.

I wrote Miss Rand a letter in 1949 when I was studying psychology at UCLA and she was living in San Fernando Valley and was writing Atlas Shrugged The purpose of my letter was to ask her a number of philosophical questions suggested to me by The Fountainhead and by her earlier novel, We The Living. The letter intrigued her; I was invited to her home for a personal meeting in March, 1950, a month before I turned twenty.

By that time anyone could read any sentence in The Fountainhead and I could recite the essence of the sentence immediately preceding as well as the sentence immediately following. I had absorbed that book more completely than anything else in my life.

I told Miss Rand that I felt that she had, in effect, brought me up, long distance, through The Fountainhead. That book was the most important companion of my adolescent years. We became friends and were associated for eighteen years — often in daily contact. I remember, in the first year of our relationship, when I was twenty years old, that my biggest expense — at a time when I was on a very modest allowance — was my phone bill. Typically we would talk philosophy on the telephone three or four nights a week, two or three hours at a time. In those days, thirty or forty dollars a month for toll calls from Los Angeles to the Valley was a lot of money.

Our relationship went through many stages over the next eighteen years. It came to an end in the summer of 1968. There was an explosive parting of the ways. I intend to write about that break one day, but I shall not concern myself with it here.

From 1958 to 1968, through the Nathaniel Branden Institute in New York City, I lectured on her philosophy and offered courses on her philosophy via tape transcription in some eighty other cities throughout North America. My first book, published in 1962, was Who Is Ayn Rand? It was a study of her life and work.

Following the break, I moved to Los Angeles, and in my public lectures in Los Angeles and elsewhere through the country I encountered many people, admirers of Miss Rand, students of objectivism, who wanted to talk to me about their own experiences with objectivism as they struggled to apply Rand's teachings to their own lives. Perhaps because of my break with her, they now felt freer to speak openly to me than they would have in the past. Of course they talked of the many benefits they had derived from Rand's work. But, they also disclosed much suffering, conflict, guilt, and confusion. At first my almost reflexive response was to think that they had somehow failed to understand objectivism adequately. But as time went by and I saw the magnitude of the problem, I realized that answer was not good enough — and that I needed to take a fresh look at what the philosophy of Ayn Rand was saying to people.

This conviction was reinforced by many men and women who came to me for psychotherapy who were admirers of Ayn Rand. Here again I was exposed to problems relating to objectivism that cried out for an explanation.

Later as I conducted more lectures and seminars, I met literally thousands of people around the country who described themselves as students of objectivism and admirers of Ayn Rand's books, and while I saw the great benefits and values her work offered to their lives, I also saw the dark side, the difficulties, the feelings of guilt, confusion and self-alienation that clearly seemed related, in some way, to the impact of Ayn Rand's work. Perhaps the evidence had always been there — I think it was — only now I was freer to see it because of my own growth and emancipation.

In discussing Rand's philosophy, there are certain difficulties. One is the task of separating her basic ideas from her own style of presentation. She could be abrasive, she could make sweeping generalizations that needed explanations that she did not provide; she made very little effort to understand someone else's intellectual context and to build a bridge from their context to hers.

A further difficulty lies in the fact that she was a novelist and chose principally to present her philosophy in fiction, the important exceptions being, of course, her monograph, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, and a number of collections of her nonfiction essays, such as The Virtue of Selfishness. There are some wonderful benefits to be derived from dramatizing one's ideas in a novel, but there are also hazards. A novel can be a superb form through which to illustrate a new code of ethics or morality because one really has the opportunity to show, concretely and specifically, what one means and what one advocates; one can dramatize one's ideas through characters, actions, and events — saying to the reader, in effect, "This is what I mean." The problem lies in the fact that a good novelist has to consider many other elements besides philosophical exposition: drama, pace, exIment, suspense, and so forth. There is no time for the kind of qualifications — amendments, exceptions, special cases — that slow down the pace. So what we get are broad slashes, sharp-cutting strokes, which make superb reading and fantastic theatre — unless you're sixteen years old, reading this novel and feeling more excited than you've ever felt in your life, your mind and soul on fire, and taking it all in as if it were to be read like a philosophical treatise. That's not how novels are to be read. But you see the problem, especially when reading a novelist as powerful and hypnotically persuasive as Ayn Rand.

In this article, I cannot provide an overview of Rand's entire system, let alone discuss each point in detail. I want to discuss here only a few basic issues, a few broad fundamentals that strike me as particularly important in terms of their impact on her admirers.

What, in essence, does objectivism teach? What are the fundamentals of the Ayn Rand philosophy?

Objectivism teaches:

That reality is what it is, that things are what they are, independent of anyone's beliefs, feelings, judgments or opinions — that existence exists, that A is A;

That reason, the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by the various senses, is fully competent, in principle, to understand the facts of reality;

That any form of irrationalism, supernaturalism, or mysticism, any claim to a nonsensory, nonrational form of knowledge, is to be rejected;

That a rational code of ethics is possible and is derivable from an appropriate assessment of the nature of human beings as well as the nature of reality;

That the standard of the good is not God or the alleged needs of society but rather "Man's life," that which is objectively required for man's or woman's life, survival, and well-being;

That a human being is an end in him- or herself, that each one of us has the right to exist for our own sake, neither sacrificing others to self nor self to others;

That the principles of justice and respect for individuality autonomy, and personal rights must replace the principle of sacrifice in human relationships;

That no individual — and no group — has the moral right to initiate the use of force against others;

That force is permissible only in retaliation and only against those who have initiated its use;

That the organizing principle of a moral society is respect for individual rights and that the sole appropriate function of government is to act as guardian and protector of individual rights.

So, Rand was a champion and advocate of reason, self-interest individual rights, and political and economic freedom. She advocated a total separation of state and economics, just as — and for the same reason as — we now have the separation of state and church. She took the position, and it is a position I certainly share, that just as the government has no proper voice in the religious beliefs or practices of people, provided no one else's rights are violated, so there should be freedom or production and trade between and among consenting adults.

Obviously there is a good deal more to her philosophy than this brief sketch can begin to convey but we are talking here in terms of fundamentals — and these are the core ideas at the base of everything else she wrote.

I don't know of any other philosopher who has had her ideas quite so shamelessly misrepresented in the media. I was fairly young during the early years of my association with Ayn Rand and objectivism, and seeing this phenomenon in action was a shocking and dismaying experience. Here was a philosopher who taught that the highest virtue is thinking — and she was commonly denounced as a materialist. Here was a philosopher who taught the supremacy and inviolability of individual rights — and she was accused of advocating a dog-eat-dog world. Here was the most passionate champion in the Twentieth century of the rights of the individual against the state — and her statist opponents smeared her as being a fascist.

It was not a pleasant experience, during my twenties and thirties, to know the truth of our position and to encounter the incredible distortions and misrepresentations that so commonly appeared in the press, or to be present at some event with Miss Rand and later read a summary of what happened in a magazine that bore almost no relationship to the facts of the occasion. I suppose, however, it focused and dramatized something I needed to learn about the world: how low in their priorities is the issue of truth for most people when issues are involved about which they have strong feelings. Media people are no worse than anyone else; they merely operate in a more public area.

Notwithstanding all the smears on Ayn Rand and notwithstanding all the attacks and the misrepresentations of her ideas and work, her books sold and continue to sell in the millions. She has always had an especially powerful appeal to the young. Contrary to what some commentators may have led you to believe, her most passionate admirers are not to be found among big business. They are to be found among the young. I must tell you that in all the years I was associated with her I never saw big business do a thing to assist or support Ayn Rand in any way. I would say that for most businessmen her ideas were much too daring, much too radical. She believed in laissez-faire capitalism. She believed in a free market economy, I mean, a free free market economy. An economy in which not only were you to be unencumbered by regulations but so was everyone else. No special favors, no special protections, franchises, subsidies. No governmental privileges to help you against your competitors. Often I've had the fantasy of one day writing an article entitled "Big Business Versus Capitalism."

The benefits

Now what are some of the values that Ayn Rand offers, as a philosopher, to the many people who have been moved by her work? To begin with, she offered a comprehensive and intelligible view of the universe, a frame of reference by means of which we can understand the world. She was a philosophical system builder who offered a systematic vision of what life on this planet is essentially about and a vision of human nature and human relationships. And the point right now is not whether she was right or wrong in all respects of that vision, but that she had a vision, a highly developed one, one that seemed to promise comprehensiveness, intelligibility, and clarity — one that promised answers to a lot of burningly important questions about life. And human beings long for that.

We humans have a need to feel we understand the world in which we live. We have a need to make sense out of our experience. We have a need for some intelligible portrait of who we are as human beings and what our lives are or should be about. In short, we have a need for a philosophical vision of reality.

But twentieth-century philosophy has almost totally backed off from the responsibility of offering such a vision or addressing itself to the kind of questions human beings struggle with in the course of their existence. Twentieth-century philosophy typically scorns system building. The problems to which it addresses itself grow smaller and smaller and more and more remote from human experience. At their philosophical conferences and conventions, philosophers explicitly acknowledge that they have nothing of practical value to offer anyone. This is not my accusation; they announce it themselves.

During the same period of history, the twentieth century, orthodox religion has lost more and more of its hold over people's minds and lives. It is perceived as more and more irrelevant. Its demise as a cultural force really began with the Renaissance and has been declining ever since.

But the need for answers persists. The need for values by which to guide our lives remains unabated. The hunger for intelligibility is as strong as it ever was. The world around us is more and more confusing, more and more frightening; the need to understand it cries out in anguish.

One evidence of this need, today, is the rise of cults, the resurgence of belief in astrology, pop mysticism, and the popularity of self-appointed gurus.

We want answers, we want to feel we understand what is going on. If philosophers are telling us, "Don't even ask, it's naive to imagine that answers are possible," and if someone at last says to us, "Look no further, I have the answers, I can tell you, I bring clarity, peace, and serenity," it can be very tempting, very appealing and sometimes some of us end up in bed with the strangest people — all because of the hunger for answers, the hunger for intelligibility.

Ayn Rand has an incredible vision to offer — in many respects a radiantly rational one. I am convinced that there are errors in that vision and elements that need to be changed, eliminated, modified, or added and amplified, but I am also convinced that there is a great deal in her vision that will stand the test of time.

Her vision is a very uplifting one, it is inspiring. It doesn't tell you your mind is impotent. It doesn't tell you that you're rotten and powerless. It doesn't tell you that your life is futile. It doesn't tell you that you are doomed. It doesn't tell you that your existence is meaningless. It tells you just the opposite.

It tells you that your main problem is that you have not learned to understand the nature of your own power and, therefore, of your own possibilities. It tells you that your mind is and can be efficacious, that you are competent to understand, that achievement is possible, and that happiness is possible. It tells you that life is not about dread and defeat and anguish but about achievement and exaltation.

The message she has brought runs counter not only to the dominant teachings of religion and philosophy for many centuries past, but, no less important, it runs counter to the teachings of most of our parents. Our parents, who said, "So who's happy?"; who said, "Don't get too big for your britches"; who said, "Pride goeth before a fall"; who said, "Enjoy yourself while you're young, because when you grow up, life is not fun, life is grim, life is a burden"; who said, "Adventure is for the comic strips; real life is learning to make your peace with boredom"; who said, "Life is not about exaltation, life is about duty."

Then, this incredible writer, Ayn Rand, comes along and says, in effect, "Oh, really?" and then proceeds to create characters who aren't in the Middle Ages, who aren't running around in outer space, but who are of our time and of this earth — who work, struggle, pursue difficult career goals, fall in love, participate in intensely emotional relationships, and for whom life is an incredible adventure because they have made it so. Characters who struggle, who suffer, but who win — who achieve success and happiness.

So, there is a powerful message of hope in her work. A powerful affirmation of the possibilities of existence. Her work represents a glorification not only of the human potential but also of the possibilities of life on earth.

And perhaps that is why her books have had such a powerful impact on the young, on those still fighting to protect themselves against the world of adults and against the cynicism and despair of their elders, on those fighting to hang onto the conviction that they can do better, that they can rise higher, and that they can make more of their life than those who have gone before them, especially, perhaps, their parents and relatives. One cannot understand the appeal of Ayn Rand if one doesn't understand how starved people — and especially young people — are for a celebration of human efficacy and for a vision that upholds the positive possibilities of life. The Fountainhead in particular has served as an incredible source of inspiration for the young. The Fountainhead gave them courage to fight for their own lives and for their own integrity and for their own ambitions.

I remember reading letters written by soldiers in World War II who reported reading sections of the book to one another and finding in it the will to believe they would survive the horror they were enduring and come back home and create a better life for themselves. I remember reading letters from people who spoke of the courage the book gave them to quit their jobs and enter new careers, when all their friends and relatives opposed them. Or the courage to leave an unhappy marriage. Or the courage to marry someone who didn't meet with family approval. The courage to treat their own lives as important, as worth fighting for.

And what is Atlas Shrugged if it is not a hymn to the glories of this earth, this world, and the possibilities for happiness and achievement that exist for us here? What is Atlas Shrugged if it is not a celebration of the human mind and human efficacy? And isn't this just what the young so desperately need? And not just the young, but all of us? To be told that our lives belong to ourselves and that the good is to live them and that we are here not to endure and to suffer but to enjoy and to prosper — is that not an incalculably valuable gift? So these are some of the great benefits of the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Now let us turn to some of the problems.

The hazards

What I have to say will by no means be exhaustive or comprehensive, but I do want to touch on just a few issues that strike me as especially important. I want to share with you what I have observed.

Confusing reason with "the reasonable"

I have said that Ayn Rand was a great champion of reason, a passionate champion of the human mind — and a total adversary of any form of irrationalism or any form of what she called mysticism. I say "of what she called mysticism," because I do not really think she understood mysticism very well — I know she never studied the subject — and irrationalism and mysticism are not really synonymous, as they are treated in Atlas Shrugged. That gets me a little off my track, however. A discussion of mysticism outside the Randian framework will have to wait for some other occasion. I will only state for the record that I am not prepared to say, as Rand was, that anyone who might describe him- or herself as a "mystic" is to be dismissed as a crackpot or a charlatan.

Reason is at once a faculty and a process of identifying and integrating the data present or given in awareness. Reason means integration in accordance with the law of noncontradiction. If you think of it in these terms — as a process of noncontradictory integration — it's difficult to imagine how anyone could be opposed to it.

Here is the problem: There is a difference between reason as a process and what any person or any group of people, at any time in history, may regard as "the reasonable." This is a distinction that very few people are able to keep clear. We all exist in history, not just in some timeless vacuum, and probably none of us can entirely escape contemporary notions of "the reasonable." It's always important to remember that reason or rationality, on the one hand, and what people may regard as "the reasonable," on the other hand, don't mean the same thing.

The consequence of failing to make this distinction, and this is markedly apparent in the case of Ayn Rand, is that if someone disagrees with your notion of "the reasonable," it can feel very appropriate to accuse him or her of being "irrational" or "against reason."

If you read her books, or her essays in The Objectivist, or if you listen to her lectures, you will notice with what frequency and ease she branded any viewpoint she did not share as not merely mistaken but "irrational" or "mystical." In other words, anything that challenged her particular model of reality was not merely wrong but "irrational" and "mystical" — to say nothing, of course, of its being "evil," another word she loved to use with extraordinary frequency.

No doubt every thinker has to be understood, at least in part, in terms of what the thinker is reacting against, that is, the historical context in which the thinker's work begins. Ayn Rand was born in Russia: a mystical country in the very worst sense of the word, a country that never really passed through the Age of Reason or the Enlightenment in the way that Western Europe did. Ayn Rand herself was not only a relentless rationalist, she was profoundly secular, profoundly in love with this world, in a way that I personally can only applaud. Yet the problem is that she became very quick on the draw in response to anything that even had the superficial appearance of irrationalism, by which I mean, of anything that did not fit her particular understanding of "the reasonable."

With regard to science, this led to an odd kind of scientific conservatism, a suspicion of novelty, an indifference — this is only a slight exaggeration — to anything more recent than the work of Sir Isaac Newton. I remember being astonished to hear her say one day, "After all, the theory of evolution is only a hypothesis." I asked her, "You mean you seriously doubt that more complex life forms — including humans — evolved from less complex life forms?" She shrugged and responded, "I'm really not prepared to say," or words to that effect. I do not mean to imply that she wanted to substitute for the theory of evolution the religious belief that we are all God's creation; but there was definitely something about the concept of evolution that made her uncomfortable.

Like many other people, she was enormously opposed to any consideration of the possible validity of telepathy, ESP, or other psi phenomenon. The evidence that was accumulating to suggest that there was something here at least worthy of serious scientific study did not interest her; she did not feel any obligation to look into the subject; she was convinced it was all a fraud. It did not fit her model of reality. When an astronaut attempted during a flight to the moon to conduct a telepathic experiment, she commented on the effort with scorn — even the attempt to explore the subject was contemptible in her opinion. Now I have no wish to argue, in this context, for or against the reality of nonordinary forms of awareness or any other related phenomenon. That is not my point. My point is the extent to which she had a closed mind on the subject, with no interest in discovering for herself why so many distinguished scientists had become convinced that such matters are eminently worthy of study.

Another example — less controversial — involves hypnosis. I became interested in hypnosis in 1960. I began reading books on the subject and mastering the basic principles of the art. Now this generated a problem because on the one hand Ayn Rand knew, or believed she knew, that hypnosis was a fraud with no basis in reality; on the other hand, in 1960 Nathaniel Branden was the closest thing on earth to John Galt. And John Galt could hardly be dabbling in irrationalism. So this produced some very curious conversations between us. She was not yet prepared, as she was later, to announce that I was crazy, corrupt, and depraved. At the same time, she firmly believed that hypnosis was irrational nonsense. I persevered in my studies and learned that the human mind was capable of all kinds of processes beyond what I had previously believed. My efforts to reach Ayn on this subject were generally futile and I soon abandoned the attempt. And to tell the truth, during the time I was still with her, I lost some of my enthusiasm for hypnosis. I regained it after our break and that is when my serious experimenting in that field began and the real growth of my understanding of the possibilities of working with altered states of consciousness.

I could give many more examples of how Ayn Rand's particular view of "the reasonable" became intellectually restrictive. Instead, to those of you who are her admirers, I will simply say: Do not be in a hurry to dismiss observations or data as false, irrational, or "mystical," because they do not easily fit into your current model of reality. It may be the case that you need to expand your model. One of the functions of reason is to alert us to just such a possibility.

It would have been wonderful, given how much many of us respected and admired Ayn Rand, if she had encouraged us to develop a more open-minded attitude and to be less attached to a model of reality that might be in need of revision. But that was not her way. Quite the contrary. Other people's model of reality might be in need of revision. Never hers. Not in any fundamental sense. Reason, she was convinced, had established that for all time. In encouraging among her followers the belief that she enjoyed a monopoly on reason and the rational, she created for herself a very special kind of power, the power to fling anyone who disagreed with her about anything into the abyss of "the irrational" — and that was a place we were all naturally eager to avoid.

Encouraging repression

Now let's turn to another very important issue in the Randian philosophy: the relationship between reason and emotion. Emotions, Rand said again and again, are not tools of cognition. True enough, they are not. Emotions, she said, proceed from value judgments, conscious or subconscious, which they do in the sense that I wrote about in The Psychology of Self-Esteem and The Disowned Self. Emotions always reflect assessments of one kind or another, as others besides Rand and myself have pointed out.

We must be guided by our conscious mind, Rand insisted; we must not follow our emotions blindly. Following our emotions blindly is undesirable and dangerous: Who can argue with that? Applying the advice to be guided by our mind isn't always as simple as it sounds. Such counsel does not adequately deal with the possibility that in a particular situation feelings might reflect a more correct assessment of reality than conscious beliefs or, to say the same thing another way, that the subconscious mind might be right while the conscious mind was mistaken. I can think of many occasions in my own life when I refused to listen to my feelings and followed instead my conscious beliefs — which happened to be wrong — with disastrous results. If I had listened to my emotions more carefully, and not been so willing to ignore and repress them, my thinking — and my life — would have advanced far more satisfactorily.

A clash between mind and emotions is a clash between two assessments, one of which is conscious, the other might not be. It is not invariably the case that the conscious assessment is superior to the subconscious one; that needs to be checked out. The point is not that we follow the voice of emotion or feeling blindly, it means only that we don't dismiss our feelings and emotions so quickly; we try to understand what they may be telling us; we don't simply repress, rather we try to resolve the conflict between reason and feeling. We strive for harmony, for integration. We don't simply slash away the pieces of ourselves that don't fit our notion of the good or the right or the rational.

The solution for people who seem over preoccupied with feelings is not the renunciation of feelings but rather greater respect for reason, thinking, and the intellect. What is needed is not a renunciation of emotion but a better balance between emotion and thinking. Thinking needs to be added to the situation, emotion does not need to be subtracted from the situation.

Admittedly there are times when we have to act on the best of our conscious knowledge, and children will pay more attention to our conscious knowledge and convictions, even when it's hard, even when it does violence to some of our feelings — because there is not time to work the problem out. But those are, in effect, emergency situations. It's not a way of life.

I wrote The Disowned Self to address myself to this problem. In a way, that book is written in code. On one level, it's a book about the problem of self-alienation and a deeper discussion of the relationship of reason and emotion than I had offered in The Psychology of Self-Esteem. But on another level, it's a book written to my former students at Nathaniel Branden Institute, an attempt to get them to rethink the ideas about the relationship of mind and emotion they might have acquired from Ayn Rand or me, and thereby I hoped to undo some of the harm I might have done in the past when I shared and advocated Rand's views in this matter. If you read the book that I wrote with my wife Devers The Romantic Love Question and Answer Book, you will find that approach carried still further.

In the days of my association with Ayn Rand, we heard over and over again the accusation that we are against feelings, against emotions. And we would say in all good faith, "What are you talking about? We celebrate human passion. All the characters in the novels have powerful emotions, powerful passions. They feel far more deeply about things than does the average person. How can you possibly say that we are against feeling and emotion?"

The critics were right. Here is my evidence: When we counsel parents, we always tell them, in effect: "Remember, your children will pay more attention to what you do than what you say. No teaching is as powerful as the teaching of the example. It isn't the sermons you deliver that your children will remember, but the way you act and live." Now apply that same principle to fiction, because the analogy fits perfectly. On the one hand, there are Rand's abstract statements concerning the relationship of mind and emotion; on the other hand, there is the behavior of her characters, the way her characters deal with their feelings.

If, in page after page of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, you show someone being heroic by ruthlessly setting feelings aside, and if you show someone being rotten and depraved by, in effect, diving headlong into his feelings and emotions, and if that is one of your dominant methods of characterization, repeated again and again, then it doesn't matter what you profess, in abstract philosophy, about the relationship of reason and emotion. You have taught people: repress, repress, repress.

If you want to know the means by which they were taught, notwithstanding all the celebrations of passion in Ayn Rand's books, study the scenes in The Fountainhead that deal with Roark's way of responding to his own suffering, study the ruthlessness toward their own feelings and emotions exhibited by the heroes and heroine of Atlas Shrugged, and study also consistent way in which villains are characterized in terms of following their feelings. And understand the power of role models to shape beliefs.

When admirers of Ayn Rand seek my services professionally, they often come with the secret hope, rarely acknowledged in words, that with Nathaniel Branden they will at last become the masters of repression needed to fulfill the dream of becoming an ideal objectivist. When I tell them, usually fairly early in our relationship, that one of their chief problems is that they are out of touch with their feelings and emotions, cut off from them and oblivious, and that they need to learn how to listen more to their inner signals, to listen to their emotions, they often exhibit a glazed shock and disorientation. I guess I should admit that seeing their reaction is a real pleasure to me, one of the special treats of my profession you might say, and I do hope you will understand that I am acknowledging this with complete affection and good will and without any intention of sarcasm. The truth is, seeing their confusion and dismay, that it's hard to keep from smiling a little.

One of the first things I need to convey to them is that when they deny and disown their feelings and emotions, they really subvert and sabotage their ability to think clearly — because they cut off access to too much vital information. This is one of my central themes in The Disowned Self. No one can be integrated, no one can function harmoniously, no one can think clearly and effectively about the deep issues of life who is oblivious to the internal signals, manifested as feelings and emotions, rising from within the organism. My formula for this is: "Feel deeply to think clearly." It seems, however, to take a long time — for objectivists and nonobjectivists alike — to understand that fully. Most of us have been encouraged to deny and repress who we are, to disown our feelings, to disown important aspects of the self, almost from the day we were born. The road back to selfhood usually entails a good deal of struggle and courage.

I know a lot of men and women who, in the name of idealism, in the name of lofty beliefs, crucify their bodies, crucify their feelings, and crucify their emotional life, in order to live up to that which they call their values. Just like the followers of one religion or another who, absorbed in some particular vision of what they think human beings can be or should be, leave the human beings they actually are in a very bad place: a place of neglect and even damnation. However, and this is a theme I shall return to later, no one ever grew or evolved by disowning and damning what he or she is. We can begin to grow only after we have accepted who we are and what we are and where we are right now. And no one was ever motivated to rise to glory by the pronouncement that he or she is rotten.

It's often been observed that the Bible says many contradictory things and so if anyone tries to argue that the Bible holds a particular position, it's very easy for someone who disagrees to quote conflicting evidence. It's been said that you can prove almost anything by quoting the Bible. The situation with Ayn Rand is not entirely different. Right now someone could quote passages from The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged that would clearly conflict with and contradict what I am saying about the messages contained in those works. They would not be wrong, given that the works contain contradictory messages. Nathaniel Branden of 1960 could quote lots of passages to dispute at least some of the points I am making here. He did, too. That doesn't change the fact that if you really study what the story is saying, if you pay attention to what the actions of the characters are saying, and if you pay attention to the characterizations, you will find abundant evidence to support my observation that the work encourages emotional repression and self-disowning.

Notice further — and this is especially true of Atlas Shrugged — how rarely you find the heroes and heroine talking to each other on a simple, human level without launching into philosophical sermons, so that personal experience always ends up being subordinated to philosophical abstractions. You can find this tendency even in the love scene between Galt and Dagny in the underground tunnels of Taggart Transcontinental, where we are given a brief moment of the intimately personal between them, and then, almost immediately after sexual intimacy, Galt is talking like a philosopher again. I have reason to believe that Galt has a great many imitators around the country and it's driving spouses and partners crazy!

The effect of Rand's approach in this area, then, is very often to deepen her readers' sense of self-alienation. That was obviously not Rand's intention; nonetheless it is easy enough to show how often it has been the effect of her work on her admirers — not only self-alienation, but also alienation from the world around us. Now it is probably inevitable that any person who thinks independently will experience some sense of alienation relative to the modern world. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about alienation exalted to the status of a high-level virtue. And how might a reader draw that inference from Ayn Rand? I will answer in the following way.

In preparation for this presentation, I re-read the opening chapter of The Fountainhead. It really is a great book. I noticed something in the first chapter I never noticed before. Consider these facts: The hero has just been expelled from school, he is the victim of injustice, he is misunderstood by virtually everyone, and he himself tends to find other people puzzling and incomprehensible. He is alone; he has no friends. There is no one with whom he can share his inner life or values. So far, with the possible exception of being expelled from school, this could be a fairly accurate description of the state of the overwhelming majority of adolescents. There is one big difference: Howard Roark gives no indication of being bothered by any of it. He is serenely happy within himself. For average teenagers, this condition is agony. They read The Fountainhead and see this condition, not as a problem to be solved, but as a condition they must learn to be happy about — as Roark is. All done without drugs! What a wish-fulfillment that would be! What a dream come true! Don't bother learning to understand anyone. Don't bother working at making yourself better understood. Don't try to see whether you can close the gap of your alienation from others, at least from some others, just struggle for Roark's serenity — which Rand never tells you how to achieve. This is an example of how The Fountainhead could be at once a source of great inspiration and a source of great guilt, for all those who do not know how to reach Roark's state.

In Atlas Shrugged, admittedly, Rand does acknowledge that we are social beings with legitimate social needs. For many of us, our first introduction to Ayn Rand's philosophy was through The Fountainhead, and that book makes an impression not easily lost

Encouraging moralizing

Another aspect of her philosophy that I would like to talk about — one of the hazards — is the appalling moralism that Ayn Rand herself practiced and that so many of her followers also practice. I don't know of anyone other than the Church fathers in the Dark Ages who used the word "evil" quite so often as Ayn Rand.

Of all the accusations of her critics, surely the most ludicrous is the accusation that Ayn Rand encourages people to do just what they please. If there's anything in this world Ayn did not do, it was to encourage people to do what they please. If there is anything she was not, it was an advocate of hedonism.

She may have taught that "Man's Life" is the standard of morality and your own life is its purpose, but the path she advocated to the fulfillment of your life was a severely disciplined one. She left many of her readers with the clear impression that life is a tightrope and that it is all too easy to fall off into moral depravity. In other words, on the one hand she preached a morality of joy, personal happiness, and individual fulfillment; on the other hand, she was a master at scaring the hell out of you if you respected and admired her and wanted to apply her philosophy to your own life.

She used to say to me, "I don't know anything about psychology, Nathaniel." I wish I had taken her more seriously. She was right; she knew next to nothing about psychology. What neither of us understood, however, was how disastrous an omission that is in a philosopher in general and a moralist in particular. The most devastating single omission in her system and the one that causes most of the trouble for her followers is the absence of any real appreciation of human psychology and, more specifically, of developmental psychology, of how human beings evolve and become what they are and of how they can change.

So, you are left with this sort of picture of your life. You either choose to be rational or you don't. You're honest or you're not. You choose the right values or you don't. You like the kind of art Rand admires or your soul is in big trouble. For evidence of this last point, read her essays on esthetics (Rand, 1970). Her followers are left in a dreadful position: If their responses aren't "the right ones," what are they to do? How are they to change? No answer from Ayn Rand. Here is the tragedy: Her followers' own love and admiration for her and her work become turned into the means of their self-repudiation and self-torture. I have seen a good deal of that, and it saddens me more than I can say.

Let's suppose a person has done something that he or she knows to be wrong, immoral, unjust, or unreasonable: instead of acknowledging the wrong, instead of simply regretting the action and then seeking, compassionately, to understand why the action was taken and asking where was I coming from? and what need was I trying in my own twisted way to satisfy? — instead of asking such questions, the person is encouraged to brand the behavior as evil and is given no useful advice on where to go from there. You don't teach people to be moral by teaching them self-contempt as a virtue.

Enormous importance is attached in Rand's writings to the virtue of justice. I think one of the most important things she has to say about justice is that we shouldn't think of justice only in terms of punishing the guilty but also in terms of rewarding and appreciating the good. I think her emphasis on this point is enormously important.

To look on the dark side, however, part of her vision of justice is urging you to instant contempt for anyone who deviates from reason or morality or what is defined as reason or morality. Errors of knowledge may be forgiven, she says, but not errors of morality. Even if what people are doing is wrong, even if errors of morality are involved, even if what people are doing is irrational, you do not lead people to virtue by contempt. You do not make people better by telling them they are despicable. It just doesn't work. It doesn't work when religion tries it and it doesn't work when objectivism tries it.

If someone has done something so horrendous that you want to tell him or her that the action is despicable, go ahead. If you want to tell someone he is a rotten son-of-a-bitch, go ahead. If you want to call someone a scoundrel, go ahead. I don't deny that there are times when that is a thoroughly appropriate response. What I do deny is that it is an effective strategy for inspiring moral change or improvement.

The great, glaring gap in just about all ethical systems of which I have knowledge, even when many of the particular values and virtues they advocate may be laudable, is the absence of a technology to assist people in getting there, an effective means for acquiring these values and virtues, a realistic path people can follow. That is the great missing step in most religions and philosophies. And this is where psychology comes in: One of the tasks of psychology is to provide a technology for facilitating the process of becoming a rational, moral human being.

You can tell people that it's a virtue to be rational, productive, or just, but, if they have not already arrived at that stage of awareness and development on their own, objectivism does not tell them how to get there. It does tell you you're rotten if you fail to get there.

Ayn Rand admirers come to me and say, "All of her characters are so ambitious. I'm thirty years old and I don't know what to do with my life. I don't know what I want to make of myself. I earn a living, I know I could be better than I am, I know I could be more productive or creative, and I'm not. I'm rotten. What can I do?" I've heard some version of this quite often. I've heard it a lot from some very intelligent men and women who are properly concerned they they have many capacities they are not using, and who long for something more — which is healthy and desirable, but the self-blame and self-hatred is not and it's very, very common.

The question for me is: How come you don't have the motivation to do more? How come so little seems worth doing? In what way, in what twisted way, perhaps, might you be trying to take care of yourself by your procrastination, by your inertia, by your lack of ambition? Let's try to understand what needs you're struggling to satisfy. Let's try to understand where you're coming from.

That is an approach I learned only after my break with Ayn Rand. It is very foreign to the approach I learned in my early years with her. And it's very foreign to just about every objectivist I've ever met. However, if we are to assist people to become more self-actualized, that approach is absolutely essential. We are all of us organisms trying to survive. We are all of us organisms trying in our own way to use our abilities and capacities to satisfy our needs. Sometimes the paths we choose are pretty terrible, and sometimes the consequences are pretty awful for ourselves and others. Until and unless we are willing to try to understand where people are coming from, what they are trying to accomplish, and what model of reality they're operating form — such that they don't see themselves as having better alternatives, we cannot assist anyone to reach the moral vision that objectivism holds as a possibility for human beings.

It's not quite true to say that I didn't understand this until after my break with Rand. This approach is already present in The Psychology of Self-Esteem, most of which was written during my years with her. I will say instead that I learned to practice this approach far more competently only after the break, only after I disassociated myself from her obsessive moralism and moralizing.

So here in Ayn Rand's work is an ethical philosophy with a great vision of human possibilities, but no technology to help people get there, and a lot of messages encouraging self-condemnation when they fail to get there.

Her readers come to me and they say; "Boy, it was so great. I read her books and I got rid of the guilt that the Church laid on me. I got rid of the guilt over sex. Or wanting to make money." "Why have you come to see me?", I ask. "Well, now I'm guilty about something else. I'm not as good as John Galt. Sometimes I'm not even sure I'm as good as Eddie Willers," they respond.

Rand might respond, "But these people are guilty of pretentiousness and grandiosity!" Sure they are, at least some of the time. Although when you tell people, as Rand did, that one of the marks of virtue is to value the perfection of your soul above all things, not your happiness, not your enjoyment of life, not the joyful fulfillment of your positive possibilities, but the perfection of your soul, aren't you helping to set people up for just this kind of nonsense?

A man came to me a little while ago for psychotherapy. He was involved in a love affair with a woman. He was happy with her. She was happy with him. But he had a problem; he wasn't convinced she was worthy of him — he wasn't convinced she was "enough." And why not? Because, although she worked for a living, her life was not organized around some activity comparable to building railroads. "She isn't a Dagny Taggart." The fact that he was happy with her seemed to matter less to him than the fact that she didn't live up to a certain notion of what the ideal woman was supposed to be like.

If he had said, "I'm worried about our future because, although I enjoy her right now, I don't know whether or not there's enough intellectual stimulation there," that would have been a different question entirely and a far more understandable one. What was bothering him was not his own misgivings but a voice inside him, a voice which he identified as the voice of Ayn Rand, saying "She's not Dagny Taggart." When I began by gently pointing out to him that he wasn't John Galt, it didn't make him feel any better — it made him feel worse!

I recall a story I once read by a psychiatrist, a story about a tribe that has a rather unusual way of dealing with moral wrongdoers or lawbreakers. Such a person, when his or her infraction is discovered, is not reproached or condemned but is brought into the center of the village square — and the whole tribe gathers around. Everyone who has ever known this person since the day he or she was born steps forward, one by one, and talks about anything and everything good this person has ever been known to have done. The speakers aren't allowed to exaggerate or make mountains out of molehills; they have to be realistic, truthful, factual. And the person just sits there, listening, as one by one people talk about all the good things this person has done in the course of his or her life. Sometimes, the process takes several days. When it's over, the person is released and everyone goes home and there is no discussion of the offense — and there is almost no repetition of offenses (Zunin, 1970).

In the objectivist frame of reference there is the assumption, made explicit in John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged, and dramatized throughout the novel in any number of ways, that the most natural, reasonable, appropriate response to immoral or wrong behavior is contempt and moral condemnation. Psychologists know that that response tends to increase the probability that that kind of behavior will be repeated. This is an example of what I mean by the difference between a vision of desirable behavior and the development of an appropriate psychological technology that would inspire people to practice it.

Conflating sacrifice and benevolence

Now let us move on to still another aspect of the Rand philosophy that entails a great contribution, on the one hand, and a serious omission, on the other. I have already stressed that in the objectivist ethics a human being is regarded as an end in him- or herself and exists properly for his or her own sake, neither sacrificing self to others nor sacrificing others to self. The practice of human sacrifice is wrong, said Rand, no matter by whom it is practiced. She was an advocate of what we may call enlightened selfishness or enlightened self-interest. Needless to say, this is a viewpoint that I support unreservedly.

I noted earlier that, when we want to understand a thinker, it's generally useful to understand what that person may be reacting against. I believe that in desire to expose the evil of the notion that self-sacrifice is a virtue and in her indignation at the very idea of treating human beings as objects of sacrifice, she presented her case for rational self-interest or rational selfishness in a way that neglected a very important part of human experience. To be precise, she didn't neglect it totally; but she did not deal with it adequately, did not give it the attention it deserves.

I am referring to the principle of benevolence, mutual helpfulness and mutual aid between human beings. I believe it is a virtue to support life. I believe it is a virtue to assist those who are struggling for life. I believe it is a virtue to seek to alleviate suffering. None of this entails the notion of self-sacrifice. I am not saying that we should place the interests of others above our own. I am not saying that our primary moral obligation is to alleviate the pain of others. I am not saying that we do not have the right to place our own interests first. I am saying that the principle of benevolence and mutual aid is entirely compatible with an ethic of self-interest and more: An ethic of self-interest logically must advocate the principle of benevolence and mutual aid.

Given that we live in society, and given that misfortune or tragedy can strike any one of us, it is clearly in our self-interest to live in a world in which human beings deal with one another in a spirit of mutual benevolence and helpfulness. Could anyone seriously argue that the principle of mutual aid does not have survival value?

I am not talking about "mutual aid" coercively orchestrated by a government. I am talking about the private, voluntary actions of individual men and women functioning on their own initiative and by their own stand

[imurray]

Peter,

Thanks for posting, however, it would be nice if you could distill these long copy and paste pieces down a bit for us. That would actually really help you make your points better as I doubt many people have time to read through all of this and on top of that dig through it to find and make all the relevant connections. Of course, this would take some time on your part that, understandably, you may not have.

I wasn't being facetious when I asked for some clarification of your last post (as I'm not being facetious now). I wasn't sure what you wanted us to see and was giving you a chance to clarify yourself before agreeing or attempting a rebuttal.

Ian

Edited May 3, 2010 by Panoptic

[imurray]

G.H. Smith wrote a very interesting article about this topic: "Objectivism as a Religion".

http://web.archive.org/web/20041217041217/http://www.dailyobjectivist.com/Spir/ObjectivismasaReligion.asp

I wish he had applied 'Smith's Scalpel' more radically: while he clearly sees that fervent followers can and have indeed assumed a religious attitude, imo he has not sufficiently examined Rand's own role in it.

In that essay I made the point that most of the problems relating to Objectivist religiosity have to do with Rand's style rather than with the substance of her philosophy. I still stand by the following passage:

Quote from Ghs, "Objectivism as a Religion":

Ayn Rand is a passionate writer, and passionate writers tend to attract passionate readers, both rational and irrational. If some of Rand's readers, confusing style with substance, revere her as a secular pope, then she cannot be held accountable. Rand repeatedly stresses the value of independent judgment—the "sovereign consciousness," as she calls it. This passage is typical: "Truth or falsehood must be one's sole concern and sole criterion of judgment—not anyone's approval or disapproval...." The virtue of rationality, the centerpiece of Rand's moral theory, entails "that one must never place any value or consideration whatsoever above one's perception of reality....It means that one must never sacrifice one's convictions to the opinions and wishes of others...."

Intellectual passion is the creative engine of philosophy, indeed, of all abstract disciplines. Every philosopher, while etching ideas on that paper mirror known as the printed page, must make a decision: How much emotion should I inject into my arguments? Conventional academic wisdom dictates: none at all, especially if you wish to be published in a professional journal or by a university press.

Ayn Rand chose another path; she was an academic pariah who cared little for academic etiquette. Acerbic and arrogant, she rarely footnoted or quoted anyone except herself. This attitude sometimes got the better of her, as when she based her critique of A Theory of Justice by John Rawls on a review published in The New York Times Book Review, rather than on the book itself. "Let me say," she proclaimed, "that I have not read and do not intend to read that book." Having herself been victimized by such tactics, one would have expected better from Ayn Rand.

Despite her fondness for pronouncements from on high, Rand's philosophy is just that—a philosophy, not a religion. She labored hard on her theories; and if they sometimes become entangled in rhetoric and prejudice, then surely the reader can exert a little labor to untangle them. Critics who fail to do this call her dogmatic; admirers who fail to do this succumb to religiosity.

Ghs

George, I took the time to read the whole article and I enjoyed it very much. I can see why you are admired for you clear and concise style. I must say that I am on my way to agreeing with you, but I've hit a few snags. One of them came today when Peter posted:

I think that Benevolence is a corollary of Justice. It is an aspect of "giving each man his due." This means judging them and treating them accordingly. As Rand points out in "The Ethics of Emergencies", "a rational man regards strangers as innocent until proved guilty, and grants them that initial good will in the name of their human potential. After that he judges them according to the moral character they have actualized....If he finds them to be virtuous, he grants them personal, individual value and appreciation, in proportion to their virtues. It is on the ground of that generalized good will and respect for the value of human life that one helps strangers in an emergency -- AND ONLY IN AN EMERGENCY." (VOS, p. 47) For people one knows and values personally, however, one helps them because and to the extent that doing so is a "practical implementation of friendship, affection and love," i.e., one incorporates "the welfare (the ~rational~ welfare) of the person involved into one's own hierarchy of values, then act accordingly." (VOS, p. 46) This are applications of the virtue of benevolence, which clearly seems to be a corollary of the virtue of justice.

Now, this explanation he posted may be wrong and, if you're so inclined, please tell me it is (a simple yes or no will do for me and I'll be on my way to do more research). If it is correct, which I currently have no reason to doubt based on Peter's use of what seem to be 'encyclopedic' references and my own understand of Rand, how can one objectively "judge" a person "according to the moral character they have actualized" and "grant" them "personal, individual value and appreciation, in proportion to their virtues?" It would seem that in order for her basic philosophy about the individual in society to be true, it would be necessary to work from a universal code of values. Doesn't her theory rest on the idea that rational people will treat each other morally? Which leads me to question: if indeed people are free and in another sense obligated to judge others according to their own perception of reality, what if a group of rational people reached different judgments about the same people or issues - how would that be resolved by her philosophy? If that situation is allowed for her system, how does it differ from more subjective philosophies? And finally, if rational people can reach different conclusions about reality, that is also to say rational people can hold different values (and by extension different conclusions about who and what is valuable or not valuable in society), how can she be so sure something like laissez faire government or free market capitalism would work as she conceives it?

Ian

Edited May 3, 2010 by Panoptic

[George H. Smith]

George, I took the time to read the whole article and I enjoyed it very much. I can see why you are admired for you clear and concise style. I must say that I am on my way to agreeing with you, but I've hit a few snags. One of them came today when Peter posted:

I think that Benevolence is a corollary of Justice. It is an aspect of "giving each man his due." This means judging them and treating them accordingly. As Rand points out in "The Ethics of Emergencies", "a rational man regards strangers as innocent until proved guilty, and grants them that initial good will in the name of their human potential. After that he judges them according to the moral character they have actualized....If he finds them to be virtuous, he grants them personal, individual value and appreciation, in proportion to their virtues. It is on the ground of that generalized good will and respect for the value of human life that one helps strangers in an emergency -- AND ONLY IN AN EMERGENCY." (VOS, p. 47) For people one knows and values personally, however, one helps them because and to the extent that doing so is a "practical implementation of friendship, affection and love," i.e., one incorporates "the welfare (the ~rational~ welfare) of the person involved into one's own hierarchy of values, then act accordingly." (VOS, p. 46) This are applications of the virtue of benevolence, which clearly seems to be a corollary of the virtue of justice.

Now, this explanation he posted may be wrong and, if you're so inclined, please tell me it is (a simple yes or no will do for me and I'll be on my way to do more research).

I believe this passage was written years ago by Roger Bissell, not by Peter. Without rereading some things, I can't say for certain whether it accurately represents Rand's position, but it sounds right to me. In any case, it is not the approach I would take.

If it is correct, which I currently have no reason to doubt based on Peter's use of what seem to be 'encyclopedic' references and my own understand of Rand, how can one objectively "judge" a person "according to the moral character they have actualized" and "grant" them "personal, individual value and appreciation, in proportion to their virtues?" It would seem that in order for her basic philosophy about the individual in society to be true, it would be necessary to work from a universal code of values. Doesn't her theory rest on the idea that rational people will treat each other morally? Which leads me to question: if indeed people are free and in another sense obligated to judge others according to their own perception of reality, what if a group of rational people reached different judgments about the same people or issues - how would that be resolved by her philosophy? If that situation is allowed for her system, how does it differ from more subjective philosophies? And finally, if rational people can reach different conclusions about reality, that is also to say rational people can hold different values (and by extension different conclusions about who and what is valuable or not valuable in society), how can she be so sure something like laissez faire government or free market capitalism would work as she conceives it?

I'm not sure what the problem is supposed to be here. A universal code of values can be applied differently by different people, depending on their circumstances. For example, I may see virtues in my friends that other people don't.

As for free market capitalism, this is a different issue -- one that pertains to the principles of justice, strictly conceived as a system of enforceable rights. Here it doesn't matter whether someone personally values justice or not; others still have rights claims against him.

I may have missed something here, but at this point I don't know what else to say.

Ghs

[Leonid]

After thousands upon thousands of words written on this thread about meaning of sacrifice I'd like to remind to all participants that this concept has religious origin. “Therefore I urge you, brothers, in the view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-this is your spiritual act of worship." (Romans 12). In the Jesus' times worship was a sacrifice of animals in the Temple. Paul actually suggests that every believer spiritually will turn himself into such an animal. And this is exactly what Ayn Rand calls sacrifice. The change of the beneficiary from god to society, state, nation, future generations or mother-earth doesn't change the nature of sacrifice which is an act of self-abnegation.

[imurray]

After thousands upon thousands of words written on this thread about meaning of sacrifice I'd like to remind to all participants that this concept has religious origin. “Therefore I urge you, brothers, in the view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-this is your spiritual act of worship." (Romans 12). In the Jesus' times worship was a sacrifice of animals in the Temple. Paul actually suggests that every believer spiritually will turn himself into such an animal. And this is exactly what Ayn Rand calls sacrifice. The change of the beneficiary from god to society, state, nation, future generations or mother-earth doesn't change the nature of sacrifice which is an act of self-abnegation.

I appreciate the biblical reference, but this in and of itself doesn't address Xray's argument that a sacrifice is always an act of giving up a lesser value for a higher value. In fact, it could be used to her advantage: giving up your earthly body is not self-abnegation in the Christian context - the earthly body is sacrificed in exchange for eternal spiritual life in heaven. Of course from the perspective of an atheist, this is the ultimate example of self-abnegation.

[George H. Smith]

After thousands upon thousands of words written on this thread about meaning of sacrifice I'd like to remind to all participants that this concept has religious origin. “Therefore I urge you, brothers, in the view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-this is your spiritual act of worship." (Romans 12). In the Jesus' times worship was a sacrifice of animals in the Temple. Paul actually suggests that every believer spiritually will turn himself into such an animal. And this is exactly what Ayn Rand calls sacrifice. The change of the beneficiary from god to society, state, nation, future generations or mother-earth doesn't change the nature of sacrifice which is an act of self-abnegation.

I appreciate the biblical reference, but this in and of itself doesn't address Xray's argument that a sacrifice is always an act of giving up a lesser value for a higher value. In fact, it could be used to her advantage: giving up your earthly body is not self-abnegation in the Christian context - the earthly body is sacrificed in exchange for eternal spiritual life in heaven. Of course from the perspective of an atheist, this is the ultimate example of self-abnegation.

So far I've stayed away from this debate over the meaning of "sacrifice," because I don't think it's especially relevant to the keys points Rand was making in "The Ethics of Emergencies." Moreover, I have my own problems with that essay, and I don't want to be trapped into defending all of it.

Nevertheless, this business about the meaning of "sacrifice," as the giving up of a lesser value for a greater value, has gotten on my nerves, so I want to say a few words about it.

Subjectively speaking, we always act on our "highest value" in any given action that involves choice. This is true virtually by definition, since if we didn't subjectively value X above other alternatives at a given point in time, we would not have acted to achieve X.

Now, I suppose we could assume that Rand was so dense that she had no inkling of this truism, even though her definition of value ("that which one acts to gain and/or keep") clearly entails it. I suppose we could assume she was so irredeemably stupid that she could not grasp something so obvious that a child could understand it. This seems to be the assumption of some of Rand's critics on OL, who wouldn't give Rand the benefit of a sympathetic reading if their lives depended on it.

Or we could take a different route. We could assume -- just for the sake of argument, of course -- that Rand had better than a room temperature IQ. And where might this assumption lead us? Well, it might -- just might -- cause us to explore the possibility that Rand was speaking of objective values rather than subjective values when she spoke of "sacrifice." And this investigation, in turn, might lead us to pay attention to passages such as the following in "The Ethics of Emergencies."

After saying that we should never sacrifice a greater value for the sake of a lesser value, Rand continues:

"This applies to all choices, including one's actions toward other men. It requires that one possess a defined hierarchy of rational values (values chosen and validated by a rational standard). Without such a hierarchy, neither rational conduct nor considered value judgments nor moral choices are possible."

Now, maybe -- just maybe -- there is a reason why Rand emphasizes rational values in explaining her views on sacrifice. Perhaps she did this in order to contrast the kind of value sacrifice she had in mind from mere subjective preferences, where one is always motivated by one's "highest value" at the time, even though that may not be a "rational" value from a moral point of view.

It is with fear and trembling that I suggest that Ayn Rand was not a complete dunderhead.

Ghs

[BaalChatzaf]

.

It is with fear and trembling that I suggest that Ayn Rand was not a complete dunderhead.

Ghs

One certain matters, Rand was at the top of her game. For example her view of money is right on point. Her preference for liberty over the bondage of slavery and unfounded duty is correct. She was correct to prefer capitalism and markets to socialism and collectivism. On some other matters (primarily scientific and mathematical) she was greatly uninformed and just plain wrong.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[imurray]

After thousands upon thousands of words written on this thread about meaning of sacrifice I'd like to remind to all participants that this concept has religious origin. “Therefore I urge you, brothers, in the view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-this is your spiritual act of worship." (Romans 12). In the Jesus' times worship was a sacrifice of animals in the Temple. Paul actually suggests that every believer spiritually will turn himself into such an animal. And this is exactly what Ayn Rand calls sacrifice. The change of the beneficiary from god to society, state, nation, future generations or mother-earth doesn't change the nature of sacrifice which is an act of self-abnegation.

I appreciate the biblical reference, but this in and of itself doesn't address Xray's argument that a sacrifice is always an act of giving up a lesser value for a higher value. In fact, it could be used to her advantage: giving up your earthly body is not self-abnegation in the Christian context - the earthly body is sacrificed in exchange for eternal spiritual life in heaven. Of course from the perspective of an atheist, this is the ultimate example of self-abnegation.

So far I've stayed away from this debate over the meaning of "sacrifice," because I don't think it's especially relevant to the keys points Rand was making in "The Ethics of Emergencies." Moreover, I have my own problems with that essay, and I don't want to be trapped into defending all of it.

Nevertheless, this business about the meaning of "sacrifice," as the giving up of a lesser value for a greater value, has gotten on my nerves, so I want to say a few words about it.

Subjectively speaking, we always act on our "highest value" in any given action that involves choice. This is true virtually by definition, since if we didn't subjectively value X above other alternatives at a given point in time, we would not have acted to achieve X.

Now, I suppose we could assume that Rand was so dense that she had no inkling of this truism, even though her definition of value ("that which one acts to gain and/or keep") clearly entails it. I suppose we could assume she was so irredeemably stupid that she could not grasp something so obvious that a child could understand it. This seems to be the assumption of some of Rand's critics on OL, who wouldn't give Rand the benefit of a sympathetic reading if their lives depended on it.

Or we could take a different route. We could assume -- just for the sake of argument, of course -- that Rand had better than a room temperature IQ. And where might this assumption lead us? Well, it might -- just might -- cause us to explore the possibility that Rand was speaking of objective values rather than subjective values when she spoke of "sacrifice." And this investigation, in turn, might lead us to pay attention to passages such as the following in "The Ethics of Emergencies."

After saying that we should never sacrifice a greater value for the sake of a lesser value, Rand continues:

"This applies to all choices, including one's actions toward other men. It requires that one possess a defined hierarchy of rational values (values chosen and validated by a rational standard). Without such a hierarchy, neither rational conduct nor considered value judgments nor moral choices are possible."

Now, maybe -- just maybe -- there is a reason why Rand emphasizes rational values in explaining her views on sacrifice. Perhaps she did this in order to contrast the kind of value sacrifice she had in mind from mere subjective preferences, where one is always motivated by one's "highest value" at the time, even though that may not be a "rational" value from a moral point of view.

It is with fear and trembling that I suggest that Ayn Rand was not a complete dunderhead.

Ghs

George, Sir Knight of Faith,

I agree with you. I have been attempting to defend Rand's view of sacrifice (and the insignificance of the word itself) and concomitantly the importance of understanding the concept of rational values in her ethical theory over and over again myself. I was attempting to point out that Leonid's post had the potential to send us round and round in circles again instead of actually addressing Xray's argument - which I think we and others have done sufficiently already. In other words, I was preempting Xray's argument in an attempt to prevent it.

(Sorry Xray, it's not only you making this argument. I just consider your argument to have been the strongest, therefore, by addressing your argument all similar and, in my opinion, weaker arguments also get addressed.)

So it is with infinite resignation that I suggest we move on.

Ian

Edited May 6, 2010 by Panoptic

[Dragonfly]

Or we could take a different route. We could assume -- just for the sake of argument, of course -- that Rand had better than a room temperature IQ. And where might this assumption lead us? Well, it might -- just might -- cause us to explore the possibility that Rand was speaking of objective values rather than subjective values when she spoke of "sacrifice."

That is in direct contradiction to her own words: "If you wish to save the last of your dignity, do not call your best actions a “sacrifice”: that term brands you as immoral. If a mother buys food for her hungry child rather than a hat for herself, it is not a sacrifice: she values the child higher than the hat; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat, who would prefer her child to starve and feeds him only from a sense of duty."

This is a prime example of subjective values: whether the woman feeding the child instead of buying a hat is a "sacrifice" does according to Rand herself not depend on the objective values of "the life of her child" vs. "a new hat", but on what the woman prefers. One would suppose that if you're thinking of objective values, you'd rate the well-being of the child higher than a new hat. Not so according to Rand: if the woman feeds the child "from a sense of duty", it is a sacrifice in her terms, and brands the woman as immoral. Note that in that case that woman cannot act in a moral way: if she chooses the supposedly higher value, she's immoral because it is a sacrifice (as she does it from a sense of duty), but if the chooses the hat she's of course immoral because she offers the objectively higher value for a lower value. Heads I win, tails you lose. How can an action be immoral if you haven't any choice? Whatever she does, it is immoral, because she cannot force herself to value the child higher than the hat, the only thing she can force is her actions. If this isn't muddled thinking, I don't know what is.

[imurray]

Or we could take a different route. We could assume -- just for the sake of argument, of course -- that Rand had better than a room temperature IQ. And where might this assumption lead us? Well, it might -- just might -- cause us to explore the possibility that Rand was speaking of objective values rather than subjective values when she spoke of "sacrifice."

That is in direct contradiction to her own words: "If you wish to save the last of your dignity, do not call your best actions a “sacrifice”: that term brands you as immoral. If a mother buys food for her hungry child rather than a hat for herself, it is not a sacrifice: she values the child higher than the hat; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat, who would prefer her child to starve and feeds him only from a sense of duty."

This is a prime example of subjective values: whether the woman feeding the child instead of buying a hat is a "sacrifice" does according to Rand herself not depend on the objective values of "the life of her child" vs. "a new hat", but on what the woman prefers. One would suppose that if you're thinking of objective values, you'd rate the well-being of the child higher than a new hat. Not so according to Rand: if the woman feeds the child "from a sense of duty", it is a sacrifice in her terms, and brands the woman as immoral. Note that in that case that woman cannot act in a moral way: if she chooses the supposedly higher value, she's immoral because it is a sacrifice (as she does it from a sense of duty), but if the chooses the hat she's of course immoral because she offers the objectively higher value for a lower value. Heads I win, tails you lose. How can an action be immoral if you haven't any choice? Whatever she does, it is immoral, because she cannot force herself to value the child higher than the hat, the only thing she can force is her actions. If this isn't muddled thinking, I don't know what is.

I've already addressed this numerous times above. As of now, nobody has rebutted my argument - only continued to assert their original argument.

Ian

[tjohnson]

I'm sure the child has been dead for years anyway.

[Xray]

Or we could take a different route. We could assume -- just for the sake of argument, of course -- that Rand had better than a room temperature IQ. And where might this assumption lead us? Well, it might -- just might -- cause us to explore the possibility that Rand was speaking of objective values rather than subjective values when she spoke of "sacrifice."

That is in direct contradiction to her own words: "If you wish to save the last of your dignity, do not call your best actions a “sacrifice”: that term brands you as immoral. If a mother buys food for her hungry child rather than a hat for herself, it is not a sacrifice: she values the child higher than the hat; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat, who would prefer her child to starve and feeds him only from a sense of duty."

This is a prime example of subjective values: whether the woman feeding the child instead of buying a hat is a "sacrifice" does according to Rand herself not depend on the objective values of "the life of her child" vs. "a new hat", but on what the woman prefers. One would suppose that if you're thinking of objective values, you'd rate the well-being of the child higher than a new hat. Not so according to Rand: if the woman feeds the child "from a sense of duty", it is a sacrifice in her terms, and brands the woman as immoral. Note that in that case that woman cannot act in a moral way: if she chooses the supposedly higher value, she's immoral because it is a sacrifice (as she does it from a sense of duty), but if the chooses the hat she's of course immoral because she offers the objectively higher value for a lower value. Heads I win, tails you lose. How can an action be immoral if you haven't any choice? Whatever she does, it is immoral, because she cannot force herself to value the child higher than the hat, the only thing she can force is her actions. If this isn't muddled thinking, I don't know what is.

DF is correct, George. It IS muddled thinking.

D. Barnes commented on the same issue:

Rand doesn't appear to even understand her own example of the hat "sacrifice" discussed earlier.

In stating that the label "sacrifice" is connected to a person's subjective values, Rand, without being aware of it, collapses Objectivism's root premise of "objective value". She really did her critics' homework here.

Panoptic: I appreciate the biblical reference, but this in and of itself doesn't address Xray's argument that a sacrifice is always an act of giving up a lesser value for a higher value.

To avoid any misunderstanding, precision is important: I wrote that a sacrifice is an act of trading (what a person subjectively conceives as) the lesser value for what he/she (subjectively conceives as) the higher value.

Panoptic: In fact, it could be used to her advantage: giving up your earthly body is not self-abnegation in the Christian context - the earthly body is sacrificed in exchange for eternal spiritual life in heaven.

This illustrates the comment I made above. It's not about advantage in a debate; it is about truth. And if we are committed to finding out the truth about this issue, we WILL get there.

Panoptic: Of course from the perspective of an atheist, this is the ultimate example of self-abnegation.

Since atheists' subjective values differ from theists' in that field, they would not perform this kind of sacrifice. Their individual sacrifices would be of a different nature.

Edited May 6, 2010 by Xray

[George H. Smith]

Or we could take a different route. We could assume -- just for the sake of argument, of course -- that Rand had better than a room temperature IQ. And where might this assumption lead us? Well, it might -- just might -- cause us to explore the possibility that Rand was speaking of objective values rather than subjective values when she spoke of "sacrifice."

That is in direct contradiction to her own words: "If you wish to save the last of your dignity, do not call your best actions a “sacrifice”: that term brands you as immoral. If a mother buys food for her hungry child rather than a hat for herself, it is not a sacrifice: she values the child higher than the hat; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat, who would prefer her child to starve and feeds him only from a sense of duty."

This is a prime example of subjective values: whether the woman feeding the child instead of buying a hat is a "sacrifice" does according to Rand herself not depend on the objective values of "the life of her child" vs. "a new hat", but on what the woman prefers.

The hat example appears in Galt's Speech, not in "The Ethics of Emergencies," but it is only fair that it be considered in the context of Rand's more complete discussion of "sacrifice" in "The Ethics of Emergencies." (I will return to the hat example later.)

Rand's basic purpose is to refute the notion that "to value another means to sacrifice oneself." She is talking about the supposed duty to sacrifice oneself for the sake of others, and she continues:

"This present discussion is concerned with the principles by which one identifies and evaluates the instances involving a man's nonsacrificial help to others."

Later, Rand writes:

"The proper method of judging when or whether one should help another person is by reference to one's own rational self-interest and one's own hierarchy of values: the time, money or effort one gives or the risk one takes should be proportionate to the value of the person in relation to one's own happiness."

Rand clearly offers her examples to illustrate what is in "one's own rational self-interest," and to show that helping others is often in one's rational self-interest. She is talking about objective values here, not mere preferences.

Now, here is the hat example from Galt's Speech:

"If a mother buys food for her hungry child rather than a hat for herself, it is not a sacrifice: she values the child higher than the hat; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat, who would prefer her child to starve and feeds him only from a sense of duty."

The first thing to note about this example is that Rand never used it other than in Galt's Speech. The example has some obvious problems, and it's possible that Rand later found it unsuitable to the points she wished to make about "sacrifice."

Nevertheless, it is clear that a major point of the example is to criticize the notion of "duty." The mother who values her child over the hat is not acting from a sense of duty, which is not the case with the mother who feeds her child from a sense of duty. In this regard, the example is consistent with Rand's view that altruism preaches the duty of self-sacrifice, and with her condemnation of this view.

One would suppose that if you're thinking of objective values, you'd rate the well-being of the child higher than a new hat.

And what makes you think that this assumption is not implicit in the hat example? When Rand refers to "the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat" [my emphasis], do you seriously think she is taking a neutral stand? Do you seriously think that she is not making a moral comparison between the two types of mothers?

Not so according to Rand: if the woman feeds the child "from a sense of duty", it is a sacrifice in her terms, and brands the woman as immoral.

I think a strong case could be made that a woman who values a hat more than her child, and who would "prefer her child to starve," has a seriously screwed-up hierarchy of values. It's not a stretch to call such a woman "immoral."

Note that in that case that woman cannot act in a moral way: if she chooses the supposedly higher value, she's immoral because it is a sacrifice (as she does it from a sense of duty), but if the chooses the hat she's of course immoral because she offers the objectively higher value for a lower value. Heads I win, tails you lose.

As for branding the woman immoral, here is the line that precedes the hat example:

"If you wish to save the last of your dignity, do not call your best actions a 'sacrifice': that term brands you as immoral."

Rand's point, as it pertains to the hat example, is that a sacrifice is necessary only if a woman, who would prefer that her child starve so she could buy a hat, feeds him from a sense of duty. Rand has a point when she declares that this situation should not be regarded as an exemplar of our "best actions."

Note that Rand speaks of branding "you" -- i.e., a person -- as "immoral," and not simply the actions that a person might take. She would call the wayward mother, qua person, immoral, because her hierarchy of values in respect to her child is so perverse. Rand doesn't say that this immoral mother could not make some decisions that are morally better than others. Just as moral people can make immoral choices, so can immoral people makes choices that are relatively moral.

In short, if you can find any indication in the hat example that Rand would equally condemn any choice by the wayward mother, even if one resulted in saving the child's life, then point it out.

How can an action be immoral if you haven't any choice?

The key to the mother's immorality, in Rand's view, is her perverted hierarchy of values -- a matter of choice, according to Rand -- that causes her to value a hat over her child, such that only a sense of duty could cause her to do the right thing. But, in Rand's ethics, external behavior is not sufficient to qualify an action as "moral." For Rand, as for many ethicists, motives must be taken into account when determining the morality of an action, and Rand rejected "duty" as a moral motive. You may not agree with this approach, but that's a different issue.

Whatever she does, it is immoral, because she cannot force herself to value the child higher than the hat, the only thing she can force is her actions. If this isn't muddled thinking, I don't know what is.

You are reading this into Rand's example; she doesn't actually say this.

Ghs

[Dragonfly]

I think a strong case could be made that a woman who values a hat more than her child, and who would "prefer her child to starve," has a seriously screwed-up hierarchy of values. It's not a stretch to call such a woman "immoral."

I think it is a stretch to call such a woman immoral. I have already quoted Schopenhauer's remark a few times in earlier posts: "Man can do what he wants, but he cannot want what he wants", in other words, you can choose your actions, but you cannot choose your desires, you can only choose to act on them or not. In my opinion it is nonsense to call something "immoral" if you haven't any choice in the matter. That mother didn't choose her "screwed-up hierarchy of values". Moreover, is it really screwed up? Is it really so strange that a mother doesn't like her child, or even hates it? Perhaps it is a little monster. We may think she "should" like it, but reality is often different. Then I think it is absurd to condemn her if she nevertheless supports the child at the cost of a new hat, because she does it "out of a sense of duty", because she acts then according to the - as you said - implied hierarchy of "objective" values, and the alternative - buying the hat - is also immoral, as it goes against that hierarchy.

The key to the mother's immorality, in Rand's view, is her perverted hierarchy of values -- a matter of choice, according to Rand -- that causes her to value a hat over her child, such that only a sense of duty could cause her to do the right thing.

And that is just absurd, as the hierarchy of values of the mother is not a matter of choice, as Schopenhauer already correctly observed, that mother cannot choose to like that child, and the notion of morality is irrelevant in matters in which you don't have any choice. In that regard Rand is not different from the religionist who says "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife", claiming that even the thought, the desire is sinful, as if you could do anything about that, and not only when you really turn that desire into action.

[George H. Smith]

I think a strong case could be made that a woman who values a hat more than her child, and who would "prefer her child to starve," has a seriously screwed-up hierarchy of values. It's not a stretch to call such a woman "immoral."

I think it is a stretch to call such a woman immoral.

Whether or not you agree with Rand on this issue is beside the point. Your disagreement doesn't make Rand's example "muddled." It is coherent on her own terms.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

I have already quoted Schopenhauer's remark a few times in earlier posts: "Man can do what he wants, but he cannot want what he wants", in other words, you can choose your actions, but you cannot choose your desires, you can only choose to act on them or not.

Rand does not equate values with desires.

In my opinion it is nonsense to call something "immoral" if you haven't any choice in the matter. That mother didn't choose her "screwed-up hierarchy of values".

People choose to reevaluate and adjust their value priorities all the time. I've done this on many occasions.

Moreover, is it really screwed up? Is it really so strange that a mother doesn't like her child, or even hates it? Perhaps it is a little monster. We may think she "should" like it, but reality is often different.

What a shame that Rand didn't explore every possible variation and nuance when presenting her brief example. She might have been able to do this in ten pages, and those ten pages would have greatly enhanced the dramatic impact of Galt's Speech, don't you think? Such a digression would have been a real page turner.

Ghs