About Objectivism, part III: Ethics

By Massimo Pigliucci

[Part I of this series was on Objectivist metaphysics, Part II on epistemology]

Well, in this 4-part essay on Objectivism, we have arrived at where the real fun begins: first by considering Objectivist ethics and then — in the next and final installment — its implications for Objectivist politics. Let us clear the air of a common misunderstanding about Rand and followers: when they talk about selfishness being their chief moral value, they do not mean what most of us mean by that term. Of course, that is a recurring problem with Objectivist writings: one can reasonably ask why on earth Rand should make prominent use of a very common word while attributing to it a very different meaning from the one commonly accepted. This sounds like either an attempt to confuse things from the beginning (though I’m sure that wasn’t her goal) or at the very least, a sloppy practice that ends up in endless and useless disputes. Oh well, so much for achieving philosophy’s goal of clarifying rather than muddling things.

So, what did Rand mean by “selfishness”? In her view, the term refers to a particular form of rational egoism, “To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason, Purpose, Self-esteem” (from The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought, 1989). Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1991) further clarifies: “[Objectivism aims at] the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action.”

All right, I’m all in favor of reason (I mean, just look at the title of this blog), and I certainly think that we need to give purpose to our lives in order to be more than just biological reproductive machines (not that there is anything wrong with the latter, within limits), and I suppose self-esteem is broadly speaking a good thing (though too much of it leads to unbearable degrees of pompous self-importance). But for these to be the “supreme values” of one’s life seems to be a stretch and to neglect other important aspects of human existence. What about, for instance, love and friendship? I suspect that they don’t make the pantheon of Objectivist ethics because in some form or other they would conflict with rational self-interest. See, when John Galt (the pompous protagonist of Atlas Shrugged, one that clearly had no trouble with self-esteem) says “I swear — by my life and my love of it — that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine” one suspects that the guy will have some trouble picking up chicks who might be interested in more than a one-night stand, and that other people might agree to have business relations with him, but certainly not to call him a friend.

Other ethical values that have a hard time squeezing into the Objectivist view of morality are things like justice and fairness — unless they get to be redefined in terms of rational self-interest. For an Objectivist, any attempt to level the playing field by guaranteeing access to resources (like education or health care), or by, god forbid, redistributing resources through taxation, is anathema for the simple reason that within the Objectivist system it is hard to justify ethical duties to others, outside of “live and let live.” But the unexamined assumption behind that attitude is that people own their moral selves, in a way that is actually very difficult to justify.

Let me trying to explain this carefully, because it is a point that potentially undermines the entire Objectivist ethics, and yet it is something that I have never seen one of my Objectivist friends even consider. In my experience, the main attraction of Objectivism is the idea that a human being is a moral island of his/her own. I ought to be able to make my own decisions about my own life in absolute freedom, because that is the purest and most noble sense in which I can be truly human. Bullshit, any decent undergraduate student in ethics would quickly be able to respond. It is very hard to see in what sense we “own” ourselves independently of a particular societal (and even biological) background.

Consider the following example (which I adapt from Michael Sandel’s excellent book, Justice). Is it right to tax Kevin Garnett for his high earnings as a basketball player? In 2008-09 he was the highest paid NBA player, with the Boston Celtics giving him a whopping $24,751,934. I assume that the answer for Objectivists and most Libertarians alike would be that we have no right to take any of this away from Garnett, because the guy earned his money in a (quasi) free capitalist society, so he deserves it. “Deserve” here implies some sense of moral desert, and not just the result of luck. Nobody “deserves” to win the lottery, as glad as they may be to pocket the money if they happen to hold the winning ticket.

But let us unpack how it is, exactly, that Garnett (I’m not just picking on him, the same could be said for anyone’s salary, in any activity, including my own) deserves that compensation? Because he is an excellent basketball player that brings in money for its franchise, obviously. Right, but he is able to do so for a number of complex reasons, most of them having precious little to do with moral desert. Most obviously, of course, Garnett just got lucky at the genetic lottery: had he had a different combination of genes, he wouldn’t have been able to play professional basketball. Second, he owes his success also to his teammates, coach, and the remainder of the large number of people that make professional basketball possible. I mean, he didn’t build all that, right? Third, he has been lucky at what I shall call the “cultural lottery” as well: had he been born in a different time or place (say, medieval Europe, for instance) all his skills would not have earned him much other than forced labor as a serf, the common destiny of most people of the time. But, you might say, he has worked hard at honing his skills, day after day and year after year. While some moral philosophers (John Rawls, for instance) would say that even that is the result of natural propensities and societal environments for which it is hard to claim ownership, I won’t go that far. My point is that Objectivists drastically overestimate the independence of individuals from society, as well as the ability of the individual to overcome or take ownership of his/her natural abilities.

This is why Objectivists make a big deal out of the philosophically exceedingly murky concept of free will: for rational self-interest to be ethical in any sense (as opposed to simply instrumental to getting what one wanst), I have to assume that everyone completely owns responsibility for both his failure and his successes. But that is simply and obviously not the case, regardless of what one thinks of the concept of free will itself.

It gets even more basic than that: for Rand, the ultimate value is survival, and human beings are the only animals that can make conscious decisions about it. While I certainly agree witht the latter statement, and I don’t deny that survival is the sine qua non of everything else in life, it’s just too darn simple. Yes, we want and need to survive, but even that is simply not possible for highly social animals without a substantial contribution from the rest of society — without which, in the immortal words of Hobbes, life would have “No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, [there would be] continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man [would be], solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” (Leviathan, 1651, ch. 12). It is hard to imagine how Objectivist ethics would lead to the kind of polity that most of us take for granted these days: a place where our rights and wants are balanced with other people’s, where we have obligations to our fellow human beings and they have obligations toward us, where we enjoy not only arts and letters, but also friendship and love.

Next time, the conclusion: Objectivist politics (ouch!).