Thanks to my fellow symposiasts for a terrific conversation! And likewise to our hosts at Cato for sponsoring it.
Just a few last observations:
I agree with what Doug says about abstraction; indeed the distinction between precisive and non-precisive abstraction has been one of my chief hobbyhorses for some time. (See, e.g., this piece [pdf].) I don’t see how that point about abstraction conflicts with anything I said about universal vs. individualized aspects of human nature, however. The abstraction mammal is individualized in different ways in different mammals, but that doesn’t change the fact that some properties belong to all mammals qua mammals (such as being warm-blooded), while others vary according to the individualization (such as having or not having fur); individualization does not invalidate what is essential to the class as a whole. So what’s good for any given mammal will depend in part on universally mammalian properties (the needs of warm-blooded animals) and in part on properties specific to that species or indeed to that individual organism. Why should it be different with humans?
At first I was puzzled as to why Neera should think that “the existence of wicked people” shows the falsity of the claim that everyone who remains alive is “rationally committed to morality.” But now I think there’s an ambiguity on “committed.” In one sense, being “committed” to something is a matter of deliberately dedicating oneself to it; in that sense, obviously not everyone is committed to morality. But in another sense, one is “committed” to something if one’s current beliefs and projects logically entail it, whether or not one recognizes this fact; and in that sense, of course, the existence of evil people is no evidence against the claim that everyone is committed to morality.
Finally, Neera wonders whether I’m saying that one wrong act destroys one’s character. I certainly don’t think that (and neither, incidentally, did Kant). What I’m saying is that in each individual choice situation, the virtuous choice is eudaimonically preferable to the non-eudaimonic choice. I think there’s a danger of confusing the claim that I should choose death over an unjust act with the claim that if I do choose an unjust act, my life thereafter is no longer worth living. The second claim doesn’t follow from the first. The preference ranking goes as follows:
a) Top choice, I act justly at time t and go on living afterward.
b) Second choice, I act justly at time t and then perish.
c) Third choice, I act unjustly at time t and go on living afterward.
d) Bottom choice, I act unjustly at time t and then perish.
Now when I’m confronted with the choice between justice and survival, then obviously (a) is no longer an option. So I should then choose (b). But suppose I fail to do so; instead I commit the unjust action at t. In that case, (b) is no longer an option, and so the best option for me now is (c) rather than (d). As I understand it, eudaimonic choice is about ranking options in particular case after particular case — not about some stark once-for-all choice between a happy life per se and an unhappy one per se. As the Austrians have taught us, choice happens at the margin.
Read: Flourishing at the Margin
* * *
OK, one more comment.
In his initial response to Doug’s essay, Roderick argued that Rand’s “pyramid of ability” contradicts “most people’s everyday experience.” He cites Kevin Carson: the “`people who regulate what you do, in most cases, know less about what you’re doing than you do,’ and businesses generally get things done only to the extent that `rules imposed by people not directly involved in the situation’ are treated as `an obstacle to be routed around by the people actually doing the work.’”
Whereas I’m not familiar either with Carson’s work or with the empirical studies Bryan Caplan uses to dispute Roderick’s and Carson’s contention, it does seem that even if the statement above is true, all that follows is that the masses are not dull, but not that there is no pyramid of ability, or that “the people at the `bottom’” carry “the people at the `top’”. I have no doubt that assembly line workers, carpenters, plumbers and so on know more about their work than the owners of the business who would regulate them. But the owners know more about their work than the people they regulate. Who does more carrying of whom depends on whose intelligence, productive energy, and vision are greater. In my experience, in every area of human endeavor a few people stand out above others and benefit others much more than they are benefited by them: in school and college, in science, philosophy, medicine, music, technology, sports, and art. It would be odd if this were not the case in business.
Read: The Pyramid of Ability
* * *
Probably, the last thing anyone needs to see at this time is another post by me. So, I am going to keep this short and hopefully sweet. I do not suppose for a moment that this is the last word. But I think it must be so, at least for me, now.
First, Rod has dropped the other shoe regarding what he means by conflict of interests and concedes what I (and I believe Neera as well) noted — namely, that there can be righteous conflicts. It is better for me that I get the job by moral means than that Rod gets the job my moral means, and vice-versa. But I don’t see anything in this point as implying that one can use immoral means to rectify this situation. Whether Rand only meant to deny the appropriateness of immoral means to rectify such conflict and not the existence of righteous conflicts, as Rod claims, is not at all obvious to me.
Second, I am not at all comfortable with Rod’s speaking of common and individualized “parts” of human nature. Following Aquinas, the nature of a thing is thoroughly individualized, and it is only by an act of abstraction that we can talk about what is common. (This is accomplished by what Thomists call “abstraction without precision,” and this process is more or less what Rand meant when she said that in abstraction we “omit the measurements.”) So, I do not think some ethical principles flow from a universal part and other ethical principles flow from an individual part of human nature. I also think this confuses how ethical principles are both justified and applied, but this is for another day.
Third, Rod’s understanding of metanormativity is not complete. Rights regulate human conduct so as to allow for the possibility of playing the moral game in a social context. The vital importance of securing this possibility and the determination in what this possibility consists (as well as how it is to be secured) is dependent on the nature of human flourishing. But this does not mean that securing the possibility for playing the moral game in a social context is the same as securing the possibility of human flourishing. Rights are ethical principles that trump all other ethical principles when it comes to securing the possibility of playing the moral game among others, but they do not trump tout court. This does not require moral dualism, but the realization that an account of human flourishing that is objective, individualized, inclusive, agent-relative, self-directed, and social gives rise to ethical principles that are not all of the same type or have the same function.
There is even more that I should say here, but this will have to do. (See Norms of Liberty, especially chapters 6, 7, 11 and 12). Further, I am aware that Den Uyl’s and my own theory of rights is not the topic of discussion for this conversation. (Those interested should see also Aeon Skoble, ed., Reading Rasmussen and Den Uyl: Critical Essays on Norms of Liberty [Lexington Books, 2008]). Yet, since Rod has mentioned this theory more than once, I thought I should say this much about it.
Finally, Michael is correct, of course, to say that non-flourishing folks exist, but the issue is whether they are actualized. This is why I have always contended that the way to read Rand’s ethics is as a type of perfectionism. What Rand brought (and now Philippa Foot brings as well) to perfectionism is an emphasis on life that allows for a connection between being a good X and being good for X when it comes to living things. This is crucial to any account of how goodness might be defined. (Rod’s recent post, “Biology and Interests” fits nicely into this line of thought.)
Of course, all of this involves a deep discussion of metaethics, as well as a debate with Mooreans [1] regarding meaning and reference, but this is not the place for such discussion. I will say, however, that I have an essay in progress dealing with the alleged naturalistic fallacy.
Well, maybe these parting comments have not been short, but I hope they were sweet. Once again, thanks to everyone.
Note
[1] This refers to anyone who is a follower of G. E. Moore. He claimed that any attempt to define goodness committed the “naturalistic fallacy.”
Read: The Other Shoe has Dropped and Some Parting Comments
* * *
In response to Mike’s post of Monday night: Rand presupposes what you might call a natural or biological egoism, identifying this egoism narrowly with the goal of the entity’s own survival. We know, of course, that this is false — the lives of animals display all kinds of “altruism” and “self-sacrifice”. But even if our biological goal were survival, inferring that we ought to choose life for this reason would be to commit the famous naturalistic fallacy — which Rand avoids by arguing that ethics is grounded in the pre-moral choice to live, this being the only alternative to the choice to die (as Mike notes in one of his Tuesday posts). But Rand also often writes as though, in normal circumstances, the choice to live is the only rational and moral choice.
One reason Rand’s view is so seductive is that, if it were true that each of us must be ethical to survive, then the result would be pretty fantastic! Everyone who is alive (and not trying to commit suicide even though he is in a position to do so) is rationally committed to morality just by virtue of choosing to remain alive! You can’t find a deeper grounding for morality in human nature and the nature of the world. The only problem, of course, is that it’s not true, as shown by the existence of wicked people.
Doug has pretty much said what I would have said in response to Will’s pot-stirring comments. The only thing I want to add is that if we want to interpret Rand’s views fairly, we cannot privilege a short essay she wrote as a lecture to a student group over the thousands of pages of fiction she wrote, as I think Will is doing in relying on “The Objectivist Ethics” for his interpretation. Nor can we privilege two short essays — or, indeed, the entire corpus of Rand’s non-fiction — over her fiction. As an individual shows her character in the life she leads better than in her statements about herself, I think Rand shows her philosophy in the worlds she creates in her novels better than in her non-fictional statements. But as all of us neo-Aristotelians have acknowledged in this forum and elsewhere, neither her essays nor her novels present just one consistent view; rather, we think that when this work is considered in its totality, the neo-Aristotelian view is dominant (and more defensible).
Conflict of Interests, Again
If all Roderick means by the claim that rational interests don’t conflict is that it can never be in one’s interests to gain something by immoral means, then I pretty much agree (“pretty much,” because of the possibility of tragic situations I’ve been describing, of which more below). But I don’t think Rand meant simply this in her article, although it’s been a long time since I read it, and I admit I may be wrong.
Regarding tragic situations and eudaimonia: I think we are converging, although Roderick still misunderstands some of my claims.
1. I gave the example of the possibility of an intra-personal conflict of interests not because it’s a problem for the eudaemonist thesis, but because it strengthens the case for the possibility of an interpersonal conflict of interests (as I interpret or interpreted it).
2. My point about rational regret, sadness, frustration, or unhappiness over losing out to someone else is that such regret etc. is precluded by the thesis that there are no conflicts of rational interests (again, as I interpret or interpreted it), even if Rand does not say otherwise.
3. I agree that, on Aristotle’s view, the virtuous person will not always enjoy doing the right thing (this is a question I often challenge students with, with the example of Agamemnon sacrificing Iphigenia).
4. I agree that neither Rand nor Aristotle believes that doing the right thing always increases our subjective enjoyment (I make this point whenever I discuss happiness in either of them, my favorite example being that of Roark in the quarry).
5. Roderick says that when “happiness is no longer an option … it can still be true that … we’re even worse off giving up virtue than we are giving up subjective enjoyment.” But first, “giving up virtue” is not the option I was describing; the option was not acting virtuously on that one occasion. It’s psychologically implausible to respond, as philosophers sometimes do (Rand, Kant, Roderick?), that even one wrong act will destroy your character. If that were true, then everyone’s character would be in a shambles. I say this confidently not because I know every human being in the world, but because every human being I know well enough to evaluate has acted wrongly more than once (and, I am confident, will continue to do so)! Second, “we are worse off doing the wrong thing than we are giving up the very capacity for subjective enjoyment” is true only if being worse off simply means having a more tarnished moral account. But eudaimonia is more than an untarnished moral account — just as it’s more than subjective enjoyment. It begs the question to say that acting virtuously is always the more important component of eudaimonia, regardless of consequences. I have yet to see an argument for this. Not every unvirtuous act is terrible –some are forgivable. And when they are, we can recover our happiness again. But losing the very capacity for enjoying life — that, by hypothesis, is forever.
6. I also presented an even more tragic possibility: losing the capacity to act virtuously by, in part, acting virtuously (thanks to Doug for acknowledging this). Neither Rand nor Aristotle faces up to the possibility of these sorts of situations. Again, see Swing Kids.
7. Roderick thinks that Rand does face up to the possibility of these sorts of situations because she says, in his words, that “if one were faced with a choice between cooperating with an oppressive regime or watching a loved one be tortured to death, suicide might be one’s only rational option.” But this doesn’t encompass the SK case. It also doesn’t encompass the cases Solzehnitsyn describes in his Gulag Archipelago: (i) You are denied the opportunity to commit suicide, even by starvation; (ii) before you can commit suicide, you have to either cooperate or see your daughter tortured and gang raped.
Will — thank you very much for putting on this symposium and inviting me to participate. Doug, Roderick, and Mike: thank you for your many insights. I look forward to reading or re-reading your work.
Read: Does Rand Presuppose Egoism or Argue for Egoism?
* * *
Doug’s initial essay raised a number of questions. For the most part, we’ve been focusing on just one subset of them: those having to do with Rand’s attempt to argue from biological teleology to Aristotelean egoism to individual rights and the harmony of interests. In my initial post I did try to address one of Doug’s questions about Rand’s conception of capitalism, but no one really took the bait. (Well, no one here. Bryan Caplan replied elsewhere; see my response in the talkback.)
But Doug raised still other issues that none of us has addressed — including the question of whether Rand’s complete rejection of religion is defensible. As our discussion winds down, I thought it might be worth asking whether we want to say anything about those further issues, and in particular religion.
Let me approach the issue of religion from a somewhat odd angle.
Rand says somewhere in her letters or journals that she would not object so much to a conception of God that made him just one more thing among others in the universe; that would leave him open to rational investigation, and in particular would avoid the need to see God as the creator of the universe (which in her view would incoherently make existence dependent on consciousness). It is particularly the notion of a transcendent God that she objects to.
For many believers, of course, Rand will seem to have gotten things simply reversed. A God who was just one more being among others would hardly seem worthy of worship; his distance from a clay idol would be too small, and to worship him would be degrading and unseemly. Without transcendence, we have no God worth talking about.
I share the reaction that any God worthy of the name would need to be more than just one another denizen of the universe. But I also agree with Rand that nothing should be beyond rational investigation, as well as that the notion of consciousness creating existence is incoherent. So does that leave any room for a transcendent object of worship?
Maybe. There is a long tradition of identifying God not with a subjective personality but with something more like an ontological-moral principle, or even the logical structure of the universe itself. We find this idea in Plato’s Form of the Good, in the Stoics’ identification of God with Reason or the Scholastics’ identification of God with Being, and perhaps even in God’s Biblical self-identification as “I AM WHO AM.” Thinking of God as the logical structure of the universe rather than as one more chunk of reality within that structure would yield the transcendence the believer desires, but it wouldn’t place God beyond rational inquiry (what could be more open to reason than Reason itself?), nor would it make God a personal creator. The notion of worshipping a principle may also seem less offensive to human dignity than that of worshipping a person. (Of course, insofar as the logical structure of the universe is something atheists can believe in too, the line between theism and atheism would thereby be blurred.)
But is there room for such a conception of God in Rand’s ontology? Probably not. For a Platonist, the realm of logic is a feature of reality itself, external to the human mind, and so is a potential candidate for Godhood; but for Rand, logic is a tool of the human mind with which to grasp reality, and the constructs of logic, such as universals, have a merely epistemological status rather than a metaphysical one. Hence worshipping logic would simply be worshipping the contents of one’s own mind – an unpromising (though not unprecedented) basis for theism.
My own (Wittgenstein-influenced) view, however, is that logic is neither a tool we bring to reality à la Rand nor an extramental feature to which our minds must bow à la Plato; it’s much more pervasive than that. It’s not located in our mind, or in the Forms, or in physical objects, or in our mind’s relation to physical objects; it’s not located, period. It’s the background presupposition of all thought and all reality; and there’s nothing we can (without resorting to metaphor) say about it over and above what we can say with and through it. Hence it is, in a certain sense, indescribable, even though it is the most intelligible thing there is. If this sounds like mysticism, it’s the mysticism of reason rather than the mysticism of unreason. (I talk about these issues more in “Theism and Atheism Reconciled,” “The Unspeakable Logos,” “Satanic Epistemology?,” and “The Very Idea.”)
In saying these things about logic, and identifying God with logic so conceived, do we rescue the concept of God, and indeed raise it to the highest transcendence conceivable? Or do we instead etherealize God into nothingness?
Read: And Now for Something Completely Different
* * *
Mike wants to know whether all I’m saying re Rand’s biological defense of egoism is that it’s “incoherent to doubt that one should pursue one’s interests.”
Well, not quite all. It sounds as though Mike is inviting me to dispense with my “good for” talk in favor of talk about interests. But I think the “good for” talk is essential, because the reference to “good” is essential. Seeing something as in one’s interest doesn’t by itself carry with it any conceptual necessity to value the thing unless we have that link between interest and goodness; the conceptual necessity of valuing one’s interests is parasitic on the conceptual necessity of valuing goodness.
Here’s what I mean. “Good” is action-guiding; to see something as good is to be committed (ceteris paribus) to favoring it, pursuing it, endorsing it, etc. “Good for X” is not ordinarily action-guiding; I can see something as good for X and quite rationally not give a damn; what’s good for the virus is no concern of mine. But when I recognize myself as X, then (I claim) the qualifier drops away and I have to regard what’s good for X as good simpliciter.
By “good simpliciter” I don’t mean good from some agent-neutral point of view. Rather, I just mean this: I can see something as valuable from X’s perspective and yet not value it; but not when I’m X. I can’t see something as valuable from my perspective and yet not value it, because I can’t get out of my perspective.
I mean the term “perspective” in a broad way that applies to plants too; I’m not talking solely about conscious agents. However, if one is a conscious agent, then one’s perspective in the narrow sense needs, on pain of incoherence, to be responsive to one’s perspective in the broad sense.
I regard the situation as analogous to Moore’s Paradox. There’s no incoherence in saying “It’s raining, but X doesn’t believe it is” — unless I am X. “It’s raining, but I don’t believe it is” is indeed incoherent.
As for why the biological references aren’t dispensable, I think we need those to give content to the notion of “interest.” An interest isn’t just anything I happen to want; to want something is inter alia to judge that it’s worth having, and those judgments can be true or false; so we need something independent of our wants to be what makes them true or false, and life is the phenomenon that gives value-concepts their purchase.
Where the eudaimonic and instrumentalist strands differ is in the role assigned to those biological considerations; the instrumentalist strand makes mere survival the goal and a definite mode of survival the means, while the eudaimonic strand makes a definite mode of survival the goal.
In answer to Mike’s question about why non-flourishing people don’t also count as enjoying a definite mode of survival, let me point to a certain mode of argument that the eudaimonist can accept while the instrumentalist can’t: if my goal is to survive in a human manner, then if life A is more human than life B, then life A has better claim than life B to be my goal.
The instrumentalist can’t consistently accept that claim; if your goal is just to live, say, a human life, or a reasoning life, then hey, Hitler was human and alive, and he could reason enough to find his way to the bathroom, so he must have been achieving the goal – and then any fancier considerations will have to enter at the level of implausible claims about, e.g., strategies needed to ensure longevity.
But the eudaimonist can say that if some lives are more human than others, or more fully exemplify what is most essentially human, then those lives are more fully candidates for the good human life — so that our goal will be not to live a minimally human life but to live one that excels at being human.
And what’s attractive in Rand, I maintain, is the respects in which she sets out that latter vision, even when aspects of her theorizing pull her at the same time toward the instrumentalist approach.
Read: Biology and Interests
* * *
I agree with almost everything in Doug’s response to Will’s pot-stirring. (The only real disagreement is over whether respect for rights is merely a background context for flourishing rather than constitutive of it; but we’ve discussed that already.)
Let me just add a couple of points.
I once heard Dave Schmidtz explain moral dualism this way: it may be true that the wise person wouldn’t find murder fulfilling, but what’s wrong with murder is (at least primarily) what it does to the victim rather than what it does to the wise person. So although morality needs a eudaimonic element, it needs to appeal to a different kind of reason as well when it comes to certain aspects of interpersonal morality. (I should add that I don’t mean to suggest that Dave’s entire complex position can be reduced to this one argument! But anyway …)
On Dave’s point about what’s wrong with murder, I agree and disagree. Certainly if one takes what murder does to the murderer as separate from what it does to the victim, then I agree that it would be perverse to hang the wrongness of murder solely or even primarily on the former. But I think that’s the wrong way to conceptualize the eudaimonist approach (and thus the wrong way to conceptualize the eudaimonist strand in Rand’s thought). Rather, what murder does to the victim is constitutive of what it does to the murderer. So we don’t need moral dualism to solve the problem Dave raises, because that problem is the result of excessively dualistic thinking to begin with.
On the coordinating function of morality: my preferred way of handling this is different from Rand’s. I take a unity-of-virtue approach where the value of coordination (which in turn relates to my social-rationality stuff) stands in reciprocal determination with various other values and they’re all thrown into the pot together, so what emerges is guaranteed to include coordinative considerations (along with other considerations that may sometimes trump them). (Note that throwing them all into the pot is crucially different from assigning them to separate spheres à la moral dualism.) But all that involves a dialectical approach to epistemology that Rand rejects. That may explain why Rand (I think) wavers between treating respect for rights as part of the virtuous life and treating it as a background social condition à la Doug’s metanormative framework: if you want coordinative considerations but you’re not willing to throw them into the pot from the start, then you’re going to have to add them on to whatever comes out later.
Read: Yes, and …
* * *
There was something I didn’t follow in Doug’s last post, under his third observation. It seemed as though Doug was saying that we must interpret life in terms of flourishing rather than survival, because it is impossible to exist without a specific identity. I don’t follow this. People who are not flourishing (by Doug’s lights) exist, right? And they are not lacking in a specific identity, are they? So I don’t see why the concept of life couldn’t include both flourishing and non-flourishing people.
I thank Rod for his recent post. I think that “good for x” means “in x’s interests”. And I think that by “take an attitude of indifference toward x,” Rod means approximately, “not hold that one should pursue x (at least ceteris paribus)” (only thus would the reasoning bridge the is-ought gap). So, I think Rod’s premise (2) can be paraphrased like this:
2′. One cannot, without incoherence, recognize that x is in one’s interests but not hold that one should pursue x (ceteris paribus). Or:
2”. It is incoherent to doubt that one should pursue one’s interests (ceteris paribus). Or even:
2”’. It is a logical truth that one should pursue one’s interests (ceteris paribus).
If you have this premise, then I don’t think you need Rod’s premise (1), nor any talk about biological organisms. (2) by itself eliminates the is/ought gap. Can it be that easy?
Read: Identities and Interests
* * *
Reply to Neera and Doug
I think by the “harmony of interests” doctrine Neera and Doug mean something more extreme than I do. I don’t deny that the state of affairs that’s most in my interest may be inconsistent with the state of affairs that’s most in your interest, but that’s not what I mean by a conflict, or anyway a “fundamental” conflict, between our interests. By a fundamental conflict of interests I mean a case where suppressing other’s people’s interests in an immoral way — including, but not limited to, rights-violations — would be in my interest.
So take the rival-job-candidates case that both Neera and Doug both invoke; I would say that each candidate’s eudaimonic rankings should be as follows:
1) top choice, I get the job by moral methods;
2) second choice, the other person gets the job by moral methods;
3) third choice, the other person gets the job by immoral methods;
4) bottom choice, I get the job by immoral methods.
If my ranking (1) over (2) is what Doug and Neera mean by a conflict of interests, then I grant that such conflicts can occur under eudaimonism; but what I wish to deny (and all I take Rand to deny in her article “The ‘Conflicts’ of Men’s Interests”) is that the ranking of (1) over (2) implies a ranking of (4) over (2) or (3).
Take likewise the case of romantic rivalry, to which Rand devotes a fair amount of attention in her novels. Does or does not Francisco, in Atlas Shrugged, prefer that Dagny choose him over Galt? Well, I think that question underdescribes the situation. Here’s how I interpret Francisco’s ranking of the relevant possibilities:
1) top choice, Dagny loves me and chooses me;
2) second choice, Dagny loves Galt and chooses Galt;
3) bottom choice, Dagny loves Galt and chooses me.
Rand makes clear that although Francisco would be happier with his first choice than with his second, he is still happier with the second choice than the third.
Of course Rand also portrays Francisco as accepting the second choice with more inner serenity than most of us could manage or perhaps would even want to. (The idea of hanging out together in the company of one’s beloved and one’s successful rival is one I not only don’t find appealing, I don’t aspire to finding it appealing.) But I don’t think an inability to achieve that kind of serenity over the situation would contradict the basic eudaimonic point.
On Neera’s patent case, I regard patents per se as unjust so I can cheerfully ignore that example. (Incidentally, though, under U.S. law the patent doesn’t go to the first to file anyway, though Rand in her article on patents mistakenly thought it did; but the situation Neera and Rand describe does hold in some other countries, I believe.)
On Neera’s spousal career case, I’m not sure why intra-personal conflict should be considered a problem for the eudaemonist thesis. Eudaimonism doesn’t say (well, the Stoic version does, but the Aristotelean version in any case doesn’t) that it’s always possible for everyone to attain all their rational desires. Sometimes we have to give up some to get others.
I agree with Neera, then, that the need to “prioritize and try to make the best of the situation” doesn’t imply that there is “no room for rational regret, sadness, frustration, or unhappiness.” But neither Rand nor Aristotle, as I read them, ever said otherwise.
Aristotle is sometimes interpreted as holding that the virtuous person will always enjoy doing the right thing, but he explicitly denies this; many of the deeds involved in, e.g., military courage, he notes, are ones that only a wicked person would enjoy. To add another example (I owe this one to Karen Stohr): it may fall to me, in some circumstance, to break the news to somebody of a loved one’s death, yet while I ought to perform this unwelcome task rather than wimp out of it, I certainly don’t have to enjoy it, and indeed there would be something morally wrong with me if I did.
On the issue of situations that destroy our capacity for happiness, I want to resist Neera’s suggestion that if we grant the premises a) doing the right thing always makes us happier, and b) happiness includes subjective enjoyment, then we’re committed to the conclusion c) that doing the right thing always increases our subjective enjoyment. I accept the premises but reject the inference (and so don’t take the implausibility of the conclusion to impugn either of the premises).
If we’re faced with a situation where doing the right thing will destroy our capacity for subjective enjoyment, then happiness is no longer an option; but it can still be true than one option will leave us happier than the other. (Analogously, we can grant that a mouse is larger than an ant without granting that either one is large.) We can’t be living good lives unless we have both virtue and subjective enjoyment; but that’s consistent with holding, as Aristotle does, that we’re even worse off giving up virtue than we are giving up subjective enjoyment.
I also don’t think it’s true that Rand doesn’t face up to the possibility of these sorts of situations. On the contrary, she says explicitly that if one were faced with a choice between cooperating with an oppressive regime or watching a love done be tortured to death, suicide might be one’s only rational option.
Doug thinks that if “human flourishing is different for each person,” then it follows that “there is no way that one can in principle rule … out” fundamental conflicts of interests. Well, it depends how it’s different. I take it that Doug agrees with me (and Cicero) that there is some necessary common overlap in content among these different versions of flourishing, just in virtue of our shared human nature. But in that case, respect for rights, say, might belong to the common part rather than to the individualized part.
Of course, to say that it might be is not to show that it is. But my point is that the mere fact of individualization doesn’t show that it isn’t. By analogy: it’s true that red is always individualized as some particular shade — scarlet or crimson or whatever – but that doesn’t show that it’s impossible in principle to make any principled generalizations about red as such.
(An aside regarding Doug’s comment on metaphysical realism, I think Putnam and Wittgenstein are barking up somewhat different trees, and I prefer the latter to the former; but I agree with Doug that discussing this would take us too far afield. I’ll just note that I don’t think reality is “social.”)
Reply to Mike
To Mike’s query about how one can extract normativity from Rand’s merely biological premises, here’s my short version of the naturalistic two-step:
1. We can’t make sense of a biological organism without seeing its successful self-maintenance as good for it; and indeed such self-maintenance seems to be a precondition of the applicability of the notion of “good for”; by contrast, nothing can be good or bad for a rock, say. But this notion of “good for” doesn’t commit us to taking a positive attitude toward anything; I can grant that it would be good for the shark to eat me without endorsing its success in doing so.
2. But I myself am a biological organism, and it’s hard to see how I could without incoherence recognize something as good for me and yet take an attitude of indifference toward it.
So it’s the combination of a) the value-neutral fact that X is good for Y, with b) the fact that I am Y, that commits me to c) valuing X.
Regarding “Causality vs. Duty,” I agree that that essay is mostly in tension with the Aristotelean strand (though part of its aim is simply to defend internalism, which I take it is okay on Aristotelean grounds). My view of Rand, as I’ve said, is that the Aristotelean and the instrumentalist strands coexist, that Rand wavers between them, and that the instrumentalist strands becomes more pronounced in her later writings. “Causality vs. Duty” is an example of that latter trend. But I also claim that the Aristotelean strand never completely goes away (and they’re both quite strong in “The Objectivist Ethics”). In Reason and Value I trace the textual evidence of both strands throughout her writings, showing how the Aristotelean strand gradually (but never completely) wanes as its instrumentalist rival waxes.
(On another website, by the way, I noticed someone interpreting my use of “wavers” as meaning that Rand was hesitant. No; I mean that she was confused — unhesitatingly confused — and failed to see the inconsistency.)
Read: Interests, Harmonious and Otherwise
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Some things are not as clear as our good editor thinks. So, in response to his pot-stirring, I offer these brief comments—each of which requires much greater development than I can provide here.
First, strictly speaking, Rand’s “Causality Versus Duty” does not require an instrumentalist reading of morality. See my previously cited essays in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies on the pre-moral choice issue.
Second, instrumentalist reasoning and practical wisdom are not the same. Aristotle notes that prudence is not “cleverness.” See Den Uyl’s previously cited The Virtue of Prudence.
Third, I find the survivalist-reading of Rand most implausible. Unless one engages in what Rand called a “floating abstraction,” the claim that life is the ultimate end means “life as the kind or sort of thing something is.” There is no such thing as denatured or abstract life for Rand. One must understand her ethics in the context of her ontology — to exist is to be something or, as Rand prefers, “existence is identity.” I think this is the point of “qua man.”
Fourth, Rand’s Aristotelianism is what makes her intellectually interesting, and not just another contractarian. (By the way, does Adam Smith see human beings as merely instrumentalist reasoners? I think not.)
Fifth, egoism need not be instrumentalist, see Lester Hunt’s important essay, “Flourishing Egoism,” Social Philosophy & Policy 16.1 (Winter 1999): 72-95 and Tibor Machan’s discussions of classical egoism in his many works. Sixth, if moral dualism holds that there are two basic, but fundamentally different standards (with no connection between them), then this is a most unstable ethical view. Moreover, it must be shown why there are two basic moral standards. (Den Uyl and I discuss these problems towards the end of chapter 9, “Self-Ownership,” in Norms of Liberty.)
Seventh, Rand’s discussion of rights is her basic way of discussing the social nature of morality, because rights provide the rules of the game, and this provides the context for both instrumentalist reasoning and prudence properly understood. But this is strictly speaking only the political/legal dimension of social morality. There is indeed much more to society than politics and law.
Finally, Deidre McCloskey, who is a most interesting thinker, not only conflates instrumentalist reasoning with practical wisdom but also makes the connection between morality and capitalism too close. See Den Uyl’s previously cited, Homo Moralis, for a discussion of these two issues.
Read: No
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On the subject of instrumentalist egoism, survival vs. flourishing, and the pre-moral “choice to live”: someone just reminded me of Rand’s “Causality versus Duty”, which supports interpreting Rand as holding the less sophisticated views on these matters. Consider two quotations:
1. “Life or death is man’s only fundamental alternative. To live is his basic act of choice. If he chooses to live, a rational ethics will tell him what principles of action are required to implement his choice. If he does not choose to live, nature will take its course.” [1]
I think this supports the view of a pre-moral “choice to live”. It also suggests that living is understood here as the logical contradictory of dying (rather than as flourishing).
2. “Reality confronts man with a great many ‘musts,’ but all of them are conditional; the formula of realistic necessity is: ‘You must, if–’ and the ‘if’ stands for man’s choice: ‘–if you want to achieve a certain goal.’” [2]
This again lines up with the pre-moral-choice-to-live view. And I think it suggests that there are no ends to be found in nature, no goals that are metaphysically privileged. Rather, we simply choose what goals to pursue, and an action can be rationally criticized only when it fails to fit with the agent’s chosen goals. I think this stands in contrast to the Aristotelian view.
Notes
[1] Ayn Rand, “Causality Versus Duty,” in Philosophy: Who Needs It (New York: Signet, 1984), paperback ed., p. 99.
[2]Ibid., p. 99.
Read: Instrumentalist Egoism
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I obviously agree with Neera regarding the no-conflict-of-rational-interests issue. But I want to express not only my appreciation for the reference to Ronald de Sousa’s important article but also for her point about how it is possible to lose the capacity to do the right thing as a result, at least in part, from doing the right thing. (Sorry that I did not grasp this point from her earlier remarks.) It may be a “benevolent universe” but it is still possible for such things to happen.
Read: Yes
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About Neera’s message on the conflict of rational interests: Ditto that.
But now about her previous message, responding to me: We’ve mentioned the following premises and/or lemmas that appear in “The Objectivist Ethics” (taken from Neera’s message, slightly abbreviated):
1. Living things face an alternative of existence or non-existence.
2. Living things have a specific nature and must act according to that nature to survive.
3. Our means of survival is reason.
4. Reason functions volitionally.
5. To survive we must use our reason well and preserve our ability to reason well.
6. To reason well and live accordingly is to be virtuous.
First, I didn’t mean to imply that “Living things face an alternative of existence or non-existence” was the only premise deployed in the essay, and of course my one-line identification of the argument I was talking about does not give one the full picture of what goes on in the article.
However, as far as I understand the reasoning, premises (2)-(5) only seem to become relevant after you have established ethical egoism (perhaps the same is true even of premise (1)); I do not see how they are part of the premises used to establish egoism. (2)-(5) seem to be intended to show that, to survive, we must use our reason well and preserve our ability to reason well. But, what does that have to do with showing that the point of ethics is to serve one’s self-interest? It seems as though we are just presupposing that the purpose of ethics is to ensure one’s own survival. So it must be that that was supposed to be established already, right?
I’m not trying to saddle Neera with defending Rand’s argument in “The Objectivist Ethics”. I’m just trying to get more agreement on what the argument is. Whatever it is, I think egoism must have come out before things like (2)-(6). In fact, my own opinion is that egoism was simply presupposed, but that Rand represented it as having been proved.
Read: More on the Conflict of Rational Interests
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I agree (1) with Rod’s response to Neera that happiness needs to be understood objectively and (2) with what he says about Michael’s concern re the plausibility of Rand’s general approach. Much of what Rod says in response to Michael was noted by Den Uyl and myself in our “Nozick on the Randian Argument” in The Personalist 59 (April 1978): 184-205 as well as in our account of her ethical views in The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand. But he makes these points well, and they are to my mind part of the life-based approach to natural teleology that we both champion.
I cited Cicero for his recognition that human flourishing is individualized and not for the problematic Stoic claim (made elsewhere) that universal rights (which may or may not be negative) follow from our rational nature.
I would think that if human flourishing is individualized and agent-relative,[1] then this would mean that human flourishing is different for each person, and thus it is possible for there to be conflict—that is, there is no way that one can in principle rule this out. For example, if Arizona University were considering only either Rod or myself for an endowed chair, then mutatis mutandis his good would be served better if he were chosen and I was not, and my good would be served better if I were chosen, and he was not. But all these sorts of things depend on numerous concretes (e.g., that it would be good for either of us to accept such a chair). Ethical principles do not specify such details, and this is again why practical wisdom is so important.
I do think that it is possible for people to cooperate peaceably. This is why basic negative rights are so important, but the issue here between me and Rand seems to be whether the existence of such rights depends on the assumption that what is objectively good for one individual cannot ever conflict with what is objectively good for another. I don’t assume this. She did.
Human beings are certainly social. Indeed, human reason has a social dimension, but I am afraid that I may have a different reading of the social nature of reason than Rod’s. It may come down to a disagreement regarding the views of Hilary Putnam and possibly the later Wittgenstein. (See my essay, “The Importance of Metaphysical Realism,” Social Philosophy & Policy 25.1 (Winter 2008): 56-99.) But now, we are getting away from Rand and talking more of our own approaches to these issues.
Surely, any philosopher’s work is incomplete. But Rand’s corpus is certainly nothing like that of Aristotle’s or Kant’s.
This has been fun. I want to thank Rod, Michael, and Neera for their comments. I learned a great deal.
Note
[1] “Agent-relative” describes any value, ranking, or reason V for which its description includes an essential reference to the person for whom the value exists, for whom the ranking is correct, or who has the reason. Thus, a good, G1, for a person, P1, is agent-relative if and only if its distinctive presence in a world, W1, is a basis or reason for P1 ranking W1 over W2, even though G1 may not be a basis or reason for any other person ranking W1 over W2.
Read: Neither Stoicist Nor Putnam-Wittgensteinian
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I too love the passage from Cicero that Doug quoted. But I did not see it as supporting either Doug (and me) or Roderick on the issue of the possibility of a conflict among different people’s rational interests. Although I have agreed with most of Roderick’s views so far, I am now making up by disagreeing with him on two of the three points he makes in his latest!
Roderick says that there is no “fundamental” conflict between one person’s good and another’s. I don’t know what rides on “fundamental,” but it seems to be a qualification to the thesis that there can be no conflicts between two people’s rational interests, the thesis affirmed by Rand and Objectivists. At any rate, I think there can also be fundamental conflicts. Here are some simple everyday examples: (i) there are two equally good candidates for one job — equally qualified and equally good for the business/department. The one who loses out gets stuck in a really awful job for several years that takes the joy out of work. It’s no good saying that there cannot be two equally good candidates for a job — I’ve witnessed this sort of situation more than once. (Of course, people then try to invent reasons for why one is better than the other, but they’re just that — inventions! There is oodles of experimental evidence for this kind of rationalization.) (ii) Two people invent the same thing at the same time, but only the one who reaches the patent office first gets the patent (she lives closer to the patent office). Now you could say that our patent laws are irrational, and the thesis of the harmony of rational interests applies only to situations not created by irrational factors. I’m not sure Rand thought our patent laws were irrational, but in any case, the first example does not depend on a situation created by irrational factors. Indeed, like I said earlier, I think even our own rational interests can conflict. Here’s an example that shows both intrapersonal and interpersonal conflict: (iii) the best location for my career, in which I am heavily invested, is P, the best location for my husband, in which he is heavily invested, is R, we both want each other to flourish in their careers, and we are both equally interested in living together. But neither of us can satisfy all of our interests.
The idea that rational interests cannot conflict assumes that the rational constraints on desire/need are no different from the rational constraints on belief: all rational wants must harmonize just as all true beliefs must harmonize (see Ronald de Sousa, “The Good and the True” [pdf]). But there is no good reason to believe this. In the face of conflict, It is rational to prioritize and try to make the best of the situation, but it’s not rational to pretend that there never was a conflict — and, therefore, no room for rational regret, sadness, frustration, or unhappiness.
On Happiness and Virtue
Roderick argues that “choice situations that destroy our capacity for happiness” are not a problem for the Aristotelian view because it does not hold that “virtue is sufficient for happiness or that happiness consists solely in conscious occurrent feelings.” I agree, but my argument did not assume either of these things. Rather, given the very real possibility of such situations, I believe it is false to hold that (i) doing the right thing is always better for us, where this means that it must contribute more to our happiness than doing the wrong thing (a view that, according to Irwin and others, Aristotle does hold), where (ii) where happiness includes both the objective worth of one’s life as a whole, and the psychological disposition to enjoy this life. I don’t think that enjoyment of life, joy in life, capacity for pleasure etc. can be subtracted from happiness without changing the very concept of happiness. Our philosophical concepts have to be “descriptively plausible,” that is, match up with the way they are ordinarily used. Moreover, Aristotle’s own conception of happiness is descriptively plausible in this way. The problem I was pointing to in my earlier post on this issue is that he (and the Stoics and Rand) do not face up to the possibility of the kind of terrible situation I was envisaging, that of destruction of the very capacity for such enjoyment. Of course, doing the wrong thing can also destroy the very capacity for enjoyment through shame and guilt. In that case, it is as bad for us as doing the right thing, but still not worse, or not necessarily so. In my earlier post, I also pointed to another possibility illustrated by Swing Kids: the destruction of the very capacity for doing the right thing as a result, in part, of doing the right thing.
None of this is meant to suggest that naturalism doesn’t work (as, I think, Doug thought I was suggesting). Rather, it’s meant to show that Aristotelian naturalism needs to be modified to take account of such cases.
Read: The Conflict of Rational Interests
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The passage Doug quotes from Cicero is one of my favorites too, but it seems to be asserting my position rather than Doug’s. For it says that we should follow our individual nature only so far as it consists with virtue and/or the requirements of universal human nature; and Cicero would clearly agree (given the rest of De Officiis) that respect for the rights of others is part of universal virtue. One’s individual nature can make the requirements of human nature more specific, but it cannot contradict them. (In the text that follows Cicero goes on to specify that one’s social circumstances can add yet further specifications, but these are clearly subject to the same requirement.) So the fact that the human good is individualized differently for different people doesn’t entail that one person’s good can conflict fundamentally with another’s. So I don’t agree with Doug’s claim that the mere fact of individuality “does mean that there can be” such conflicts.
Of course, if Doug hasn’t shown that there can be, I also haven’t shown that there can’t be. Determining which aspects of morality belong to the universal nature and which to the individual, and in particular whether respect for rights belongs to the former or the latter, is a complicated business. But I do think that the close connection between our nature asrational beings and the need to deal with others through reason rather than force does speak in favor of locating respect for rights at a fairly deep level.
In response to Neera’s worries about choice situations that destroy our capacity for happiness, I think this would be a problem for the Aristotelean view if it held either that virtue is sufficient for happiness or that happiness consists solely in conscious occurrent feelings. But if happiness is a matter of the objective success of one’s life as a whole, then I don’t find it problematic to say that if we were to avoid suffering horrific injustice only by committing such injustice ourselves, our lives would be objectively even worse (though we might perhaps feel better). But here I suspect I am siding with Aristotle against Rand, who defines happiness as “a state of non-contradictory joy,” which doesn’t make it sound like a feeling (though one might be able to place some weight on the qualifier “non-contradictory”).
In answer to Mike’s question, here’s principally what I find plausible in “The Objectivist Ethics”: a) the idea that the self-sustaining nature of living organisms gives value-concepts a purchase in their case that it doesn’t have in the case of things that don’t do anything to maintain themselves in existence, and so can’t clearly be said to succeed or fail, or to be benefited or harmed; b) the further idea that once we recognize ourselves as one of these entities, we cannot without incoherence fail to endorse what is biologically good or bad for it/us; and c) the yet further idea that reflection on the nature of the particular sort of organism we are will form part of the argument both for governing our own lives by reason and for dealing with others by reason.
And that’s a fair bit. But I think to get to a full-fledged harmony of interests we need more than Rand gives us, and in particular we need to lay some stress on the social nature of reason, which is something Rand would not be jazzed about.
So in short, I’d say that Rand filled in some important bits of the picture, but not all of it, and indeed she explicitly rejected some pieces that I think are needed. But I’d say the same of Aristotle, or indeed of Kant.
Read: More on Happiness
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I think Neera is correct to say in response to Michael that there are “a whole lot of other premises.” This is why it is important to take Rand as making insightful suggestions, but not as offering a finished product. But if you think any and every version of naturalism in ethics must fail, then it does seem implausible. That is the basic issue here.
Also, speaking of Cicero, I would like to add my favorite statement from him:
Everybody, however, must resolutely hold fast to his own peculiar gifts, in so far as they are peculiar only and not vicious, in order that propriety, which is the object of our inquiry, may the more easily be secured. For we must so act as not to oppose the universal laws of human nature, but, while safeguarding those, to follow the bent of our own particular nature, and even if other careers should be better and nobler, we may still regulate our own pursuits by the standard of our own nature.
– Cicero, De Officiis
Read: Bravo Neera
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Rod:
Doug thinks that the natural harmony of interests that the eudaimonist tradition largely embraces requires an agent-neutral conception of the good.
Neera:
Doug is right that the omission of the virtue of practical wisdom from Rand’s discussion is an important one. But I don’t find it surprising: she was not a systematic philosopher, and she omitted to discuss a whole lot of important things such as generosity, kindness, forgiveness, and charity.
Michael: ”. . . you’re going to have to rely on ethical intuition.”
I am dubious of the idea that what is objectively good and right for one person to do cannot ever conflict with what is objectively good and right for another person to do. Rod thinks I am dubious because I believe that the only way one can have harmony is by assuming agent-neutrality. I do not.
Though there are some advocates of eudaimonia that take an agent-neutral approach, I don’t think agent-neutrality is the hallmark of the eudaimonist tradition. This is not the basic issue, however. As I implied in my earlier remarks, it has to do with the place of individuality in one’s understanding of human good. Human flourishing is always and necessarily individualized, and this means not only that human flourishing does not exist apart from individuals but also that it only exists in an individualized manner. Though we can speak abstractly of generic goods and virtues and thus note what is common, these goods and virtues do not take on determinacy, reality, or worth apart from the excellent use of practical reason. This does not mean that there must be conflicts between one individual’s good and that of another’s, but it does mean that there can be. But more importantly, it does show that human flourishing is something different for each of us. Here is the pluralist dimension of ethics. (See Norms of Liberty, chapters 6 and 7)
This is why Rand’s failure to have a place for practical wisdom in her ethics is so disappointing. Practical wisdom is necessary for the presence of all of the virtues, including the ones she notes, as well as those she ignores or fails to emphasize. Indeed, it is indicative of a failure to truly appreciate the importance of individuality for ethical deliberations. I think this comes from an excessive rationalist approach to morality. I also think that this is part of the reason for the cultish behavior of many of her followers and some of the foundations devoted to her thought.
Neera is of course correct to say the Rand is not a systematic philosopher and that she omits many other important virtues as well, but I think that the omission of practical wisdom is a fundamental flaw because it undermines her ethical individualism.
Finally, Aristotle notes that nous goes in both directions — that is to say, it apprehends both the universal and necessary and the contingent and particular. So, there is certainly a place for direct insight — not all knowledge, including ethical knowledge, is discursive. But I think insight occurs within the context of metaphysical realism and natural teleology. As Foot has noted, “A moral evaluation does not stand over against the statement of a matter of fact, but rather has to do with facts about a particular subject matter.” So, I think we have insight into what human flourishing is as well as many other things. This is part of the story.
Read: This and That
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Thanks to Doug, Roderick, and Mike for further food for thought.
Starting with the most recent: Mike is right that you can’t go from “Living things face an alternative of existence or non-existence” to ethical egoism. But of course Rand introduces a whole lot of other premises to get there: all living things, including the human variety, have a specific nature and must act according to that nature to achieve survival; our means of survival is reason, which functions volitionally; to survive we must survive as rational beings, which means both “by using our reason well” and “preserving our ability to reason well” (the latter is implicit); to reason well and live accordingly is to be virtuous. Now I don’t mean that the conclusion is strongly supported by these premises, since prudent free-riding is one way of reasoning well as a means to survival and preserving the ability to reason well. But I do think that the mistake in the passage from the starting point to the conclusion is not as naïve or obvious as Mike seems to. And the particular problem I’m identifying is a problem with all ancient theories.
If I understand Roderick correctly, I guess he disagrees with me on the last point. I find the following from Seneca inspiring, but I think it doesn’t face the toughest issue:
… a human being’s constitution is a rational one, and so a human being’s attachment is to himself notqua living being but qua rational being; for he is dear to himself in respect of what makes him human. (Letters to Lucilius 121.)
The toughest issue is that doing the right thing can lead not just to death, but something far harder: prolonged torture and degradation of the self or of those we love (see Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago), or destruction of the very capacity for happiness (see Todorov on evil and the story of the absent father in the movie Swing Kids), or even of the capacity for moral agency (see Swing Kids again). In both the Gulag Archipelago and Swing Kids, the choice one is presented with is between saving oneself and those one is closest to from these consequences, on the one hand, and saving one’s comrades and one’s cause, on the other. What is the rational thing to do in such circumstances? Like Cicero, I find one answer convincing one day, and the other the next day. Like Sidgwick, I think practical reason is divided.
Read: Yes, We Can Get Along — and We Can Even Agree Quite a Bit!
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I can’t dispute with Neera about what she finds initially plausible. But I want to clarify what I thought hardly anyone would find plausible. I didn’t mean neo-Aristotelian egoism per se. I meant the argument in “The Objectivist Ethics” that, as I think, starts from “Living things face an alternative of existence or non-existence,” and somehow gets from there to ethical egoism (be it of whatever kind) and free market capitalism as the only just social order. Do the other participants find that inference plausible? Or would they say that is not a fair characterization of what goes on in “The Objectivist Ethics”?
Read: Clarifying What Hardly Anyone Would Find Plausible
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I’m in considerable agreement with what all three of my fellow symposiasts have said. For example, we all seem to agree in finding both an instrumentalist strand and a constitutive, Aristotelian strand in Rand’s ethics, and we likewise agree in finding the latter more attractive and defensible than the former.
My chief disagreement with Mike, I think, is over the extent to which the instrumentalist approach pervades Rand’s mature moral philosophy, and in particular “The Objectivist Ethics.” Mike seems to see the latter essay as almost purely instrumentalist — which, I take it, is why he is able to say that hardly anybody finds its argument even remotely convincing unless they buy into Rand’s whole system. Clearly this would not be a plausible claim if we gave the constitutive strand in that essay much weight, for then we could offer as counterexamples virtually every major moral thinker from the first two thousand years of Western philosophy; none of them would have bought into Rand’s whole system, but the basic idea of our moral concern for others being grounded in our own flourishing as rational agents, with the latter in turn being identified both with our own true self-interest and with our biological life-function, was the reigning paradigm from Socrates through the Scholastics.
Mike’s claim becomes more plausible if we take “The Objectivist Ethics” as purely instrumentalist or nearly so; but I find instrumentalist and constitutive strands confusedly intertwined in that piece. (Consider her rejection of “merely physical” survival, for example.) The mere attempt to ground ethics on self-preservation, I should note, is not by itself enough to make Rand’s argument instrumentalist; for the Stoics, e.g., likewise gave self-preservation a place in ethical justification, yet few thinkers were less instrumentalist than they were. For the Stoics, self-preservation is by nature our initial primary concern, but this concern can and should be transformed, as a result of critical reflection on the nature of the self to be preserved, into a broader moral concern to preserve ourselves as particular kinds of beings living a particular kind of life – and that new concern will, when necessary, trump mere survival, which now gets kicked away like a ladder after we have climbed up it.
Seneca, for example, writes that our desire to preserve our own constitution, while initially favoring mere survival, ultimately leads us away from it, since “a human being’s constitution is a rational one, and so a human being’s attachment is to himself not qua living being but qua rational being; for he is dear to himself in respect of what makes him human.” (Letters to Lucilius 121.) There is much in “The Objectivist Ethics” that is reminiscent of this approach, which shows that Rand’s talk of survival can make sense even within the constitutive strand, not just within the instrumentalist strand. (I’d also be curious to know what Mike makes of the approach defended in the Bidinotto essay I linked to earlier.)
Mike’s argument that egoists cannot have non-instrumental concern for others echoes Cicero’s similar criticism of the Epicureans. The Epicurean response was, in effect, an indirect consequentialism or rule-consequentialism: it’s in our self-interest to cultivate in ourselves non-instrumental concern for others. While I don’t find this adequate (mainly because once the cultivation is successful the agent is no longer a consequentialist — see my article “The Value in Friendship“), it doesn’t seem obviously hopeless, and one could read Rand the same way; I’d be curious to know what my fellow symposiasts think of this solution.
My chief disagreement with Doug is over the extent to which interpersonal morality, and in particular a principled dedication to rights, can be identified as a constitutive part of human flourishing. Doug thinks that the natural harmony of interests that the eudaimonist tradition largely embraces requires an agent-neutral conception of the good; I’m not convinced. (Our further disagreement as to whether one can ground rights in interpersonal morality is, I think, a corollary of this prior disagreement.)
Resolving this dispute between Doug and myself would require answering another of Mike’s questions: by what epistemic means we are to determine the content of eudaimonistic flourishing. Mike finds empirical methods unpromising (as do I) and so defends an appeal to intuition. In my book Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Rand, and again in my review of Leland Yeager’s Ethics As Social Science, I defend Aristotelian dialectic as the best epistemic method, and argue that Rand’s deviation from Aristotle in the direction of empiricism was responsible for the instrumentalist strand in her ethics (a claim that’s similar to what Mike is saying about the survival approach being easier to justify via empiricism). I also argue there that the dialectical approach supports the harmony of interests and the incorporation of rights into personal morality and happiness. Whether Aristotelian dialectic is the same thing as intuitionism is of course a complicated question.
I have the fewest disagreements with Neera, but let me mention a few. While I agree with her (and, apparently, everyone else here) that the value of mere survival is insufficient to ground the value of survival qua human, I am less convinced about the further gap Neera sees between survival qua human and eudaimonia; but perhaps I am loading more into the former notion than she does.
Neera also criticizes Rand for insisting on the unity of virtue. If by the unity of virtue Neera means the thesis that one can’t have any one virtue to a significant degree without having them all, then I agree with her that that’s false (and I also agree that Rand seems, at least sometimes, to have held this mistaken view — as for example when she assumed that 19th-century businessmen could be neatly divided into those who prospered by their own effort and those who prospered through government favoritism, ignoring the substantial class of those who initially rose by their own efforts but then turned to government for favors once they’d acquired sufficient wealth to influence legislators). But if Neera means the thesis that one can’t have any one virtue completely without having them all, then I’d be willing to defend that thesis, on the grounds that a virtue is a disposition to act correctly in a certain domain, and the relevant domains all overlap. In the words of Alexander of Aphrodisias (the leading Aristotelian of the 2nd century CE):
That the virtues are implied by one another might also be shown in the following way, in that it is impossible to have some one of them in its entirety [emphasis added] if one does not have the others too. For it is not possible to have justice in isolation, if it belongs to the just person to act justly in all things that require virtue, but the licentious person will not act justly when something from the class of pleasant things leads him astray, nor the coward when something frightening is threatened against him if he does what is just, nor the lover of money where there is hope of gain; and in general every vice by the activity associated with it harms some aspect of justice. (“That the Virtues Are Implied By One Another,” On the Soul II. 18; trans. R. W. Sharples)
(See also my pieces Happiness in Austro-Athenian Perspective and Why Does Justice Have Good Consequences?.)
Read: Can We All Get Along?
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Doug is right that the omission of the virtue of practical wisdom from Rand’s discussion is an important one. But I don’t find it surprising: she was not a systematic philosopher, and she omitted to discuss a whole lot of important things, such as generosity, kindness, forgiveness, and charity. Of course, there are philosophical reasons why she didn’t discuss practical wisdom or the virtues of benevolence: she thought the latter “minor” and she assumed, like Plato, that practical and theoretical rationality are one and the same. Hence her view that the truly productive must have all the other virtues. Still, she does show practical wisdom in her heroines’ and heroes’ characters, as she shows generosity, kindness, and forgiveness (or so I argue in “The Virtues of Benevolence: The Unnamed Virtues in The Fountainhead,” ARS, December 1993; see also David Kelley, Unrugged Individualism, 2003).
Michael Huemer is certain that “hardly anyone” other than Objectivists finds “The Objectivist Ethics” “at all convincing.” Well, I could name many, many counterexamples, in addition to the other three people contributing to this symposium. We ”counterexamples” find it somewhat convincing because we see more than a Hobbesian, instrumentalist egoism there: we also see a neo-Aristotelian egoism. And I should think that everyone would find it convincing that long-term survival requires a more-or-less moral society, and that predators survive only by free-riding on others. This is not, of course, original with Rand, but it’s rare to see it acknowledged these days by philosophers other than contractarians. (And it’s worth noting, although I know Michael is not disputing it, that no one shows it more vividly than Rand in Atlas Shrugged). That said, I agree that individual rights cannot be defended on the basis of a purely instrumentalist ethical egoism. This is the part of Rand we need to throw out and not link with libertarianism.
Read: Omitting Practical Wisdom
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I guess I will comment on the “survival vs. flourishing” debate. This is, briefly, how it seems to me.
1.There probably is no answer to the question, which is correct as an interpretation of Rand. Rand probably did not have a settled position herself, and thought different things at different times.
2. The important question, however, is not which view is Rand’s, but which view is more likely true. On this, I think:
a) The flourishing view is much more ethically plausible. I don’t think I would have been impressed with Atlas Shrugged if the heroes were just centenarians going around reading actuarial tables to figure out how to maximize their life expectancy.
b) The survival view is more clearly connected to the metaethical foundations Rand seems to be trying to lay, and the effort to avoid the is/ought gap. With the flourishing view, it is much more clear that you’re going to have to rely on ethical intuition.
3. Apropos of the last point, it has never been clear to me how we are supposed to know what constitutes flourishing. Suppose I want to know whether observing the non-initiation of force principle is part of “flourishing.” Is there an empirical test I can perform? Do I just rely on intuition?
Read: Survival, Flourishing, and Intuition
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Towards the end of my lead essay I state:
If there is any single reason for why Rand’s views should be worthy of the attention they are currently receiving, it is this: philosophical principles matter, and persons and cultures that ignore them do so at their peril. This is the basis for the continued appeal of Atlas Shrugged, for there she pointed out more vividly than anyone else in our time what happens when the right principles are subverted and the wrong ones take their place.
So, I certainly concur with the claim that it is Rand qua novelist that has made her so influential. Nonetheless, what is crucial to Rand as the novelist is the philosophical vision that is expressed in her novels — particularly, it is her view of the nature of the free society, of capitalism, and of human perfection that has made her so inspiring. It is in regard to that vision that I offered my six sets of questions.
Turning to some of these questions, I will respond not only to some of what Professors Long, Huemer, and Badhwar have said but also offer some of my own views regarding these questions.
Metaethics
1) Professors Long and Badhwar are certainly correct to note that if Rand’s ethics is based on a pre-moral choice to live, then she fails to overcome the so-called naturalistic fallacy. I have in several articles [1] argued against the pre-moral choice view and have suggested that a neo-Aristotelian reading of her ethics (particularly one that invokes natural teleology) is a better way of understanding what she is saying. There are, however, many proponents of her thought that still seek to defend the pre-moral choice view.
2) If I understand Professor Huemer rightly, he does not think that any naturalistic approach to ethics can overcome the supposed is-ought gap. So, the issue as to whether Rand is to be given a neo-Aristotelian reading or not is simply beside the point as far as he is concerned. Huemer thinks that only a non-naturalistic (specifically, an ethical intuitionist) approach can provide moral knowledge. [2] This claim is worthy of discussion on some other occasion.
Normative Ethics
3) Long and Badhwar are also on target when they note that Rand’s account of the moral life sometimes treats all virtues as merely instruments to an agent’s own flourishing but at other times treats them as constitutive features of such a way of life. Further, I agree that a merely instrumental account of virtues (and basic goods) is unpersuasive. Yet, as before, there are many proponents of Rand’s ethical views that interpret them in strictly consequentialist terms. [3] Indeed, it is against just this sort of account of Rand’s ethics that Huemer’s criticisms are well-directed.
4) I also agree that the virtue of justice is a constitutive feature of human flourishing for Rand, but I do not think that this virtue — that is, giving others their appropriate due — amounts to the same thing as respecting individual rights. The virtue of justice requires both more and less than individual rights. Giving others their appropriate due can require in certain contexts and relationships much more than simply forbearing from coercion, and alternatively it often can involve considerably less than equal or neutral treatment to everyone. Practicing the virtue of justice is a highly nuanced matter. Individual rights do offer, of course, a form of justice. They regulate human conduct by providing the rules for playing the moral game among others, so to speak. But I do not think it would be accurate to characterize such rights as constituent virtues of an agent’s flourishing.
5) None of the virtues that constitute human flourishing for Rand can be applied or followed in simply a deductive manner. In order for the moral life to be practiced, intellectual insight into the contingent and the particular is required (and here I share some common ground with Professor Huemer). Any unity these virtues might acquire can only be achieved through the excellent use of practical reason. Thus, I continue to think that it is scandalous that Rand has no discussion of the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom in her ethics. On the importance of this virtue, see Douglas J. Den Uyl’s The Virtue of Prudence.[4]
6) Unless Rand takes a Platonic or an agent-neutral [5] view of human flourishing, I remain unconvinced that what is objectively right and good for one individual to do must as a matter of principle never conflict with what is objectively right and good for another individual to do. Are individual human beings mere loci for the right and the good? Is who one is irrelevant to moral deliberations? I think not, and I recommend David L. Norton’s Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism on this point. [6]
7) I think that Professor Long is dead-right to emphasize the self-directed character of human flourishing for Rand. Possibly, her most important insight for our times is that attempting to force the human good is “like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.”
Individual Rights
8 ) Rights are not consequentialist moral concepts, but I do not think that they are deontological ones either. [7] Further, I do not think that the idea that rights considerations trump all other moral considerations can be maintained simply by treating rights, as Rand appears to do, as means to human flourishing. It may be that all moral concepts have their basis in human flourishing, but how they are related to this ultimate good may be neither direct nor isomorphic. I think this is especially true when it comes to individual rights. Den Uyl’s and my work, Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis For Non-Perfectionist Politics, offers an account of individual rights that takes many of these matters into consideration. [8]
Capitalism
9) I agree with much of what Long and Badhwar have to say about capitalism, and I would only add that it is dangerous either to sever all connection between an understanding of capitalism and the ethical order or to hold that connection too close. To my mind, Rand is sometimes guilty of the latter when she conceptualizes capitalism. [9] I think that part of her difficulty stems from wearing two hats: that of the novelist and that of the philosopher. The very thing that allows Rand to be such an effective novelist is also the very thing that leaves her own account of her philosophical positions incomplete and sometimes simply mistaken.
Conclusion
In The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand, Den Uyl and I argued that Rand’s philosophy is a form of Aristotelianism. [10] Both Professors Long and Badhwar have in their responses, as well as in their own important works on Rand, noted how vital it is to understand her arguments and approach in an Aristotelian context. Indeed, Leonard Peikoff has said of her philosophy that it is “Aristotelianism without Platonism.” Rand saw herself, of course, as offering her own unique philosophy, and while it is certainly true that she offers some important insights and improvements on that tradition, [11] it seems best to understand her as a neo-Aristotelian. [12]
I am aware that this conclusion will disappoint some of Rand’s followers as well as some of her critics.
Notes
[1] See my essays: “Rand’s Metaethics: Rejoinder to Hartford,” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 8. 2 (Spring 2007): 307-316; “Regarding Choice and the Foundation of Morality: Reflections on Rand’s Ethics,” Vol. 7. 2 The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (Spring 2006): 309-328; “Rand on Obligation and Value,” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 4, no. 1 (Fall 2002): 69-86; and “The Aristotelian Significance of Sections Titles of Atlas Shrugged: A Brief Considerations of Rand’s View of Logic and Reality,” in Edward M. Younkins, ed., Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: A Philosophical and Literary Companion, ed. (Ashgate, 2007), 33-45.
[2] See his interesting book, Ethical Intuitionism (Palgrave MacMillan, 2005)
[3] Consequentialism is any theory in normative ethics that attempts to determine obligations simply by whether an action or rule produces the greatest, net, expected “good” (or least “bad”) consequences.
[4] (Peter Lang, 1991).
[5] Describes any value, reason, or ranking V for which, “if a person P1 is justified in holding V, then so are P2-Pn under appropriately similar conditions. . . . On an agent-neutral conception it is impossible to weight more heavily or at all, V, simply because it is one’s own value.” (Den Uyl, The Virtue of Prudence, p. 27). Sometimes referred to as “impersonalism” and often thought of as definitive of the so-called moral point of view.
[6] (Princeton University Press, 1976). See also my essay, “Human Flourishing and the Appeal to Human Nature,” Social Philosophy & Policy 16 (Winter 1999): 1-43.
[7] Deontology is any theory in normative ethics that holds “duty” and “right” to be basic and defines the morally good in terms of them. Such theories attempt to determine obligations apart from a consideration of the good.
[8] (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005). For a discussion of this work, see Aeon Skoble, ed., Reading Rasmussen and Den Uyl: Critical Essays on Norms of Liberty (Lexington Books, 2008).
[9] See not only Norms of Liberty on this general issue, but as it pertains specifically to economics, see Den Uyl’s essay, “Homo Moralis,” The Review of Austrian Economics 22 (2009): 349-385 as well as Rasmussen and Den Uyl, “Making Room for Business Ethics: Rights as Metanorms of Market and Moral Values,” The Journal of Private Enterprise 24.2 (2009): 1-19.
[10] (University of Illinois Press, 1984).
[11] See Den Uyl and Rasmussen, “The Philosophical Importance of Ayn Rand,” Modern Age 27 (Winter 1983): 67-69.
[12] It should be noted that Tibor R. Machan has argued that Rand does share some affinities with the later Wittgenstein regarding essences. See also my essay, “Quine and Aristotelian Essentialism,” The New Scholasticism 58 (Summer 1984): 316-335.
Read: Rand’s Philosophic Thought: A Response to Professors Long, Huemer, and Badhwar
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University of Oklahoma philosopher Neera K. Badhwar attributes the ongoing currency of Ayn Rand’s ideas to the persisting appeal of her novels. “In Rand’s fiction,” Badhwar writes, “we witness the tragedy of Prometheus bound and the triumph of Prometheus unbound. No purely theoretical work can show this.” When it comes to Rand’s theoretical work, Badhwar’s assessment is mixed. She notes that Rand’s ethical theory presents both long-term biological survival and survival “as a rational, and thus, viruous being” as the standard of moral action. However, Badhwar argues, “there is no coherent way to show that to survive long-term is to survive qua man is to achieve eudaimonia.” Rand depicts virtue in her fiction “as a shield against misery even in the worst of misfortunes,” and vice “as causing psychological turmoil.” But, Badhwar observes, virtue doesn’t always pay and vice doesn’t always exact a terrible price. Badhwar also disputes Rand’s belief in the unity of the virtues and the possibility of moral perfection and argues that “virtues such as kindness, charity, and forgiveness are much more important in human life than Rand grants.” Last, Badhwar takes up Rand’s idea that “the creator should not pander to debased or immoral desires,” and suggests a more moderate version of this view.
Read: Ayn Rand’s Significance: A Reply to Douglas Rasmussen
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University of Colorado philosopher Michael Huemer takes up Douglas Rasmussen’s question of why there is such intense interest in Ayn Rand and answers that Rand, unlike Mises or Bastiat, “was not only a philosopher, but a compelling novelist.” However gripping her novels, Huemer is not impressed with Rand’s moral philosophy. “The theory of ‘The Objectivist Ethics’,” Huemer writes, “is simultaneously the most distinctive and the least plausible, worst defended of all of Rand’s major ideas.” Huemer argues that there is a glaring conflict between Rand’s ethical egoism and her case for individual rights.”I cannot hold my own well-being as the only end in itself, and simultaneously say that I recognize other persons as ends in themselves too.” Huemer recommends discarding Rand’s egoism and setting her ban of the initiation of force and fraud on a more plausible foundation.
Read: Why Ayn Rand? Some Alternate Answers
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In his reply to Rasmussen’s lead essay, Auburn University philosopher Roderick Long sets out to sort the wheat from the chaff in Ayn Rand’s moral and political thought. Long maintains that “Rand sets out to found a classical liberal conception of politics … upon a classical Greek conception of human nature and the human good,” and he goes on to defend the plausibility of this project. In particular, Long stands up for Rand’s reliance on a naturalistic teleology to ground her neo-Aristotlean ethic theory, pointing to contemporary philosophical work that supports Rand’s view. Long is less happy with Rand’s political thought and criticizes her ideas of the “pyramid of ability” and of big business as a “persecuted minority.” Long credits Rand for her trenchant analysis of corporatism, but argues that she was mistaken to deny that corporatism and capitalism go hand in hand. According to Long, Rand’s ideal of voluntary interaction not only implies a radical departure from historical capitalism, but also a more thoroughly anti-statist social order.
Read: The Winnowing of Ayn Rand
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In this month’s lead essay, St. Johns University philosopher Douglas B. Rasmussen notes that Ayn Rand is all the rage. But why not Hayek or other free-market thinkers? Why Rand? Rasmussen submits that it comes down to “her ability to note with dramatic force the immorality and hypocrisy of our current political age; her commitment to individual rights; her holding liberty and capitalism inviolate; her rejection of ‘moral cannibalism’ in any form; her advocacy of moral individualism; her recognition of a moral order grounded in human nature; and her realization that reality is not only intelligible but open to possibilities for human achievement far more wondrous than ever realized.” But is the philosophy underpinning this envigorating picture coherent? Rasmussen offers for discussion a series of tough questions, ranging from Rand’s account of individual rights to her views of religion.
Read: Why Ayn Rand? Answers and Some Questions for Discussion
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