The Objective Standard Blog

The Objective Standard Blog

Saturday, February 06, 2010

TOS is now available via Kindle Magazine Subscription

Posted by TOS Admin at 9:15 PM

Amazon.com has offered TOS in Kindle Book format (i.e., single issues) since last May, but they've not offered the journal via their highly exclusive Kindle Magazine program (i.e., via subscription), which currently includes only 48 periodicals. Today, however, Amazon added TOS to their Kindle Magazine lineup. Kindle owners, enjoy!

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Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Virtue and the Realization of Human Life: Response to Roderick Long on Ayn Rand

Posted by Wendell Hoenir at 5:38 PM

In my last post, I responded to Will Wilkinson's allegation that Ayn Rand's ethical egoism cannot support the principle of individual rights, because the egoist has no self-interested reason to refrain from using force against others. Wilkinson contended that bureaucrats who feast at the public trough seem to fulfill their self-interest even though they live by force. In response, I asked whether they might be able to live a better, happier life by becoming producers rather than looters.

But many who read Ayn Rand's works are troubled by Wilkinson's question about why it is in the egoist's self-interest to refrain from predation on others, and it is worth expanding on the answer. The question arises again in the series of posts from Cato Unbound that originally motivated Wilkinson's comment. I want to briefly sketch an answer to one of these posts, by philosophy professor Roderick Long. Long also asks the question about how egoism supports rights, and offers an answer that he regards as superior to Rand's. His position rests on a misunderstanding of Rand's view on the relationship between means and ends.

To explain his answer to the predation problem, Long invokes a distinction from the history of ethics:

But what, in Rand's view, connects our self-interest with the moral claims of others? For most of Rand's aforementioned "eudaimonist" predecessors, the requirements of moral virtue were conceived as a constitutive part of the agent's own interest; the Epicureans were the only major dissidents, regarding virtue instead as an instrumental strategy for attaining this interest (rather like Hobbes, in a way, though the Epicureans are surely closer to the main line of eudaimonism than Hobbes is). Rand appears to waver between these two approaches, treating the individual's ultimate good sometimes as a robust human flourishing that has virtue as a component, and sometimes as mere survival to which virtue is only an external means.
Long sees this distinction as relevant to answering the predation problem because if we adopt the "constitutive" view rather than the "instrumental view," and regard a man's honesty and integrity as proper parts of his self-interest, then his being a man of honesty and integrity automatically contributes to his self-interest, whereas his use of force against others would contradict these virtues and automatically count against his self-interest. Long thinks that he sees elements of this "constitutive" view in Rand's fiction:

The constitutive approach predominates in her novels; the chief reason that Rand's fictional protagonists (such as architect Howard Roark in The Fountainhead or railroad executive Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged) do not cheat their customers, for example, is pretty clearly that they would regard such parasitism on the productive efforts of others as directly inconsistent with the nobility and independence of spirit that they cherish for themselves, and not because they're hoping that a policy of honesty will maximize their chances of longevity.
Long rightly stresses that elsewhere in her work, Rand urges that virtue is not an end in itself but a means to the end of human life. This suggests that she regarded virtue as "instrumental" to self-interest, rather than as a proper or constitutive part of it. But Long contends that this instrumental view of virtue is harder to square with an obligation to refrain from initiating force against others. If virtue consists of whatever achieves one's self-interest, and self-interest is constituted only by generic material gain, then regularly mugging one's neighbor would be virtuous. Long urges that we adopt the view that self-interest is constituted by virtue, but contends that Rand does not hold what he takes to be this more defensible view.

Long's argument begins from a faulty assumption: that there is a firm distinction between the "instrumental" and the "constitutive" in value theory, that a means to an end cannot itself be part of the end.

Rand does regard the virtues as means, not as "ends in themselves." But her point in rejecting the idea that virtue is "its own reward" is to distance her view from the altruistic view that severs the tie between virtue and the happy life. "Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue." Her point is not necessarily to regard virtue as a mere means to an end—as if engaging in virtuous action were external to the end of life or as if virtuous action were not itself living.

Consider further that virtues are the principle-directed actions we must engage in to live a distinctive kind of life, a human life, which is itself constituted by distinctive types of values, values of both the body and the spirit. Life is an end in itself, and part of what this means is that living is both means and end, the means to more of itself. The question to answer, then, is what is this action of living?

In an underappreciated passage in "The Objectivist Ethics," Rand makes this brilliantly clear:

Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep—virtue is the act by which one gains and/or keeps it. The three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics—the three values which, together, are the means to and the realization of one's ultimate value, one's own life—are: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride (pg. 25). [my emphasis].
Reason, purpose, and self-esteem are the values that most crucially constitute the distinctively human way of living—as such they are both means to and part of the end. And the virtues are actions in service of these values.

Reason, purpose and self-esteem are the fundamental means to the ultimate end, which is human life. We need reason to identify the facts of reality that bear on solving the problem of survival, we need to identify the relationship of our actions and goals to our life and happiness—which is the value of purpose, and we need self-esteem to motivate these actions by reminding us that we are capable of succeeding in them and worthy of doing so.

The crucial nature of these cardinal values to a life of happiness is exhibited in Rand's fiction when her characters are shown enjoying work, and enjoying it even when it is not a part of their chosen career. When Roark can't find commissions, for example, he finds purpose in his life by working in the quarry. And when Dagny exiles herself from the railroad, she creates tasks for herself—like clearing brush and clearing paths—just because "what she needed was the motion to a purpose, no matter how small or in what form" (563).

Life itself is a process of action, and the actions that are central enough to an organism's life are by that fact also essential parts of that organism's distinctive form of life. Ayn Rand uses the language of "man's survival qua man" to describe the distinctive virtues and values that compose a distinctively human life.

To draw a parallel: A plant's distinctive life qua plant is more than its life qua a mass of cells; its life includes the way its cells are organized to interact with each other, to allow its leaves to reach toward the sun and its roots to burrow into the earth. Were a plant to be harvested and sliced into salad bits, many of its cells would still live, but the plant's life qua plant would cease.

By the same token, a man's distinctive form of life involves more than heartbeat and respiration, and more than walking and eating and reproducing. Distinctive to human life is the way our actions are organized and integrated by the operations of a rational mind. A man in a comatose state has lost this distinctive organizing principle. His cells and his brain stem may continue to function, but his is not man's life qua man.

Being in a comatose state is not the only way to live a less than fully human life. When people fail to live lives of reason, purpose, and self-esteem, they may not exactly be vegetables, but they are not living the full, flourishing lives that they could. Wilkinson's beltway bureaucrats, to the extent that they parasitize others, live "lives" of force rather than lives of reason, of the promiscuous "why not?" instead of the purposeful "what for?", and of neurosis about whether they can maintain their ongoing parasitism, rather than self-esteem.

Which man lived a more confident, self-secure life: Thomas Edison, or Al Capone? Which man does a Rahm Emmanuel or a Timothy Geithner more closely resemble? And in our current situation, how long will either be able to maintain even the façade of the productive law-abiding citizen, rather than that of the gangster?

Images:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Da_Vinci_Vitruve_Luc_Viatour.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leonardo_Flowers.jpg

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Monday, January 25, 2010

The Philosophic Foundations of Freedom: A Conference on the Principle of Individual Rights

Posted by TOS Admin at 10:14 PM

Here’s an announcement from the UCLA Objectivist Club about an upcoming conference:

What is liberty? Why is it desirable? How is a free society achieved?

Today, it is relatively uncontroversial that freedom is good, but there is widespread disagreement about what it actually constitutes and how to implement it. Some believe that liberty amounts to the wishes of a democracy being carried out; others believe that it is being faithful to a literal interpretation of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers. But is there an objective basis in philosophy for determining what freedom is in principle and in practice?

Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, laid out such philosophic principles: A free society requires limited government that enacts and enforces objective laws for the sole purpose of protecting individual rights. It is where the government does not interfere, by penalty or reward, in thought, production, or trade. It requires a separation of church and state, science and state, education and state, and economics and state.

The Philosophic Foundations of Freedom Conference will focus precisely on these philosophic fundamentals, with numerous talks and Q&A sessions, a leadership seminar on intellectual activism, as well as a panel with a special guest, Alex Kozinski, the Chief Judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Saturday, January 30, 2010–Sunday, January 31, 2010

Click here for full event details.

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The Real Goal of the Green Climate Crusade

Posted by TOS Admin at 9:07 PM

An event announcement from the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights:

A talk at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
Who: Dr. Keith Lockitch, fellow focusing on science and environmentalism at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights
What: A talk examining the drastic claims put forth by environmentalists, and a critical look at their fundamental goal
Where: Angell Hall, Auditorium C, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, MI 48105
When: Wednesday, February 3, 2010, at 7:30 p.m.
Description: Environmentalists claim that our use of carbon-based energy is altering the climate, making us more vulnerable to climate disasters. Human survival, they insist, requires the immediate abandonment of fossil fuels in favor of carbon-free sources. So why do environmentalist groups vehemently oppose projects involving every alternative form of energy ever proposed to replace fossil fuels--including wind farms and solar power plants? And why do they ignore the dramatic degree to which industrial development under capitalism has reduced the risk of harm from severe climate events? Before we rush headlong into drastic climate policies and energy rationing, a critical examination of these policies is urgently needed. Dr. Lockitch will address these important issues and answer audience questions.
Admission: FREE. Open to students and the public.
Bio: Dr. Keith Lockitch is a fellow focusing on science and environmentalism at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. He teaches writing courses for the Objectivist Academic Center’s undergraduate program and a history of physics course for the graduate program. His writings have appeared in publications such as the Orange County Register, San Francisco Chronicle, Australia’s Herald Sun and the Canberra Times, and USA Today magazine. Dr. Lockitch has been a frequent guest on radio shows such as The Thom Hartmann Program. Prior to joining ARI in 2003, Dr. Lockitch was a postdoctoral researcher in physics at the University of Illinois and at Pennsylvania State University. He is an alumnus of the Objectivist Graduate Center.
More information: Please e-mail Adam Gaglio, president of the University of Michigan Students of Objectivism, at agaglio@umich.edu.
Please note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI. ARI does not necessarily endorse the content of the lectures and sessions offered.
Copyright © 2009 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Sunday, January 24, 2010

Force versus Egoism and Happiness: Response to Will Wilkinson on Ayn Rand

Posted by Wendell Hoenir at 11:35 PM

Commenting on the recent revival of interest in Ayn Rand, libertarian blogger Will Wilkinson recently asserted that while "Rand's emphasis on the role of individual rights in generating creativity and entrepreneurial effort remains enlightening," her moral justification for individual rights fails. Wilkinson, himself a former Ayn Rand enthusiast who became disenchanted with Objectivism, dismisses Rand's argument with stunning brevity:

On the face of it, Rand needs to solve the compliance problem—why should a rational egoist comply with constraints on self-interested action?—and the way to solve the compliance problem is to show that mutual restraint is generally to mutual advantage. But I don't think Rand ever shows this. Instead she goes off the rails trying to argue that rational thought, and therefore a distinctively human life, is impossible in the absences [sic] of a strong version of the non-coercion principle, and that predation or parasitism are never in an individual's self-interest. None of that is convincing. (A strong version of the non-coercion principle is not in effect, but we're doing fine thinking rationally and living human lives. Lots of people live long and satisfying lives of institutionalized parasitism and predation, especially in and around Washington, DC.)
Wilkinson's objection unjustly attributes a bizarre kind of naiveté to Rand's argument. Does Wilkinson really believe that in Rand's view all rational thought and happiness must cease immediately in a society that adopts even the tiniest amount of coercion? This interpretation is difficult to square with Atlas Shrugged, in which John Galt, Hank Rearden, and Dagny Taggart make important discoveries, produce innovations, and at least at times draw substantial happiness from these achievements, in spite of the coercion to which they are subject.

Rand's point, quite obviously, is that the greater the extent of force used against individuals, the less they are able to act on their own judgment, and thus the less happy they can be. As Leonard Peikoff summarizes in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

In all its forms and degrees, from private crimes to the incursions of the welfare state to full dictatorship, the principle is the same: physical force, to the extent it is wielded or threatened, denies to its victim the power to act in accordance with his judgment.
In the context of the present mixed economy, Wilkinson's contention that we are "doing fine thinking rationally and living human lives" is ridiculous. Surely we are doing better than cave men and Medieval serfs, but as the present financial crisis illustrates, we could obviously be doing a lot better—and the crisis is demonstrably a result of government coercion.

Wilkinson's only remotely plausible objection is his allegation that Rand's egoist has no reason to refrain from coercion because it seems as though he can profit from predation and parasitism. The example of comfortable beltway bureaucrats feeding off the public trough could lend one pause. But how are we to evaluate Wilkinson's smug contention that these people live satisfying lives—and his implication that they would not live better lives if they were producers rather than plunderers?

Wilkinson is a fan of empirical "happiness studies," which measure people's self-reported happiness under different social and economic conditions. He is happy to trot out empirical evidence alleging that people in richer countries are happier than those in poorer ones, that those in less-religious countries are happier than those in more-religious ones, and that those in more-individualist cultures are happier than those in more-collectivist cultures. On one occasion, Wilkinson even provided evidence in support of the idea that people who earned their wealth reported greater satisfaction than those who inherited it or otherwise obtained it through luck. Why would this not bear on our evaluation of the happiness of those comfortable beltway bureaucrats?

Of course all of this data comes to little, because happiness is not merely the short-term feeling of satisfaction one might enjoy while sitting in comfortable house, or the elation of winning political power over the producers—and self-reported happiness is far from objective data. Wilkinson himself admits that we can be wrong about how happy we are. If that's true, then we'd better not measure the self-interest of an act by the extent to which it affords us temporary material comfort or superficial self-satisfaction. Instead we must appeal to philosophic principles that measure the value of an action or policy to the life of a being who survives by reason—principles such as the virtues of independence, production, honesty, and integrity—none of which support the initiation of force.

Happiness is not a fundamental standard of value, though it is a consequence of the achievement of values. Contrary to Wilkinson's claim that Rand never sought to understand the relationship between the use of force and the achievement of one's own happiness, her most crucial passage on the matter defines happiness as "a state of non-contradictory joy" and connects directly to the question of predation or parasitism on others:

Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.

Just as I support my life, neither by robbery nor alms, but by my own effort, so I do not seek to derive my happiness from the injury or the favor of others, but earn it by my own achievement. Just as I do not consider the pleasure of others as the goal of my life, so I do not consider my pleasure as the goal of the lives of others. Just as there are no contradictions in my values and no conflicts among my desires—so there are no victims and no conflicts of interest among rational men, men who do not desire the unearned and do not view one another with a cannibal's lust, men who neither make sacrifices nor accept them.

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