Is Objectivism a Religion?

[jthegreat]

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The skeptic can just believe?

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Umm... the skeptic DOESN'T believe. The skeptic has no belief in the "supernatural" until there is reason to have it.

[jthegreat]

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I would say that his highest moral goal would be to increase happiness. And, if happiness is most increased by his self-sacrifice, then that is the right moral action.


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Rand stated in several writings that there *are* conditions where giving up one's own life is justified. Those conditions are such that a person would not want to live anymore should they not act. For instance, through some tragedy, you are alive with your child but with only enough food for the child to survive. Rand would argue that in this case it's perfectly justified to starve yourself in order to save your child, since you wouldn't want to starve your child in order to live. Life wouldn't be worth it in that condition. Rand argued that the highest goal of a person is to "live", *not* to "survive". She made a distinction between the two.

[DougShrapnel]

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Does by my survival she include the survival of that which is important to me even to the detriment of my own personal survival?


[/ QUOTE ] Yes, not in the way you think tho, she stays away from sacrafice. If you value the survival of something important to you more so than your own survival, this is not a sacrafice.

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Based off of the limited information you pointed me to (please provide more websites, if you can), it doesn't seem that she "stays away from sacrifice", but states that sacrifice of your life is not good:

From the website you linked to:

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Man's mind requires selfishness, and so does his life in every aspect: a living organism has to be the beneficiary of its own actions. It has to pursue specific objects—for itself, for its own sake and survival. Life requires the gaining of values, not their loss; achievement, not renunciation; self-preservation, not self-sacrifice.

Moral selfishness does not mean a license to do whatever one pleases, guided by whims. It means the exacting discipline of defining and pursuing one's rational self-interest. A code of rational self-interest rejects every form of human sacrifice, whether of oneself to others or of others to oneself.

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So, that would be one objection I have to Objecvitist Morality, which is really one aspect of a broader objection: whereas Objectivist Morality says that man's highest moral goal would be to survive, I would say that his highest moral goal would be to increase happiness. And, if happiness is most increased by his self-sacrifice, then that is the right moral action.

[/ QUOTE ] Yeah I meant that she states that sacrifice is immoral, or at the very least so defines it into imorality.

As DDT stated and as AR states happiness is part of your survival it is your highest value.

I'll just post the entire 3rd chapter of The Virture of Selfishness. I am not an expert in Objectivist ethics. And I certainly don't wish to confuse AR idea's with my own.

The psychological results of altruism may be observed in the fact that a great many people approach the subject of ethics by asking such questions as: “Should one risk one’s life to help a man who is: a) drowning, b) trapped in a fire, c) stepping in front of a speeding truck, d) hanging by his fingernails over an abyss?”
Consider the implications of that approach. If a man ac*cepts the ethics of altruism, he suffers the following conse*quences (in proportion to the degree of his acceptance):
1. Lack of self-esteem—since his first concern in the realm of values is not how to live his life, but how to sacri*fice it.
2. Lack of respect for others—since he regards mankind as a herd of doomed beggars crying for someone’s help.
3. A nightmare view of existence—since he believes that men are trapped in a “malevolent universe” where disasters are the constant and primary concern of their lives.
4. And, in fact, a lethargic indifference to ethics, a hope*lessly cynical amorality—since his questions involve situa*tions which he is not likely ever to encounter, which bear no relation to the actual problems of his own life and thus leave him to live without any moral principles whatever.
By elevating the issue of helping others into the central and primary issue of ethics, altruism has destroyed the con*cept of any authentic benevolence or good will among men. It has indoctrinated men with the idea that to value another human being is an act of selflessness, thus implying that a man can have no personal interest in others—that to value another means to sacrifice oneself—that any love, respect or admiration a man may feel for others is not and cannot be a source of his own enjoyment, but is a threat to his existence, a sacrificial blank check signed over to his loved ones.
The men who accept that dichotomy but choose its other side, the ultimate products of altruism’s dehumanizing influ*ence, are those psychopaths who do not challenge altruism’s basic premise, but proclaim their rebellion against self-sacrifice by announcing that they are totally indifferent to anything living and would not lift a finger to help a man or a dog left mangled by a hit-and-run driver (who is usually one of their own kind).
Most men do not accept or practice either side of altru*ism’s viciously false dichotomy, but its result is a total intel*lectual chaos on the issue of proper human relationships and on such questions as the nature, purpose or extent of the help one may give to others. Today, a great many well-meaning, reasonable men do not know how to identify or conceptualize the moral principles that motivate their love, affection or good will, and can find no guidance in the field of ethics, which is dominated by the stale platitudes of altruism.
On the question of why man is not a sacrificial animal and why help to others is not his moral duty, I refer you to Atlas Shrugged. This present discussion is concerned with the principles by which one identifies and evaluates the in*stances involving a man’s nonsacrificial help to others.
“Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue. Thus, altruism gauges a man’s virtue by the degree to which he surrenders, re*nounces or betrays his values (since help to a stranger or an enemy is regarded as more virtuous, less “selfish,” than help to those one loves). The rational principle of conduct is the exact opposite: always act in accordance with the hierarchy of your values, and never sacrifice a greater value to a lesser one.
This applies to all choices, including one’s actions toward other men. It requires that one possess a defined hierarchy of rational values (values chosen and validated by a rational standard). Without such a hierarchy, neither rational con*duct nor considered value judgments nor moral choices are possible.
Love and friendship are profoundly personal, selfish val*ues: love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one’s own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere exis*tence of the person one loves. It is one’s own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love.
A “selfless,” “disinterested” love is a contradiction in terms: it means that one is indifferent to that which one values.
Concern for the welfare of those one loves is a rational part of one’s selfish interests. If a man who is passionately in love with his wife spends a fortune to cure her of a dan*gerous illness, it would be absurd to claim that he does it as a “sacrifice” for her sake, not his own, and that it makes no difference to him, personally and selfishly, whether she lives or dies.
Any action that a man undertakes for the benefit of those he loves is not a sacrifice if, in the hierarchy of his values, in the total context of the choices open to him, it achieves that which is of greatest personal (and rational) importance to him. In the above example, his wife’s survival is of greater value to the husband than anything else that his money could buy, it is of greatest importance to his own happiness and, therefore, his action is not a sacrifice.
But suppose he let her die in order to spend his money on saving the lives of ten other women, none of whom meant anything to him—as the ethics of altruism would re*quire. That would be a sacrifice. Here the difference be*tween Objectivism and altruism can be seen most clearly: if sacrifice is the moral principle of action, then that husband should sacrifice his wife for the sake of ten other women. What distinguishes the wife from the ten others? Nothing but her value to the husband who has to make the choice—nothing but the fact that his happiness requires her survival.
The Objectivist ethics would tell him: your highest moral purpose is the achievement of your own happiness, your money is yours, use it to save your wife, that is your moral right and your rational, moral choice.
Consider the soul of the altruistic moralist who would be prepared to tell that husband the opposite. (And then ask yourself whether altruism is motivated by benevolence.)

The proper method of judging when or whether one should help another person is by reference to one’s own rational self-interest and one’s own hierarchy of values: the time, money or effort one gives or the risk one takes should be proportionate to the value of the person in relation to one’s own happiness.
To illustrate this on the altruists’ favorite example: the issue of saving a drowning person. If the person to be saved is a stranger, it is morally proper to save him only when the danger to one’s own life is minimal; when the danger is great, it would be immoral to attempt it: only a lack of self-esteem could permit one to value one’s life no higher than that of any random stranger. (And, conversely, if one is drowning, one cannot expect a stranger to risk his life for one’s sake, remembering that one’s life cannot be as valu*able to him as his own.)
If the person to be saved is not a stranger, then the risk one should be willing to take is greater in proportion to the greatness of that person’s value to oneself. If it is the man or woman one loves, then one can be willing to give one’s own life to save him or her—for the selfish reason that life without the loved person could be unbearable.
Conversely, if a man is able to swim and to save his drowning wife, but becomes panicky, gives in to an unjusti*fied, irrational fear and lets her drown, then spends his life in loneliness and misery—one would not call him “selfish”; one would condemn him morally for his treason to himself and to his own values, that is: his failure to fight for the preservation of a value crucial to his own happiness. Re*member that values are that which one acts to gain and/or keep, and that one’s own happiness has to be achieved by one’s own effort. Since one’s own happiness is the moral purpose of one’s life, the man who fails to achieve it be*cause of his own default, because of his failure to fight for it, is morally guilty.
The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not “self*lessness” or “sacrifice,” but integrity. Integrity is loyalty to one’s convictions and values; it is the policy of acting in accordance with one’s values, of expressing, upholding and translating them into practical reality. If a man professes to love a woman, yet his actions are indifferent, inimical or damaging to her, it is his lack of integrity that makes him immoral.
The same principle applies to relationships among friends. If one’s friend is in trouble, one should act to help him by whatever nonsacrificial means are appropriate. For instance, if one’s friend is starving, it is not a sacrifice, but an act of integrity to give him money for food rather than buy some insignificant gadget for oneself, because his welfare is important in the scale of one’s personal values. If the gadget means more than the friend’s suffering, one had no business pretending to be his friend.
The practical implementation of friendship, affection and love consists of incorporating the welfare (the rational wel*fare) of the person involved into one’s own hierarchy of values, then acting accordingly.
But this is a reward which men have to earn by means of their virtues and which one cannot grant to mere acquain*tances or strangers.
What, then, should one properly grant to strangers? The generalized respect and good will which one should grant to a human being in the name of the potential value he represents—until and unless he forfeits it.
A rational man does not forget that life is the source of all values and, as such, a common bond among living beings (as against inanimate matter), that other men are potentially able to achieve the same virtues as his own and thus be of enormous value to him. This does not mean that he regards human lives as interchangeable with his own. He recognizes the fact that his own life is the source, not only of all his values, but of his capacity to value. Therefore, the value he grants to others is only a consequence, an extension, a secondary projection of the primary value which is himself.
“The respect and good will that men of self-esteem feel toward other human beings is profoundly egoistic; they feel, in effect: ‘Other men are of value because they are of the same species as myself.’ In revering living entities, they are revering their own life. This is the psychological base of any emotion of sympathy and any feeling of ‘species solidarity.’ ”[4]
Since men are born tabula rasa, both cognitively and mor*ally, a rational man regards strangers as innocent until proved guilty, and grants them that initial good will in the name of their human potential. After that, he judges them according to the moral character they have actualized. If he finds them guilty of major evils, his good will is replaced by contempt and moral condemnation. (If one values human life, one cannot value its destroyers.) If he finds them to be virtuous, he grants them personal, individual value and appreciation, in proportion to their virtues.
It is on the ground of that generalized good will and re*spect for the value of human life that one helps strangers in an emergency—and only in an emergency.
It is important to differentiate between the rules of con*duct in an emergency situation and the rules of conduct in the normal conditions of human existence. This does not mean a double standard of morality: the standard and the basic principles remain the same, but their application to either case requires precise definitions.
An emergency is an unchosen, unexpected event, limited in time, that creates conditions under which human survival is impossible—such as a flood, an earthquake, a fire, a ship*wreck. In an emergency situation, men’s primary goal is to combat the disaster, escape the danger and restore normal conditions (to reach dry land, to put out the fire, etc.).
By “normal” conditions I mean metaphysically normal, normal in the nature of things, and appropriate to human existence. Men can live on land, but not in water or in a raging fire. Since men are not omnipotent, it is metaphysi*cally possible for unforeseeable disasters to strike them, in which case their only task is to return to those conditions under which their lives can continue. By its nature, an emer*gency situation is temporary; if it were to last, men would perish.
It is only in emergency situations that one should volunteer to help strangers, if it is in one’s power. For instance, a man who values human life and is caught in a shipwreck, should help to save his fellow passengers (though not at the expense of his own life). But this does not mean that after they all reach shore, he should devote his efforts to saving his fellow passengers from poverty, ignorance, neurosis or whatever other troubles they might have. Nor does it mean that he should spend his life sailing the seven seas in search of shipwreck victims to save.
Or to take an example that can occur in everyday life: suppose one hears that the man next door is ill and penni*less. Illness and poverty are not metaphysical emergencies, they are part of the normal risks of existence; but since the man is temporarily helpless, one may bring him food and medicine, if one can afford it (as an act of good will, not of duty) or one may raise a fund among the neighbors to help him out. But this does not mean that one must support him from then on, nor that one must spend one’s life look*ing for starving men to help.
In the normal conditions of existence, man has to choose his goals, project them in time, pursue them and achieve them by his own effort. He cannot do it if his goals are at the mercy of and must be sacrificed to any misfortune hap*pening to others. He cannot live his life by the guidance of rules applicable only to conditions under which human sur*vival is impossible.
The principle that one should help men in an emergency cannot be extended to regard all human suffering as an emergency and to turn the misfortune of some into a first mortgage on the lives of others.
Poverty, ignorance, illness and other problems of that kind are not metaphysical emergencies. By the metaphysical nature of man and of existence, man has to maintain his life by his own effort; the values he needs—such as wealth or knowledge—are not given to him automatically, as a gift of nature, but have to be discovered and achieved by his own thinking and work. One’s sole obligation toward oth*ers, in this respect, is to maintain a social system that leaves men free to achieve, to gain and to keep their values.
Every code of ethics is based on and derived from a metaphysics, that is: from a theory about the fundamental nature of the universe in which man lives and acts. The altruist ethics is based on a “malevolent universe” metaphysics, on the theory that man, by his very nature, is helpless and doomed—that success, happiness, achievement are impossi*ble to him—that emergencies, disasters, catastrophes are the norm of his life and that his primary goal is to combat them.
As the simplest empirical refutation of that metaphysics—as evidence of the fact that the material universe is not inimical to man and that catastrophes are the exception, not the rule of his existence—observe the fortunes made by insurance companies.
Observe also that the advocates of altruism are unable to base their ethics on any facts of men’s normal existence and that they always offer “lifeboat” situations as examples from which to derive the rules of moral conduct. (“What should you do if you and another man are in a lifeboat that can carry only one?” etc.)
The fact is that men do not live in lifeboats—and that a lifeboat is not the place on which to base one’s metaphysics.
The moral purpose of a man’s life is the achievement of his own happiness. This does not mean that he is indifferent to all men, that human life is of no value to him and that he has no reason to help others in an emergency. But it does mean that he does not subordinate his life to the welfare of others, that he does not sacrifice himself to their needs, that the relief of their suffering is not his primary concern, that any help he gives is an exception, not a rule, an act of generosity, not of moral duty, that it is marginal and inci*dental—as disasters are marginal and incidental in the course of human existence—and that values, not disasters, are the goal, the first concern and the motive power of his life."

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I would say that his highest moral goal would be to increase happiness. And, if happiness is most increased by his self-sacrifice, then that is the right moral action.


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Rand stated in several writings that there *are* conditions where giving up one's own life is justified. Those conditions are such that a person would not want to live anymore should they not act. For instance, through some tragedy, you are alive with your child but with only enough food for the child to survive. Rand would argue that in this case it's perfectly justified to starve yourself in order to save your child, since you wouldn't want to starve your child in order to live. Life wouldn't be worth it in that condition.

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That would seem to be a contradiction to website I quoted, then. Can you provide a better resouce with more accurate information than the one DTT did?

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Rand argued that the highest goal of a person is to "live", *not* to "survive". She made a distinction between the two.

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That's a very convenient distinction of those two words, I suppose. If I pressed to get a firm definition of "live" from an Objectivist, would I pretty much be back to "happiness"? If so, then why equivocate? Just say "happiness" (or whatever else you mean). When you say "live", most people will think you mean "stay alive" -- which is the same as "survive".

[razor]

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The skeptic has no belief in the "supernatural" until there is reason to have it.

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By which you mean the skeptic has no opinion on the "supernatural" or denies it's existance until proven otherwise?

[chezlaw]

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Chez I'm not sure if the differences in ethics between you and AR are of a real importance. Much less so that I truely understand them. [ QUOTE ]
Hence some of our goals (things that make us happy) are about the well-being of other people.


[/ QUOTE ] I think when you try to saperate them, when you try to say that our goals are about the well-being of other people, does the difference become clear. I have yet to see you do this, but I think that you may wish to. I think that if you wish to make the statement that our values are about the well-being of others without qualifying them in your own personal heirachy of values is what AR is against.

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As soon as she starts talking about value based ethics her framework looks the same as mine.

[/ QUOTE ] Right.

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As soon as she starts talking about value based ethics her framework looks the same as mine.

[/ QUOTE ] I am more so inclined to state that the differences between yours, mine, and AR's ethic regarding altruism are minimal and may only be semantical.

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It then makes sense to talk of how great the selfless component of an act is and to characterise people whose values lead them to more class 2 actions as less selfish than those who are led to class 1 actions.


[/ QUOTE ] There is merit to what you say, but It may need to be qualified in terms of the values and life experiences one has in order to have some many class 2 actions be correct. It's not the class 2 actions are ethical in and of themselves. It's the heirachy of values that you use to arrive at the class 2 type actions that gives the class 2 actions it's morality. If you agree with these statements than I'm sure that we aren't argueing about anything other than presentation style.

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Been interesting. I think there is far more agreement than differences which, as you, say are largly semantic.

The two key ares I'm unsure about are:

1)exactly what she means by survival. I'm wondering if there is a philosophical component of survival of self into the future.

2) This hierachy of values. Because I believe values have structure (or at least ethical actions have structure) its not obvious that they can be ordered into a useful hierachy. Sometimes its obvious whats best but in normal practise when people offer some sort of ordering of the value of action it looks contrived and any outcome can be justified.

chez

[jthegreat]

Doesn't believe in it until there's a reason.

[jthegreat]

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That's a very convenient distinction of those two words, I suppose. If I pressed to get a firm definition of "live" from an Objectivist, would I pretty much be back to "happiness"? If so, then why equivocate? Just say "happiness" (or whatever else you mean). When you say "live", most people will think you mean "stay alive" -- which is the same as "survive".

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To "live" according to Rand is to live and be happy. I don't remember where she wrote this, specifically, and I'd have to look it up. But that's what she said.

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That's a very convenient distinction of those two words, I suppose. If I pressed to get a firm definition of "live" from an Objectivist, would I pretty much be back to "happiness"? If so, then why equivocate? Just say "happiness" (or whatever else you mean). When you say "live", most people will think you mean "stay alive" -- which is the same as "survive".

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To "live" according to Rand is to live and be happy. I don't remember where she wrote this, specifically, and I'd have to look it up. But that's what she said.

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Hahaha. I find that amusing. That's like saying: "To 'eat', means to eat and like it." She should try not to equivocate. She should just say "be happy". Obviously, you have to live to "be happy"... and since she say's it would be better to die if you can't live and be happy, then being happy is the superior value.

[deepdowntruth]

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To "live" according to Rand is to live and be happy. I don't remember where she wrote this, specifically, and I'd have to look it up. But that's what she said.

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No she didn't. Ironically, this type of response almost exactly fits the characterization of Objectivists in the original post of this thread and my response to it.

If you want to defend AR, know what you are talking about; and if you are going to say that she said something or other, be prepared to cite a reference. Otherwise, you are doing her a worse injustice than the most virulent of her detractors.

Incidentally, Ayn Rand never said that to be alive *means* to be alive and to be happy. Many people are alive and miserable. Some things that are alive aren't people and don't have the capacity. Moral virtue doesn't guarantee happiness either, though it is a necessary--and the overwhelmingly primary--condition. For an example from AR's fiction of this, see the character of Leo Kovalensky in We The Living. For a real life example, see any rational person living under a totalitarian regime. Clearly you need to read or re-read Peikoff's chapter on "Happiness" in OPAR.

For reasons such as this kind of misrepresentation, I will not get involved in responding to anything other than a reply to one of my posts. Otherwise, I'm responding to responses to mistaken characterizations. It is too much work for too little payoff to not only persuade her opponents but also to correct her defenders.

P.S. It is generally a waste of time for anyone to get their knowledge of a controversial subject from random and essentially anonymous posters on the internet when the source material is 1.) readily available, 2.) intellectually accessible, 3.) stands alone and speaks for itself. In so doing, you are making a judgement of the issue in question based on the very possibly mistaken interpretation of a person whose authority and quality of understanding is unknown to you.

I would urge anyone here who has not read AR's works (and that of a few affiliated authors) regarding the topics in question to do so and to decide for yourself whether her ideas are true and important or not. To those ask, I will be happy to provide references to sources on any topic Ayn Rand discussed.