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the way in which they are to be justified thereby leaving it unclear how sensory data can validate judgments structured propositionally 48 49 ethics self interest edit objectivism includes an extensive treatment of ethical concerns rand wrote on morality in her works we the living 1936 atlas shrugged 1957 and the virtue of selfishness 1964 rand defines morality as a code of values to guide man s choices and actions the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life 50 rand maintained that the first question is not what should the code of values be the first question is does man need values at all and why according to rand it is only the concept of life that makes the concept of value possible and the fact that a living entity is determines what it ought to do 51 rand writes there is only one fundamental alternative in the universe existence or non existence and it pertains to a single class of entities to living organisms the existence of inanimate matter is unconditional the existence of life is not it depends on a specific course of action it is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative the issue of life or death rand argued that the primary emphasis of man s free will is the choice to think or not to think thinking is not an automatic function in any hour and issue of his life man is free to think or to evade that effort thinking requires a state of full focused awareness the act of focusing one s consciousness is volitional man can focus his mind to a full active purposefully directed awareness of reality or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment at the mercy of his undirected sensory perceptual mechanism and of any random associational connections it might happen to make 52 according to rand therefore possessing free will human beings must choose their values one does not automatically have one s own life as his ultimate value whether in fact a person s actions promote and fulfill his own life or not is a question of fact as it is with all other organisms but whether a person will act to promote his well being is up to him not hard wired into his physiology man has the power to act as his own destroyer and that is the way he has acted through most of his history 53 in atlas shrugged rand wrote man s mind is his basic tool of survival life is given to him survival is not his body is given to him its sustenance is not his mind is given to him its content is not to remain alive he must act and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action he cannot obtain his food without knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it he cannot dig a ditch or build a cyclotron without a knowledge of his aim and the means to achieve it to remain alive he must think 54 in her novels the fountainhead and atlas shrugged she also emphasizes the importance of productive work romantic love and art to human happiness and dramatizes the ethical character of their pursuit the primary virtue in objectivist ethics is rationality as rand meant it the recognition and acceptance of reason as one s only source of knowledge one s only judge of values and one s only guide to action 55 the purpose of a moral code rand said is to provide the principles by reference to which man can achieve the values his survival requires 56 rand summarizes if man 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 reality confronts a man with a great many must s 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 57 rand s explanation of values presents the proposition that an individual s primary moral obligation is to achieve his own well being it is for his life and his self interest that an individual ought to obey a moral code 58 ethical egoism is a corollary of setting man s life as the moral standard 59 rand believed that rational egoism is the logical consequence of humans following evidence to its logical conclusion the only alternative would be that they live without orientation to reality a corollary to rand s endorsement of self interest is her rejection of the ethical doctrine of altruism which she defined in the sense of auguste comte s altruism he popularized the term 60 as a moral obligation to live for the sake of others rand also rejected subjectivism a whim worshiper or hedonist according to rand is not motivated by a desire to live his own human life but by a wish to live on a sub human level instead of using that which promotes my human life as his standard of value he mistakes that which i mindlessly happen to value for a standard of value in contradiction of the fact that existentially he is a human and therefore rational organism the i value in whim worship or hedonism can be replaced with we value he values they value or god values and still it would remain dissociated from reality rand repudiated the equation of rational selfishness with hedonistic or whim worshiping selfishness without a self she said that the former is good and the latter bad and that there is a fundamental difference between them 61 for rand all of the principal virtues are applications of the role of reason as man s basic tool of survival rationality honesty justice independence integrity productiveness and pride each of which she explains in some detail in the objectivist ethics 62 the essence of objectivist ethics is summarized by the oath her atlas shrugged character john galt adhered to i swear by my life and my love of it that i will never live for the sake of another man nor ask another man to live for mine 63 criticism on ethics edit some philosophers have criticized objectivist ethics the philosopher robert nozick argues that rand s foundational argument in ethics is unsound because it does not explain why someone could not rationally prefer dying and having no values in order to further some particular value he argues that her attempt to defend the morality of selfishness is therefore an instance of begging the question nozick also argues that rand s solution to david hume s famous is ought problem is unsatisfactory in response the philosophers douglas b rasmussen and douglas den uyl have argued that nozick misstated rand s case 64 65 charles king criticized rand s example of an indestructible robot to demonstrate the value of life as incorrect and confusing 66 in response paul st f blair defended rand s ethical conclusions while maintaining that his arguments might not have been approved by rand 67 politics individual rights and capitalism edit part of a series on capitalism concepts austerity business cycle capital capital accumulation capital markets company corporation competition law definitions economic interventionism economic liberalism economic liberalization economic surplus entrepreneurship fictitious capital financial market fiscal conservatism free price system free market goods and services investor invisible hand visible hand marginalism private property privatization profit rent seeking supply and demand surplus value tariff value wage labour systems anglo saxon authoritarian corporate dirigist free market humanistic laissez faire liberal libertarian market mixed monopoly national neoliberal nordic raw regulated market regulatory rhine social political state state sponsored welfare theories american austrian chartalism mmt chicago classical institutional keynesian neo new post market monetarism critique of political economy critique of work marxist monetarist neoclassical new institutional supply side ideologies anarcho authoritarian classical liberalism democratic dirigisme eco forced labour gladstonian humanistic inclusive liberal liberalism libertarian nationalist neo neoliberalism objectivism ordoliberalism plutocracy privatism slavery third way intellectuals petty cantillon smith bentham malthus say ricardo mill hamilton bastiat marshall pareto bawerk weber von mises schumpeter keynes hayek rand coase stigler friedman buchanan rothbard sowell becker lucas laffer block hoppe origins age of enlightenment capitalism and islam commercial revolution feudalism industrial revolution mercantilism merchant capitalism primitive accumulation physiocracy simple commodity production development advanced consumer community corporate crony finance global illiberal late marxist merchant progressive rentier state monopoly technological related accelerationism anti capitalism capitalism in singapore capitalist propaganda capitalist realism capitalist state consumerism crisis theory criticism of capitalism critique of political economy critique of work cronyism culture of capitalism evergreening exploitation of labour globalization history history of theory market economy periodizations of capitalism perspectives on capitalism post capitalism speculation spontaneous order venture philanthropy wage slavery capitalism portal economics portal v t e rand s defense of individual liberty integrates elements from her entire philosophy 68 since reason is the means of human knowledge it is therefore each person s most fundamental means of survival and is necessary to the achievement of values 69 the use or threat of force neutralizes the practical effect of an individual s reason whether the force originates from the state or from a criminal according to rand man s mind will not function at the point of a gun 70 therefore the only type of organized human behavior consistent with the operation of reason is that of voluntary cooperation persuasion is the method of reason by its nature the overtly irrational cannot rely on the use of persuasion and must ultimately resort to force to prevail 71 thus rand argued that reason and freedom are correlates just as she argued that mysticism and force are corollaries 72 based on this understanding of the role of reason objectivists claim that the initiation of physical force against the will of another is immoral 73 as are indirect initiations of force through threats 74 fraud 75 or breach of contract 76 the use of defensive or retaliatory force on the other hand is appropriate 77 objectivism claims that because the opportunity to use reason without the initiation of force is necessary to achieve moral values each individual has an inalienable moral right to act as his own judgment directs and to keep the product of his effort peikoff explaining the basis of rights stated in content as the founding fathers recognized there is one fundamental right which has several major derivatives the fundamental right is the right to life its major derivatives are the right to liberty property and the pursuit of happiness 78 a right is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man s freedom of action in a social context 79 these rights are specifically understood to be rights to action not to specific results or objects and the obligations created by rights are negative in nature each individual must refrain from violating the rights of others 80 objectivists reject alternative notions of rights such as positive rights 81 collective rights or animal rights 82 objectivism claims that the only social system which fully recognizes individual rights is capitalism 83 specifically what rand described as full pure uncontrolled unregulated laissez faire capitalism 84 objectivism regards capitalism as the social system which is most beneficial to the poor but does not consider this its primary justification 85 rather it is the only moral social system objectivism maintains that only societies seeking to establish freedom or free nations have a right to self determination 86 objectivism describes government as the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control i e under objectively defined laws thus government is both legitimate and critically important 87 in order to protect individual rights 88 rand opposed anarchism because she considered that putting police and courts on the market is an inherent miscarriage of justice 89 objectivism claims that the proper functions of a government are the police to protect men from criminals the armed services to protect men from foreign invaders the law courts to settle disputes among men according to objective laws the executive and legislatures 90 furthermore in protecting individual rights the government is acting as an agent of its citizens and has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens 91 and it must act in an impartial manner according to specific objectively defined laws 92 rand argued that limited intellectual property monopolies being granted to certain inventors and artists on a first to file basis are moral because she considered all property as fundamentally intellectual furthermore the value of a commercial product derives in part from the necessary work of its inventors however rand considered limits on patents and copyrights as important and said that if they were granted in perpetuity it would necessarily result in de facto collectivism rand opposed racism and any legal application of racism she considered affirmative action to be an example of legal racism 93 rand advocated the right to legal abortion 94 rand believed capital punishment is morally justified as retribution against a murderer but dangerous due to the risk of mistakenly executing innocent people and facilitating state murder she therefore said she opposed capital punishment on epistemological not moral grounds 95 rand opposed involuntary military conscription 96 she opposed any form of censorship including legal restrictions on pornography opinion or worship rand famously quipped in the transition to statism every infringement of human rights has begun with a given right s least attractive practitioners 97 98 objectivists have also opposed a number of government activities commonly endorsed by both liberals and conservatives including antitrust laws 99 the minimum wage public education 100 and existing child labor laws 101 objectivists have argued against faith based initiatives 102 displaying religious symbols in government facilities 103 and the teaching of intelligent design in public schools 104 rand opposed involuntary taxation and believed government could be financed voluntarily although she thought this could only happen after other reforms of government were implemented 105 106 criticism on politics edit some critics including economists and political philosophers such as murray rothbard david d friedman roy childs norman p barry and chandran kukathas have argued that objectivist ethics are consistent with anarcho capitalism instead of minarchism 107 108 109 110 111 aesthetics metaphysical value judgments edit see also romantic realism the objectivist theory of art derives from its epistemology by way ...
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