Documentary

Extract from interview with Ayn Rand.

The name I have chosen for my philosophy is Objectivism.

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

At a sales conference at Random House, preceding the publication of Atlas Shrugged, one of the book salesmen asked me whether I could present the essence of my philosophy while standing on one foot. I did as follows:

Metaphysics: Objective Reality
Epistemology: Reason
Ethics: Self-interest
Politics: Capitalism

If you want this translated into simple language, it would read: 1. “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed” or “Wishing won’t make it so.” 2. “You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.” 3. “Man is an end in himself.” 4. “Give me liberty or give me death.”

If you held these concepts with total consistency, as the base of your convictions, you would have a full philosophical system to guide the course of your life. But to hold them with total consistency—to understand, to define, to prove and to apply them—requires volumes of thought. Which is why philosophy cannot be discussed while standing on one foot—nor while standing on two feet on both sides of every fence. This last is the predominant philosophical position today, particularly in the field of politics.

My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that:

Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.
The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows.

This—the supremacy of reason—was, is and will be the primary concern of my work, and the essence of Objectivism.

The only philosophical debt I can acknowledge is to Aristotle. I most emphatically disagree with a great many parts of his philosophy—but his definition of the laws of logic and of the means of human knowledge is so great an achievement that his errors are irrelevant by comparison.

Objectivism is a philosophical movement; since politics is a branch of philosophy, Objectivism advocates certain political principles—specifically, those of laissez-faire capitalism—as the consequence and the ultimate practical application of its fundamental philosophical principles. It does not regard politics as a separate or primary goal, that is: as a goal that can be achieved without a wider ideological context.

Politics is based on three other philosophical disciplines: metaphysics, epistemology and ethics—on a theory of man’s nature and of man’s relationship to existence. It is only on such a base that one can formulate a consistent political theory and achieve it in practice. When, however, men attempt to rush into politics without such a base, the result is that embarrassing conglomeration of impotence, futility, inconsistency and superficiality which is loosely designated today as “conservatism.” Objectivists are not “conservatives.” We are radicals for capitalism; we are fighting for that philosophical base which capitalism did not have and without which it was doomed to perish.

I regard the spread of Objectivism through today’s culture as an intellectual movement—i.e., a trend among independent individuals who share the same ideas—but not as an organized movement.

A series of Q+A’s from the Atlas Societies website, the answers were written by William Thomas.

Question: How is it in the self-interest of one to respect the rights of another? Are my rights limited to those which it is in the self-interest of others to respect?

Answer: Objectivism’s social ethic (which underlies its theory of rights) is based on the recognition of a complex fact about rational beings: that there is a harmony of fundamental interests among rational people. The basis for this claim is that each person’s means of survival is production, i.e. the use of his rational mind to discover how to create the goods and other values he needs to prosper. Furthermore, reason allows us to adjudicate disputes based on negotiation and appeals to objective evidence. This means that human beings can flourish by dealing with each other as independent traders, giving and receiving value voluntarily in all of our social interactions. The alternative to being a trader is to live as a predator or a mooch. The mooch begs others to do his work for him, the predator uses force to try and take the fruits of others’ labors.

The individual right to life, liberty, and property allows everyone freedom to live as a trader.

The individual right to life, liberty, and property allows everyone freedom to live as a trader (or to suffer the consequences of mooching), and secures our freedom from people who would use force to seek values from others. On the Objectivist view, individual rights are principles the provide the foundation of a just legal and political order. Individual rights are in one’s self-interest both because one needs the liberty they protect, and because it is not in one’s interest to deal with others as a predator.

Two common concerns often arise when people consider the Objectivist view of rights. (I should mention that David Kelley discussed this issue in some detail during his “Perennial Questions of Objectivism” lectures at our Summer Seminar in 2001.) Perhaps one of these lies behind your question.

The first is that an ethic of self-interest is contrary to the idea of rights. Rights, in this view, are duties we have to respect the freedom of others. They are strict, categorical, and disinterested. But the Objectivist ethic is practical and self-interested. A fully self-interested person will be too pragmatic to respect rights as moral law. Objectivism holds, however, that one has a strong self-interest in being a person of principle. One may well respect the rights of others out of naked self-interest and greed for one’s own long-term well-being, and do so in a principled manner. I have a short essay on the Objectivist view of principle which is available online, if you would like to pursue this further:” Why should one act on principle” . An essay by David Kelley, “Ruled or Principled?” is also helpful: Or take a look at Rand’s comments on integrity in Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged .

That first objection concedes that by and large living by trade is the practical way live and succeed.

But the second objection I would like to mention breaks with this view and argues that for at least a significant minority of people, a rational and prudent policy of preying on others is the way to success in life. Examples are dictators, successful criminals, even Bill Clinton! This again is an issue one must think through in detail, and the considerations are more than I can fully cover here. But, in the first place, while Objectivism holds that wealth is a value, it is not the most basic of values, and is only worthwhile in its proper context. So seeing a person get wealthy at the price of their health, social relations, life satisfaction, and overall happiness, is no example of pursuit of self-interest on the Objectivist account. It is true that from time to time there are people who live as thieves or tyrants who seem to survive the experience in good shape, but these cases are quite unusual, and may well be put down to chance. In fact, almost all people who pursue lives of predation pay a spiritual and a material price for it (I thought the story of the financial con artist Martin Frankel, who appeared to have escaped punishment a wealthy man, was a good example of this in all respects: he had no real friends, lost all his wealth, lived a miserable, paranoid, haphazard existence, and is now in prison–and THAT’S self-interest?).

If you would like to read more about this, of course Rand’s classic essays “The Objectivist Ethics” and “Man’s Rights” (both in The Virtue of Selfishness) are the best place to start. For a more technical account, you might be interested in an essay of mine: I gave a talk a few years ago at our summer seminar about the theoretical underpinnings of Objectivist rights theory. David Kelley and I have been working on a book, The Logical Structure of Objectivism, that will cover the logic behind the Objectivist social ethics and the argument for rights, among other issues.

Environmental Protection and Objectivism

Question: I am just beginning to learn about Objectivism , but I have yet to hear anything about how Objectivists would address the multifarious environmental issues that plague this world today, including environmental cleanup from industry and preservation of ecologically rich environments for the sake of species diversity.

1) My experience is that when businessmen and bankers are allowed to please themselves, someone else ends up monitoring the environmental cleanup (if it is cleaned up) and the taxpayers end up paying for it, while the polluters keep their profits. How would Objectivism create a fair playing field so that only those who benefit from an industry pay for the cleanup, rather than those who live down-wind or down-time (i.e., in the future)?

2) How would Objectivists manage to preserve ecologically rich land areas that possess no intrinsic financial value, at least not when evaluated in our current fiduciary mindset, but which provide environmental services free of charge (e.g., wetlands purifying the water that runs through them, forests generating oxygen) and which give pleasure to mankind simply by being? Or in other words, how would Objectivism represent the non-human, yet vital, aspects of our world?

Answer: On the first part of your question, the basic answer is: private property rights. To the extent that a resource is owned in common, no one has an incentive to keep it from being destroyed or to economize on its use; the result is what is known as “the tragedy of the commons”, the common resource being quickly depleted or destroyed. Those environmental concerns that have validity invariably are the result of this phenomenon.

Genuine environmental problems therefore have only one real solution: better definition and enforcement of private property rights. If an industry owns the resources it uses or pollutes; or if these resources are privately owned by someone else who can sue for damages if his property is harmed; then the industry will have to pay these costs. Defining property rights may not always be easy, and in some cases will require some technological development (an example is the definition of property rights in grazing land for cattle, which required the development of barbed wire); but the philosophical principle involved in the solution to such problems is clear, and it is the same principle that Objectivism advocates for much more fundamental grounds: the principle that human life requires private property rights.

The only justification
for preserving natural areas is the value that people place on such preservation and the pleasure they get from it.

On the second part of your question, the direct answer is that in the free market, anything that people enjoy and value does have financial value. The profit in developing land to be used for industry or agriculture comes from the willingness of the industry’s customers to pay for its products. If people enjoy a natural area, as a place for hiking, camping, etc., they will also be willing to pay for that enjoyment through entrance fees, so keeping the natural area undeveloped can also be profitable. Also, people who place a value on having natural areas preserved, or on species diversity, without necessarily enjoying them directly, can donate money to organizations buying such areas to ensure their preservation. So supply and demand in the free market will determine which land will be developed and used for industry or agriculture, and which will be preserved as natural areas, in the way that will best satisfy people’s diverse values.

Many environmentalists do not find this answer satisfying, because they regard nature, or species diversity, as valuable in itself, independently of human benefits and purposes; and so they do not want the preservation of natural areas to depend on the value people put on such preservation. The idea of nature as an intrinsic value is asserted as a dogma, without argument or justification; and the Objectivist analysis of the concept of value exposes the fallacy in any assertion that something has an intrinsic value. A value requires an answer to the questions: of value to whom, and for what? There is no meaning to a value something allegedly has in itself, independently of some valuer. Nor is there a meaning to a claim that something “gives pleasure to mankind”, apart from pleasure to individual men. Once we get rid of the idea of intrinsic value, the only justification for preserving natural areas is the value that people place on such preservation and the pleasure they get from it; and that will be expressed in their willingness to pay, and the only moral way to satisfy it, alongside all the other values people have for the use of land and natural resources, is in the free market.

Question: Don’t animals have rights too?

Answer: Rights only apply to rational beings whose needs are best fulfilled by production and trade.

“A right is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context,” wrote Ayn Rand in her essay “Man’s Rights.” People do not “have” rights in the sense of having a body part. Rather, rights are principles that apply to people, and that people should apply to others in society. A being incapable of grasping such an abstract set of principles and incapable of understanding the consequences of his actions vis-à-vis those principles, could not deal with others in terms of rights, and could not conform his behavior so as not to violate the rights of others. A being that could not live by production must live in conflict with the needs of all others, and thus rights would not serve it well. Reason is the source of both these characteristics, and only one kind of animal is rational.

The right to life is (currently) exclusively human, because rights principles only apply to and can only be applied by humans, of all the species we know of. If some other being (a space alien, perhaps, or a genetically modified earth-animal) developed sufficient rationality to grasp and apply principles, and to live by production and trade, then rights would apply to it as well.

A common equivocation here is based on the difference between life as an ultimate value and life as a right. All living things pursue life as their ultimate value, and it is their own lives in each case. Life is the ultimate value for humans, too, as living beings, and the Objectivist ethics is based on this recognition . But a moral claim to a right is much more than the recognition of one’s ultimate value. It is a political principle about the proper use of force in society. It is based not only on life as the ultimate value, but on the mode of life of which one is capable and the needs that must be fulfilled to sustain one’s life. Ultimately, the right to life is the right to take all the actions that life requires, free from physical force. But such a right is only possible to a being that is capable of taking all those actions without initiating force against others and without being subject to force itself. This not true of any other species with which we are currently familiar.

Advocates of animal rights tend to both misunderstand what a right is and maintain a double standard as to how rights apply. For instance, imagine if a coyote were said to have rights. We wouldn’t expect the coyote to change its behavior toward man in virtue of having those rights, would we? But man is expected to do something different for coyotes because of those rights. That is a double standard. The inalienable rights of the individual are supposed to be universal and uniform at root; the double standard contradicts that basic principle. Furthermore, man is not supposed allow the coyote to live independently on terms of mutual respect, but rather is supposed to exercise a paternalistic guardianship over the coyote. This, too, is contrary to the basic idea of individual rights.

So, in short, animal rights misunderstands the very nature of rights and perverts their meaning.

About The Author:

William Thomas

William R Thomas writes about and teaches Objectivist ideas. He is the editor of The Literary Art of Ayn Rand and of Ethics at Work, both published by The Atlas Society. He is also an economist, teaching occasionally at a variety of universities.