## 1. Introduction


### 1.1 Ayn Rand and Philosophy



In Rand's own words, her first and greatest love, her
"life purpose", was "the creation of the kind of
world ... that represents human perfection", while her
interest in philosophical knowledge was "only" for the
sake of this purpose (Journal entry for 4 May 1946; in 1997:
 479).[1]
 Nevertheless, her interest in philosophical knowledge continued long
after she had created this world in her magnum opus, *Atlas
Shrugged*, her last work of fiction. In her non-fiction, Rand
developed a conception of metaphysical realism, rationality, ethical
egoism (rational self-interest), individual rights,
*laissez-faire* capitalism, and art, and applied her philosophy
to social issues. She wrote polemical, philosophical essays, often in
response to questions by fans of *Atlas Shrugged* and *The
Fountainhead*; lectured on college campuses; and gave radio and
television interviews. In her own words, her 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.
> (Rand 1957 [1992]: Afterword) 
> 
> 
> 



Capitalism, "the unknown ideal", is for her the only
political-economic system compatible with this philosophy because it
is the only system based on respect for human beings as ends in
themselves. The free-market libertarian political movement, though
largely disowned by Rand, drew--and draws--great inspiration
from her moral defense of the minimal state, that is, the state whose
only *raison d'etre* is protection of individual
rights.



Whereas Rand's ideas and mode of presentation make Rand popular
with many non-academics, they lead to the opposite outcome with
academics. She developed some of her views in response to questions
from her readers, but seldom took the time to defend them against
possible objections or to reconcile them with the views expressed in
her novels. Her philosophical essays lack the self-critical, detailed
style of analytic philosophy, or any serious attempt to consider
possible objections to her views. Her polemical style, often
contemptuous tone, and the dogmatism and cult-like behavior of many of
her fans also suggest that her work is not worth taking
 seriously.[2]
 Further, understanding her views requires reading her fiction, but
her fiction is not to everyone's taste. It does not help that
she often dismisses other philosophers' views on the basis of
cursory readings and conversations with a few philosophers and with
her young philosophy student acolytes. Some contemporary philosophers
return the compliment by dismissing her work contemptuously on the
basis of hearsay. Some who do read her work point out that her
arguments too often do not support her conclusions. This estimate is
shared even by many who find her conclusions and her criticisms of
contemporary culture, morality, and politics original and insightful.
It is not surprising, then, that she is either mentioned in passing,
or not mentioned at all, in the entries that discuss current
philosophical thought about
 virtue ethics,
 egoism,
 rights,
 libertarianism, or
 markets.
 (Readers may also find the entry on
 Nozick's political philosophy
 to be of interest.) We present specific criticisms of her arguments
and claims below, in the relevant sections of this entry.


### 1.2 Life and Work



Ayn Rand was born Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum, to a bourgeois Jewish
family in St. Petersburg, Russia, on 2 February 1905. A witness to the
Russian Revolution and civil war, Rand opposed both the Communists and
the Tsarists. She majored in history, but the social science program
in which she was enrolled at Petrograd State University included
philosophy, law, and philology. Her teachers emphasized--as she
herself later did--the importance of developing systematic
connections among different areas of thought (Sciabarra 2013).
Rand's formal philosophical education included ancient
philosophy (especially Plato and Aristotle), logic, philosophical
psychology, Marxism-Leninism, and non-Marxist political thought. But
she was evidently also exposed to Hegelian and Nietzschean ideas,
which blossomed during this period (known as the Russian Silver Age),
and read a great deal of Friedrich Nietzsche on her own. After
graduating from Petrograd State University in 1924, an interest in
screenwriting led her to enroll in the State Institute for
Cinematography. On the literary side, she studied the great Russian
novelists and poets, but fell in love with Victor Hugo, to whose
influence she owes the "Romantic Realism" of her
novels.



In 1925 Rand succeeded in obtaining permission to visit relatives in
the United States; hating the Soviet system, she left with no
intention of returning. After six months with relatives in Chicago,
she made her way to Hollywood where, on her second day, a fortuitous
encounter with Cecil B. DeMille led to a job as a script reader, and
later as a screenplay writer. The next week she had another fortuitous
encounter, this time with the actor Frank O'Connor, whom she
married in 1929. She was married to him till his death in 1979. She
adopted the pen name Ayn Rand to (it is thought) protect her family
back in Russia, although she also told the New York *Evening
Post* in 1936 that "Rand" was an abbreviation of her
Russian surname.



Rand and her husband moved permanently to New York City in 1951, where
she became involved with, and was influenced by, the circle of mostly
New-York-based intellectuals involved in the revival of classical
liberalism, such as the economic journalist Henry Hazlitt, the
Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, and the Canadian-American
novelist, literary critic, and political philosopher Isabel Paterson.
Rand also studied, and was a great admirer of, the Lockean philosophy
of the American founding. Rand lived and worked in New York City until
her death in 1982.



Rand holds that philosophy, like all forms of knowledge and
achievement, is important only because it is necessary for living a
good human life and creating a world conducive to living such a life.
Philosophy supplies the most fundamental cognitive and normative
abstractions which, respectively, identify and evaluate what is.
Everyone, according to Rand, needs a philosophy and is guided by at
least an implicit one (1982a: ch. 1). Her novels express her belief
that if our philosophy is more or less correct, our lives will be more
or less successful, if our philosophy is wildly off the mark, our
lives will be disastrous. Philosophy thus has an urgent, practical
importance. But unlike Marx, her philosophical and political antipode,
Rand thinks that social change has to start with a moral revolution
within each individual and the spread of the right ideas and ideals
through rational discourse and the inspiration of art.



Rand's ideal human being appears, in varying degrees of
development, in all her novels; her ideal world appears in *Atlas
Shrugged*. Her novels feature striking, complex plots with subtle
psychological explorations of her characters' emotions and
thoughts, and philosophical reflections that rarely lose sight of the
dramatic context. Like many famous Russian novelists, especially
Dostoevsky, whom she recognized as a great psychologist, Rand also
uses long speeches to lay out her philosophy, a device that has both
its supporters and its detractors. She described *Atlas
Shrugged* as a "stunt novel" and a murder
mystery--the murder of the human soul by a collectivist culture.
By "soul", however, she meant not an immortal substance
that survives the death of the body--she is not a dualist in any
aspect of her philosophy--but the mind, or the human spirit that
celebrates life on this earth. She took a familiar phenomenon and
literary trope--a workers' strike--and turned it on
its head to show what happens when "the men of
mind"--scientists, philosophers, industrialists,
entrepreneurs, writers--the "prime movers" of a
society--go on strike. It also purports to show how the wrong
metaphysics can lead to the wrong ethics and thus to disastrous
personal choices and a disastrous political and economic system, and
how the right philosophy is needed for the rebirth of the soul and the
rebuilding of the world. Her protagonists are not knights on white
steeds rescuing damsels in distress, or swordsmen who can fight off a
dozen enemies single-handed, but men and women in the
mid-20th century industrial America of steel mills,
skyscrapers, and glimmering highways: women who run transcontinental
railroads and men who revolutionize architecture or (long before clean
energy became a *cause celebre*) build a motor
powered by static electricity to produce limitless, clean energy. Her
novels show the importance of striving to be the best we can be:



> 
> 
> Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the
> hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the
> not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely
> frustration for the life you deserved, but never have been able to
> reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you
> desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible....
> (*Atlas Shrugged*, 1957 [1992]: 983).
> 
> 
> 



Her novels inspire readers because they present heroes of unbreached
integrity, heroes who lead colorful and remarkable lives and succeed
not in spite of, but because of, their uncompromising virtue. This
estimate of their virtue is not, of course, shared by all: many
readers find her characters wooden, her writing stilted, and her
ethical and political views misguided.



Rand paid tribute to Aristotle, whom she considered the greatest of
all philosophers, in the titles she gave to the three Parts of
*Atlas Shrugged* (Non-Contradiction, Either-Or, *A* is
*A*) and to one of the chapters (The Immovable Movers). While
she differed sharply from Nietzsche on many issues, including
rationality, free will, and individual rights, his influence is
evident in her provocative, often aphoristic, point-counterpoint
writing style, as well as in her "transvaluation" of
traditional values and her powerful affirmation of life and joy and
the spirit of youth. In the Introduction to the 25th
Anniversary edition of *The Fountainhead*, she stated that the
novel's sense of life is best conveyed by a quotation from
Nietzsche's *Beyond Good and Evil*: "The noble soul
has reverence for itself". (For *The
Fountainhead*'s partly sympathetic and partly critical
engagement with Nietzsche's ideas, see Hunt 2006.)


### 1.3 Metaphysics and Epistemology



Fundamental to Rand's outlook--so fundamental that she
derives the name of her philosophical system,
"Objectivism", from it--is a trichotomy among three
categories: the *intrinsic*, the *subjective*, and the
*objective* (ITOE: 52-54; Rand 1965: 13-23). An
intrinsic phenomenon is one whose nature depends wholly on factors
external to the mind; a subjective phenomenon is one whose nature
depends wholly on the mind; and an objective phenomenon is defined,
variously, as that which depends on the relation between a living
entity's nature (including the nature of its mind) and its
environment, or as that which depends on the relation between a
properly functioning (rational) mind and extramental reality.
Commentators are divided over the best way to interpret Rand's
views on this issue.



Rand holds that there is a widespread tendency to ignore the third
category or to assimilate it to the second, thus setting up a false
dichotomy between the intrinsic and the subjective. On Rand's
view, many of the fundamental questions of philosophy, from the
existence of universals to the nature of value, involve fruitless
debates over the false alternative "intrinsic or
subjective?" in cases where the phenomenon in question is
neither intrinsic nor subjective, but rather objective.



If ethics is the branch of philosophy concerned with practice, then in
a sense all of Rand's philosophy is ethics, for Rand stresses
"the supremacy of *actual living* over all other
considerations", and insists that philosophy needs to be
"brought *up* to the realm of actual
living"--adding "I say intentionally brought
*up* to it, not down" (Journal entry for 15 May 1934, p.
72; in Rand 1997: 73). Consequently, Rand regularly concerns herself
with the practical implications and social relevance not only of moral
and political philosophy, but likewise of the seemingly more arcane
strata of metaphysics and epistemology--as when she identifies
errors in concept-formation as one of the roots of racism, or
mind-body dualism as a root of the dichotomy between economic and
personal freedom. This approach likewise reflects Rand's
emphasis on integrating each piece of information into the total
context of one's knowledge, and her consequent hostility to
compartmentalization.



Rand's conviction of the vital practical importance of abstract
theory may help to explain the passionately polemical nature of her
philosophical writing (which some readers find inspiring and others
hyperbolic and off-putting), although Nietzsche's influence, as well
as the influence of her Marxist-Leninist education also probably play
a role. Rand also tended--perhaps owing in part to the same two
influences--to regard philosophical errors as revelatory of the
psychological flaws of their authors.



For a more in-depth presentation of Rand's views on epistemology
and metaphysics, please see the supplementary document
 Epistemology and Metaphysics



## 2. Ethics


### 2.1 What is Ethics, and Why do we need It?



Ethics 



> 
> 
> is 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. (1961b: 13) 
> 
> 
> 



Before we can decide which code of values we should accept, we need to
ask *why* we need a code of values at all. Rand claims that no
philosopher before her has provided a *scientific* answer to
this question, and so none has provided a satisfactory ethics.



Rand starts by describing value or "the good", in
classical fashion, as the object of pursuit: "that which one
acts to gain and/or keep" (1961b: 16). Thus, the concept of
value presupposes the concept of "an entity capable of acting to
achieve a goal in the face of an alternative"--and the
basic alternative facing any living entity is life or death (1961b:
16). It is the conditional nature of life that gives rise to values,
not just human values, but values as such. As she puts it: 



> 
> 
> Metaphysically, *life* is the only phenomenon that is an end in
> itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action.
> (1961b: 18) 
> 
> 
> 



Survival is the organism's ultimate value, the "final goal
or end to which all [its] lesser goals are the means", and the
standard of all its other values: "that which furthers its life
is the good, that which threatens it is the evil" (pp.
16-17). The same, suitably modified, applies to human beings.
Life is the standard and goal of all genuine human values, in the
sense that all of them--from food to philosophy to fine art to
ethics--must be explained and justified as requirements of human
survival. "Ethics is an *objective, metaphysical necessity of
man's survival"* (p. 24). Thus, 



> 
> 
> [t]he standard of value of the Objectivist ethics ... is
> *man's life*, or: that which is required for man's
> survival *qua* man, (1961b: 25) 
> 
> 
> 



that is, 



> 
> 
> the terms, methods, conditions and goals required for the survival of
> a rational being through the whole of his lifespan--in all those
> aspects of existence which are open to his choice. (1961b: 27) 
> 
> 
> 



To choose to live is to accept one's "*own
life*" as one's "ethical
*purpose*".



Rand's metaphysical arguments make three points central to her
axiology and ethics. (1) All living entities have values, not only
human beings, and only living entities have values: life necessitates
value, and value depends on life. (2) An entity's values are
determined by its objective life-needs, that is, by the requirements
of survival for entities of its kind, and ethics is a requirement of
human survival. (3) Thus, values are neither intrinsic properties of
things, nor subjective, neither free-floating Platonic entities, nor
mere matters of preference, time, or culture. Rather, values are
relational or objective, dependent on the nature of the valuing entity
and the nature of its environment. 



Rand supports the first point by arguing that the concept of value
entails the concept of life: 



> 
> 
> epistemologically, the concept of "value" is genetically
> dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of
> "life". (1961b: 18) 
> 
> 
> 



She asks the reader to 



> 
> 
> imagine an immortal, indestructible robot, an entity which moves
> and acts, but which cannot be affected by anything, which cannot be
> changed in any respect, which cannot be damaged, injured or destroyed.
> (1961b: 16) 
> 
> 
> 



Such an entity, she concludes, cannot have values.



The problem with this argument is that all it shows is that an entity
that cannot be destroyed or harmed cannot have values, and not that a
non-living entity cannot have values. Unlike the robot of this
example, real robots *can* be damaged or destroyed, by external
as well as internal events. What it means for them to be damaged or
destroyed is that they cannot perform their functions well, or at
all. Hence they can, quite straightforwardly, be said to have
 values.[3]
To take this into account, Rand would have to say that for an entity
that has a function, values are determined by what it needs to
function (well), and that the function of living beings is to survive
(well). Hence she can still maintain that for living things, values
are determined by its objective life-needs, hence that values are
objective, and that ethics is a requirement of a proper human
survival. 



Rand's naturalism, and her rejection of intrinsicism and
subjectivism in favor of objectivism, anticipate recent naturalisms
and echo Aristotle's argument, against both the Platonist and
the subjectivist, that "the good" must always be
good-*for*-something. Her conception of the function of
morality is notable both for its affinity to, and its difference from,
Thomas Hobbes' conception: like Hobbes, Rand sees morality as a
necessary means to long-term survival, but unlike Hobbes, she does not
see morality as requiring a contract or even as a fundamentally social
affair. The need for morality, according to Rand, is dictated by our
nature as creatures that must think and produce to survive; hence we
would need morality even on a desert island. There is, however, no
duty to survive; morality is based on a hypothetical imperative: if
you choose to live, then you must value your own long-term survival as
an ultimate end, and morality as a necessary means to it. If asked why the
choice to live commits you to your own long-term survival rather than
some other ultimate end (such as, for example, the greatest happiness
of the greatest number (Nozick 1971), or becoming worthy of eternal
life in heaven), the only answer is: because any other ultimate end, *if
consistently adhered to*, would lead to death.



Rand's ethics is thus firmly teleological, this-worldly, and
foundationalist. Virtue is "the act by which one gains/and or
keeps" values in light of a recognition of certain facts (1961b:
27, 28); it "is not an end in itself ... not its own
reward" (1957 [1992]: 939). A fact central to a
"scientific" ethics is that reason is the chief
indispensable human tool of survival, and we exercise reason by
choice. Hence rationality is the fundamental moral virtue, a virtue
implicated in all the other virtues, including productiveness
 (Section 2.4 below).


 Rand is widely credited by Objectivists (Peikoff 1991; Binswanger
1990, 1992; Kelley & Thomas 1999--see Other Internet
Resources; Gotthelf 1999; Smith 2000, 2006) with having solved the
is-ought problem by showing that morality is essential for long-term
survival as a rational being, and so anyone who chooses to live ought
to be moral (1961b: 19). But if the choice to live is itself a moral
choice, in the sense that we ought to choose to live, then the
argument proceeds from an ought to an ought, not from an is to an
ought. On the other hand, if the choice to live is a non-moral choice
(an idea that's hard to reconcile with Rand's general view
that all significant choices are moral choices), then suicide can
never be wrong, even if it is done for cowardly, irresponsible, or
unjust reasons, a view that is obviously incoherent (King 1984 and
Narveson 1998 criticize this and other aspects of Rand's moral
views). Again, if morality is needed only for long-term survival, and
choosing death is not immoral, then a suicide-bomber does no wrong in
killing innocent people. But people don't lose their rights just
because their killer has decided to kill himself. Darryl Wright seeks
to save something of the commonsense view that the suicide-bomber acts
wrongly by arguing that his choice to die without good reason
"corresponds to a real defect or corruption" in him
(Wright 2011: 26-29). But this verdict contradicts the premise
that choosing death is not immoral. For if the choice expresses a
corruption in the character of the suicide-bomber, then the choice
itself is immoral. Moreover, this response leaves untouched the most
important criticism of the suicide-bomber's actions: that he
violates other people's rights by using them as mere means to
his own (wicked) ends.


 More fundamentally, the very idea of morality resting on the
choice to live is questionable (Long 2000, Badhwar 2001). Most of us
rarely, if ever, make a choice to live: we live by default. By giving
us desires for food and water, for pleasure and security, Nature gives
us, as she gives other animals, the implicit desire to stay
alive. Perhaps the most dramatic evidence is the existence of feral
children, children who have managed to stay alive for years in the
company of wild animals. When we grow up, the only time we seriously
ask ourselves if we want to live or die is when living requires an
effort on our part, such as in a grave illness, or deep depression, or
emergency. But we start learning the difference between right and
wrong (for example, don't hit others, don't grab their
things, and so on) long before we ever consider whether to live or
die. A deeper reflection on morality begins when we mature and start
asking ourselves what constitutes happiness and a worthwhile life. But
this is an inherently moral question to which the answers are
inherently moral or immoral. 


 Let let us now return to the question of how we should understand
the relationship between long-term survival and survival as a rational
being--the life "proper to a rational being" (Rand
1961b: 27). Is a life proper to a rational being a necessary means,
and only a necessary means, to literal, long-term survival? Or is such
a life itself the ultimate goal, the kind of survival worth having?
Again, what are we to make of the many passages in which Rand states
that the ultimate goal is one's own happiness?



Some of Rand's statements suggest that she had only one,
consistent ethical view: the ultimate goal is the individual's
own survival; the only way to survive long-term, i.e., over a complete
life-span, is to live by the standard of man's life as a
rational being, which means: to live morally; and happiness is the
psychological "result, reward and concomitant" (p. 32) of
living thus. Many of Rand's commentators follow her in holding
that there is only one consistent view, while disagreeing on the right
interpretation of it (Den Uyl & Rasmussen 1978; Machan 1984, 2000;
Peikoff 1991; Bidinotto 1994--see Other Internet Resources; Hunt
1999; Kelley & Thomas 1999--see Other Internet Resources;
Gotthelf 1999; Smith 2000, 2006). Others (Mack 1984, 2003; Badhwar
1999, 2001; Long 2000) argue that Rand's writings actually allow
of two, if not three, mutually incompatible views of the ultimate
goal, and our task is to see which of these is the dominant or most
plausible view. The three views are: survival, survival *qua*
rational being, and happiness in the ancient Aristotelian sense of
flourishing or *eudaimonia*. In the rest of Section 2, we will
present the textual evidence for each of these views of the final
goal, and the common objections to them, in turn.



All three views are, of course, egoist, in that the primary or sole
intended beneficiary of morality is supposed to be the moral agent
herself. But some of the criticisms usually levied at egoism lose some
of their force when directed at the second and third views.


### 2.2 Survival as the Ultimate Value



The survivalist view holds that just as literal survival is the
ultimate value for other living entities, so it is for human beings
(Kelley & Thomas 1999; Gotthelf 1999; Smith 2000). Survival is the
source and final goal of all the actions of an entity, that which
gives point to all its other values. For human beings, morality and
happiness are both instrumental means to survival. The vicious can
"achieve their goals [only] for the range of a moment", as
evidenced by "any criminal or any dictatorship" (1961b:
26).



"Non-survivalists" make the following objections:


1. The biological premise that survival is the ultimate goal of all
living things is mistaken. Animals of many species risk their own
lives for the sake of reproduction, or for protecting their young or
even their group. But even if survival were the ultimate goal of other
species, it need not be ours.
2. Even if our own survival needs were the *source* of all our
values, it would not follow that survival must be the ultimate
psychological and moral *goal* to which all our other values
are merely necessary means. The genesis of *x* does not
logically determine the ultimate goal of *x*. For example, the
source of sexual desire is our reproductive capacity but, as Rand
would agree, it doesn't follow that we ought to satisfy our
sexual desires only if we want to reproduce.
3. The survivalist view that turns happiness into a mere means to
survival entails, quite implausibly, that a long, unhappy life is
better than a somewhat shorter but happy life, and just as good as a
long and happy one.
4. Many dictators, including the Pharaohs of the past and the Stalins
and Maos of the 20th century, have survived by making
elaborate plans to preserve their lives and their power by using a
combination of terror, myth, and bribery. Their gross injustice poses
a far greater threat to the lives of their subordinates than to their
own. Morality *enhances* the individual's chances of survival
under normal circumstances, but it is not *necessary* for
survival. And in some circumstances, such as in a dictatorship, acting
morally *decreases* the individual's chances of survival, a
point that Rand herself convincingly dramatizes in *We the
Living* and
*Anthem*.
5. A survivalist ethics can support, at best, a bare-bones Hobbesian
morality, not a virtue ethics. If Rand's virtues were necessary
for survival, the human species would have perished a long time ago,
instead of expanding exponentially. Her rich and challenging picture
of human life and virtue in her novels points to a richer and more
challenging conception of the final end than mere survival.
6. Many of Rand's heroes, from Kira (*We the Living*) to
Prometheus (*Anthem*) to John Galt (*Atlas Shrugged*),
risk their lives for the sake of the values that make their lives
worth living.
7. Like Hobbes, Rand rightly points out that if everyone or most
people were to start preying on each other, then no one would survive
for long--*literally*, and that generations of predators
would end up destroying or driving away the producers, and thus
destroying themselves (*Anthem* and *Atlas
Shrugged*). But this doesn't show that a few predators in a
society of producers cannot survive by predation. Indeed, Rand herself
sometimes acknowledges that evil people can survive by free-riding
("hitch-hiking", as she calls it) on rational, productive
people:



> 
> 
>  If some men attempt to survive by means of brute force or fraud
>  ... it still remains true that their survival is made possible
>  only by their victims, only by the men who choose to think and to
>  produce the goods which they, the looters, are seizing. (1961b:
>  25)
> 
> 
>
8. Rand often says that the final end is survival proper to a human
being (1961b: 26), or that the final end is happiness (1961b: 27, 30).
Neither can be reduced to survival simpliciter.
9. In "Man's Rights", Rand explains an
individual's right to his own life as 



> 
> 
>  the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a
>  rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and
>  the enjoyment of his own life. (1963b: 93 and 1967a: 321-22)
>  
> 
> 
> 



"Life" here is explicated in terms of not only continued
survival but also of fulfillment and enjoyment.



For all these reasons, a more plausible interpretation of Rand's
view is that morality is required for surviving qua human being, that
is, for living a life proper to a human being.


### 2.3 Survival *Qua* Man as the Ultimate Value



Just as the *standard* of value is survival *qua* human
being, so the ultimate *goal* is one's own survival
*qua* human being. To accept this standard and goal is to
accept (i) the three cardinal values of reason, purpose (or
purposiveness) and self-esteem as not only "the means to"
but also "the realization of one's ultimate value,
one's own life" (1961b: 27), and (ii) the three
"corresponding virtues" of rationality, productiveness,
and pride. These values are means to one's life insofar as they
further one's life as a rational being, and they realize it
insofar as they express the value we place on our lives.



What it means to value survival *qua* human being turns on the
relationship of the three cardinal values to the three virtues. Rand
often states that virtue is only a means to value. But when she
explains how the three cardinal values "correspond" to
their three virtues, she does not provide a means-end analysis
(Badhwar 1999, 2001). Thus, she says:



> 
> 
> Productive work is the central *purpose* of a rational
> man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the
> hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the
> precondition of his productive work--pride is the result. (1961b:
> 27)
> 
> 
> 



The virtue of productiveness becomes the central example of purpose
(one of the three cardinal values), reason (another cardinal value)
becomes its source, and the virtue of pride becomes its result. Rand
also defines rationality, which is "the basic virtue", in
terms of 



> 
> 
> the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of
> knowledge ... and one's only guide to action. (1961b: 28)
> 
> 
> 
> 



By this definition, being rational means valuing reason in thought,
word, and deed, and realizing reason in one's life means being
rational: the virtue and the value entail each other.



This point generalizes to all the virtues and values. Further, since
the (cardinal) values are both "the means to" and
"the realization of one's ultimate value" (1961b:
27), it follows that the (cardinal) virtues are also both the means to
and the realization of one's ultimate value: long-term survival
*qua* human being. On this interpretation, to survive
*qua* human being is none other than to lead a virtuous life in
which one has realized one's potential.



Both survivalists and *eudaimonists*, however, point out that
this conception of the final end contradicts Rand's oft-repeated
claim that "Virtue is not an end in itself...." In
addition, *eudaimonists* make the following objections:


1. Since even a long, virtuous life need not be a happy one, positing
it as the final end contradicts Rand's related claim that
"*Life* is the reward of virtue--and happiness is
the goal and reward of life" (1957 [1992]: 939).
2. It contradicts Rand's conception of the final end in her
novels, where happiness is proclaimed as "the purpose, the
sanction and the meaning of life" (1957 [1992]: 674).



In addition, it is psychologically implausible to hold that we would
choose mere survival as an end even if we were deeply unhappy and saw
no happiness in our future (cf. Wright 2019 20).



*Eudaimonists* hold that the dominant and/or more plausible
view expressed in Rand's writings is that happiness--a
happy life--is the ultimate value, where a happy life is
understood as a life of emotional fulfillment in worthwhile goals and
activities. Happiness in this sense necessarily *involves*
virtue, but is not *identical* with virtue (Den Uyl &
Rasmussen 1978; Machan 1984, 2000; Mack 1984; Badhwar 1999, 2001; Hunt
1999; Long
 2000).[4]


### 2.4 Happiness as the Ultimate Value



Happiness is the existentially and psychologically "successful
state of life" (1961b: 27). As an emotion it is not simply a
positive subjective state, as on some contemporary views, but an
emotion that meets certain normative standards: "a state of
non-contradictory joy--a joy without penalty or guilt",
achievable only by 



> 
> 
> the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but
> rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.
> (1961b: 32) 
> 
> 
> 



Happiness is also a form of life-affirmation: 



> 
> 
> the feeling of one's blessing upon the whole of the earth, the
> feeling of being in love with the fact that one exists and in this
> kind of world. (1957 [1992]: 105-6) 
> 
> 
> 



Thus, happiness is an emotionally positive state of mind in an
objectively worthwhile state of life.



Rand holds that the pursuit of happiness is inseparable from the
activity of maintaining one's life through the rational pursuit
of rational goals (1961b: 29, 32). A virtuous life is, thus, essential
to happiness. It is also a shield against soul-wracking unhappiness.
Just as even great misfortunes don't throw Aristotle's
virtuous individual into misery, they don't throw Rand's
heroes into misery. Even at the worst of times, the virtuous
individual's pain "only goes down to a certain
point" (1943: 344), never touching the core of her being: the
conviction that she is worthy and
capable of
 happiness.[5]



In keeping with their richer conception of the final end, Rand's
novels also employ a richer conception of virtue as an integrated
intellectual-emotional character trait to think, feel, and act in
certain ways, rather than simply as an act in light of a recognition
of certain facts (Badhwar 1999, 2001). Her characters reveal their
souls not only in what they say or do, notice or fail to notice, focus
on or evade, on this or that occasion, but in their cognitive,
emotional, and action dispositions, their style of being in the world.
Their actions show not only an intellectual commitment to the right
but a wholehearted "love of rectitude" (1957 [1992]:
512).



This basically Aristotelian view of virtue goes hand-in-hand with a
basically Aristotelian view of emotions. Rand rejects the
reason-emotion dichotomy as stemming, ultimately, from a false
mind-body dichotomy. Emotions are neither raw feelings nor inherently
irrational but, rather, automatized value-judgments: 



> 
> 
> estimates of that which furthers man's values or threatens them
> ... lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or
> loss. (1961b: 27) 
> 
> 
> 



Emotions provide instant guidance when circumstances do not permit
reasoning everything out anew. But our emotions are only as good as
our reason, because they are "programmed" by our reason.
Hence they can only be corrected by conscious reasoning, and in a
conflict between reason and emotions, one must always side with the
 former.[6]



*Eudaimonists* argue that Rand's vision of a virtuous and
happy life in her novels can be understood only as a form of
*eudaimonism*, even if she sometimes makes statements
inconsistent with this vision. The chief objection
to *eudaimonism* is that, by defining a happy life partly in
terms of virtue, *it* employs an unconvincing conception of
happiness. The philosophical literature on happiness in this sense
(usually called well-being) makes and answers this and other such
objections (Annas 1993, Haybron 2008, Badhwar 2014).


### 2.5 Virtues, Vices, and Egoism



The chief Objectivist virtues are rationality, integrity, honesty
(with self and others), justice, independence, productiveness, and
pride. Rationality, 



> 
> 
> one's total commitment ... to the maintenance of a full
> mental focus in all issues, in all choices ... to the fullest
> perception of reality within one's power, (1961b: 28) 
> 
> 
> 



is the basic virtue of which the other virtues are aspects or
derivatives. The virtues are thus united or reciprocal. Each virtue is
defined partly in terms of a recognition of, and appropriate
responsiveness to, some important fact or facts, a recognition and
responsiveness understood by the agent to be indispensable for
gaining, maintaining, or expressing her ultimate value. For example,
integrity is "the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake
your consciousness" (1957 [1992]: 936), a recognition that is
expressed in loyalty to one's rational values and convictions,
especially in the face of social pressures to surrender them (1961b:
28; 1964a: 52, 80); honesty is "the recognition of the fact that
you cannot fake existence", a recognition that is expressed in
truthfulness in thought and speech (1957 [1992]: 936-37); and
justice is 



> 
> 
> the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men
> as you cannot fake the character of nature, ... that every man
> must be judged for what he *is* and treated
> accordingly.... (1957 [1992]: 937)
> 
> 
> 



Conspicuous by their absence from Rand's list of the cardinal
virtues are the "virtues of benevolence", such as
kindness, charity, generosity, and forgiveness. Rand states that
charity is not a major virtue or moral duty (1964b); likewise,
presumably, kindness, generosity, and forgiveness. Whether, and how
much, one should help others depends on their place in one's
rationally defined hierarchy of values, and on the particular
circumstances (whether they are worthy of help, what the likely
consequences are of helping them, and so on). The greater their value
*vis-a-vis* one's rational self-interest, the
greater the help that one should be willing to give, *ceteris
paribus*. What is never morally appropriate is to make a
sacrifice, that is, to surrender something of value to oneself for the
sake of something of less or no value to oneself. Thus, it can never
be moral to knowingly risk one's life for a stranger (unless, of
course, one's life is no longer worth living) or to court
unhappiness for the happiness of another, whether stranger or
friend. It is appropriate to help a stranger only in an emergency, and
only when the risk to our own life or well-being is minimal (1963c:
43-45). This should not be taken to imply that helping a
stranger is always morally optional, regardless of the
circumstances. Indeed, people who 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" are
"psychopaths" (1963c: 43-45) Rand makes even more
concessions to "common sense morality" when she states
that it's good to help a neighbor going through a hard time till
he can get back on his own feet, if we can afford to and if we have no
reason to think that he is undeserving. Charity understood thus is a
virtue because it is an expression of the generalized good will and
respect that all normal people have towards others as creatures who
share with them the capacity to value (1963c: 46-47). Nathaniel
Branden tries to reconcile charity with egoism by declaring that the
former stems from a species-identification with another, such that, in
revering others, people "are revering their own life". By
acting charitably, people actualize this sense of kinship, without
sacrificing their own well-being.



This last is true, but the desire to reduce all proper motivations to
egoistic motivations leads Branden (and Rand and many Objectivists) to
ignore the fact that charity is first and foremost profoundly
other-regarding, prompted by another's plight rather than
concern for one's own self-actualization. The same is true of
trying to rescue a dog mangled by a hit-and-run driver, where the
egoistic motivation must be even weaker, since here there is no
species-identification, but rather only a
"genus-identification" with another sufferer.

 The
problem with Rand and Branden's ethical egoism can be sharpened
by asking why we should not harm others, for example, by spitefully
stepping on their gouty toes. Rand and Branden's answer has to
be: because doing so will harm us. But why will it harm us? Because we
have unjustly and irrationally hurt another out of spite, and
injustice and irrationality are bad for us. But our action
wouldn't be unjust and irrational if it didn't hurt them
- if, in fact, stepping on their toes cured their gout and we
did it for that reason. Clearly, then, the wrongness of our action and
motivation depends, in the first instance, on what we know it will do
to our victims. This is why we ought to apologize to them, and not to
ourselves. It's right and important to consider the effect on
ourselves of being spiteful, unjust, and irrational, but there is no
good argument for the view that we ought to be just to others only or
primarily because it is good for us. All other-regarding virtues are
responses to other people's moral standing.


At any rate, the argument from identification can also be used to
justify charity towards strangers in non-emergency situations, for
example, towards those who are permanently disabled and unable to care
for themselves (Badhwar forthcoming). Rand concedes as much in
"What is Capitalism?" (1965) where she argues that people
who are unable to work must rely on voluntary charity, thus implying
that it is proper for those who can afford it to support strangers in
non-emergency situations. And indeed, as recent scholarship has
revealed, in her own life Rand was often extremely generous, not only
towards friends and acquaintances, but also
strangers.[7]



The question arises why Rand thinks that charity, kindness etc. are
not major virtues when they meet all the conditions of
appropriateness: the recipient is worthy of help, one can afford to
help, it is in one's rational self-interest (or not contrary to
it) to help, and so on. Perhaps Rand thinks that they are
"minor" virtues because we are not obligated to act on
them at all times, the way we are obligated to act justly and honestly
at all times. A deeper reason, however, might be her conception of
people as essentially agents rather than patients, doers rather than
receivers, self-sufficient rather than dependent. Nevertheless,
Rand's view of the unity of the virtues dictates that, even if
we are not obligated to *act* on charity, kindness etc. at all
times, they are just as important to *possess* as the other
virtues. Moreover, in keeping with her emphasis on the importance of
goodwill towards others and "the benevolent universe
premise", Rand's heroes are often extraordinarily (and
almost always appropriately) kind and generous, not only towards those
they love but also towards mere acquaintances, and even sometimes
adversaries. Striking examples include, from *The
Fountainhead*, Howard Roark's unsought-for attempt to give
hope and courage to Steven Mallory, the gifted young sculptor whose
failure to get work has driven him to the verge of a spiritual and
physical collapse, and Roark's unreproachful help to his
erstwhile adversary, Peter Keating, when Keating falls on hard
times. In *Atlas Shrugged*, Dagny offers support to a
heart-broken and despairing Cheryl Taggart who, in the past, has
treated Dagny with scorn, and Hank Rearden generously supports his
exploitative family before he realizes their 
exploitativeness.[8]
Rand's implicit recognition that kindness and generosity are important
virtues is shown also in her depiction of her villains as lacking all
kindness and generosity.



Just as rationality, a focus on reality, is at the heart of every
virtue, so irrationality, evasion of reality (including
self-deception), is at the heart of every vice. Rand's villains
are all master evaders motivated by a desire for power, social status,
fame, or unearned wealth, and resentment of the good. They are
"second-handers"--people whose primary relationship
is to other people rather than to reality. Between the virtuous and
the vicious are the "innocently wrong", people who adopt
wrong moral principles or make wrong choices, not through evasion but
through an error of judgment (Rand does not explicitly recognize any
moral category other than virtue, vice, and moral error, although her
novels portray characters that do not easily fit into any of these
categories). Hank Rearden, in *Atlas Shrugged*, is the great
innocent living under a burden of unearned guilt because of his
mistaken sense of honor and a family interested only in manipulating
and using him. Cheryl Taggart is killed by the too-sudden revelation
that the man she loved and admired as the embodiment of her ideals is
a fraud--and that the world is full of such frauds.



As already indicated, Rand justifies virtue in both instrumental and
non-instrumental terms, though without distinguishing between them.
The instrumental arguments show the existential and psychological
rewards of virtue and costs of vice. In her depiction of her heroes,
Rand shows her conviction that virtue creates an inner harmony and
serenity. Virtue also makes one trustworthy, and thus enables mutually
beneficial interactions with others. Evasiveness, by contrast, traps
one in a "tangled web" of rationalizations and
pretenses. The evader who deceives others is either eventually caught,
or lives in fear of getting caught, becoming dependent on
others' unconsciousness. He is "a fool", says a
character in *Atlas Shrugged*, "whose source of values is
the fools he succeeds in fooling" (1957 [1992]: 945). Further,
like Sartre, Rand holds that no evasion is completely successful,
because the truth constantly threatens to resurface. Hence, the
evader's "diseased soul" is in a state of constant
inner conflict and anxiety as he tries to suppress his awareness of
uncomfortable truths while maintaining his hold on others. His lack of
integrity and of esteem for reality results in a lack of self-love or
self-esteem and, indeed, of a solid self. (It is noteworthy, however,
that Rand's portrayal of Gail Wynand in *The Fountainhead* is
closer to Aristotle's portrayal of the vicious man in Book III
of the *Nicomachean Ethics* as someone who is
"unconscious of his vice" than to her own stated view of
the evader.)



These views are familiar from the history of philosophy, but many
readers find their expression in Rand's novels to be of unusual
psychological depth and conviction. Nevertheless, the views are
subject to the well-known objection that the complexity and
variability of human psychology and society allow only "for the
most part" generalizations about the existential and
psychological benefits of virtue or costs of vice. For example, it is
possible for a small injustice to lead to great rewards, especially
since others are willing to shrug off or forgive occasional
transgressions. It is also possible for poor introspection,
forgetfulness, or self-acceptance to allow one to evade something
without any need for supporting evasions or damage to one's
self-esteem. Again, even if every wrongdoing carries psychological
costs, these might sometimes be outweighed by the long-term
psychological and existential costs of doing the right thing (as Rand
herself suggests in her portrayal of the embittered Henry Cameron and
Stephen Mallory in *The Fountainhead*).



The non-instrumentalist justification of virtue in Rand's novels
is largely immune to these objections (though subject to the
objections noted in 2.4 above). To
compromise morally is, necessarily, to compromise one's own
(objectively conceived) happiness, because no existential loss can
compare to the loss of moral integrity. Rectitude is partly
constitutive of genuine happiness because it expresses the right
relationship to reality: to existence, to oneself, and to others. For
the same reason, it is partly constitutive of a self worth loving, an
ideally human or rational self. Any value gained at the price of
rectitude is only the simulacrum of genuine value. In a variety of
conceptually interconnected ways, then, virtuous individuals are
necessarily better off than those willing to take moral short-cuts. In
its structure and much of its content, Rand's ethical egoism is
thus of a piece with the egoism of ancient *eudaimonistic*
theories.



Of course, this non-instrumentalist justification of virtue depends on
the prior instrumentalist justification, viz., that in normal
circumstances (that is, in a society of more or less virtuous people),
virtue enables us to gain both external and psychological goods. If
justice or kindness were systematically bad for human beings, leading
to disease and death, they would not be virtues. If rationality
routinely led to an early demise, no one would value rationality. But
this does not entail, as Salmieri seems to think, that the ultimate
value is literal survival (Salmieri 2019). All it entails is that the
virtues be *compatible* with survival in normal
circumstances. For it is easy to see that if justice or kindness
systematically led to deep depression, and rationality routinely
sucked the joy out of life, only the rare misery-lover would value his
life, or the virtues. Survival is a necessary condition of a happy
life (as well as an unhappy one), not an ultimate value. And
it's only because the virtues lead to, and partly constitute, a
happy (eudaimonic) life, that a virtuous person considers it a greater
loss to betray his principles than to lose the work he loves -
or, sometimes, even his life. One of the best examples of this from
Rand's own work is Howard Roark's decision to act out of
integrity, even at the cost of being unable to practice architecture
(*The Fountainhead*). Another example concerns two minor
characters in *We The Living* who risk - and lose -
their freedom and lives for resisting the new communist regime. (Note,
however, that Rand does not think that we are morally obligated to
martyr ourselves to fight evil. All we are obligated to do is not be
complicit in evil, or betray our values.)



Even on this indirect, sophisticated egoism, where the good to the
agent lies in being virtuous, Rand's theory is open to the objection
often levied against egoistic theories, viz., that they give the wrong
reason for acting in other-regarding ways - justly, kindly, etc. My
act does not adequately express the virtue of justice if I give you
your due solely or primarily because acting justly is good for me
rather than because I recognize and respect your moral standing, your
entitlement to be treated justly. Nor does my helping you when you
need help adequately express goodwill or kindness if I help you solely
or primarily because acting benevolently is good for me. One way out
taken by some other theories is to argue that the
egoist's *justification* is egoistic but not
her *motivation*. Rand does not address the
"wrong-reason" objection, but there is no hint in her
writings that she would accept this dichotomy between justification
and motivation. The root of the problem is that, although Rand rejects
psychological egoism, she seems to regard genuine goodwill towards, or
love of, others as an offshoot of proper self-love, as though there
were no independent source of love for others in human nature. This is
where her metaethics and ethics differ most starkly from that of
Aristotle. 


### 2.6 Altruism



According to Rand, there is only one alternative to being rationally
self-interested: sacrificing one's proper interests, either for
the sake of other people (which she equates with altruism) or for the
sake of the supernatural (which she calls mysticism) (1982a:
ch. 7). "The basic principle of altruism", she argues,
"is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that
service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that
self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value"
("Faith and Force," PWNI 61). Kant's ethics is a secularized
mysticism insofar as it rests on categorical commands and duty for
duty's sake, which is to say: regardless of any earthly desire
or interest (1970). An altruistic ethics equates right action with
self-sacrifice for the sake of others' good and immorality with
"selfishness", while saying nothing about the standard of
the good ("Introduction", 1964a: iii; 1974). It thus fails
to answer the prior question of what code of values we should follow
and why, and provides no motivation to be moral other than guilt over
"selfishness". When taken to its logical conclusion,
altruism does not simply tell us that it is "selfish" to
pursue our own desires, but also that it is "selfish to
uphold... [our own] convictions, ... [that we] must
sacrifice them to the convictions of others" (Rand 1957 [1992]:
943; Galt's Speech, Rand 1961a: 142). In foreign policy,
altruism is used to justify and gain support for America's
intervention in other countries (1966a). Altruism is also the reason
why so many sympathize with, or even praise, bloody dictatorships that
proudly proclaim that the sacrifice of the individual is a necessary
and noble means to the goal of the collective good (Rand 1966a).



As a moral code, altruism is impractical, because its requirements are
contrary to the requirements of life and happiness, both the
agent's and other people's. As such, it is also profoundly
immoral. Altruism leaves us without any moral guidance in our everyday
lives and gives morality a bad name.



What, then, is the psychological explanation for the widespread
equation of altruism with morality? Rand suggests various explanations
reminiscent of Nietzsche's analysis of the psychology of
altruism. The theorists and preachers of altruism are motivated
largely by a desire to control and manipulate others by playing on
their guilt. Those who accept their teachings typically do so either
because of guilt over their own superior achievements, or because,
lacking any "intellectual integrity, love of truth...or a
passionate dedication to an idea", they have nothing much worth
saving, and so do not mind sacrificing themselves ("Selfishness
Without a Self", 1973b; 1982a). Some altruists are altruists
because their mentalities are still frozen in a tribal past when
survival required the sacrifice of some for the sake of others
(1973b). Rand herself rejects a zero-sum picture of human
relationships, so long as everyone in the relationship acts
rationally.



Rand's defense of "selfishness" (rational
self-interest) and rejection of altruism (living for others'
sake) are part of the reason both for her popularity with the general
reader, and her unpopularity with philosophers and other
intellectuals, although some would no doubt agree with her rejection
of abject self-sacrifice and her recognition of proper concern with
the self as moral (Falk 1963; Gilligan 1982; Hampton 1993; Badhwar
1993a). The general reader who responds positively to Rand's
work finds, for the first time, a moral justification for pursuing a
life of her or his own and a liberation from "unearned
guilt". The philosopher who responds negatively to her work
finds many biased and simplistic interpretations of philosophers and
philosophical doctrines, including her claim that she is the first to
consistently defend a morality of rational self-interest, all other
philosophers having defended either altruism or mysticism (Pojman
1995). Her critics also challenge her equation of altruism with abject
self-sacrifice (Rachels 2000, Flew 1984), and her claim (explained
below) that there is no conflict between people's
*rational* interests (Flew 1984). 


## 3. Social-Political Philosophy


### 3.1 Rights, Capitalism, the Trader Principle, and Government


 "Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun
begins" (*Atlas Shrugged* 1023). Not only actually shooting
someone, but also threatening him with a gun, is an act of force. The
non-initiation of force against others is the basic moral principle
guiding our interactions with others, whether in a political society,
or in the state of nature. It is also the basic political principle:
"no man may initiate the use of physical force against
others. ... Men have the right to use physical force *only*
in retaliation and *only* against those who initiate its
use" (1961b, 1964a: 36). This political principle binds not only
individuals in their interactions with each other, but also,
importantly, the government. Rand's ideal society is a society
of independent individuals who respect each other's rights to
life, liberty, and property, and who trade value for value, materially
and spiritually. They live, in her words, by "the trader
principle". Individual rights and the trader principle are both
dictated by the fact that, as rational, independent beings, we need to
think and act for our "proper survival" (1961b: 31). Both
are based in human nature, and required by respect for individuals as
ends in themselves, not mere means to others' ends. But what
exactly is a right? 



> 
> 
> "Rights" are a moral concept--the concept that
> provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an
> individual's actions to the principles guiding his relationship
> with others--the concept that preserves and protects individual
> morality in a social context--the link between the moral code of
> a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics.
> *Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral
> law*. (1963b: 92). 
> 
> 
> 



Again,



> 
> A "right" is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a
> man's freedom of action in a social context. (1964a 93).
> 



These rights are based in human nature, and are basically rights to
actions, not to things or outcomes, and they can be violated only
through the initiation or threat of force, or through fraud. Hence,
all natural rights are negative, that is, claims on others'
non-interference, and not claims on them to provide one with certain
goods or outcomes.[9]
The fundamental right is the right to life:
the right to take the actions necessary for sustaining the life proper
to a human being.



> 
> 
> The right to life means...the freedom to take all the actions
> required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the
> furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such
> is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of
> happiness.). (1963b: 93) 
> 
> 
> 



The right to liberty is the right to act (including to write and
speak) on one's judgment; the right to the pursuit of happiness
is the right to pursue goals for one's own fulfillment; the
right to property is "the right to gain, to keep, to use and to
dispose of material values" (1963b: 94). Like the mind-body
dichotomy, the common dichotomy between "human rights" and
the right to property is a false one, because to own one's life
is to own one's actions and their fruits (1962b:
 91).[10]
 Just as there is a causal and logical connection between the virtues,
so there is between these rights: a government that violates human
rights also violates property rights. Thus, for example, in violating
the right to freedom of expression by banning "obscene"
speech on TV, the government violates the property right of the owners
of the TV station to use their property as they see fit. Like other
libertarians, both right (market) and left (egalitarian), Rand opposes
state regulation of morality, as well as forced service to the state,
whether military or civilian. She criticizes both conservatives and
liberals (as these terms are understood in American politics) for
wanting government to control the realm they regard as important: the
spiritual or moral realm in the case of conservatives, and the
material or economic realm in the case of liberals (1981b). Both sides
thus betray a lack of understanding of the fact that human beings need
to be free in both realms to be free in either.



Critics have pointed out that if we have rights only because we need
them for our survival and happiness, then we have no right to take
actions that are *contrary* to our survival and happiness, such
as blindly following a guru instead of thinking for ourselves, living
off others because we prefer the life of a couch potato to fending for
ourselves, wasting our property instead of using it wisely, or, most
obviously, committing suicide (Mack 1984; Zwolinski 2019). Yet the
freedom to do only that which is morally good or rational is no
freedom. But there is another interpretation of the claim that
"The right to life means...the freedom to take all the
actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support,
the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own
life." What Rand is pointing out here is that we would not have
rights if we did not need them for our survival and happiness (Badhwar
2017, Miller & Mossoff 2019). This need (and the fact that we
value our survival and happiness) is the source of rights. If by our
very nature we didn't care whether we lived or died,
didn't care about being forced by the government or other people
to act in certain ways and not others, had no use for property, and
couldn't be bothered to think for ourselves, we would have no
rights. It doesn't follow, however, that we don't have the
right to act contrary to the requirements of our survival or
happiness. As Rand says elsewhere: 



> 
> 
> A right is the sanction of independent action. A right is that which
> can be exercised without anyone's permission (Rand 2018 83). 
> 
> 
> 
> [A] right is the moral sanction of a positive, of his freedom to act
> on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary,
> uncoerced choice. (Rand 1963b 93.)
> 
> 
> 



In spite of several statements that justify such freedom in terms of
the individual's *rational* judgments (Rand 1965 17), it is
the position taken here that is compatible with Rand's
deep-seated commitment to liberty and a minimal government. 



Another criticism of Rand's theory of rights is that it is
incompatible with her ethical egoism, because respect for
others' rights cannot be justified as a means to the ultimate
end of one's survival (Mack 1984; Flew 1984). For under
perfectly realistic scenarios, one's survival can require one to
violate another's right to life or property. Thus, according to
these critics, Rand's defense of rights suffers from the same
unresolved tension between the instrumentalist strand and the deontic
strand that we find in her justification of morality in general (Mack
1984, 2003). On our *eudaimonistic* interpretation of
Rand's ethical egoism and theory of rights, there is no
incompatibility between the two. Nevertheless, as we've argued
above, both her ethical egoism and her theory of rights face the
criticism that the primary reason for respecting others' rights,
or exercising any of the other-regarding virtues, is not one's
*eudaimonia* but the fact that others are ends in
themselves. What promotes our eudaimonia is recognizing this and
living accordingly, but our own *eudaimonia* is not the primary
reason for respecting people's rights.


 Everything said so far shows that Rand believes that individuals
have rights even in a state of nature, or a society without a
government. Yet in later years, in a workshop on rights, Rand suggests
that rights exist only in a society with some kind of authority and a
"formulated morality" (2018: 111). It is not clear what Rand
means by "formulated morality": a written, or at least
explicitly stated, morality that recognizes rights, like the Bill of
Rights in the U.S. Constitution? Or like Thomas Paine's *Rights of
Man?*? But aren't there many societies - perhaps a majority
- that don't have a formulated morality yet do recognize at
least individuals' basic rights against each other and the government,
and many that can produce paper Constitutions claiming to recognize
these rights that, in fact, they deny their citizens? In any case,
Rand takes back her controversial statement by reiterating her earlier
view that:



> 
> 
> The source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional
> law, but the law of identity. A is A and Man is Man. Rights are
> conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper
> survival ("Galt's Speech," Rand 1961a: 182).
> 
> 
> 




What we don't have in the absence of a government, she says, is
objectively defined laws that can determine if a right has been
violated (2018: 211). A "proper government," in her words,
"*is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical
force under objective control*, i.e., under objectively defined
laws" (1963a: 128).



Onkar Ghate (2019) and Harry Binswanger (2019) both defend this
view. Ghate uses two scenarios involving individuals in a state of
nature. Suppose you are by yourself on a desert island, and you
domesticate a pig. Then someone from a neighboring tribe steals it. Do
you have a right to retaliate by stealing some of his property, or
stealing from his relatives? Again, suppose Robinson Crusoe and Friday
are strangers sharing an island, and Crusoe invents a superior
spear. Does Friday have a right to copy it? Ghate's main point is that
because individuals in his scenarios don't have a government, they
don't have objectively defined laws, and because they don't have
objectively defined laws, the boundaries of their property rights are
unclear. But Ghate does not explain why you, the pig owner, cannot
talk to the tribe and come up with a mutually agreeable solution, or
why Crusoe and Friday can't talk things over and decide on the
boundaries of their rights vis-a-vis each other (if Crusoe has any
common sense, he'll encourage Friday to copy his spear and propose
that they cooperate in their future hunts). Of course the tribe and
you might not be able to reach a resolution satisfactory to both of
you. But that doesn't mean that it is in principle impossible to do
so. Neither Rand nor Ghate (2019) provide an explanation of why a
peaceful society of people without a government cannot come up with
objective laws that define the boundaries of their rights - as,
in fact, they do in Rand's Atlantis: Galt's Gulch. Their
view seems to imply that if the Founding Fathers had been shipwrecked
for 5 years on a desert island, they could not have come up with a
Bill of Rights that defined the limits of their liberties vis-a-vis
each other, or set up a fair system of adjudication in the event of a
dispute. But we don't have to engage in hypotheticals. As many
scholars have pointed out, starting in the 11th C, merchants from
various countries created the body of law called the Law Merchant in
order to protect foreign merchants not protected by the local laws
(Benson 1989; see the entry on *law merchant* at
libertarianism.org, linked from Other Internet Resources). The Law
Merchant was uniform throughout Europe, and enforced by courts also
created by merchants in European cities, without the involvement of
any European government.



Rand argues that the only just social-political system, the only
system compatible with our rational nature and with the right of
individuals to live for their own sakes, is capitalism (1965, 1967b),
that is, 



> 
> 
> *laissez-faire* capitalism--with a separation of state and
> economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation
> of state and church. (1961b, 1964a) 
> 
> 
> 



State regulation of the market, she argues, is responsible for
corrupting both state and market institutions, just as political
regulation of religion (or religious regulation of politics), wherever
it exists, corrupts both state and religious institutions. Regulation
creates the opportunity for the trading of favors between politicians
and religious leaders, and politicians and businesses. *Atlas
Shrugged* offers a complex and compelling depiction of the
economic, political, and moral corruption spawned by
"cronyism" between government and business.
*Laissez-faire* capitalism is "the only [social] system
that bans force from social relationships" domestically and
abroad, because the trader and the warrior are antagonists (Rand
1966a). Rand's conception of capitalism is, thus, more radical
than the mainstream conception, and her defense of it significantly
different both from the utilitarian defenses given by most economists,
and the religious defenses given by many conservatives (for
discussion, see Den Uyl & Rasmussen 1984b; Machan 1984). She does,
of course, praise capitalism (or semi-capitalism) for creating
widespread prosperity, but this feature is itself explained only by
the fact that it leaves individuals free to produce in peace. In
*Atlas Shrugged*, Rand distinguishes between the few business
people who earn their money through honest effort, without seeking
favors from the government, and the vast majority who are members of
"the aristocracy of pull" ("crony
capitalists", in contemporary terminology) and get rich only
through such favors, a situation that she thinks prevails, and has
always prevailed, in the real world (Rand 1964c). She holds that for a
short period in the nineteenth-century America came closer to a
*laissez-faire* system than any other society before or since,
but that capitalism remains an unknown ideal. Some critics complain,
however, that in her non-fiction (1961c) Rand does not always
recognize the aristocrats of pull in the real world--business
leaders who lobby politicians for subsidies for themselves and
restrictions on their competitors (Rothbard 1968; Johnson 2006).



Rand rejects the criticism that unregulated, *laissez-faire*
capitalism would lead to a concentration of power in a few hands and
undermine people's ability to lead their own lives,
because *laissez-faire* capitalism requires the rule of law, a
well-defined system of property rights, freedom of contract, and, as a
corollary, a government that abstains from all favoritism. In such a
society, competition and opportunity will flourish, and prevent
concentration of power in a few hands. 



Rand holds that there is no conflict between one person's
rational interests and another's, hence that there is no
conflict between their rights (1962a, 1964a: 57-65). Is it true,
however, that rational interests cannot conflict, or that, if they do,
it follows that rights must also conflict? Our answer to both
questions is 'no'. We think that whenever two or more
people have a rational interest in one good, there is potential for
conflict, and sometimes that potential is actualized. To show
otherwise, Rand considers a situation in which two people apply for
the same job, and the better candidate gets the job. There is no
conflict of interests here, she argues, because the better candidate
has earned the job, and the loser cannot rationally wish to have been
given the job. Both applicants also know that competition for jobs is
a good thing, because the business would close if only one person
applied for its jobs (presumably, because that would mean that the
business wasn't doing very well).



Both points are well-taken. But what if the employer is not rational
and gives the job to the somewhat less qualified applicant because,
say, he reminds the employer of his long-lost brother? Or, what if the
two candidates are equally qualified, and the hiring committee chooses
one over the other by tossing a coin? In both cases there is a
conflict of interests between two rational applicants. Rand raises the
first possibility, that of the irrational employer, but doesn't
trace its implications for her thesis that rational interests
don't conflict. The second possibility, that of two equally
qualified candidates, she does not consider at all. Rand would be on
firmer ground if she were to argue that there is no *necessary*
conflict between rational interests, that is, that it is not in
their *nature* to conflict. When they conflict, it is due to
contingent factors, such as only one job for two equally qualified
people. In any case, a conflict between rational interests does not
entail a conflict between rights, since, as Rand herself points out,
neither party has a right to the job.



Rand defines government as: 



> 
> 
> an institution that holds the exclusive power to *enforce*
> certain rules of social conduct in a given geographical area. (1963a:
> 125) 
> 
> 
> 



A proper government is: 



> 
> 
> *the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under
> objective control*--i.e., under objectively defined law.
> (1963b: 128) 
> 
> 
> 



Such a government is minimal, limited to protecting us from criminals
and foreign aggressors, and enforcing individual rights and contracts
with the help of the police and armed forces, using objectively
defined civil and criminal laws and courts. Someone who violates his
contracts, or engages in fraud, is guilty of the
"indirect" use of force, in that he obtains a value from
another without that person's consent (1963a: 111). Accordingly,
the government may use or threaten force only in retaliation against
those who initiate or threaten force directly or indirectly. A
government that tries to enforce the brother's keeper
principle--"from each according to his ability, to each
according to his need"; or that drafts citizens into the armed
services or "public service"; or that forces them,
directly or indirectly, to become more virtuous, well-mannered,
healthy, or wealthy, violates rights. Statism in all its forms, from
unlimited democracy to a mixed economy to dictatorship, is at odds
with our status as independent, rational beings, as ends in
ourselves. Statism also destroys ability and fails to fulfill
anyone's needs for long, because "[t]o deal with men by
force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion"
(1973a: 32). The fountainhead of all progress is the human mind, and
the mind does not function well when forced.



In *Atlas Shrugged* Rand depicts her utopia, Galt's
Gulch, as a "voluntary association of men held together by
nothing but every man's self-interest", without any formal
organization (1957 [1992]: 690). There is a judge to arbitrate
disagreements, but there has never been any need for arbitration.
Galt's Gulch is, thus, an anarchist society, although Rand never
calls it that. In "The Nature of Government", however,
Rand rejects anarchism as irrational and unworkable because, she says,
it is incompatible with a single, objective system of law and, thus,
with rights and peaceful cooperation (1963a; cf. 2018b). Anarchist
critics, such as Roy Childs (1969 [1994]) and Murray Rothbard (1978),
have argued that a territorial monopoly on law and force (government)
is not necessary, because people can establish a just and effective
legal system in a competitive market of security providers (see Long
and Machan 2009). The Law Merchant, a body of law established and
enforced in private courts by the merchants of various countries,
illustrates the possibility of an effective voluntary legal
system. Further, a government is incompatible with Rand's own
principle of the non-initiation of force, a principle she regards as
the linchpin of a moral society (Long 2013; cf. Cox 2013a and
2013b).



The trader principle states that a voluntary, mutually beneficial
exchange between independent equals is the only basis for a mutually
respectful and rational relationship (1961b: 31). It is also the only
basis for a peaceful relationship among countries: "the trader
and the warrior have been fundamental antagonists throughout
history" (1966a: 38).



The trader principle applies to emotional relationships as well. To
love or admire someone is to "pay" him for the pleasure
one derives from his virtues (1961b: 31)--or, Rand might say in
the case of love for a small child, from his personality. It would
seem, however, that the trade between parent and child is unequal,
given that the child receives both pleasure and material support from
the parent. And it is unclear how the trader principle applies at all
when a severe disability renders a beloved child or spouse a source of
pain rather than pleasure.


### 3.2 Feminism



If feminism is the view that women are, and ought to be recognized as,
men's intellectual, moral, sexual, and political equals, then
the Objectivist philosophy of human nature is inherently feminist,
since it applies equally to all human beings, regardless of gender (or
race) (N. Branden 1999). Decades before it was considered acceptable
for women to lack "maternal instincts" or pursue careers,
Rand created heroines who lack the first and pursue the second, free
of guilt or
 self-doubt.[11]
 Kira (*We the Living*) wants to be an engineer, and Dagny
(*Atlas Shrugged*) runs Taggart Transcontinental, the largest
and most successful transcontinental railroad in the country. None of
Rand's heroines sacrifices her interests, intellect, or
principles for the man or men in her life. One literary critic argues
that Dagny is the first, and perhaps only, epic heroine in Western
literature because of the grandness of her vision, her courage and
integrity, her unusual abilities, and her national importance
(Michalson 1999). Rand's depiction of her heroines'
enjoyment of sex and their freedom from all merely conventional norms
about sex anticipates the sexual liberation movement of the
20th century by at least 30 years. In all three novels, it
is the heroine who has the power to choose which of the men who love,
admire, and desire her (and only her) she will have. Rand was also an
ardent champion of a woman's right to control her own
reproductive choices (1968a, 1981).



Her relationship to the feminist movement, however, was more complex.
Although she praised Betty Friedan's *The Feminine
Mystique*, mainstream feminism's collectivism and emphasis
on women as victims later led her to reject feminism as such. Many
theorists argue that Rand's work, especially *Atlas
Shrugged*, upholds important feminist ideals, even as it succumbs
to some anti-feminist tendencies that contradict her individualistic
ethics (e.g., Gladstein 1978, 1999; B. Branden 1999; Presley 1999;
Sheaffer 1999; Taylor 1999). Many others regard her and her work as
plainly anti-feminist, with Susan Brownmiller even calling her
"a traitor to her own sex" (Brownmiller 1975). One
criticism takes aim at the individualism of Rand's ethics and
politics, which rejects any special government help for women or
discrimination against men (e.g., Harrison 1978). Another objects that
Rand has internalized a masculine conception of human nature and
virtue, and then created her ideal woman in light of this conception
(Brownmiller 1975; Glennon 1979). This may be responsible for
Rand's puzzling (and offensive) view that the essence of
femininity is to hero-worship (not men, but) masculinity, while
insisting (as her novels depict) that women and men are inherently
equal and that the ideal romantic relationship is between moral and
intellectual equals (1968b; cf. Brown 1999). At least as offensive to
many are the violent sex scenes in her novels, especially the infamous
scene in *The Fountainhead* that many regard as rape, where
Howard Roark has sex with Dominique in spite of her resistance.



Those who reject the charge of rape argue that in the 1940s and 50s,
when Rand wrote her novels, it would have been seen as rough sex
rather than non-consensual sex (McElroy 1999; Sheaffer 1999). That
Rand herself thought of this scene as consensual is shown a few pages
later, when she writes: "They had been united in an
understanding beyond the violence, beyond the deliberate obscenity of
his action" (1943: 218). And in letters to disturbed readers in
1946 and 1965, Rand denied that the scene is "actual rape"
which, she stated, is "a dreadful crime", a "vicious
action and a violation of a woman's rights" (Rand 1995a).
On the other hand, she also depicts Dominique exultantly telling
herself that she's been raped. McElroy wonders if having her
heroine call it rape is just another instance of Rand's desire
to provoke and shock the reader (McElroy 1999), as when she uses
"selfishness" to mean "rational
self-interest".


## 4. Aesthetics



Rand holds that our actions need guidance by a vision of the
fundamental nature of the universe and of the efficacy of human
thought and activity--a vision that can be grasped directly
rather than requiring the conscious repetition of long chains of
abstract reasoning. The chief function of art is to meet this
psychological need by expressing abstract conceptual values and
metaphysical truths in concrete perceptible form. Art, according to
Rand, constitutes a selective, stylized re-creation of reality, with
the principle of selection being the artist's "sense of
life", a set of implicit "metaphysical
value-judgments", i.e., judgments about what is fundamentally
significant about the world and our place in it. (There is controversy
among Rand scholars as to whether what is re-created in art is certain
elements of reality or reality as a whole, i.e., a
"microcosm", as well as how and whether the concept of
re-creation applies to apparently non-representational forms of art:
Torres and Kamhi 2000; Bissell 2004.) Both the artist's creative
work and the audience's emotional responses to it are driven by
their senses of life, that is, the worldviews they have "formed
by a process of emotional generalization ... a subconscious
counterpart of a process of abstraction" (1966b: 27). The role
of art in sustaining us psychologically by providing a concretization
of our most fundamental values is a frequent theme in Rand's
fiction as well, especially *The
 Fountainhead*.[12]



While art can be used to convey information or to advocate a position,
such functions are secondary to its chief task: providing an object
whose mere contemplation brings spiritual fulfillment. Hence Rand does
not regard her own novels primarily as vehicles for her philosophy,
though of course they are that *inter alia*. Given her own
worldview, Rand favors literature with a strong plot as a way of
expressing purposeful human action in a world of causal regularity,
and stories involving value-conflicts as a way of expressing the
importance of free choice; hence her preference for romantic (as
opposed to, e.g., naturalistic) literature. But Rand holds that it is
possible to evaluate an artwork's aesthetic value simply in
terms of its success in conveying a concretization of the
artist's sense of life, whether or not one shares the values and
judgments so conveyed.