Ayn Rand On Why Moral Values

On Page 14 od her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand asks why humans need a code of ethics: "No philosopher has given a rational, objectively demonstrable, scientific answer to the question of why man needs a code of values. So long as that question remained unanswered, no rational, scientific, objective code of ethics could be discovered or defined. The greatest of all philosophers, Aristotle, did not regard ethics as an exact science; he based his ethical system of observations on what the noble and wise men of his time chose to do, leaving unanswered the question of: why they chose to do it and why he evaluated them as noble and wise." My response: Probably no ethicist in philosophical history ever provided their version of what a rational, objective, scientific looked like. Some theorists offered their version of objectivist ethics, but likely nothing as sweeping as Rand's account to follow. Most ethicists would define ethics as normative or subjectively in nature. It is more an ought than an is. My ethics would be moderate, more objective than subjective but both. Why do we need a code of ethics? We are an intelligent species born with free will and alert consciousness. God, Dennis Prager reminds us, is a just God and wants us to be good people, being good as part of the Children of Light, not evil and fallen like the bad people, the Children of Darkness. Animals possess moral instincts that control their behavior, but humans, minus such guiding, curbing instincts, require a code of ethics to know how to live, how to be good, thus pleasing to God, their creator.