Objectivist Ethics

 

Ayn Rand, the dogmatic moral epistemologist, was convinced that there was an objective system of moral values to guide human actions, and that she can provide for us such a system (Read Pages 14 and 15 of her book, The Virtue of Selfishness: “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 on observations of 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.

 

Most philosophers took the existence of ethics for granted, as the given, as a historical fact, and were not concerned with discovering its metaphysical cause or objective validation. Many of them attempted to break through the traditional monopoly of mysticism in ethics and, allegedly, to define a rational, scientific, nonreligious morality. But their attempts consisted of trying to justify them on social grounds, merely substituting society for God.”

 

My response: Rand is suggesting that until we pose and answer the question as to why people need a code of ethics, we cannot discover the right, correct code of ethics. She may be onto something here. In what follows in her essay on Objectivist Ethics, she will provide an answer to her presuppositional question why, and I largely think she is going about this the right way.

 

I think evil exists in the world as a spiritual, biological, natural, and moral force at work in human nature, and we are born more evil than good, as are the creatures and plants of nature. The fauna and flora of nature, and their destructive, hateful capacities, are limited, re-channeled and controlled by their DNA, by their instincts, by their being curbed under the laws of nature and evolution.

 

Humans, created by God, are intelligent animals, still half-beasts (Beasts are animated by 3/4^th destructive hateful instincts and 1/4^th constructive, loving instincts.), so their wicked urges and temptations are curbed by nature to some limited extent, by the forces of nature, mentioned above and at work to hold humans back a bit.

 

In the other half of our complicated creation, God created us as alive, alert angels, inherently 1/4^th demon and 1/4^th good angel; God gave us intelligence, free will, fairly awake consciousness and the ability to forge deadly weapons, mass movements and armies. Without spiritual and moral values of goodness and love to restrain us by threats of heaven and hell, by religious and moral training, by parental and guidance from authorities, by teaching the principle of voluntary self-control, by sanctions under the legal system, and by pressure to conform brought down on each individual by the community, lawlessness, violence, open warfare and negative anarchy would blossom across our country, crushing and smashing the civil society.

 

This is why we need a moral code; here is a simple, quick version of the ethical system that I propose with these proposed elements contributing: I would suggest direct personal communication with and communing with the Light Couple and their Good Spirits, and all the benevolent deities worshipped on earth, the Ten Commandments, the teachings of the New and Old Testaments, the ethics of Aristotle and the ethics of Mavellonialist self-maverization, a crude, approximate suggested system of values to guide to ethical youngsters being born, tutored and able to carry on well later in this 21 century.

 

The amoralists, postmodernists and nihilists and revolutionaries working in the West to tear down every aspect of our religious, cultural, mythical, and political values are dangerous and completely evil.

 

If they know what they are doing, they are eviscerating the children of light in modern society, so that the Dark Couple can marshal their legions of followers to march in and run society. If they do not know what they are doing but are true believers in their mass movement of Postmodernist/Envirostatist/Marxism, they will still usher in the Reign of the Beast upon all humanity.

 

Because humans are half angel and half beast from birth, their bestial side nudges their demonic angel side--together with Satan running this world, and Lera controlling group and institutional settings to promote and reward/punish agents to comply with wicked practices—to involuntarily side with the children of darkness, ever crushing the children of light that traditionally have fought back valiantly but with limited success.

 

Should the Progressives overthrow the American Way, the masses will not have even Rand’s objectivist ethics, based in rational egoism and staunch individualism, capitalism, and democratic political structures, to help them.

 

Rand might be too dogmatic that a scientific, rationalist, certainly knowable set of moral values can be identified and utilized to bring about moral clarity and improvement, but she is on the right track.

 

What she puts down as inferior ethical standards—values systems based on irrational beliefs, whims and mystical connections to God that does not exist (according to her), are the minority predicates that I would include in my value system. It would be objective-subjective, rational-irrational, scientific-poetic and God inspired-secularly derived.

 

In other words I am not the purest that she is, but I believe my ethical moderation and blending of the different, competing predicates of moral and ontological reality are how the world works, are the truth, and the only way to provide people with the ethical system that they require to save themselves, be happy, make God pleased, stabilize the desired civil society, and give the community the moral guidance it needs for its agents to thrive and survive.

 

Note above how she complains that other moralists have tried to get God out of ethics, to “demystify” ethics by replacing God with society, and she thinks that will not work.

 

Note that Max Stirner complains against Feuerbach and Bauer that dethrone God and put the abstraction humanity in its place, a swapping of one abstraction for another, but both God and humanity are spooks that people adhering to them, will eventually find unsatisfying.

 

Both Stirner and Rand do not find the effort by secular humanists of the 19^th century to replace God with Humanity or Society as sufficiently explanatory for whatever answers they were seeking.