Objectivism 101

Lesson 4: Rational Ethics

Value-based ethics

Amongst all the possible values, it should be obvious now that some of them are favorable to man's life, and some are not. Someone may pursue happiness, while another may pursue grief (albeit not always explicitly). Every positive value has an opposite, the two most obvious being survival and death.

Some examples of positive, life-affirming values : health, honesty, friendship, rationality.
Their negative, life-destroying opposites : illness, dishonesty, enmity, irrationality.

The hierarchy of values therefore forms a double pyramid, which is illustrated below.

(for more on the hierarchical nature of values, see the last paragraph of p392, and p393)

We can now begin to answer our initial question. What does it mean to accomplish a good action ? It means to trade lower values for higher values.

In any trade that is made freely, this notion is implicit. If I pay 8,99$ for a pizza, I do so because the pizza is more valuable to me than the money. Otherwise, I would simply not do the trade at all, and keep the money ! The value of the money is lower to me than the value of the pizza. Obviously, to the producer, these facts are reversed.

But this notion is implicit in all rational actions, not just trading with others. Suppose that, after buying the pizza, I intend to eat the pizza. This action is meant to provide me nourishment.
Since there is nothing negative about this action (supposing that I am not, for example, forsaking going to my own wedding in order to eat the pizza, or something equally stupid), the net result of this action is a gain. Therefore we say properly that such an action is good, moral.

As you saw already, I skipped a lot of things in this last example (like the possibility that there may be negative values associated with me eating the pizza).
The context of an action is very important in determining whenever it is good or evil. I will explain this in detail in the section "Value-based judgments".

Note that this process of calculation according to the hierarchy of values is not a rigid demand to do certain actions in a precise way, and no other. While values are objective and the same for everyone - we all need to eat, work, reason, be happy, etc - their application differs from person to person.

For example, as human beings, we all need to eat. However, we do not all eat the same thing. One may eat chicken while the other eats steak.
Therefore the value of nutrition is applied in different ways, even though it is a very important value for everyone regardless of context.

All that Objectivist ethics is concerned in, is our values, and how our actions size up to them. How we decide to implement them depends on our individual situations and preferences.

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