Objectivism 101

Lesson 5: Living in Society

The egoist in society (part 1)

Now that we have seen the nature and structure of values, let's examine how they apply to our relationships with others.

Here again we must acknowledge a few inescapable facts of reality :

1. To maintain a more-than-minimal standard of life, we must cooperate and trade with other people.
A farmer can live off the fruit of his own land, but even he must trade with others to obtain tools and other comforts of life. To attain the standard of life to which we are accustomed today, we must decuple our work by cooperating with others (in companies, for example) and trade with them.

2. To live a happy life, interacting with the people around us in a positive way is essential.
As interpersonal relationships are an important part of our existence as social animals, a person who is consistently hostile to other people will soon find his life has few pleasures. Unless you desire to live on an island with no loved ones, friends, or family, such an attitude will not be conductive to your happiness.

3. Society regulates itself against extreme cases of hostility, such as criminality.
Either by themselves or with a police force, society tends to desire to get rid of people who are so hostile that they are ready to use force against others. Being such a person will usually only get you trouble.

These three facts illustrate that furthering our values cannot be done without treating other people in a benevolent manner.

The mystic proclaims that "man is not an end in himself", and proceeds to demand sacrifice in the name of a spiritual or collectivist ideal. The epistemic skeptic claims that man is an island, isolated in his own mind, and proceeds to advocate rejection and violence against others.

Objectivism rejects both views as irrational. Man is an end in himself, but man is not an island.

This leads us to three important principles.

The first is the trader principle. This principle states that, to receive a value, one must provide a value in return, either actively or passively. One is not owned something by the mere fact of existing.

This does not mean, however, that you should be forced to pay for every favour someone else makes you. It simply means that you do not have the right to claim another's values outright, and other people do not have the right to demand material gain or affection from you if they are a negative influence on your well-being. As Peikoff states in O:PAR (p287) :

To "deserve" a positive, material or spiritual, is not a primary condition : it is an effect, to be achieved by enacting its cause.

In short, this is a principle of justice. One has no inherent right to the unearned. We will see more about justice in the next section. For now, you may read more about the trader principle on pages 286 to 288.

The second principle is benevolence. David Kelley, in his book Unrugged Individualism, defines benevolence in this way :

"Benevolence" means good will toward others. It is a positive attitude toward people in general, a desire for their well-being and for peaceful, cooperative relationships with them. It is contrasted with hostility, malice, envy, or other forms of malevolence. It includes such traits as kindness, generosity, sympathy, charity, and tolerance as elements. (In moral philosophy, these latter are sometimes called the "virtues of benevolence.")

Later, he offers a more detailed definition :

... commitment to achieving the values derivable from life with other people in society, by treating them as potential trading partners, recognizing their humanity, independence and individuality, and the harmony between their interests and ours.

What Kelley is saying is that our primary goal in ethics is to achieve our values, and this cannot be achieved without other people. Most people, although they would not know it with precision, and although they would vehemently deny being egoist, seek roughly rational values. Therefore it is in our interest to pursue common goals in cooperation.

It is our benevolence towards other people and their value which leads to friendship and love, which consist of finding our values expressed in other people.

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