Objectivism by Leonard Peikoff

Author:Leonard Peikoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.

Values as Objective

Since integration is crucial to the process of understanding, let us now connect the ethical knowledge we have been gaining to its roots in the Objectivist metaphysics and epistemology.

In general terms, the connection is evident. A morality of rational self-interest obviously presupposes a philosophic commitment to reason. But let us be more specific. Let us identify the role in this context of Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts, which is the essence of her view of reason. More than anything else, this is the theory that makes the Objectivist ethics possible.

For Objectivism, values, like concepts, are not intrinsic or subjective, but objective.47

Just as concepts do not represent intrinsic features of reality, but presuppose a mind that performs a certain process of integration, so values are not intrinsic features of reality. Value requires a valuer—and moral value, therefore, presupposes a certain kind of estimate made by man; it presupposes an act of evaluation. Such an act, as we know, is possible only because man faces a fundamental alternative. It is possible only if man chooses to pursue a certain goal, which then serves as his standard of value. The good, accordingly, is not good in itself. Objects and actions are good to man and for the sake of reaching a specific goal.

But if values are not intrinsic attributes, neither are they arbitrary decrees. The realm of facts is what creates the need to choose a certain goal. This need arises because man lives in reality, because he is confronted by a fundamental alternative, and because the requirements of his survival, which he does not know or obey automatically, are set by reality (including his own nature). The particular evaluations a man should make, therefore—both in regard to ultimate purpose and to the means that foster it—do not have their source in anyone’s baseless feeling; they are discovered by a process of rational cognition, the steps of which have already been indicated.

Moral value does not pertain to reality alone or to consciousness alone. It arises because a certain kind of living organism—a volitional, conceptual organism—sustains a certain relationship to an external world. Both these factors—man and the world, or human consciousness and reality—are essential in this context. The good, accordingly, is neither intrinsic nor subjective, but objective.

Here is Ayn Rand’s statement of the point:The objective theory holds that the good is neither an attribute of “things in themselves” nor of man’s emotional states, but an evaluation of the facts of reality by man’s consciousness according to a rational standard of value. (Rational, in this context, means: derived from the facts of reality and validated by a process of reason.) The objective theory holds that the good is an aspect of reality in relation to man—and that it must be discovered, not invented, by man.48

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