Metaethics, Egoism, and Virtue: Studies in Ayn Rand's Normative Theory

Virtue and Sacrifice: Response to Swanton

101 i n the preceding chapter in this volume, Professor Swanton has raised a fascinating question about Rand’s ethics and looked at Nietzsche for thoughts toward an answer that she believes would also be congenial to Rand. The question is: Can you be faulted for insufficient engagement with the interests of others? And if you can, what then becomes of the principle in Rand’s ethics that you should not make sacrifices for other people? For the insufficiently engaged, better engagement would seem to require sacrifice, whereas nonsacrifice would reinforce an already objectionable state of affairs. What guidance does Rand’s ethics offer for such agents? I think Swanton is correct in suggesting, “Rand needs to argue that it may be in a person’s objective interests to widen her conception of those in whose interests she has a stake” and that Rand can indeed “argue that some failures to identify with others are . . . flawed—expressive perhaps of a deplorable failure of empathy, which is itself expressive of weaknesses of various kinds including a sense of personal worthlessness.” Both of these general sorts of positions can be found in Rand’s views about human relationships . As an example of the first, there is Rand’s analysis of the personality type she calls the “tribal lone wolf” in her essay “Selfishness Without Virtue and sacrifice: Response to Swanton darrYL Wright gotthelf text4.indd 101 8/27/10 11:31 AM 102 ■ darrYL Wright a Self.” This sort of person is entirely alienated from other human beings, and Rand attributes his condition to a fundamental sort of selflessness— a lack of those personal values that constitute a “self” (PWNI 46–51). As an example of the second, there is the character of Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead, whose hatred of all creative and independent people is borne of a deep-seated sense of worthlessness and inferiority. The Sacrifices of Nonideal Agents Swanton imagines a woman with attachment difficulties who values her career above the best interests of her child, and thus chooses to work more than her financial needs require. In effect, Swanton points out an inconsistency among three claims: (i) It is wrong to make a sacrifice. (ii) It is not wrong for the woman to take good care of her child. (iii) It would be a sacrifice for the woman to take good care of her child. These look like they cannot all be true, but it may seem that Rand is directly committed to (i) and—in the case Swanton stipulates—would be hard-pressed to reject either (ii) or (iii). So what to do? Consider (i). After defining a sacrifice as “the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue,” Rand says the following: The rational principle of conduct is the exact opposite: always act in accordance with the hierarchy of your values, and never sacrifice a greater value to a lesser one. This applies to all choices including one’s actions toward other men. It requires that one possess a defined hierarchy of rational values (values chosen and validated by a rational standard). Without such a hierarchy , neither rational conduct nor considered value judgments nor moral choices are possible. (VOS 50) For ease of reference, let us call the principle of conduct stated in the first sentence of this passage R. For Rand, adherence to R is an aspect of the virtue of rationality; it is one of the principles to which a person possessing this virtue is committed.1 The principle’s virtue-constituting status is 1. I take it that this commitment might only be implicit; that is, not one that the person himself could articulate in these terms but one that we could attribute in view of his characteristic ways of deliberating and making decisions. Further, I take it that a person whom we would properly consider to have the virtue of rationality, as Rand understands it, might gotthelf text4.indd 102 8/27/10 11:31 AM Virtue and sacriFice ■ 103 important for the following reason. In Rand’s ethics, what is normative, in the first instance, is not the freestanding principle itself but the entire virtue that the principle helps constitute. Thus, it is also part of the virtue of rationality to choose and validate one’s values by a rational standard and, as part of that process, to integrate one...