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Productiveness Revisited This is an odd view when taken literally. The central purpose in life is to work? The central value? I thought life was the ultimate value? Perhaps "central" in this context is only meant to describe a major value or purpose, one that has a substantial impact on all of the others. But saying that it determines the hierarchy of other values suggest more than just one among many. It suggests the other values are secondary to this one. This seems like an overstatement. Unless of course she used an expansive view of "productive work" that included all productive actions taken in the pursuit of values. Since life is a self-generated, self-sustaining process, then this would just be an affirmation of life as its own purpose and central value. But that would be a stretch. She continues by saying that productive work "means the consciously chosen pursuit of a productive career, in any line of rational endeavor". So she seems to be using the term in the typical way. Does it make sense to say that we live in order to work? No it doesn't. A career is an important part of life for sure, and is the source of many significant values. Because of the amount of time, training, thinking, and effort involved, it is also an important part of most people's identity. But its importance does not mean it is the purpose of living. Many would say that we work in order to live, but that isn't quite right either. Work is part of life. It is a critical element of that "self-sustaining" process. Life is the actions that you take to further your life. It makes no sense to separate work from life. It would be like trying to describe a basketball game while leaving out the running, shooting, dribbling, etc. In "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand", Leonard Peikoff presents a different definition for productiveness. He sees it as the "process of creating material values", which he says includes goods or services. This slightly different description can be seen as a clarification of "productive work". Work is productive because it creates goods or services. Both Rand and Peikoff explain that man survives by "adjusting his background to himself", in contrast to animals who only adjust themselves to their backgrounds. We have to produce our values if we want to consume them. And we live in a physical world, so we need to translate our values into action and results. These are the justifications for the virtue of productiveness. But why limit productiveness to only "productive work"? Sure, we live in a physical work and need to produce material wealth to live, but why limit productiveness to only material values? Why not include any values that promote our lives? Why are only actions taken to create material values considered an act of productiveness? Peikoff points out that intellectual pursuits, like knowledge or new skills, are not valuable in and of themselves. They are of value when they are translated into physical action and productive achievement. Knowledge for its own sake is not a noble ideal. Knowledge enabling the pursuit of values is. It's not clear whether he considers the act of gaining knowledge or acquiring new skills as a form of productiveness. He does claim that the "mind-body integration" required by productiveness is not completed until knowledge is translated into material wealth. So perhaps productiveness includes more than just actions aimed at material wealth. It could include actions taken to increase you future ability to take actions aimed at material wealth. But then you have to ask if there are any values that this doesn't include? Would relaxation or entertainment count as an act of production, since rest is necessary and can help you to work more later? Would having a romantic relationship be an act of productiveness? Would sex? Would taking a vacation? Would sleeping in on Sunday? Here we come to what I think is the real problem with this view of productiveness. There are two ways of viewing the virtue. Either the virtue includes every pursuit of value in your life, no matter how far removed from material wealth or your career, or it only includes a subset. If productiveness includes every action, physical or mental, aimed at a any rational, objective value, then why was it described as only applying to the pursuit of material wealth or productive career? This would be just confusing. More likely, the virtue of productiveness only treats certain kinds of value pursuits as virtuous. Where exactly is the line drawn, I don't know. If we take Rand's description of a productive career as the line, then only actions taken directly to further that career would count. Working overtime would count. Taking classes or training to get ahead would count. Spending time networking among friends and keeping up with industry changes would count. But the rest of life would not. No romance. No entertainment. No eating or sleeping. Nothing else. It doesn't matter where the line is drawn, though. If the virtue of productiveness does exclude some values, then it leads to a moral conundrum. You may determine rationally that a certain value is beneficial to your life and is the most important value you can pursue right now, and yet to pursue that value instead of pursuing a lesser value related to your career would be considered less virtuous. If you pursued the lesser value, you would be considered more virtuous, at least in terms of productiveness. Perhaps you might say that while you are less productive, you are more rational. But then your virtues would be in conflict with one another. This problematic view of productiveness is not necessary. There's no reason why it must exclude some objective values. There's no reason to incorporate some value priority in the virtue, let alone a value priority that is sometimes inappropriate for your life. Instead, productiveness can be seen in a more general way. It can be seen as the virtue that focuses on taking action to achieve values. Values aren't achieved automatically. You have to take action to pursue them. You can't just wait for them to happen. You have to get up and produce them. Some of the other virtues focus on things that can get in the way of your rationally chosen values and their achievement. Honesty points out that a dishonest view of the world will end in failure. Integrity points out that there are often pressures to not do what you think you should. Independence points out that if you are reliant on someone else, then you need their permission or help to pursue the values you think you should. Like all of these, productiveness points out an obstacle to achieving your rationally determined values. The obstacle is your own unwillingness to act on them. If you don't take action, the values can't be achieved. It's not enough to identify what would be good for your life, you have to do something about it. These values can include material wealth, or intellectual or spiritual values, or relationships with others, or anything else that objectively benefits your life. So if you want to understand a topic more, or gain knowledge, that also requires action. The action may be in the form of active thinking on the subject, or more intense focus, or it could include you reading a book or article. To highlight this view of productiveness, we can focus on values that are almost never seen as "productive": rest and relaxation. These are often seen as the opposite of productiveness. They are viewed as laziness, or a waste of time. But if you recognize that these are objective values, important to your life, then pursuing these values is productive. Like all values, it can be irrational to pursue them when more important values exist, but sometimes these are the most important values. When these legitimate, rational values are seen as unproductive, then you are stuck with a morality that is impractical. It demands that you keep pushing yourself past any level of exhaustion, for the sake of moral perfection. Your own life and happiness become a slave to the favored goals. And when you eventually crash or hate life so much that you slow down and take a break, the morality condemns you as lacking virtue and being morally imperfect. But the problem is a moral virtue that dismisses legitimate values as "not productive".
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