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Limits to the Effectiveness of Moral Judgment Of the six virtues, only justice requires others in order to practice it. In essence, this virtue demands that we grant to others what they earn, good or bad. Ayn Rand's essay "How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?" in The Virtue of Selfishness prescribes a single statement to accomplish this goal: "One must never fail to pronounce moral judgment." Much consternation in the Objectivist movement has arisen over exactly the best way to practice the virtue of justice -- to pronounce moral judgment and to give that pronouncement the teeth needed to make it effective. Various schisms, excommunications and ostracisms have taken place at one end of the spectrum of practice, while excessively tolerant "somnambulist ecumenism" has marked the other end. This wide difference of applications of justice demands a re-examination of its function in order to discover how optimally to practice this challenging virtue. Your Own Life as the Root of All Your Values Objectivism treats each individual as an end in himself -- as his own highest value. All other values become subservient to this ultimate value. The three primary spiritual values of Objectivism -- reason, purpose, self-esteem -- empower a man to guide himself towards a flourishing life. The three accompanying virtues -- rationality, productiveness, pride -- serve as the means to those ends. But even those ends -- the three primary spiritual values -- themselves serve as a means to the ultimate end, namely, the life of the person who seeks to gain and to keep them. According to Ayn Rand's essay "The Objectivist Ethics" in The Virtue of Selfishness, the values and virtues form a hierarchy of importance: Life Rationality Independence Integrity Honesty Justice Productiveness Pride An examination of this hierarchy shows that justice simply serves as a rational method for judging the overall characters of others and then acting accordingly in a productive manner. Thus, justice serves as a guide to action in how we conduct ourselves around others, including the relationships we choose to make or to break. Judging versus Moralizing An unnatural preoccupation with moralizing within Objectivist circles has led to needless friction and malevolence. The demand that we pronounce moral judgment simply means that we make the sincere effort to judge a given person as worthy or unworthy of a specific relationship or specific rewards or penalties. This internal thought process, a form of the rationality that justice should serve, distinguishes from the external verbal process into which so many Objectivists attempt to transform justice. The latter amounts to moralizing rather than simply judging and often runs counter to the virtue of productiveness that rationality needs ultimately to guide. Objectivism contends that a person's every action needs at last to benefit that person. When considering how best to judge others, this definitive end needs always to remain in mind so as to retain context for effective application. Objectivists from a religious background often make the mistake of attempting to apply justice as an out-of-context "all or nothing" virtue and to engage in the same sort of dogmatic moralizing in which their church ministers engaged. These acts may make their practitioners feel good for the moment, but they seldom serve long-range self-interest. Such actions distract the focus of the practitioner away from improving himself and towards attempting to change others through highly ineffective means. In effect, this misapplication of justice leads to an others-centered world view rather than a self-centered one. It places the locus of control on "them" instead of on "me." For example, an Objectivist who understands the evils of religion may declare openly all Christians as irrational evaders. He may offer his unsolicited judgment to all persons he sees wearing crosses as jewelry that the cross represents torture and death. He may even break all relations with his parents and siblings because they refuse to renounce the religious beliefs in which they have found lifelong comfort. While he may find all these actions justifiable, do they serve the ultimate end of his own life? I argue that they do not. Do better strategies exist for employing justice that better maximize one's own enjoyment of his own life? I contend that they do. Justice as a Guide to Relationship-Building To flourish in a free society, i.e., to maximize the realization of one's own chosen life-affirming values, a person needs to build productive relationships with others. Such a person will need different kinds of relationships to serve different kinds of values. These various roles that a person fills in his parts of those relationships demand that he produce values for trade with the other parties of those relationships. If he values wealth, for example, he will need to fill the role of investor and to provide the capital or sweat equity needed to produce value for the others involved in a given investment. If he values romance, he will need to discover what his lover values and then to produce those values to the best of his ability in his role as lover. If he values friendship, he will need to learn skills of empathy and intense listening so that he can better fill his role as a productive friend. In each of these relationships, justice serves an important function. It helps one to assess the character of the other people with whom one wants to form these productive relationships so as to maximize enjoyment of life over the course of one's own lifetime. Justice serves that ultimate end and no other. "You Have Now Labeled Me as 'Immoral'! So What?" Various online Objectivist forums have revealed clashes regarding how to judge a particular action or person as moral or immoral. Much of this activity amounts to intellectual masturbation: It generates a great deal of heat and gives the words of the participants the appearance of great exertion and intensity, but in the end, all of the effort goes down the drain. Seldom do these exchanges spawn valuable progeny. Objectivism provides us with valid principles by which to think and to act independently of others. This has not stopped some Objectivists from attempting to inculcate dependence in other Objectivists through bullying and intimidation techniques. Insulting labels of "immoral" or "evader" or "whim worshipper" permeate some Objectivist circles. They amount to the premise: "Agree with me or I will not like you any more." Ironically, these browbeating techniques only work on persons of a dependent mindset. A person who manifests the Objectivist virtue of independence will quite properly respond to such a scathing ad hominem critique of his well-reasoned judgment with the five words that spell liberation: "I do not need you." Conclusion The virtue of independence demands that each of us acts on his own best judgment regardless of the contrary say-so of others. Many Objectivists miss this point in their haste to moralize, and they do so at their own loss. A person can enjoy much more total value in life by simply using justice as a method of discreetly forming productive relationships rather than as a form of moralistic masturbation. If a given relationship proves to subtract value from life, then certainly one should dissolve it. However, engaging in moralizing over actions outside the scope of a given relationship's value fails to fulfill the ultimate function of virtue, namely, the enhancement of one's own life. Related Links
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