RoR: Forum

Once again, Joseph, thanks for an interesting and challenging essay. You are right: Objectivist morality - the virtue of selfishness - is unique. Books on morality and ethics seldom address egoism, and when they do, the framework is always within altruism. When they ask "Can egoists be moral?" they attempt to question (and perhaps supply an answer, not very good) whether and to what extent an egoist can act in the interests of others. The only way to be moral, for them, is to abandon your self-interest. The few books that I found at my university library simply did not come close to articulating the virtue of selfishness -- except, of course, the one book by that name.

That said, we are also unique in that Ayn Rand demonstrated repeatedly that morality rests on reason and reality. Others, such as Max Stirner, and Friedrich Nietzsche, made stomping around and pounding your chest a causeless primary. And they never got beyond the primitive. Rand's egoism is in and of the modern world. She tied selfishness to capitalism and romanticism.

So, you cogently chose morality as a central focus, a nexus, for everything else. Conceptually, morality rests on deeper truths, but it is a good place to start.

Post 1

Thursday, June 30, 2016 - 12:17pm

I agree with Marotta. (I can nearly hear the bodies hit the floor as they faint from the shock of that sentence :-)

It is true that epistemology and metaphysics are more fundamental than morality, but that doesn't mean they should be the nexus, the entry point, the common starting ground. Morality should be these because it ties in to, and is intricately bound to 'purpose.' Without morality we couldn't determine the objective purpose for a given context. And we can't form an individual purpose, or pursue it, without morality. Life is about sucessful actions, and morality is about purposeful actions.

Our health, at a certain level, is a requirement for going about our lives - and in that sense, fundamental, but unless it presents a problem we aren't going to be focused on it whereas morality, properly understood, is totally intertwined with the pursuit of the good life.

Just as health would be our primary focus only if it becomes a problem, we'd only focus on epistemology or metaphysics to straighten out thinking problems that we'd trace to those levels.

I suspect that psychology, particularly in terms of self-awareness, is a nexus in a different way, but just as fundamental to living a good life. Maybe we need to treat psychology more like we do morality, in the sense of being a set of principles that we should keep in mind (and thereby improve our process), and to treat morality a bit more like we do psychology, in the sense of grasping that its principles are directly tied to our individual success and happiness.

Post 2

Friday, July 1, 2016 - 3:28pm

And thanks for the nod. Let them be astonished. My reply on that other problem is in another post. For here and now, let me suggest that Joseph offered an easy and powerful entry to dialog that most of us could use most of the time.

Your own professional work in psychology makes that a natural medium for you. Psychological initiatives are known. Perhaps the most infamous is Dianetics. If you just read the words of their introductiory material, you can see the point, Beyond that, it becomes problematic. The same caution flag could be raised for the Esalen Institute, the Human Potential Movement, and Gestalt Therapy. In our time we now have Trans-Humanism, a derivative of Objectivism, which as won over both Edward Hudgins and Dean Michael Gores. Nathaniel Branden had good (cautionary) words for the Esalen Institute. So, the perspectives of Objectivist psychology, being more correct and consistent, should be more powerful as attractors for those who are unfamiliar with the wider philosophy.

It was Joseph's major thesis that many avenues are open. He suggested Morality. You are free to take Psychology.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 7/01, 3:30pm)

Post 3

Friday, July 1, 2016 - 8:12pm

He [Joe] suggested Morality. You are free to take Psychology.

We have separate areas of knowledge because that is how we study and gain understanding, but with individual actions, we often have to pull together multiple disciplines. For the individuals going about our lives, I think both areas are required for making good decisions. Morality evaluates the means and ends in terms of self-interest. Psychology maintains self-awareness of the quality of those evaluations.

Post 4

Saturday, July 16, 2016 - 9:02pm