Regarding the Objectivist Theory of Rights

Given that Objectivists believe that man's fundamental right is his right to life, and given that Rand defined that right as "the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action", how could Objectivists claim that one can have the right to choose to die? How can suicide, for instance, be a right if the most fundamental of man's rights is the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action?

Post 1

Sunday, December 21, 2008 - 7:23pm

The right to choose to die is implicit in the concept that your life is YOURS. If you cannot choose to end it, it doesn't really belong to you at all. I would also argue that given Objectivist views on right and wrong and personal choice, even if it were argued that suicide is absolutely wrong, a person has the right to be totally wrong if the only consequence is their own downfall.

Post 2

Sunday, December 21, 2008 - 7:50pm

Ryan,
First of all, thanks for your response.
I think that the problem is with Rand's saying that man's most fundamental right was the right to life, and then defining that right in terms of life-sustaining action. If his own life-sustaining action is his most fundamental right, then how can he have a right to commit suicide? Obviously that would not be life-sustaining. Yet, according to Rand, ALL rights are rights to those types of action neccessary to sustain human life.

Post 3

Sunday, December 21, 2008 - 8:47pm

Christopher, I think you are absolutely right, that if rights and morality depend upon and derive from the need for morality to sustain life, then technically, Rand has a problem. Of course, like Ryan, I disagree with the implication. Rand obviously did too. She would probably have said that one's life means one's life qua man, and that if one cannot live as it is proper for man to live, then one can commit suicide. I would simply say that the choice to live is really the choice to live a happy life, and that if that is not available one has no duty to nature or man to live an unhappy life. I would not say that I can derive a right to suicide. For example, if I am suicidal, and you use force, restrain me, and then change my mind, can I say you violated my right to kill myself? I don't see how that could be argued. But one always has the right to, say, take as much medicine as one thinks is reasonable. It might lead to death. Once you are dead you cannot be prosecuted. So you could say you have the right to engage in acts which could have death as their consequence. But the right to death itself seems nonsensical. For that reason, and for the fact that it perverts the role of the doctor, the law, and the coroner's office, I oppose physically assisted suicide, as in Kevorkian injects you with poison. If you want to inject yourself, that's fine. But I deny that you have the right to have someone else actively and proximately kill you.

Post 4

Sunday, December 21, 2008 - 8:51pm

"If his own life-sustaining action is his most fundamental right, then how can he have a right to commit suicide? Obviously that would not be life-sustaining. Yet, according to Rand, ALL rights are rights to those types of action neccessary to sustain human life." That's a keen observation, Christopher.

I would suggest that our rights are authenticated at a broad level of abstraction. That is, no philosopher had to determine whether or not I had a right to use the keyboard to enter this post. Instead, the determination was that liberty and property rights are needed to live life that is proper to man. And the determination (reasoning) was that one man's rights were limited only by the rights of another. This also turns out to be a very practical approach because I can answer for myself what right of action I can employ and what I can not. I just ask, "Would that action violate the right to another?" Notice that the actions that would violate a right are also broadly defined - no initiation of force, no threat to initiate force, no theft, and no fraud.

There is a continuum of most abstract to the most particular and concrete that we are discussing when we go from ethical rights to a constitution based upon them to a particular law based upon the constitution to a specific event or situation that may or may not be subject to a law.

Post 5

Sunday, December 21, 2008 - 9:00pm

I think that it might also be relevant that having the RIGHT to something doesn't necessarily mean that you must exercise that right. Just because I have the right to sustain my life, does not mean that I have the obligation to do so.

Post 6

Monday, December 22, 2008 - 3:11pm

Thanks to all you guys for your responses.
It was a hard night for me last night trying to decide if I agree with Rand that the most fundamental right is the right to sustain oneself. I still have not decided one way or the other, though I feel that Ryan's last post might possibly be able to help me out in this regard. I want very much to have a philosophy which is consistent both with itself as well as reality as I know it, and Objectivism certainly sounds better to me than any other system I know of. I also know that I definitely believe in capitalism if that means that everyone is free to do anything except initiate force against others, etc... I just possibly might end up disagreeing on what I think the most basic rights for man are. Thanks again for trying to help me.

Post 7

Friday, December 26, 2008 - 12:04pm

Christopher,

I've heard around the grapevine that the most fundamental right is the right to happiness (i.e., to happy living), instead of the right to life. The folks who've said the fundamental right is to happiness ended up arguing for minimum living standards for all at the expense of a few (the few really really productive folks). Ethically, happiness (happy living) is the ultimate value for humans -- because life without any measure of happiness is not objectively valuable (for any being capable of happiness).

There may be philosophical kinks that ought to be worked out here. It's a good thing that you asked ...

:-)

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 12/26, 12:05pm)

Post 8

Friday, December 26, 2008 - 7:59pm

Christopher,

Please keep in mind that the Objectivist theory of rights defines political principles, but it is not the end of morality, or of virtue, or of values. Those political principles are to provide for the ultimate in freedom, an optimal framework - the most room for people to be and do as they see fit without harming others. But that freedom is, in many senses, just the beginning. There are things that we are morally compelled to observe, like looking after our health, that is apart from the fact that we have the right not to, if we so choose. I have a right to abuse drugs, but good reason not to. There are virtues, like kindness, that are not major virtues, like rationality or productivity, but is still a virtue. And, for good reason, one is never required by law to 'be kind.' Generosity, kindness, compassion, good will.... these are traits and practices that actually come easier for those who are productive, successful, and happy - which is what freedom makes so much easier and more likely for all of us.

If anyone tries to paint a picture of kind, considerate and compassionate altruist society, or a happy, thriving hedonistic society, it is only a picture... and not of reality. Freedom is proper to man, and it opens the door widest to reason. Benevolence is the most likely outcome of a free society because of that.

Post 9

Friday, December 26, 2008 - 8:29pm

I'll sanction that. But kindness is a major virtue. It is instrumental in achieving the ultimate value, happiness. Maybe you meant charity. But charity is not always kindness.

Post 10

Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 6:28am

SW: There are things that we are morally compelled to observe, like looking after our health, that is apart from the fact that we have the right not to, if we so choose. I have a right to abuse drugs, but good reason not to.

I am reading Rothbard's Great Depression. He makes the point that from strict calculation alone, injecting money into the credit supply looks the same as actually having gold in the storehouse, though they are, of course, diametrically opposed. So, on the mistaken assumption that previously earned wealth is being lent for more production, it is actually consumption that increases. So, reading that, I asked myself "Why?" Businesses know from public announcements that the interest rate is lowered for reasons having nothing to do with gold in the storehouse. Why, then, do they act irrationally?

Your answer, Steve, is that virtue is internal, not external. It takes self-discipline to do the right thing when everyone else is being so publicly wrongheaded. "If you can keep your head when all about you
are losing theirs and blaming it on you..." It is why Adam Smith was taught moral philosophy before he wrote a book on economics and why Ayn Rand said that she was not primarily and advocate of capitalism but primarily an advocate of reason.

Post 11

Monday, January 5, 2009 - 6:26pm

I thought I'd mention that I noticed Andrew Bernstein saying in The Capitalist Manifesto that man's most fundamental right is to be free from force. This differs from what Rand says in "Man's Rights" (see The Virtue of Selfishness). In the latter work, Rand describes man's most fundamental right as being the right to life, and then goes on to describe that right as being the right to engage in self-sustaining behavior. I wonder, did Rand ever say anything that could have led Bernstein to make the interpretation of Rand that he did? I no longer have a copy of The Capitalist Manifesto, and I'm not sure what Rand says is man's most fundamental right in that book.

Post 12

Tuesday, January 6, 2009 - 3:35pm

The freedom to sustain your life when it is value implies the freedom to destroy it when it isn't, because it implies the right to determine for yourself which actions are self-sustaining and which are not.

Thus, the state can't come along and say, "You can't do that, because WE'VE judged that it isn't conducive to your survival. YOUR judgement is the only thing that matters. So, even if you're doing something that the state judges is suicidal, it has no right to stop you.

- Bill

Post 13

Thursday, January 8, 2009 - 7:15pm

"The right to life" requires the definition of "right" and "life" to begin with, if it is to be meaningful.

A "right" in an ethical/legal context is an inherently negative concept. It says that I may morally, ethically and legally deny you interference in my actions, whether walking down the street or farming a field or building a dam or a nuclear power plant. Whether or not this is the case - that I can validly make such a claim, and how the specific derivation in any particular case defines the limits to a specific "right" is a matter of contract, precedent and fact - i.e., the substance of the Common Law.

Oops, out of time...

Next time: What is Life?

Post 14

Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 3:13pm

I think that the underlying issue here is whether life is the standard of right and wrong, or merely the standard for what would procure for one a gain or a loss. Objectivists have shown clearly, I think, that things can only be gains or losses contingent upon the choice to live. However, "right" and "wrong" may be wider (more inclusive) than merely "that which brings one gain" or "that which brings one loss", respectively. Obviously, if I do not want to live, nothing could bring me an objective gain or loss (including commiting suicide). If right and wrong are broader than "what brings one gain" or "what brings one loss", then the most basic question of ethics becomes "What is the standard of what is rational?" and the word rational, as used in that question has to mean more than merely "what would bring one gain". So then, what is the standard of what is rational? Obviously it cannot be life, as it is sometimes rational to commit suicide. Life, again, may be the standard for gain, but not for what is rational.
Objectivism seems to start, in ethics, by showing that gains or losses can only be figured in with reference to the goal of living. It then takes this to mean that what is right is what promotes man's life and what is wrong is that which destroys it. However, what is right (in the sense of rational or appropriate) and what is wrong are broader than what brings one gain or what brings one loss. For, in some cases, not valuing one's life would make sense.
As to the issue of what the standard of right and wrong are, I haven't the slightest clue; however, I do believe there exists such a thing.

Post 15

Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 7:00pm

So then, what is the standard of what is rational?

Interesting question. Rationality is not just the adherence to truth, altho that is surely one of its attributes. There is strategy involved as well. Because we all - well, all you other people, anyway - have had the experience of being WRONG, on occasion, we should factor in the possibility that we are wrong in any given instance. After all, we were convinced that we were right before, and it turned out otherwise.

However, we are not calculating robots, programmed to a task. As living beings, we have finite resources of time and energy. So, a strategy for rationality has to take into account the evaluative weight of the subject matter - i.e., does it really matter? Are we just intellectualizing or are there real and important consequences as to what position we adopt as truth? Rationality then really becomes decision theory. We choose what to consider based upon the relative importance of the outcomes, and we choose what to act upon - to behave as though we had absolute certainty - based upon the values at stake multiplied by the probability of which path is correct.

And, since we don't have time for infinite regressions, we start from assumptions and then check them as needed.

(Edited by Phil Osborn on 1/15, 7:02pm)

Post 16

Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 8:07pm

When you were wrong, Phil, you relied on bad information, or you were illogical. That doesn't lead to doubts as you suppose.

Post 17

Friday, January 16, 2009 - 10:36am

I wanted to add something which said why what I posted in post 14 was connected to the issue about which I originally started this thread.
Although it seems obvious to me, I realized after I logged off that other people might not find it so obvious, for they do not know all my other thoughts that make the connection so apparent.
Anyway, if "what is right" is for man to sustain his own life, then the most basic right would be the right to life (with life, again defined essentially as Rand defined it in her article "Man's Rights"). All other rights, in other words, would be rights which were neccessary for man to be able to maintain his own life. However, if it is merely good (in the sense of representing a gain) for a man to sustain his life, but what is right could be either man choosing to live or his choosing not to live, depending upon circumstances, then man may be said to have a most basic right which was broader than just to live. This right would express the essence of what it means to be rational, or right in one's thinking and action, with the standard of what is right or rational being something other than life (though I don't know what this standard would be, I admit).
One Objectivist argument in politics is that if it is good for man to maintain his life, then it must be good for him to possess the legal right to do so. I would answer that although this is all the case, man needs a basic right which is broader than merely that which brings hims gain. Not that gain is ever bad, mind you, but there are times when things are right but not good. Objectivists seem to me, in other words, to confuse "the rational" (or what is "right", or "appropricate") with what is good. They simply aren't the same thing. The only problem then becomes finding a standard for what is right, which I've been ubable to do. Also, there is no reason that this standard for what is rational would not best allow for everthing which was good. For the good (in terms of purposeful actions of man which are good) is a sub-species of what is right.

(Edited by Christopher Parker on 1/16, 10:39am)

Post 18

Friday, January 16, 2009 - 1:50pm

As to the issue of what the standard of right and wrong are, I haven't the slightest clue; however, I do believe there exists such a thing.

I think everyone has a different set of primary goals they want to accomplish and different priorities on these goals. Achievement of these goals is the basis if their moral system, that which helps a person attain their primary goals is good, that which hinders or prevents their primary goal attainment is bad. This may be a topic where I dissent from Objectivism, I recognize that people have primary goals other than their own life, and recognize that to such people they have no rational reason to convert to having an Objectivist's primary goals. One first needs goals in order to claim something is good or bad, because good and bad are only in reference to goal attainment.

It sounds to me like you are looking for some universal standard of right and wrong, something that every living thing can use to determine whether something is good or bad. I argue that for a given organism, that organism's primary goal attainment is the standard-- whatever its own primary goals are.

Post 19

Friday, January 16, 2009 - 1:58pm