| | This issue was discussed in a previous thread under the Article Discussion Forum, entitled “Daily Linz 6 – A Duty to Live,” to which I contributed three posts: 48, 56 and 65. Below is a not too succinct summary of their essential points:
To say, as Tara Smith does, that "Life is the standard of value and source of moral obligation if it is a person's goal, but [that] it is up to the individual whether to embrace that goal" (Viable Values, pp. 143-145) implies that whether or not he embraces the goal is arbitrary and amoral. But if he has something to live for--if happiness is possible to him--then not to embrace that goal and the potential happiness he could gain from it would be contrary to the Objectivist ethics. Smith continues, "At a broader level, however, the decision of whether to embrace ends is not a question of rationality. Remember that the choice to live is prerational."
On the contrary, ultimate values are not chosen; they are a given and are the foundation of ethical choice. The capacity for happiness and its relationship to life-serving action is part of one's nature as a human being; it is not something one chooses. The only question for ethics is, given this natural basis of value, what choices are rational? To say that the choice to live is "prerational" is a non-sequitur. If one has something to live for--if happiness is possible to one--then the choice to live is rational. If one has nothing to live for--if life is pure agony with no redeeming value--then the choice to suffer needlessly by prolonging one's life is irrational. In either case, the choice to live or not to live is subject to the standard of rationality; it is not and cannot be prerational.
Smith continues, "[...] After all the reckoning about likely future scenarios and effects on a person's ends has been completed, a person reaches a picture of what his life might be. The decision of whether to pursue this stands beyond the reach of reason. How a person arrived at his image of his future could be rational or irrational; whether he wants that future can be neither."
Yes, whether he wants the future can be neither, in the sense that what he wants is not a means to some further end or goal. But what he chooses based on what he wants is indeed subject to the criterion of rationality. Smith is confusing the prerationality of the desire to live with the prerationality of the decision to live. The desire is prerational; the decision is not.
Which brings me to a statement by Peikoff: "Existence, therefore, does demand of man a certain course, it does include the fact that he must act in a certain way--if; if, that is, he chooses a certain goal. . . Morality is no more than a means to an end; it defines the causes we must enact if we are to attain a certain effect. Thus Ayn Rand's statement that the principle replacing duty in the Objectivist ethics is causality, in the form of the memorable Spanish proverb "God said: Take what you want and pay for it."
If life is what you want, you must pay for it, by accepting and practicing a code of rational behavior. Morality, too, is a must--if; it is the price of the choice to live. That choice itself, therefore, is not a moral choice; it precedes morality. (OPAR, pp. 244-245) Later, Peikoff addresses the following objection to this view: If the choice to live precedes morality...what is the status of someone who chooses not to live? Isn't the choice of suicide as legitimate as any other, so long as one acts on it? And if so, doesn't that mean that for Rand, too, as for Hume and Neitzsche, ethics, being the consequence of an arbitrary decision, is itself arbitrary?" [This objection seeks] to prove that values are arbitrary by citing a person who would commit suicide, not because of any tragic cause, but as a primary and an end-in-itself. The answer to this one is: no. A primary choice does not mean an 'arbitrary,' 'whimsical,' or 'groundless' choice. There are grounds for a (certain) primary choice, and those grounds are reality. . .A man who would throw away his life without cause...would belong on the lowest rung of Hell. (p. 248) But to say that there "are grounds for a (certain) primary choice," that "those grounds are reality" and that "a man who would throw away his life without cause...would belong on the lowest rung of Hell" is simply another way of saying that the primary choice is a moral choice, after all. There is no justification whatsoever for consigning a person who makes a pre-moral choice to the lowest rung of Hell, which is a moralistic metaphor if I ever heard one! Kelley was absolutely right in his criticism of Peikoff on this point.
I think that this contradiction in Peikoff’s explanation stems in part from the fact that Rand wasn't as clear as she could have been in her article, "Causality versus Duty" wherein she defends the conditional nature of morality. I do think that Peikoff is right about the wrongness of throwing away your life without cause, but this simply means that, contrary to his earlier remarks, the choice to live is not pre-moral.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that the concept of a pre-moral or pre-normative choice is incoherent. A choice presupposes a standard, which is an end or goal that the choice is intended to serve. One always chooses for a reason or a purpose. In that respect, one's choice is a means to an end. Insofar as the end is not an ultimate value, it can be evaluated by an end that is an ultimate value. In the case of Objectivism, a person's ultimate end or "standard of value" in this context is his highest moral purpose, namely his own happiness. It is for the sake of that end or goal that he "ought" to make his choices. If he chooses death without a good reason--if he decides to commit suicide when happiness is still possible to him--then he has made an irrational or immoral choice. This is what Peikoff ends up saying in so many words without actually acknowledging it, because, of course, to acknowledge it would contradict his earlier point that the choice to live is not a moral choice on the grounds that it precedes morality. Well, if the choice to live is not a moral choice, then the choice to die cannot be immoral; it cannot be a choice that defies reality and merits consignment to the lowest rung of Hell.
Consider Rand’s comments in her essay "Causality Versus Duty": Life and death is man's only fundamental alternative. To live is his basic act of choice. If he chooses to live, a rational ethics will tell him what principles of action are required to implement his choice. If he does not choose to live, nature will take its course.
Reality confronts man with a great many "musts," but all of them are conditional; the formula of realistic necessity is: "You must if --" and the "if" stands for man's choice: "-- if you want to achieve a certain goal." [The Objectivist, July 1970, p. 4] Rand's essay is also reproduced in Philosophy: Who Needs It. But I have a problem with the way she couches her argument. She writes: "You must if--and the 'if' stands for man's choice:--if you want to achieve a certain goal." No, the "if" does not stand for man's choice; it stands for the antecedent condition that determines what choice is appropriate. If you want to achieve a certain goal, then you must choose the means to that goal in order to achieve it. In other words, you do not choose the "if"; you do not choose the antecedent condition or the goal; the goal is that for the sake of which you make the choice.
Rand appears to be saying here that the ultimate goal is chosen, but if the ultimate goal is chosen, then it is not chosen for the sake any further end or goal, in which case, it is arbitrary, which is the very point that Peikoff is denying. And I think he is right to deny it, but in denying it, he is committed to the view that, rather than being something we choose, the ultimate goal is that for the sake of which we make the choice.
- Bill
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