| | I will try to return to Mr. Hayasha's main issue, of the way in which morality is contingent upon the choice to live, in a separate post below. In the present post, I want to comment on a side-issue that arose in the posts of Bob Mac (#4), Dean Gores (#5), and Robert Malcom (#9).
One definition of sacrifice in my American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is "the forfeiture of something highly valued . . . for the sake of someone or something considered to have a greater value." In that ordinary sense of the term sacrifice, making a sacrifice need not entail a deviation from the pursuit of one's self-interest. If the thing "considered to have a greater value" is considered by oneself to have that greater value, then sacrifice in the ordinary sense of the term could be an action of self-interest.
Rand gave the term sacrifice a special definition, which is the one Mr. Malcom meant: the forfeiture of something of greater value for something of lesser value. Rand used the term in the way she did, and there is no changing that. In better step with common usage, she could have called it inverted sacrifice. That would have been awkward. And she wanted to attack additional branches in the idea of sacrifice. She wanted to attack homage to supernatural deities that goes with the term sacrifice, and she wanted to attack the sacrifice of individuals to collectives.
Mr. Mac, Rand does not assert that life is the only correct choice. The protagonists in her last two novels are crafted to be morally ideal, by the light of her own theory of morality. Her protagonists Howard Roark and John Galt both leave open the possibility of correctly choosing death, even for the sake of someone else. Roark tells his friend Wynand that he would die to save him, though he would not live for him. John Galt does not say that he would not in any circumstance die for another, only that he would not live for another.
You asked, Bob Mac, whether valuing your life, but just not always at the top, is a non-Objectivist position. I regard Objectivism as nothing but the philosophy of Ayn Rand, as expressed in the writings she chose to publish. If I understand her correctly, she would regard the death-options left open for Roark and Galt as true to their lives as human lives. For humans there is having a life as a whole. That life one has is one's composition upon what is dealt one by nature. Trueness to that composed life might entail a choice of death at some point.
I am delighted by your attitude, when you say "I'm not looking to reconcile or justify my choices within Objectivism." See, further http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Boydstun/Pride_of_Place.shtml
Stephen
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