Ayn Rand’s False Dichotomy of Whim Worshiping Subjectivism Versus Emotional Repression was caused by her inability to get affects into her theoretical ethics.

Potentially and ideally ethics is an objective guide which would be taken literally. Ideally it is a non-contradictory, unambiguous, unequivocal, understandable, practical, functioning, fundamental, and effective guide, to achieve happiness (for those who choose happiness as their ultimate end, needing no justification as Rand said in “We The Living”).

Most men’s lives are generally complicated. Just as humans are bombarded with millions of percepts and the Objectivist epistemology effectively guides us to forming thousands of concepts to simplify all of those percepts so we can grasp reality; similarly, a proper objective ethics would give a method for developing a constellation of objective moral values from countless affects and percepts. This is what is needed for an effective ethical guide to happiness.

However, the way that the “Objectivist Ethics” is currently and virtually universally understood, by those interested in her secular ethics, models that there are only a few objective moral values: only those ethical values that are universal. There are a few basic moral values (like reason, purpose and self esteem) and a few universal derivatives like a productive career. But in Rand’s “Objectivist Ethics” there is no method for developing personal objective moral values that incorporate personal desires. Instead, niche personal values are widely viewed as outside of the moral landscape because they are not universal.

Analogously, imagine limiting objective knowledge to a few basic concepts: existence, consciousness and identity, and a few others that Ayn Rand defined, and then saying that every other concept is not objective knowledge. That approach would be obviously absurd. Instead there is a method – reason/logic — that anyone can use to integrate their percepts to get new concepts and new knowledge.

But the “Objectivist Ethics” has no similar method of evaluation for the thousands of personal objective moral values needed for happiness. There is no way to validate that architect for Rand’s fictional character Peter Keating is objectively immoral, while the same career choice — architecture –is objectively moral for her fictional hero Howard Roark. Rand gives us no practical and technical ethical guidance for evaluating the myriad of personal values an individual’s happiness requires. Rand does give us her dramatized moral evaluations that Roark is moral while Keating immoral for choosing the same career but she does not give us the ethical manual for achieving the objectively validated moral value that Roark achieves by choosing architecture as his “Central Integrating Purpose.”

Further, the Objectivist Ethics actually excludes emotions from the process of objective moral evaluation. Rand conceives of objective moral evaluation as a type of epistemological objectivity. Therefore, since emotions are not tools of cognition — we agree they are not — it follows for Rand that emotions cannot be tools of objective moral evaluation either.

Dr. Leonard Peikoff states in his “History of Philosophy” course that there has been a 500 year long emphasis on epistemology over ethics. We approach this this issue from the reverse ranking, in other words, reasoning as a part of moral objectivity rather than (objective) moral evaluation as a type of reasoning,

For Rand the ethicist, emotions are seen as a necessarily distorting element and therefore in objective moral evaluation as well. For Rand the fiction writer dramatizing the proper moral conduct of her characters, they dramatize the opposite ranking of affects over conscious moral convictions at key places in her fiction.

Again, in Rand’s formal ethics she has no method of objectively validating moral values that include desires or affects because here, personal desires and personal (non-universal) values can be NO part of objective moral evaluation. However, Rand contradicts her technical ethics in her fiction. A few examples are the following: Rand dramatizes her morally perfect (according to her) hero, Hank Rearden acting on his desire to start an affair with the heroine Dagny, even though his reason told him an affair was immoral because he was married. Yet, in Rand’s fiction Rearden having this affair was the moral thing to do (as long as he continued to try to understand why he desired Dagny and not his wife). Tragically, there is no support for Rearden’s behavior in Rand’s technical ethics; which supports only moral condemnation for Rearden according to Rand’s “Objectivist Ethics” standard: “reason is one’s ONLY judge of values & one’s ONLY guide to action”

Echoing Rand, we read this from Dr. Leonard Peikoff’s book “Objectivism The Philosophy of Ayn Rand” that we should conclude that Rearden should NOT have had the affair before he understood why it was moral: “I must add that anyone, for perfectly innocent reasons, may in some issue experience a clash between emotions and ideas. The rational course then is to DEFER ACTION on the issue until the clash has been resolved. First, one should discover where one’s error lies and correct it; then one can act — assuming time permits such deliberation. If it doesn’t, if some emergency requires an immediate decision, then the person in conflict has to act without full self-knowledge. In such a case, he must be guided by his mind, i.e., by his best conscious judgment of what is consonant with reality, even if his emotions protest. When the crisis is over, he can inquire into the source of his emotional dissent and reestablish mental harmony.” (OPAR, p. 229)

The problem is that if an objective ethical system and practical morality is to be sufficient guide to happiness it would have to incorporate personal desires into the objective moral evaluation process. How could you decide on a particular career, romantic partner, friends, art, or a myriad other values your happiness depends on without reference to your desires. Yet her “Objectivist Ethics” excludes desires on principle. Therefore it can’t be a sufficient guide to happiness as it claims to be.

~UNITING THE PERSONAL AND THE MORAL~

The undefined crutch-like term “Optional Values” is a widespread term used amongst many trying to practice Rand’s secular ethics to achieve happiness.

The choice between architect and painter is considered “morally optional” or an “Optional Value” because it is optional for mankind UNIVERSALLY — even though it is NOT optional for Rand’s characters Keating or Roark. In other words, according to this fallacious “Optional Value/s” approach, Keating’s choice of architect could not be morally wrong for him because it would NOT be a morally wrong for everyone, i.e., not wrong UNIVERSALLY. But in fact, it is not “morally optional” for Keating or Roark to choose architecture. Like most men, their personal happiness was greatly effected by their career choice, or “Central Integrating Purpose.” As dramatized in Rand’s “The Fountainhead,” architecture as a career was objectively immoral for Keating and objectively moral for Roark. However, the Objectivist movement’s official position says that anyone’s productive career choices is “morally optional,” thus, dispensing with “moral objectivity” in one fell swoop.

One of the essential reasons Roark’s career choice as architect was moral — and conversely Keating’s was not moral — was that Roark validly desired to be an architect. In part, without reference to one’s own desires (versus the desires of others like Keating’s mother) one could not justify the morality of Roark’s, or any personal moral choice. Though not an infallible guide — just as logic or reason is not an infallible guide — affects are part of an objective moral value. Specifically moral affects like pride, guilt, and romantic love and many others.

Not having a moral sanction for, or a method of objective moral evaluation — which includes personal desires and a means of validating them — the Objectivist Ethics is a prescription for emotional repression. It’s a protocol for creating Objectivist repressors of the kind that Rand writes about in her article “Art and Moral Treason.” And alternately and alternatively subjective hedonists or “Whim Worshippers” of the kind that Rand writes about in her body of work. One’s personal desires need to be validated, and without validation, just acting on emotions is indeed subjectivism, hedonism, “Whim Worship. Affects or moral emotions can be and should be objectively validated, but a process of reason alone is not the appropriate process for validating one’s emotions.

Rand herself criticized the duty ethics, like Immanuel Kant’s, for excluding personal desire when she wrote: “In a deontological theory, all personal desires are banished from the realm of morality; a personal desire has no moral significance…” (The Objectivist p 867) (Deontological means duty.)

The crux of the issue is that there needs to be a method of incorporating personal desires into the moral realm objectively, and Rand did NOT discover how to do this in her technical ethics, despite wanting to and actually doing it in her real life and in her fiction. How tragic that Rand’s secular, individualistic, egoistic ethics limits objective moral values to the values that are UNIVERSAL can be shared by the collective.

So what is the process for validating affects to make them a part of an objective moral value? That topic is the subject of our upcoming paper “Triumph and Tragedy: The Morality of Ayn Rand Versus the Objectivist Ethics” Part 2 by John Yokela and Brishon Martin.