The Objectivity of Rational Eudaimonic Survivalism

The task of discovering an objective system of ethics has been undertaken by philosophers since the beginning of civilization. Aristotle came the closest to uncovering the roots of morality in human life, but his mind was limited by the era in which he lived, as he lacked the wealth of historical knowledge that is now enjoyed. His ethical philosophy was continued in the 20th century by prominent novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, who developed the philosophy of Objectivism.

A fitting name for the ethical perspective forming the genus of the Objectivist ethics is "rational eudaimonic survivalism," highlighting the essential concepts of life, happiness, and rationality present in both Aristotle's and Rand's works. It is this perspective, carefully constructed from an examination of the nature of life and values, that provides the only ethical system in history to be justified in an objective manner, i.e. in full adherence to the facts of reality and human life. The content and justification of rational eudaimonic survivalism will be explored in depth, giving the system the in-depth examination it deserves and tragically lacks from mainstream intellectuals.

Meta-ethical Foundations of Survivalism

Before developing a system of values, their nature must be carefully examined and their necessity thoroughly justified. Aside from Objectivism, no philosophical system has correctly identified the origin of values and fully explored the consequences of its nature. The source is life, and this fact gives rise to a full system of morality starting from survivalism, the position that one's survival forms the core purpose and foundation of ethics.

Since morality comes from life, it must be explored before anything else. An entity is alive if it is engaged in a constant process of self-generated self-sustaining action. A virus is not alive, as it engages in no such process by itself, while all organisms are alive by this definition. Every living organism must seek values, specific objects for which it acts, in order to sustain its life. Just as the continuation of life requires values, the possibility of holding them requires life, as the only entities capable of self-generated goal-directed action are conditional and they must remain alive in order to gain and then keep the objects of their actions. Life and values cannot be separated.

Values make up the foundation of all ethical evaluation. Something is good for a value of an organism if it benefits its acquisition in some way, and bad if it does the opposite. For example, money is good for buying a house, but being robbed is bad for this goal. Indeed, money itself is a value on which the value of shelter rests: what's good for money--all else the same--is ultimately good for home acquisition, and anything bad for money is bad for it (in this context it is assumed for illustration that there is no way to acquire a home except through money). This leads to an essential conclusion: if a value A depends on another value B for its acquisition, then what is good or bad for B is ultimately good or bad for A as well.

With this fact in mind, consider again the logical equivalence of life and value. That which gives rise to the possibility and necessity of seeking values is one's life, and since life can only be sustained through a specific course of action involving constant goal-directed action, life itself is a value as the constant object of an organism's action. An organism's life is the value on which every derivative value depends, deeming it worthy of being considered the ultimate value. What's good for life is ultimately good for every achievable value, and since life requires a constant course of specific action, every value, in order to be consistently sought and achieved, must be good for life. Life is the the only object gained and kept on which all values depend: it is the only possible end-in-itself (other necessary conditions of value, such as the laws of physics, cannot be "gained and kept" but simply are, and thus cannot serve as values).

This gives rise to a definition of "the good," not just for a given value, but for all values. Since that which is good for life is ultimately good for all achievable values, and that which one consistently values must be good for life, the good for one is the same as the good for all. The good is that which is good for life, and evil is that which is bad for it, and all values must be judged by their effect on one's life. Good and bad literally means life and death.

The ultimate value of a consistent system of values must be the life of the valuer itself. The good is that which supports one's life, and anything that threatens it is bad. This is enough to construct a full system of ethics based on the real alternative of life and death one constantly faces. However, before this is done, the motivation for possessing values must be explored. While life, by virtue of its being the only value necessary for all others, is the only value that can serve as an end in itself, one must still ask why one should want to seek values and to live at all. The answer is found in an exploration of the psychological reward of living and achieving values: happiness.

Happiness as the Reason to Live

If one wishes to consistently achieve any set of values, then one's life must be the ultimate value and the standard against which value is measured. In order to satisfy this conditional and develop a full system of ethics, the psychological motivation and reward for seeking values must be thoroughly explored.

The psychological experience of achieving values is pleasure, and existing in a state of continuously achieving values is happiness. This is the ultimate psychological nature of the good, and the emotional equivalent of achieving a consistent set of values is consistent happiness. As a result of the relationship between happiness and values, the goal of being consistently happy is fundamentally equivalent to the goal of adhering to a consistent set of values, giving rise to the utility of ethics. While happiness is not the explicit goal of ethics--which is one's continued life--it is the reward for living well that makes the explicit definition and acquisition of values pertaining to one's life worthwhile.

Happiness is the fundamental purpose of one's life and it is equivalent to consistently achieving values. The only way to be happy is to explicitly identify a set of values that can be consistently achieved by one's own effort and work to obtain them. One cannot earn happiness by sitting idly or stagnating in her pursuits, as demonstrated by those who experience depression or anyone who has failed to reach an important personal goal. Then, since the only consistent set of values possible is one with life as the ultimate value, it is clear that survivalism is the only rational system of morality and the only way to consistently achieve happiness. It is for this reason that life must be the standard of value against which all potential values are considered. If a value is in conflict with the life of the valuer, it is in conflict with itself, and one will eventually feel the consequences of seeking it above one's own well-being. The pleasure from consistently consuming only fast food, for example, quickly becomes chronic pain and eventually death. Any anti-life pseudo-value must be thrown out as irrelevant, as by destroying its roots it makes itself impossible to consistently achieve. This means life and its requirements must be placed above unexamined emotional whims and inactively acquired values if one is to achieve their goal: a consistently happy life.

Despite the clarity of this fact, many contest this conclusion by claiming that humans have inherent psychological values that cannot be changed and must be satisfied to attain happiness. Examples include believing in a deity, feeling moral obligation to others, or having children, along with a countless number of additional alleged necessities. The simple response to these arguments is that we choose our values and we are not born with conceptual beliefs: any higher-level feeling like the need to believe in a deity or to serve others is based on beliefs one has developed since birth, and these beliefs can and should be whittled down to their essential form and evaluated for what they are. There is no inherent set of conceptual values with which one is born, regardless of how large or how small genetic and environmental factors may be in one's development. No matter one's genetic predisposition or the political leaning of one's family, it is not an inherent trait that causes one's reaction to a picture of Wall Street, but one's actively held intellectual position on capitalism, which can be questioned and adjusted by a self-directed process of rational thought. The simple truth supported by the science of psychology is that our emotions are controlled by the way we think and can thus be changed by careful and intentional cognitive effort, giving us control over the source of our emotions and the values we seek.

It is now clear that only by declaring and pursuing a rationally determined set of values with life at the core can one achieve happiness. If one is to live, one ought to adhere to a particular system of ethics constructed from survivalism in order to experience consistent happiness, the Greek concept of eudaimonia. The only question that remains, then, is how this is to be done. What tool must be used in order to develop and achieve a consistent set of values in this world, and how should it be applied to one's life? The tool is reason, and the virtue of using it is rationality.

 

Rationality as the Primary Virtue

Values are the objectives that make life worth living, and virtues are the principles by which they are obtained. The primary virtue, as will be explained, is rationality, and it is through that application of reason that one's life and all of the values required to sustain it must be achieved.

As explained in a previous essay (In Defense of Truth), knowledge must be evaluated by correspondence to reality: the primary function of consciousness is to perceive and conceptualize the world, which is by itself independent of the mind. It is clear from this fact that, in order to achieve any values, one must think objectively, i.e. by the application of logic to the facts of sense perception and one's conceptual knowledge. Since life requires a specific course of action and all values must serve it, reality must be placed about wishing and Existence must take precedence over consciousness.

The primary tool we have for understanding and changing the world is reason, the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by perception in an objective manner. Since knowledge of and efficacy over the world is the primary means we have of living in it, reason is the primary means of survival for humans, and without it we would be unable to live for long. Agriculture, science, hair products, computers, sanitation, indoor heating, plastic packaging, dietary supplements, clothing, and a limitless amount of other necessities without which life would be extremely difficult or impossible all rely on the consistent application of reason to the world. Our lives depend on the consistently rational use of our minds.

Because reason is one's basic means of survival and life is the ultimate value, reason is the main cardinal value of ethics. Constant adherence to the faculty of reason--rationality--is therefore the primary virtue by which one must act in order to achieve the good. In a world independent of the mind of which reason is the only means of obtaining knowledge, everything of value comes from consistently rational action. On the other hand, the infinite goodness of rationality implies all evil arises from submission to irrational whims and the evasion of reality. Living rationally is the only way to live.

While rationality is the primary virtue, it is not the only one. Further virtues corresponding to essential cardinal values are discovered through the consideration of rationality in the context of different aspects of life, but each of them depends on consistent rationality in their application. Thus, the kernel of moral action is rationality, solidifying its importance in the context of  a rational eudaimonic survivalist system of ethics.

 

Conclusion

It should now be clear that an ethical system of rational adherence to the requirement's of one's life for the purpose of one's own happiness is the objective moral standard for human life. Representing the culmination of Aristotelian and Objectivist thought, rational eudaimonic survivalism is the only moral theory based in the metaphysical nature of life and the importance of reason to human survival. For further information on the Objectivist ethics, one should turn to Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness or Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand. I intend to write more on ethics in the future, but this essay serves as the basis of my philosophical beliefs regarding the subject and may be considered a fully accurate representation of my position on the field of ethics.