Ethical Egoism

Is happiness the highest good? (See previous post.)  Aristotle says yes because it is the only good that is an end in itself.  Virtue, like other goods, is a means to the end of happiness.  But, is it possible to be virtuous and unhappy?  Further, have you ever heard someone praised for being happy?  We may be happy for them, but is happiness a praiseworthy achievement?  Happiness is a state of being, but virtue is a trait of character that we find praiseworthy regardless of whether the virtuous person is happy or not.  Which is the higher good, to be happy and dishonorable or to be virtuous and unhappy?

Virtue ethics focuses on character rather than rules or acts or consequences.  If one develops an honorable character, one will act ethically.  Motive is more important than consequences.  Character is a central element of fiction, and we have considered it in previous posts on literature and ethics.  Does the character of the lawyer in “Bartleby the Scrivener” (Sept. 2013) merit salvation? Is the character of the bishop in “The Bishop and the Candlesticks” (Oct. 2013) too good to be true?  Can the character of the soldier in “A Horseman in the Sky” (Nov. 2013) be separated from his actions? Is Stockmann’s character superior to the townspeople in “An Enemy of the People” (Nov. 2013)? What exactly is the character of “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (Dec. 2013), or, for that matter, of those who don't?  

In those cases, we assume we know what constitutes good vs. bad or strong vs. weak character.  Ayn Rand is an author who puts our conventional views to the test.

In Part III, Chapter VII (“This is John Galt Speaking”) of her 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, she presents a defense of Ethical Egoism, in which virtue is equated with the rational pursuit of individual happiness without regard for the welfare of others.  We are each responsible for our own happiness, not for others’, and selfishness is a virtue.  (See previous post, Sept. 2012.) 

As a secular materialist and atheist, Rand explicitly rejects the Christian ethics of humility, charity, and altruism.  Similarly, the notion of “duty” to be found in deontological ethics is anathema to her since it bases morality on obligatory principles rather than freely chosen means to one’s own happiness.  She likewise rejects the Utilitarian ethics of the “greatest happiness for the greatest number.”   It is individual happiness that is the greatest value.  She offers her own version of virtue ethics, replacing such commonly accepted virtues as love, compassion, humility, generosity, moderation, fairness, reciprocity, self-discipline, gratitude, etc., with such characteristics as self-love, radical individualism, and value production.  The praiseworthy individual is the “producer” of value who pursues his or her own happiness and resists the “parasites, looters, and moochers” who seek to live off the producers.  In Rand’s world, the “producers” equate with owners of property and capital. That these owners produce value off the labor of workers, who serve as means to the end of the producers’ happiness, utterly escapes Ayn Rand.

Such a philosophy assumes that we are all equal in our abilities and opportunities, that suffering is the result of our own failures, and that happiness is the reward for rational selfishness.  Random luck and systemic injustice have no place in this universe.  They are merely excuses used by the losers to rationalize their failure.

Ethical egoism can serve as a corrective to an ethic of extreme self-denial and self-sacrifice, but it goes to the opposite extreme of self-aggrandizement and self-exaltation.  It completely overlooks the interdependence of individuals, the value of social cohesion, and the role of reciprocity in healthy social relationships.

When Aristotle relegates virtue to a means to the end of happiness, he acknowledges that individual happiness is dependent, not only on the individual’s virtue, but on the virtue of others.  For Aristotle both virtue and happiness are socially shared goods.  Individual virtue contributes to the common good, and the common good contributes to individual happiness.  We praise a virtuous character because it benefits the whole.

So which is better?  To be happy and dishonorable or to be virtuous and unhappy?  Ayn Rand would probably choose the former; a strongly religious believer would likely choose the latter.  In Aristotle’s world, however, those without virtue will pay a social price that reduces any happiness and those who are virtuous will reap a social reward that mitigates any unhappiness.

This ends the series of blog posts since September on literature and ethics, covering five theories of ethics: authority based divine command, deontological ethics, relativism, Utilitarianism, and virtue ethics.  In practice we use all these theories to one degree or another.  Atheists would not appeal to the authority of divine command, of course, but they might arrive at similar values by an appeal to reason.  Likewise, religious adherents, upon finding themselves in an ethical bind when caught between conflicting divine commands, might have recourse to independent reason.  Different situations might call for the application of different ethical criteria.  This conclusion may sound like relativism, but reason tells us that relativism, by definition, cannot be absolute.  There may be few, if any, ethical absolutes (rules that apply without exception), but there are surely general ethical principles (guidelines with sensible exceptions) based on reason and shared human interests.

One value of literature is that it can dramatize the abstractions of ethical theory, enabling us to think about it in concrete terms, bringing to consciousness what we take for granted, raising our awareness of unanticipated complications, and enhancing our understanding of what it means to live an ethical life.

Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Speaking of individualism, Emersonian Transcendentalism, and women’s rights (see previous post), Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) should surely be noted.

When Emerson wrote “Self-Reliance” one senses he was writing for men.  Self-reliance is “manly” and dependence is “effeminate.”  Margaret Fuller, however, taking her inspiration from the Transcendental roots of Emerson’s essay, called on women to develop their independence and on men to treat women as equals.

However gendered the traditional concept of God, the Transcendental “Oversoul,” suggesting as it does the Hindu concept of Brahma, was more abstract and universal.  Emerson’s theory of two selves, the social self and the “aboriginal self,” made it possible to separate gender, a social category, from the Transcendental selfhood or “soul.” 

Thus Margaret Fuller undergirds her call for women’s social and legal equality with an appeal for Woman’s need “as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded, to unfold such powers as were given her when we left our common home,” that “home” being our source in the Universal “One.”

At times, Fuller sounds like an essentialist, capitalizing “Woman” (and “Man”) , referring to “Femality,” and presenting “male and female” as a “radical dualism.” Yet, she argues that the “feminine element…is no more the order of nature that it should be incarnated pure in any form” and asserts that “There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.” Even the ancients are invoked as recognizing the fluidity of gender identity:  “Man partakes of the feminine in the Apollo, Woman of the masculine as Minerva.” 

As transcendental souls, women are the equal of men and as capable of self-reliance (which Fuller also refers to as “self-dependence,” “self-respect,” and “self-help”) as any man.  As for relationships, she says, “Union is only possible to those who are units,” and she strikes a modern note when she calls for the wife to be an “equal partner” with her husband.

Fuller’s faith in transcendental individualism, however, while it gave her the confidence to pursue her own independence, did not prevent her from speaking out for social justice, not only for women, but also for slaves, Native Americans,  the poor, the sick, convicts, and immigrants.  Her own freedom was not to be enjoyed at the expense of her fellow Americans.  As the first American “foreign correspondent” she openly supported the revolutionary movements in Europe in the 1840’s.  Her life and writings, unlike those of Emerson and Ayn Rand (see previous post), offer strong testimony to the compatibility of individualism and communitarianism.

"Self-Reliance" and Anthem

I was thinking I should do a blog post on Ralph Waldo Emerson since I studied his work so much as both an undergraduate and graduate student in American literature, not to mention my affiliation with Unitarian Universalism since 1979.  “Self-Reliance” seemed like the best known essay to take another look at.  At the same time, Paul Ryan was being nominated as Mitt Romney’s running mate and I was hearing a lot about Ayn Rand, who I have never read.  I started wondering if there was any connection between Emerson and Rand besides being known for promoting individualism.  There seems to be some discussion of whether Ayn Rand misrepresented Emerson in one reference to him (http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/essays/emerson.html) and others have compared the two (noting perhaps more differences than similarities). 

Curious, I read an early example of Rand’s fiction, a dystopian novella called Anthem, which kind of reminded me of George Orwell’s 1984.  Others have also compared those two writers, again seeming to find more contrasts than similarities.  Both Rand and Orwell are critiquing totalitarianism, but Rand from a capitalist and Orwell from a democratic socialist stance. 

In Anthem, the narrator, like all members of his collectivist society, refers to himself as “We, “the first-person “I” having been expunged from the language.  When, upon escaping from this society, the narrator discovers manuscripts from an earlier age, he learns the word “I” and promptly rejects the use of “We”: “I am done with the monster of ‘We,’ the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood, and shame.”  In the end, the narrator chooses “the word that is to be my beacon and my banner…The sacred word: EGO.”

This radical individualism is strangely contradicted by the narrator’s need for a lover and life partner, who is pregnant with his child.  One wonders if the word “we” would apply to his family and what would happen to that unit if every member truly placed “ego” ahead of family relationships.  The narrator’s vision calls for him to invite his “friends” to “follow” and join him in building a new future:  “Here on this mountain, I and my sons and my chosen friends shall build our new land and our fort.”  Again, one wonders how one sustains friendship if ego rules, and how successful this venture will be without some degree of cooperation and communitarianism, not to mention governance. 

Perhaps Rand’s answer would be that so long as relationships, group affiliation, and communal “belonging” is chosen, then, of course, ego naturally adjusts to that choice, but if it is enforced by coercion, law, tradition, or obligation, then ego is bound to assert itself, for true freedom means that “each man will be free to exist for his own sake.”

 One passage in Anthem particularly reminded me of “Self-Reliance.”  The fictional narrator states:

 "I do not surrender my treasures, nor do I share them. The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom."

 

In “Self-Reliance” Emerson similarly states:

"Then again, do not tell me as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. …your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold Relief Societies; though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by and by I shall have to manhood to withhold."

Self-reliance did not prevent Emerson from suing his first wife’s family for his inheritance and living with relatives after his resignation from the ministry and a tour of Europe, though he did go on to make his own living as a traveling lecturer and writer. Likewise, Ayn Rand, for all her anti-government views, collected Social Security and applied for Medicare.

Perhaps a more thorough study of Rand’s works would reveal more complexity, but Anthem offers a caricature of the choice between individualism and communitarianism.  The latter is reduced to complete tyranny of society over the individual and the former is elevated to the absolute pursuit of individual happiness, regardless of the expense to social cohesion and the common good.  One would think that a devotee of “rational egoism” would have some appreciation for a moderate middle ground, but, no, at least in Anthem, it seems to be either-or.

By comparison, ‘Self-Reliance” is a study in intricacy and nuance.  For one thing, Emerson distinguishes between the social self, formed by conformity to society and consistency to the past self, and the “aboriginal Self,” which, unlike Rand’s materialistic “Ego,” is part and parcel of the Universal Spirit or “Oversoul,” a concept the atheistic Rand would not be able to countenance.  Far from calling for the elevation of the material Ego, Emerson calls for the liberation of that “aboriginal” spiritual Self from the constraints of materialism and socialization.  And it seems that when one is in touch with that spiritual Self, one loses all individualism and participates in a shared universal truth.  Thus, whether you agree with it or not, Emerson at least has a theory that would provide the basis for communitarianism and social cohesion, a basis in human nature and shared understanding, not governmental power and social control.

In an Emersonian world, it seems, individuals would free themselves from coercion, law, tradition, and obligation, not to mention their own false selves, only to find common cause with each other in social relationships based in authenticity, integrity, mutuality, and spiritual bonds.

Neither Rand nor Emerson show evidence of having any understanding of systemic social injustices such as economic disparity, inherited wealth or poverty, racism, sexism, ableism, or, perish the thought, heterosexism.  They seem to assume that all individuals function on a level playing field with equal ability and resources to assert their individuality.  No doubt the message of individual empowerment is important to the economically disadvantaged and socially subordinated, but Rand fails to allow for the role that material and social inequality play in individual opportunity and achievement, and Emerson fails to recognize a relationship between material well-being and spiritual power.

Though Emerson eschewed collective action, for fear it might compromise his independence, he eventually became more active in the abolitionist movement, suggesting perhaps that he did come to realize that (1) the concept of self-reliance is pretty meaningless to a slave, and (2) in the case of such material conditions as slavery, collective social action may be necessary, not only to material but also to spiritual freedom.

Although Emerson used gendered language in describing self-reliance as “manly,” he also supported the women’s rights movement, describing it as “no whim, but an organic impulse…a right and proper inquiry…honoring to the age.”  One wonders if Ayn Rand would acknowledge any debt to the collective women’s action that earned her the right to speak in public, vote, and participate in the political process, as she did when she worked on behalf of Wendell Wilkie’s presidential campaign in 1940.

Where does this leave us?  It seems both Emerson and Rand’s lives and works are rife with contradictions.  Sometimes they seem to be sounding a similar note, though overall their versions of individualism are quite different, Rand openly espousing individual action based on “the virtue of selfishness” and Emerson defining self-reliance as “self-trust,” more an affirmation of self-esteem and self-worth than a rationale for the active pursuit of self-interest without regard for the well-being of others. 

Despite Emerson’s renunciation of the ministry, his philosophy of individualism really has a religious and moral basis, whereas Rand’s philosophy seems to be based on secular materialism and individual self-interest.

 

Emerson seems to be asserting the value of one's individual self-interest as at least equal to that of others, whereas Rand seems to be asserting it as superior to that of others.