Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics
Tara Smith
New York, Cambridge, 2006
x + 318 pp., bibliography and index

Tara Smith has done it again. Her third book on Objectivism and this from a major press, Cambridge University Press. Smith’s books and I go back a bit. I even used her first book, Human Rights and Political Freedom, as a text in one of my classes. And I found her treatment of Kant’s ethics in Viable Values to be the best yet from an Objectivist.
What Smith has done for those interested in the Objectivist’s virtues is provide, along with Rand herself, a Starbucks of choices. If you want a “Tall” treatment, the essay “The Objectivist Ethics” is perfect, sometimes providing only a sentence on a given virtue, e.g., justice. Prefer a “Grande,” then check out Galt’s speech where Rand devotes a paragraph to each virtue. But if you need a “Venti,” then Smith has just what you are looking for, since she provides each virtue with its own chapter. To quote Gershwin, “Who could ask for anything more?”
She begins with two introductory chapters; the first bearing that title while the second is entitled, “Rational Egoism: A Profile of Its Foundations and Basic Character.” Since these chapters represent what Smith presented in greater detail in Viable Values, the interested reader should check out that fine work.
Chapters three through nine constitute the heart of the book, with in depth analyses of the seven virtues Rand introduces in Galt’s speech, viz., rationality, honesty, independence, justice, integrity, productiveness, and pride respectively receiving chapter length treatments.
Chapter three bears the title “The Master Virtue: Rationality” and anyone with even a passing acquaintance of Objectivism knows how apt the title is. In a very real sense, all of the other virtues are species of rationality, applied to more limited contexts. For example, integrity is the application of rationality to the question of the proper relationship between thought and action; production is the application of rationality to the problem of survival etc.
This chapter begins a practice that Smith continues in chapters four through nine, viz., giving over the opening subsection to answer the question What is _____? Armed with this information, one can then proceed with Smith’s argument, secure in the fact that the reader knows what Smith is talking about. This avoids confusing the Objectivist notion of, say, pride, with what the tradition defines as pride.
Chapter four is on honesty. Smith begins the chapter by stating that, “honesty is perhaps the most obvious outgrowth of the virtue of rationality.” (75) This may lead one to ask, is this why she changed of the order of the virtues? In Galt’s speech the order of the virtues is rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness and pride. Rand keeps the same order when she discusses the virtues in “The Objectivist Ethics.” Smith goes on in the same paragraph to say that honesty “often seems integral to other virtues, such as justice and integrity, and it is probably the single most widely endorsed virtue by people of divergent views on many other aspects of morality’s substantive instruction.” That is good enough for me, especially since I could discern nothing much that hangs on the order in which the virtues are presented. If she had not given pride of place to rationality, that would be cause for alarm, but such is not the case.
Smith treats honesty as a primary virtue, not as one of the conventional virtues that she discusses in chapter ten, “Implications for Certain Conventional Virtues: Charity, Generosity, Kindness, Temperance.” These latter virtues, when they are virtues, (mercy, for example, is never a virtue) are time bound. That is, there is a time when it is appropriate to be, say, generous, and a time when “generosity is not appropriate.” They admit of exceptions. But then, so does honesty. Of all of the virtues listed in Galt’s speech, honesty is the one most honored in the breech. Most of the heroes lie. And their reasons for lying are not the one Smith gives on p. 265 when she writes, “Barring emergencies, a person should be honest.” This seems to imply that one should never lie unless it’s an emergency.
Yet this one exception to honesty’s ubiquity is belied by its treatment in Atlas Shrugged. Let’s look at a few examples of dishonesty in Atlas. Dagny’s first lie is to conceal from her mother her loss of virginity. Her reason, it “was a secret too precious to share.” Hank and Dagny both lie to conceal their affair. Frisco lies throughout Parts I and II, not only to the villains but even to his highest reverence. Why? Because she is “not ready to hear” what he has to say about the strike.
Peikoff is on record to permit lying to protect oneself against snoopers. (OPAR 276) In fact, I think I could paraphrase a sentence from Smith with the only change being the substitution of “honesty” for “generosity.”
“Rather, for a rational egoist, honest action is sometimes appropriate and sometimes not.” (264) For Dagny, Hank, Frisco and Peikoff this seems to be the case.
But it is then disturbing to recall that Rand once wrote that honesty is “only another name for rationality.” (75) Imagine an Objectivist hero saying, “Barring emergencies, a person should be rational.” Or Dagny being irrational because she has a precious secret; Hank being irrational to cover up his affair or Frisco being irrational because Dagny isn’t ready for rationality!

Chapter eight is dedicated to productivity, and I was anxious to read this chapter for Smith’s arguments that productive work should be the central purpose of a rational egoist’s life. It is on this notion that I will focus.
Rand did not mention a “central purpose” in Atlas, although every hero does in fact place their work at the center of their existence. The phrase “central purpose” appears for the first time in “The Objectivist Ethics.” But Rand makes no argument since she only devotes two sentences to the virtue of productivity in that essay. That means that until Smith, Objectivists had to “take it on faith” that productive work should be one’s central purpose. Smith is to be applauded for her effort on this topic.
She produces three arguments for this position, but alas, they all seem to fail. But rather than pick them apart-I’ll just look at number one--I would like to follow Rand’s recommendation and check a premise that Smith accepts without question and that permeates all three arguments. Actually, it is not a premise, but rather a metaphor. The metaphor is a circle or a target with a bulls eye at the center. Work is something like a bulls eye in the life of a rational being. Work is the center of the circle that is one’s life.
But where is the argument for this image. Maybe Kepler’s ellipse rather than Copernicus’s circle would be a better metaphor. Maybe life could or should have two foci, rather than one central purpose. Or how about a triangle? Perhaps life should have three areas of major concern for a rational being. (Rand herself uses the triangle image in describing Dagny’s life during her college years.) And Rand does talk about three supreme values—reason, purpose and self-esteem; not just one. (Notice she has to use “supreme”—“central” would not work here.) Why not ONE central value rather than three?
Now I am not arguing that any of the metaphors are better than the one Smith (and Rand) uses. I’m just pointing out the need for an argument here. The metaphor is there doing its work in an unobtrusive way.
This is different from the usual rejoinder to Rand, i.e., the one that simply offers another candidate to replace work with, say, family as the central purpose of one’s life. Here I’m asking for the justification for the assumption that there can only be ONE purpose of one’s life. Notice I’ve elided the word “central” because that word hides the problem. Covers it up. There can only be one central point in a circle. There can only be one central purpose of one’s life. Hence, my suggestion of an ellipse.
Passing on, let us look at her first argument for the thesis “Productive Work as One’s Central Purpose.” I call this the “ongoing need” argument. Since the production of material values (Smith sees this as the essence of productive work) is an ongoing need, productive work must be the central purpose of one’s life. But the same could be said for sleep, avoiding suicide, exercise, etc. The fact that something is an ongoing need would only seem to make it a necessary condition for continued existence, and not quite enough to make it the central purpose of one’s life. In fact, Smith even ends the paragraph dedicated to the first argument with the words “must be a continuing concern” and not “central purpose.” The former conclusion does seem to follow. Since one cannot scratch the requirement for material needs “off one’s ‘to do’ list” then it would seem to be a matter of “continuing concern.” But we need more than that to get us to “central purpose.”
But even if I’m wrong about the “ongoing need” argument, isn’t there the following problem. Productivity is supposed to be one of the virtues and virtue is a mean to an end, which is value, that which one acts to gain etc. If Smith were right, this would make an anomaly of productivity—it would be a means as well as an end. How would Smith respond. By conceding the point. On p. 211 she actually writes, “Productive work ideally becomes an end as well as a means.” How far this goes toward making, at least this, virtue its own reward, a position Rand criticized, I will allow others to decide.
After dealing with all seven of the virtues, Smith deals in chapter ten with “Implications for Certain Conventional Virtues: Charity, Generosity, Kindness, Temperance.” For those who may be wondering where “mercy” is, Smith devotes pages 164-70 of the justice chapter to that non-virtue.

TWO CLOSING NOTES:

1. A metaphysical question arose as I was reading the integrity chapter. Smith quotes from Atlas the statement that “man is . . . an integrated unit of two attributes: of matter and consciousness, and that he may permit no breach between body and mind. . .” This led me to ask, how can two attributes of an entity suffer any breach? Take a table. How can its matter, say, wood, suffer a breach with its form or shape? Then I thought that maybe a Cartesian dualist could suffer such a breach, i.e., lack integrity. But no, the problem that Descartes has is one of interaction; the breach seems to be the actual existential condition of Cartesian man. For him, integrity is metaphysically impossible, and one could hardly ask of a man that he do the metaphysically impossible. In other words, on the substance dualist’s view, integrity is impossible; while on the attribute dualist’s view, i.e., Rand’s view, integrity seems guaranteed.
But Smith’s book is not a book on metaphysics and one cannot fault her for not addressing this problem. In fact, the value here is how much she makes you think, even if your thoughts go in tangents not anticipated by the author.
2. What do the following five Roman Catholic Saints (Anselm, Aquinas, Augustine, Gregory and Paul) have in common? Their names all appear in the index to this book. What do Nathaniel Branden, Rand’s intellectual heir, and David Kelley, who read a poem at her funeral and wrote a book on the virtue of benevolence, have in common? They don’t appear. The omission of Kelley is bothersome considering that chapter ten deals with four conventional virtues; charity, generosity, kindness and temperance. Since kindness is a synonym for benevolence and Kelley has written a book on the latter, it would seem that at least a mention of this work is necessitated.
As for Branden, his omission is even more irksome. He founded the Nathaniel Branden Institute and contributed five essays to The Virtue of Selfishness, Rand’s only book on ethics. Additionally, Branden’s pre-split writings on (inter alia) the ethics of Objectivism, have the sanction of Ayn Rand herself. Besides, from a purely selfish point of view, I genuinely miss what Smith would have said about both of these thinkers and their contributions to Objectivism. And surely they have more interesting things to say about Objectivist ethics than, say, St. Gregory, chant aside. (Unless she is referring to St. Gregory of Nazianzus.) NB. The second reference to “Gregory, St.” in the index is actually to Gregory Vlastos, a saint of a much later period. And double surely they have more to say than an unpublished graduate student who did get into the index!
But in order not to end on a down note, I must reiterate my claim that this contribution to the Objectivist literature deserves two thumbs, no make that hands, way up. I derive much satisfaction from the knowledge that Smith is still on the uphill side of her publishing career. If this is not the book for you, then maybe Objectivism is not the philosophy for you. It’s that good.

Fred Seddon

REFERENCES

Peikoff, Leonard, 1991, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. (OPAR) New York: Dutton.

Rand, Ayn, 1999, Atlas Shrugged. New York: Plume.
-------------- 1964. The Virtue of Selfishness (VOS). New York: Signet.

This review is reprinted with the generous approval of Chris Sciabarra and the JOURNAL OF AYN RAND STUDIES