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Tara Smith's Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics Review Essay: Tara Smith’s Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist Carrie-Ann Biondi Marymount Manhattan College There has been in academic philosophy a resurgence of naturalistic virtue ethics that renders it a viable competitor with deontology and utilitarianism, making the timing opportune for the appearance of Tara Smith’s Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist.1 Indeed, Smith in part situates her book within this trend, but also contrasts her explication of how Rand’s rational ethical egoism intersects with virtue theories that have at best “danced around the edges of egoism” (p. 1). Thus far, Smith’s book has been generally well received in the few reviews it has gotten,2 especially by scholars and advocates of Rand’s Objectivism. However, some attention from mainstream philosophers, even by those who are sympathetic readers,3 reveals that contemporary moral philosophers struggle to understand the nuanced value theory underlying Objectivism and are slow to embrace full-fledged egoism. This is hardly surprising, given that many (if not most) ethics 1 Tara Smith, Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 2 See Stephen Hicks, “Review of Tara Smith’s Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist,” Philosophy in Review 27, no. 5 (October 2007), pp. 377-79; Helen Cullyer, “Review of Tara Smith’s Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist,” Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (November 12, 2006), accessed online at: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=8123; Robert Mayhew, “Review of Tara Smith’s Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist,” Philosophical Books 49, no. 1 (January 2008), pp. 56-57; Diana Hsieh, “Egoism Explained: A Review of Tara Smith’s Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist,” The Objective Standard 2, no. 1 (Spring 2007), pp. 109-19; and Shawn Klein, “Falling Short of Perfection: Review of Tara Smith’s Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist,” website of The Atlas Society (October 18, 2007), accessed online at: http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth--1986-norm_ethics.aspx. 3 Such as at an author-meets-critics symposium on Smith’s book sponsored by the Ayn Rand Society and held at the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, December 29, 2006. Reason Papers 30 (Fall 2008): 91-105. Copyright © 2008 Reason Papers Vol. 30 textbooks by prominent moral philosophers demonize egoism and define ethical thinking in terms of either impartiality or altruism.4 A careful reading of Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics will show that egoism—and not just virtue ethics—should be taken seriously as a robust and attractive moral theory. Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics is Smith’s most recent effort in a series of works explaining and defending the foundations and exploring the applications of Rand’s Objectivist theory of value.5 Recapitulating and building on Viable Values, Smith now fleshes out the “how” of a flourishing life, that is, what it is like to manifest virtuous conduct over the course of a lifetime.6 This involves understanding the role that virtues play in attaining one’s values, figuring out which lifelong principles/types of action are virtues, and judging how any particular virtue should be exercised in a context- sensitive fashion. Smith starts out in chapter 2 with a compressed summary of Viable Values, which provides a necessary foundation for readers unfamiliar with her 4 See, e.g., Robert Solomon, Morality and the Good Life, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw- Hill, 1992), p. 15: “egoism is obviously antithetical to morality,” since it “means looking out for your own interests”; James Sterba, Morality in Practice, 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1997), p. 2: “Nonmoral approaches to practical problems include the . self-interest approach”; and James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 3rd ed. (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill College, 1999), pp. 91 and 95, where he claims that ethical egoism should be rejected because it “cannot provide solutions for conflicts of interest” and it is “an arbitrary doctrine, in the same way that racism is arbitrary” by privileging one’s own interests over those of others. 5 See especially Tara Smith’s Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000) and Moral Rights and Political Freedom (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995). See also, e.g., Tara Smith’s “Egoistic Friendship,” American Philosophical Quarterly 42, no. 4 (October 2005), pp. 263-77; “Morality Without the Wink: A Defense of Moral Perfection,” Journal of Philosophical Research 29 (2004), pp. 315-31; “The Metaphysical Case for Honesty,” Journal of Value Inquiry 37 (2003), pp. 517-31; “Justice as a Personal Virtue,” Social Theory and Practice 25, no. 3 (Fall 1999), pp. 361-84; and “Tolerance and Forgiveness: Virtues or Vices?” Journal of Applied Philosophy 14, no. 1 (1997), pp. 31-41. 6 Smith spends just a few paragraphs in Viable Values illustrating “the basic relationship between normative ethics and the goal of life,” noting that a proper discussion of the virtues “would require much more in-depth treatment” (p. 96). In Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics, she makes good on an implicit promissory note that “[a] natural sequel to [Viable Values] would be another, consisting entirely of an elaboration of the normative prescriptions that derive from this account of morality’s foundations” (p. 120 n. 25). 92 Reason Papers Vol. 30 previous work.7 Chapter 3 includes both a careful prefatory explication of the nature of virtue as such as well as a discussion of the “master virtue” of rationality. Chapters 4 through 9 discuss the remaining major virtues of honesty, independence, justice, integrity, productiveness, and pride. Each of these seven virtues is explored methodically by considering the nature of the particular virtue, why it is a virtue (i.e., why it is compatible with rational self- interest), and what it requires of us in practice. Chapter 10 considers the implications of Objectivism for four traits conventionally considered virtues: charity, generosity, kindness, and temperance. Finally, an intriguing Appendix addresses the subtler aspects of Objectivist value theory in a discussion of egoistic friendship. Before discussing some of the specific substantive highlights of Smith’s book, I would like to remark on two noteworthy general features of her project. First, Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics provides a much-needed translation of egoism into practice. While it’s true that Rand’s novels— particularly The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged8—illustrate at length what it is like to live either according to or against rational ethical egoism, the nature of the literary medium is both under-theorized9 and in some sense “distracting.” Readers of a good novel get swept up in the action of the character and plot developments, wondering about things like: Why is Dominique so destructive? Will Roark ever get to design another building? Can Dagny save her railroad? Who is John Galt? Seeking answers to these questions can lead one to focus on sub-themes or to dwell on the narrative of a particular character in which one is interested, which easily distracts one from the underlying philosophical ideas that explain the larger context of conflict, choice, and character. One needs the familiarity of a first reading in order to achieve a deeper knowledge that comes from re-reading, reflecting on, and discussing a novel. Rand herself described John Galt’s lengthy speech in Atlas Shrugged as the “briefest summary” of her Objectivist system with “its fundamentals . indicated only in the widest terms,” and stated that her first collection, For the New Intellectual, could “serve as an outline or a program or a manifesto” until she “complete[s] the presentation of [her] philosophy in 7 For an extensive critical review essay of Viable Values, see Irfan Khawaja, “Tara Smith’s Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality: A Discussion,” Reason Papers 26 (Summer 2003), pp. 63-88. 8 Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (New York: New American Library, 1971 [1943]), and Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (New York: New American Library, 1985 [1957]). 9 Hsieh makes a similar point; see her “Egoism Explained: A Review of Tara Smith’s Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist,” p. 111. 93 Reason Papers Vol. 30 a fully detailed form.”10 Smith thus carries on some of the “unpacking” work that Rand began in the later part of her life, and does so in Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics in a way that serves as a bridge between the more abstract theorizing of “The Objectivist Ethics”11 and the more concrete depictions in Rand’s novels. Second, Smith identifies and addresses some of the contemporary philosophical literature on ethics and virtue theory (primarily in Chapters 1, 9, and 10, and to some extent in Chapter 6). While not as extensive as it might have been, this effort enters into a somewhat Millian spirit of discussion. John Stuart Mill famously argued for engagement with beliefs one takes to be false on the ground that grappling with them allows for “the clearer and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.”12 The virtues of this approach are that the Objectivist ethics is presented more sharply and fully than it might otherwise have been, and readers can see for themselves how Smith’s account of Rand’s theory contrasts with competitor views. For moral philosophers encountering Rand’s views for the first time, such an entry point is orienting and invaluable. One of the strong points of Smith’s explanation of Objectivism is how lucidly she rejects the morality/rationality dichotomy ubiquitous in the contemporary literature on “reasons for action.”13 She states that “the fact that rationality is a practical tool for advancing the values that fuel a person’s 10 Ayn Rand, “Preface,” in her For the New Intellectual (New York: New American Library, 1961), pp.
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