{"id":125,"date":"2023-09-29T12:43:50","date_gmt":"2023-09-29T16:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/philosophyreader102\/?post_type=chapter&p=125"},"modified":"2023-09-29T12:50:47","modified_gmt":"2023-09-29T16:50:47","slug":"ayn-rand-the-ethics-of-emergencies","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/philosophyreader102\/chapter\/ayn-rand-the-ethics-of-emergencies\/","title":{"raw":"Ayn Rand: The Ethics of Emergencies","rendered":"Ayn Rand: The Ethics of Emergencies"},"content":{"raw":"

The Ethics of Emergencies<\/h2>\r\n

by Ayn Rand <\/em><\/h3>\r\nThe psychological results of altruism may be observed in the fact that a great many people approach the subject of ethics by asking such questions as: \u201cShould one risk one\u2019s life to help a man who is: a) drowning, b) trapped in a fire, c) stepping in front of a speeding truck, d) hanging by his fingernails over an abyss?\u201d\r\n\r\nConsider the implications of that approach. If a man accepts the ethics of altruism, he suffers the following consequences (in proportion to the degree of his acceptance):\r\n
    \r\n \t
  1. Lack of self-esteem\u2014since his first concern in the realm of values is not how to live his life, but how to sacrifice it.<\/li>\r\n \t
  2. Lack of respect for others\u2014since he regards mankind as a herd of doomed beggars crying for someone\u2019s help.<\/li>\r\n \t
  3. A nightmare view of existence\u2014since he believes that men are trapped in a \u201cmalevolent universe\u201d where disasters are the constant and primary concern of their lives.<\/li>\r\n \t
  4. And, in fact, a lethargic indifference to ethics, a hopelessly cynical amorality\u2014since his questions involve situations which he is not likely ever to encounter, which bear no relation to the actual problems of his own life and thus leave him to live without any moral principles whatever.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\nBy elevating the issue of helping others into the central and primary issue of ethics, altruism has destroyed the concept of any authentic benevolence or good will among men. It has indoctrinated men with the idea that to value another human being is an act of selflessness, thus implying that a man can have no personal interest in others\u2014that to value another means to sacrifice oneself\u2014that any love, respect or admiration a man may feel for others is not and cannot be a source of his own enjoyment, but is a threat to his existence, a sacrificial blank check signed over to his loved ones.\r\n\r\nThe men who accept that dichotomy but choose its other side, the ultimate products of altruism\u2019s dehumanizing influence, are those psychopaths who do not challenge altruism\u2019s basic premise, but proclaim their rebellion against self-sacrifice by announcing that they are totally indifferent to anything living and would not lift a finger to help a man or a dog left mangled by a hit-and-run driver (who is usually one of their own kind).\r\n\r\nMost men do not accept or practice either side of altruism\u2019s viciously false dichotomy, but its result is a total intellectual chaos on the issue of proper human relationships and on such questions as the nature, purpose or extent of the help one may give to others. Today, a great many well-meaning, reasonable men do not know how to identify or conceptualize the moral principles that motivate their love, affection or good will, and can find no guidance in the field of ethics, which is dominated by the stale platitudes of altruism.\r\n\r\nOn the question of why man is not a sacrificial animal and why help to others is not his moral duty, I refer you to Atlas Shrugged. This present discussion is concerned with the principles by which one identifies and evaluates the instances involving a man\u2019s non-sacrificial help to others.\r\n\r\n\u201cSacrifice\u201d is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue. Thus, altruism gauges a man\u2019s virtue by the degree to which he surrenders, renounces or betrays his values (since help to a stranger or an enemy is regarded as more virtuous, less \u201cselfish,\u201d than help to those one loves). The rational principle of conduct is the exact opposite: always act in accordance with the hierarchy of your values, and never sacrifice a greater value to a lesser one.\r\n\r\nThis applies to all choices, including one\u2019s actions toward other men. It requires that one possess a defined hierarchy of rational values (values chosen and validated by a rational standard). Without such a hierarchy, neither rational conduct nor considered value judgments nor moral choices are possible.\r\n\r\nLove and friendship are profoundly personal, selfish values: love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one\u2019s own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one\u2019s own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love.\r\n\r\nA \u201cselfless,\u201d \u201cdisinterested\u201d love is a contradiction in terms: it means that one is indifferent to that which one values.\r\n\r\nConcern for the welfare of those one loves is a rational part of one\u2019s selfish interests. If a man who is passionately in love with his wife spends a fortune to cure her of a dangerous illness, it would be absurd to claim that he does it as a \u201csacrifice\u201d for her sake, not his own, and that it makes no difference to hi,m personally and selfishly, whether she lives or dies.\r\n\r\nAny action that a man undertakes for the benefit of those he loves is not a sacrifice if, in the hierarchy of his values, in the total context of the choices open to him, it achieves that which is of greatest personal (and rational) importance to hi.m In the above example, his wife\u2019s survival is of greater value to the husband than anything else that his money could buy, it is of greatest importance to his own happiness and, therefore, his action is not a sacrifice.\r\n\r\nBut suppose he let her die in order to spend his money on saving the lives of ten other women, none of whom meant anything to him\u2014as the ethics of altruism would require. That would be a sacrifice. Here the difference between Objectivism and altruism can be seen most clearly: if sacrifice is the moral principle of action, then that husband should sacrifice his wife for the sake of ten other women. What distinguishes the wife from the ten others? Nothing but her value to the husband who has to make the choice\u2014nothing but the fact that his happiness requires her survival.\r\n\r\nThe Objectivist ethics would tell him: your highest moral purpose is the achievement of your own happiness, your money is yours, use it to save your wife, that is your moral right and your rational, moral choice.\r\n\r\nConsider the soul of the altruistic moralist who would be prepared to tell that husband the opposite. (And then ask yourself whether altruism is motivated by benevolence.)\r\n\r\nThe proper method of judging when or whether one should help another person is by reference to one\u2019s own rational self-interest and one\u2019s own hierarchy of values: the time, money or effort one gives or the risk one takes should be proportionate to the value of the person in relation to one\u2019s own happiness.\r\n\r\nTo illustrate this on the altruists\u2019 favorite example: the issue of saving a drowning person. If the person to be saved is a stranger, it is morally proper to save him only when the danger to one\u2019s own life is minimal; when the danger is great, it would be immoral to attempt it: only a lack of self-esteem could permit one to value one\u2019s life no higher than that of any random stranger. (And, conversely, if one is drowning, one cannot expect a stranger to risk his life for one\u2019s sake, remembering that one\u2019s life cannot be as valuable to him as his own.)\r\n\r\nIf the person to be saved is not a stranger, then the risk one should be willing to take is greater in proportion to the greatness of that person\u2019s value to oneself. If it is the man or woman one loves, then one can be willing to give one\u2019s own life to save him or her\u2014for the selfish reason that life without the loved person could be unbearable.\r\n\r\nConversely, if a man is able to swim and to save his drowning wife, but becomes panicky, gives in to an unjustified, irrational fear and lets her drown, then spends his life in loneliness and misery\u2014one would not call him \u201cselfish\u201d; one would condemn him morally for his treason to himself and to his own values, that is: his failure to fight for the preservation of a value crucial to his own happiness. Remember that values are that which one acts to gain and\/or keep, and that one\u2019s own happiness has to be achieved by one\u2019s own effort. Since one\u2019s own happiness is the moral purpose of one\u2019s life, the man who fails to achieve it because of his own default, because of his failure to fight for it, is morally guilty.\r\n\r\nThe virtue involved in helping those one loves is not \u201cselflessness\u201d or \u201csacrifice,\u201d but integrity. Integrity is loyalty to one\u2019s convictions and values; it is the policy of acting in accordance with one\u2019s values, of expressing, upholding and translating them into practical reality. If a man professes to love a woman, yet his actions are indifferent, inimical or damaging to her, it is his lack of integrity that makes him immoral.\r\n\r\nThe same principle applies to relationships among friends. If one\u2019s friend is in trouble, one should act to help him by whatever non-sacrificial means are appropriate. For instance, if one\u2019s friend is starving, it is not a sacrifice, but an act of integrity to give him money for food rather than buy some insignificant gadget for oneself, because his welfare is important in the scale of one\u2019s personal values. If the gadget means more than the friend\u2019s suffering, one had no business pretending to be his friend.\r\n\r\nThe practical implementation of friendship, affection and love consists of incorporating the welfare (the rational welfare) of the person involved into one\u2019s own hierarchy of values, then acting accordingly.\r\n\r\nBut this is a reward which men have to earn by means of their virtues and which one cannot grant to mere acquaintances or strangers.\r\n\r\nWhat, then, should one properly grant to strangers? The generalized respect and good will which one should grant to a human being in the name of the potential value he represents\u2014until and unless he forfeits it.\r\n\r\nA rational man does not forget that life is the source of all values and, as such, a common bond among living beings (as against inanimate matter), that other men are potentially able to achieve the same virtues as his own and thus be of enormous value to him. This does not mean that he regards human lives as interchangeable with his own. He recognizes the fact that his own life is the source, not only of all his values, but of his capacity to value. Therefore, the value he grants to others is only a consequence, an extension, a secondary projection of the primary value which is himself.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe respect and good will that men of self-esteem feel toward other human beings is profoundly egoistic; they feel, in effect: \u2018Other men are of value because they are of the same species as myself.\u2019 In revering living entities, they are revering their own life. This is the psychological base of any emotion of sympathy and any feeling of \u2018species solidarity.\u2019 \u201d [1]<\/a>\r\n\r\nSince men are born tabula rasa, both cognitively and morally, a rational man regards strangers as innocent until proved guilty, and grants them that initial good will in the name of their human potential. After that, he judges them according to the moral character they have actualized. If he finds them guilty of major evils, his good will is replaced by contempt and moral condemnation. (If one values human life, one cannot value its destroyers.) If he finds them to be virtuous, he grants them personal, individual value and appreciation, in proportion to their virtues.\r\n\r\nIt is on the ground of that generalized good will and respect for the value of human life that one helps strangers in an emergency\u2014and only in an emergency.\r\n\r\nIt is important to differentiate between the rules of conduct in an emergency situation and the rules of conduct in the normal conditions of human existence. This does not mean a double standard of morality: the standard and the basic principles remain the same, but their application to either case requires precise definitions.\r\n\r\nAn emergency is an unchosen, unexpected event, limited in time, that creates conditions under which human survival is impossible\u2014such as a flood, an earthquake, a fire, a shipwreck. In an emergency situation, men\u2019s primary goal is to combat the disaster, escape the danger and restore normal conditions (to reach dry land, to put out the fire, etc.).\r\n\r\nBy \u201cnormal\u201d conditions I mean metaphysically normal, normal in the nature of things, and appropriate to human existence. Men can live on land, but not in water or in a raging fire. Since men are not omnipotent, it is metaphysically possible for unforeseeable disasters to strike them, in which case their only task is to return to those conditions under which their lives can continue. By its nature, an emergency situation is temporary; if it were to last, men would perish.\r\n\r\nIt is only in emergency situations that one should volunteer to help strangers, if it is in one\u2019s power. For instance, a man who values human life and is caught in a shipwreck, should help to save his fellow passengers (though not at the expense of his own life). But this does not mean that after they all reach shore, he should devote his efforts to saving his fellow passengers from poverty, ignorance, neurosis or whatever other troubles they might have. Nor does it mean that he should spend his life sailing the seven seas in search of shipwreck victims to save.\r\n\r\nOr to take an example that can occur in everyday life: suppose one hears that the man next door is ill and penniless. Illness and poverty are not metaphysical emergencies, they are part of the normal risks of existence; but since the man is temporarily helpless, one may bring him food and medicine, if one can afford it (as an act of good will, not of duty) or one may raise a fund among the neighbors to help him out. But this does not mean that one must support him from then on, nor that one must spend one\u2019s life looking for starving men to help.\r\n\r\nIn the normal conditions of existence, man has to choose his goals, project them in time, pursue them and achieve them by his own effort. He cannot do it if his goals are at the mercy of and must be sacrificed to any misfortune happening to others. He cannot live his life by the guidance of rules applicable only to conditions under which human survival is impossible.\r\n\r\nThe principle that one should help men in an emergency cannot be extended to regard all human suffering as an emergency and to turn the misfortune of some into a first mortgage on the lives of others.\r\n\r\nPoverty, ignorance, illness and other problems of that kind are not metaphysical emergencies. By the metaphysical nature of man and of existence, man has to maintain his life by his own effort; the values he needs\u2014such as wealth or knowledge\u2014are not given to him automatically, as a gift of nature, but have to be discovered and achieved by his own thinking and work. One\u2019s sole obligation toward others, in this respect, is to maintain a social system that leaves men free to achieve, to gain and to keep their values.\r\n\r\nEvery code of ethics is based on and derived from a metaphysics, that is: from a theory about the fundamental nature of the universe in which man lives and acts. The altruist ethics is based on a \u201cmalevolent universe\u201d metaphysics, on the theory that man, by his very nature, is helpless and doomed\u2014that success, happiness, achievement are impossible to him\u2014that emergencies, disasters, catastrophes are the norm of his life and that his primary goal is to combat them.\r\n\r\nAs the simplest empirical refutation of that metaphysics\u2014as evidence of the fact that the material universe is not inimical to man and that catastrophes are the exception, not the rule of his existence\u2014observe the fortunes made by insurance companies.\r\n\r\nObserve also that the advocates of altruism are unable to base their ethics on any facts of men\u2019s normal existence and that they always offer \u201clifeboat\u201d situations as examples from which to derive the rules of moral conduct. (\u201cWhat should you do if you and another man are in a lifeboat that can carry only one?\u201d etc.)\r\n\r\nThe fact is that men do not live in lifeboats\u2014and that a lifeboat is not the place on which to base one\u2019s metaphysics.\r\n\r\nThe moral purpose of a man\u2019s life is the achievement of his own happiness. This does not mean that he is indifferent to all men, that human life is of no value to him and that he has no reason to help others in an emergency. But it does mean that he does not subordinate his life to the welfare of others, that he does not sacrifice himself to their needs, that the relief of their suffering is not his primary concern, that any help he gives is an exception, not a rule, an act of generosity, not of moral duty, that it is marginal and incidental\u2014as disasters are marginal and incidental in the course of human existence\u2014and that values, not disasters, are the goal, the first concern and the motive power of his life.\r\n\r\n(February 1963)\r\n\r\n \r\n
    \r\n
    \r\n\r\n[1]<\/a> Nathaniel Branden, \u201cBenevolence versus Altruism,\u201d The Objectivist Newsletter<\/em>, July 1962.\u202832\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"

    The Ethics of Emergencies<\/h2>\n

    by Ayn Rand <\/em><\/h3>\n

    The psychological results of altruism may be observed in the fact that a great many people approach the subject of ethics by asking such questions as: \u201cShould one risk one\u2019s life to help a man who is: a) drowning, b) trapped in a fire, c) stepping in front of a speeding truck, d) hanging by his fingernails over an abyss?\u201d<\/p>\n

    Consider the implications of that approach. If a man accepts the ethics of altruism, he suffers the following consequences (in proportion to the degree of his acceptance):<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Lack of self-esteem\u2014since his first concern in the realm of values is not how to live his life, but how to sacrifice it.<\/li>\n
    2. Lack of respect for others\u2014since he regards mankind as a herd of doomed beggars crying for someone\u2019s help.<\/li>\n
    3. A nightmare view of existence\u2014since he believes that men are trapped in a \u201cmalevolent universe\u201d where disasters are the constant and primary concern of their lives.<\/li>\n
    4. And, in fact, a lethargic indifference to ethics, a hopelessly cynical amorality\u2014since his questions involve situations which he is not likely ever to encounter, which bear no relation to the actual problems of his own life and thus leave him to live without any moral principles whatever.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      By elevating the issue of helping others into the central and primary issue of ethics, altruism has destroyed the concept of any authentic benevolence or good will among men. It has indoctrinated men with the idea that to value another human being is an act of selflessness, thus implying that a man can have no personal interest in others\u2014that to value another means to sacrifice oneself\u2014that any love, respect or admiration a man may feel for others is not and cannot be a source of his own enjoyment, but is a threat to his existence, a sacrificial blank check signed over to his loved ones.<\/p>\n

      The men who accept that dichotomy but choose its other side, the ultimate products of altruism\u2019s dehumanizing influence, are those psychopaths who do not challenge altruism\u2019s basic premise, but proclaim their rebellion against self-sacrifice by announcing that they are totally indifferent to anything living and would not lift a finger to help a man or a dog left mangled by a hit-and-run driver (who is usually one of their own kind).<\/p>\n

      Most men do not accept or practice either side of altruism\u2019s viciously false dichotomy, but its result is a total intellectual chaos on the issue of proper human relationships and on such questions as the nature, purpose or extent of the help one may give to others. Today, a great many well-meaning, reasonable men do not know how to identify or conceptualize the moral principles that motivate their love, affection or good will, and can find no guidance in the field of ethics, which is dominated by the stale platitudes of altruism.<\/p>\n

      On the question of why man is not a sacrificial animal and why help to others is not his moral duty, I refer you to Atlas Shrugged. This present discussion is concerned with the principles by which one identifies and evaluates the instances involving a man\u2019s non-sacrificial help to others.<\/p>\n

      \u201cSacrifice\u201d is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue. Thus, altruism gauges a man\u2019s virtue by the degree to which he surrenders, renounces or betrays his values (since help to a stranger or an enemy is regarded as more virtuous, less \u201cselfish,\u201d than help to those one loves). The rational principle of conduct is the exact opposite: always act in accordance with the hierarchy of your values, and never sacrifice a greater value to a lesser one.<\/p>\n

      This applies to all choices, including one\u2019s actions toward other men. It requires that one possess a defined hierarchy of rational values (values chosen and validated by a rational standard). Without such a hierarchy, neither rational conduct nor considered value judgments nor moral choices are possible.<\/p>\n

      Love and friendship are profoundly personal, selfish values: love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one\u2019s own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one\u2019s own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love.<\/p>\n

      A \u201cselfless,\u201d \u201cdisinterested\u201d love is a contradiction in terms: it means that one is indifferent to that which one values.<\/p>\n

      Concern for the welfare of those one loves is a rational part of one\u2019s selfish interests. If a man who is passionately in love with his wife spends a fortune to cure her of a dangerous illness, it would be absurd to claim that he does it as a \u201csacrifice\u201d for her sake, not his own, and that it makes no difference to hi,m personally and selfishly, whether she lives or dies.<\/p>\n

      Any action that a man undertakes for the benefit of those he loves is not a sacrifice if, in the hierarchy of his values, in the total context of the choices open to him, it achieves that which is of greatest personal (and rational) importance to hi.m In the above example, his wife\u2019s survival is of greater value to the husband than anything else that his money could buy, it is of greatest importance to his own happiness and, therefore, his action is not a sacrifice.<\/p>\n

      But suppose he let her die in order to spend his money on saving the lives of ten other women, none of whom meant anything to him\u2014as the ethics of altruism would require. That would be a sacrifice. Here the difference between Objectivism and altruism can be seen most clearly: if sacrifice is the moral principle of action, then that husband should sacrifice his wife for the sake of ten other women. What distinguishes the wife from the ten others? Nothing but her value to the husband who has to make the choice\u2014nothing but the fact that his happiness requires her survival.<\/p>\n

      The Objectivist ethics would tell him: your highest moral purpose is the achievement of your own happiness, your money is yours, use it to save your wife, that is your moral right and your rational, moral choice.<\/p>\n

      Consider the soul of the altruistic moralist who would be prepared to tell that husband the opposite. (And then ask yourself whether altruism is motivated by benevolence.)<\/p>\n

      The proper method of judging when or whether one should help another person is by reference to one\u2019s own rational self-interest and one\u2019s own hierarchy of values: the time, money or effort one gives or the risk one takes should be proportionate to the value of the person in relation to one\u2019s own happiness.<\/p>\n

      To illustrate this on the altruists\u2019 favorite example: the issue of saving a drowning person. If the person to be saved is a stranger, it is morally proper to save him only when the danger to one\u2019s own life is minimal; when the danger is great, it would be immoral to attempt it: only a lack of self-esteem could permit one to value one\u2019s life no higher than that of any random stranger. (And, conversely, if one is drowning, one cannot expect a stranger to risk his life for one\u2019s sake, remembering that one\u2019s life cannot be as valuable to him as his own.)<\/p>\n

      If the person to be saved is not a stranger, then the risk one should be willing to take is greater in proportion to the greatness of that person\u2019s value to oneself. If it is the man or woman one loves, then one can be willing to give one\u2019s own life to save him or her\u2014for the selfish reason that life without the loved person could be unbearable.<\/p>\n

      Conversely, if a man is able to swim and to save his drowning wife, but becomes panicky, gives in to an unjustified, irrational fear and lets her drown, then spends his life in loneliness and misery\u2014one would not call him \u201cselfish\u201d; one would condemn him morally for his treason to himself and to his own values, that is: his failure to fight for the preservation of a value crucial to his own happiness. Remember that values are that which one acts to gain and\/or keep, and that one\u2019s own happiness has to be achieved by one\u2019s own effort. Since one\u2019s own happiness is the moral purpose of one\u2019s life, the man who fails to achieve it because of his own default, because of his failure to fight for it, is morally guilty.<\/p>\n

      The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not \u201cselflessness\u201d or \u201csacrifice,\u201d but integrity. Integrity is loyalty to one\u2019s convictions and values; it is the policy of acting in accordance with one\u2019s values, of expressing, upholding and translating them into practical reality. If a man professes to love a woman, yet his actions are indifferent, inimical or damaging to her, it is his lack of integrity that makes him immoral.<\/p>\n

      The same principle applies to relationships among friends. If one\u2019s friend is in trouble, one should act to help him by whatever non-sacrificial means are appropriate. For instance, if one\u2019s friend is starving, it is not a sacrifice, but an act of integrity to give him money for food rather than buy some insignificant gadget for oneself, because his welfare is important in the scale of one\u2019s personal values. If the gadget means more than the friend\u2019s suffering, one had no business pretending to be his friend.<\/p>\n

      The practical implementation of friendship, affection and love consists of incorporating the welfare (the rational welfare) of the person involved into one\u2019s own hierarchy of values, then acting accordingly.<\/p>\n

      But this is a reward which men have to earn by means of their virtues and which one cannot grant to mere acquaintances or strangers.<\/p>\n

      What, then, should one properly grant to strangers? The generalized respect and good will which one should grant to a human being in the name of the potential value he represents\u2014until and unless he forfeits it.<\/p>\n

      A rational man does not forget that life is the source of all values and, as such, a common bond among living beings (as against inanimate matter), that other men are potentially able to achieve the same virtues as his own and thus be of enormous value to him. This does not mean that he regards human lives as interchangeable with his own. He recognizes the fact that his own life is the source, not only of all his values, but of his capacity to value. Therefore, the value he grants to others is only a consequence, an extension, a secondary projection of the primary value which is himself.<\/p>\n

      \u201cThe respect and good will that men of self-esteem feel toward other human beings is profoundly egoistic; they feel, in effect: \u2018Other men are of value because they are of the same species as myself.\u2019 In revering living entities, they are revering their own life. This is the psychological base of any emotion of sympathy and any feeling of \u2018species solidarity.\u2019 \u201d [1]<\/a><\/p>\n

      Since men are born tabula rasa, both cognitively and morally, a rational man regards strangers as innocent until proved guilty, and grants them that initial good will in the name of their human potential. After that, he judges them according to the moral character they have actualized. If he finds them guilty of major evils, his good will is replaced by contempt and moral condemnation. (If one values human life, one cannot value its destroyers.) If he finds them to be virtuous, he grants them personal, individual value and appreciation, in proportion to their virtues.<\/p>\n

      It is on the ground of that generalized good will and respect for the value of human life that one helps strangers in an emergency\u2014and only in an emergency.<\/p>\n

      It is important to differentiate between the rules of conduct in an emergency situation and the rules of conduct in the normal conditions of human existence. This does not mean a double standard of morality: the standard and the basic principles remain the same, but their application to either case requires precise definitions.<\/p>\n

      An emergency is an unchosen, unexpected event, limited in time, that creates conditions under which human survival is impossible\u2014such as a flood, an earthquake, a fire, a shipwreck. In an emergency situation, men\u2019s primary goal is to combat the disaster, escape the danger and restore normal conditions (to reach dry land, to put out the fire, etc.).<\/p>\n

      By \u201cnormal\u201d conditions I mean metaphysically normal, normal in the nature of things, and appropriate to human existence. Men can live on land, but not in water or in a raging fire. Since men are not omnipotent, it is metaphysically possible for unforeseeable disasters to strike them, in which case their only task is to return to those conditions under which their lives can continue. By its nature, an emergency situation is temporary; if it were to last, men would perish.<\/p>\n

      It is only in emergency situations that one should volunteer to help strangers, if it is in one\u2019s power. For instance, a man who values human life and is caught in a shipwreck, should help to save his fellow passengers (though not at the expense of his own life). But this does not mean that after they all reach shore, he should devote his efforts to saving his fellow passengers from poverty, ignorance, neurosis or whatever other troubles they might have. Nor does it mean that he should spend his life sailing the seven seas in search of shipwreck victims to save.<\/p>\n

      Or to take an example that can occur in everyday life: suppose one hears that the man next door is ill and penniless. Illness and poverty are not metaphysical emergencies, they are part of the normal risks of existence; but since the man is temporarily helpless, one may bring him food and medicine, if one can afford it (as an act of good will, not of duty) or one may raise a fund among the neighbors to help him out. But this does not mean that one must support him from then on, nor that one must spend one\u2019s life looking for starving men to help.<\/p>\n

      In the normal conditions of existence, man has to choose his goals, project them in time, pursue them and achieve them by his own effort. He cannot do it if his goals are at the mercy of and must be sacrificed to any misfortune happening to others. He cannot live his life by the guidance of rules applicable only to conditions under which human survival is impossible.<\/p>\n

      The principle that one should help men in an emergency cannot be extended to regard all human suffering as an emergency and to turn the misfortune of some into a first mortgage on the lives of others.<\/p>\n

      Poverty, ignorance, illness and other problems of that kind are not metaphysical emergencies. By the metaphysical nature of man and of existence, man has to maintain his life by his own effort; the values he needs\u2014such as wealth or knowledge\u2014are not given to him automatically, as a gift of nature, but have to be discovered and achieved by his own thinking and work. One\u2019s sole obligation toward others, in this respect, is to maintain a social system that leaves men free to achieve, to gain and to keep their values.<\/p>\n

      Every code of ethics is based on and derived from a metaphysics, that is: from a theory about the fundamental nature of the universe in which man lives and acts. The altruist ethics is based on a \u201cmalevolent universe\u201d metaphysics, on the theory that man, by his very nature, is helpless and doomed\u2014that success, happiness, achievement are impossible to him\u2014that emergencies, disasters, catastrophes are the norm of his life and that his primary goal is to combat them.<\/p>\n

      As the simplest empirical refutation of that metaphysics\u2014as evidence of the fact that the material universe is not inimical to man and that catastrophes are the exception, not the rule of his existence\u2014observe the fortunes made by insurance companies.<\/p>\n

      Observe also that the advocates of altruism are unable to base their ethics on any facts of men\u2019s normal existence and that they always offer \u201clifeboat\u201d situations as examples from which to derive the rules of moral conduct. (\u201cWhat should you do if you and another man are in a lifeboat that can carry only one?\u201d etc.)<\/p>\n

      The fact is that men do not live in lifeboats\u2014and that a lifeboat is not the place on which to base one\u2019s metaphysics.<\/p>\n

      The moral purpose of a man\u2019s life is the achievement of his own happiness. This does not mean that he is indifferent to all men, that human life is of no value to him and that he has no reason to help others in an emergency. But it does mean that he does not subordinate his life to the welfare of others, that he does not sacrifice himself to their needs, that the relief of their suffering is not his primary concern, that any help he gives is an exception, not a rule, an act of generosity, not of moral duty, that it is marginal and incidental\u2014as disasters are marginal and incidental in the course of human existence\u2014and that values, not disasters, are the goal, the first concern and the motive power of his life.<\/p>\n

      (February 1963)<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      \n
      \n

      [1]<\/a> Nathaniel Branden, \u201cBenevolence versus Altruism,\u201d The Objectivist Newsletter<\/em>, July 1962.\u202832<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":750,"menu_order":1,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[47],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-125","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","chapter-type-standard"],"part":123,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/philosophyreader102\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/philosophyreader102\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/philosophyreader102\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/philosophyreader102\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/750"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/philosophyreader102\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/philosophyreader102\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/125\/revisions\/127"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/philosophyreader102\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/123"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/philosophyreader102\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/125\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/philosophyreader102\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/philosophyreader102\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/philosophyreader102\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/philosophyreader102\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}