Life and Value in
Ayn Rand's Ethics
 

1. Ethics as a Science
2. The Coin of Survival
3. The Death of the Wet Nurse
4. What Is Life?
5. The Galt's Gulch Boys
6. Legacies

One of Ayn Rand's philosophical goals was to establish ethics as a science. She proposed that the validity of ethical principles could be assessed by identifying the biological function served by ethics, and asking what principles serve that function. This is a promising idea and makes Objectivism a fitting name for her philosophy, by contrast to such schools of ethics as Christianity, which makes ethical principles the commands of God (accepted on faith), or utilitarianism, which accepts any preferences whatever as equally valid and makes ethical principles neutral tools for achieving them two approaches reasonably described as ultimately subjective.

But the devil is in the details. A careful reading of Rand's statements on ethics, especially her essay "The Objectivist Ethics," shows that its arguments and conclusions are inconsistent with actual biological facts. Rand herself does not apply those principles consistently in her fiction, which attempts to portray people living by her ethics. Actually carrying out Rand's project requires a more accurate understanding of biology and leads to conclusions different from hers.