For thousands of years, people have debated the objective standard of morality. Is there such a thing? If so, what is it? And how can we know it?
Is it “Might makes right,” as the Sophists claimed? Or “the Form of the Good” as Plato imagined? Or “God’s will,” as Jews, Christians, and Muslims submit?
Is it selfless service to others, as altruists declare? Or compliance with the will of some group, as socialists, communists, and fascists insist? Or “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” as Utilitarians say?
Or . . . is it the factual requirements of human life, given human nature and our basic needs?
It is the latter. And this fact is hiding in plain sight.
Observe that the very question morality or ethics seeks to answer is: How should we live? This aim—living—is captured in descriptions spanning from the great philosopher Socrates, who said that ethics is about “the way we ought to live,” to political commentator Ben Shapiro, who notes that it addresses the question, “How ought we to live?” The same aim appears in the titles and themes of countless books on ethics—from widely used college texts such as How Should We Live? by Louis Pojman and How Are We to Live? by Peter Singer, to popular books such as Epictetus’s The Art of Living and Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, to groundbreaking works such as Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, which is about living in harmony with your nature and thus living fully.
Whatever disagreements such thinkers may have about how we should live—and whatever contradictions might exist in their worldviews—their basic conception of ethics recognizes, at least implicitly, that the ultimate aim of the discipline is: living.
Likewise, when people express concern about the need for an objective standard of morality, they often say that, without one, people could murder, rape, and rob—yet nothing would be wrong with such behavior. When asked why that matters, they reply that such conditions would make civilized society—and thus human life—impossible. They are right. Without a moral standard grounded in the facts of reality—namely, the factual requirements of human life—human beings would be in a constant war of each against all. We could not live as human beings.
There’s that concept of “life” again. It pervades every thoughtful discussion of ethics—and for good reason. The ultimate goal of moral thinking is to guide our actions so that we can live.
None of this is to say that people consciously or explicitly recognize human life as the ultimate goal of morality. Few do. But if we pay attention to what we and others think, say, and do regarding morality—and to the logical implications of our ideas, concerns, and actions—we can see that the ultimate reason we need morality is: to live.
Morality is a code of values and principles to guide our choices and actions. Either we need such a code, or we don’t. If we don’t need it, then there’s no point in discussing or even pondering the subject. But if we do need morality, then the reason we need it—the ultimate end it serves—logically sets the standard by which we can determine what is good and bad, right and wrong, and how we should and shouldn’t act.
As Ayn Rand observed, human life is the basic phenomenon that gives rise to both the possibility and the need of morality. If human beings didn’t exist, morality couldn’t exist—as there would be no one to formulate or apply its principles. And if we didn’t want to live, we wouldn’t need principles to guide our choices and actions—as we wouldn’t need to make choices or take actions at all. Morality is possible only to human beings, and we need it only if we want to live. We can see that this is so.
From these and related observations, Rand induced the principle that the requirements of human life constitute the objective standard of morality. On this standard, the ideas, actions, and conditions that support and further human life are morally good; those that harm or destroy it are morally bad. For instance, the principle that reason is man’s only means of knowledge, the act of producing life-serving values, and the establishment of a society that protects individual rights are moral. By contrast, the notion that faith or feelings are means of knowledge, the act of destroying life-serving values, and the establishment of a society that violates individual rights are immoral. (For a step-by-step derivation of this principle, see Rand’s essay “The Objectivist Ethics” in The Virtue of Selfishness, or my essay “Secular, Objective Morality: Look and See” in The Objective Standard.)
Morality is about how to live—specifically, how to live as a human being, given our nature and needs. And human life is the objective standard of moral value because it is the fundamental fact that gives rise to the possibility and need of morality.
So, whenever you think about morality or discuss it with others, look for the concept of “life.” See whether it’s being recognized—implicitly or explicitly—as the ultimate goal. Ask yourself whether the subject could exist or be of any use without it. And ask yourself why.
Over time, you’ll see increasingly clearly that the very reason we need a code of values and principles to guide our choices and actions is so that we can live in harmony with our nature. In other words, you’ll see that the requirements of human life constitute the objective standard of morality.
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And with every additional person who sees it, the world becomes a better place for human beings to live.
An Open Response to Craig Biddle's Evasion
You have chosen to respond to my systematic critique not by engaging its substance, but by retreating to the safe abstraction of "life as the standard of value." This evasion speaks volumes. While your latest article accurately presents this fundamental ethical principle, its timing and context reveal it as a defensive maneuver—an attempt to reassert philosophical authority while avoiding the specific contradictions I documented. You discuss morality in general terms precisely to avoid discussing your own moral contradictions in particular.
Your response demonstrates a critical failure to understand philosophy's hierarchical nature. Ethics cannot stand alone any more than multiplication can exist without addition. You attempt to perform complex ethical calculations while remaining willfully ignorant of the epistemological operations that make them possible. This would be like learning that 5×4 equals 20 while rebelling against the fact that 4×5 or 20/1 are all the same fundamental operation. You want the answer without understanding the process, the conclusion without the reasoning that makes it valid.
The problem isn't just intellectual—it's moral. Tribalism is tribalism, dependence is dependence, your evasion is evasion. None of these become virtues simply because you practice them while wearing the label of Objectivism. You cannot claim self-esteem while engaging in the very authority-worship that destroys it. Your approach represents the philosophical equivalent of wanting the product without the factors, the effect without the cause, the answer without the work required to earn it.
Angels on high
The analysis of Angelica Walker-Werth's attempted distinction provides a perfect case study of how supposedly Objectivist thinkers betray rational principles while maintaining the vocabulary of reason. Her effort to distinguish between "mental" and "physical" pleasures represents the same fundamental error as the Platonic dualism she claims to reject.
The "high/low" dichotomy is profoundly false and horrible because it represents a fundamental misidentification of human nature. The very notion of "mindless pleasure" is a contradiction in terms—all pleasure is experienced by a mind, by a consciousness. When you feel pleasure from basking in the sun or from reading philosophy, you're experiencing the same psychological mechanism: the emotional response to value-achievement. To claim otherwise is to misunderstand both consciousness and values.
If higher pleasures were possible in and by themselves, they could not be obtained otherwise unless one turns to mysticism and madness. The pursuit of "higher values" disconnected from "lower values" ultimately means brainlessness—it requires severing consciousness from its perceptual foundation, from the biological reality that gives values their meaning. This isn't philosophy; it's self-alienation disguised as enlightenment.
The correct, objective model is one of integration and hierarchy of values, not pleasures. Higher values are a guide for possible and desired development, but they must be derived from the processing and study of one's lower values. Higher values have NO meaning if one does not respect the actual values and possibilities now. You cannot build a skyscraper of ethical principles without first understanding and valuing the foundation of your own biological and psychological needs.
Walker-Werth's distinction commits the classic philosophical error of invalid concept formation. The pleasure of reading philosophy and the pleasure of a backrub both represent successful value-achievement for an integrated consciousness. To categorize them as different kinds of pleasure based solely on the complexity of conceptual engagement is to misunderstand the nature of both consciousness and values.
This corruption spreads from epistemology to ethics. A rational egoism built on this dualistic foundation becomes irrational in practice. It maintains the language of self-interest while undermining the psychological integration required to actually achieve it. This is how you get Objectivists who can eloquently defend individualism while supporting political figures who embody everything opposed to reason and individual rights.
Trump
This brings us to the ultimate demonstration of corrupted rational egoism: the Objectivist appeasement of Donald Trump. Here we see the final consequence of disintegrating philosophy from practice, of maintaining ethical principles while abandoning their methodological foundation.
Trump represents the absolute negation of Objectivist values. He explicitly rejects reason in favor of "gut feeling." He openly mocks independence and integrity. He shows contempt for individual rights, for consistency, for honesty, for every virtue you claim to champion. Yet I find supposed Objectivists making excuses for him, suggesting that he "just works."
But what does "just works" mean when divorced from principle? It means choosing not actual change, not dissolution of government or thinking and learning, but choosing between two ways to lose your soul instead of living or saving it for yourself. It means working without individualism, without reason, without personal independence, without honesty, without consistency in anything good. It means embracing the primordial collectivism of tribal politics while maintaining the pretense of individualism.
This phenomenon reveals the dirty secret of much modern Objectivism: for many of its adherents, it has become just another tribal identity rather than a methodology of reason. The principles become signaling mechanisms rather than guides to action. The movement becomes focused on boundary-policing rather than truth-seeking. And the result is the exact opposite of what Ayn Rand intended: instead of independent thinkers, you get orthodox followers; instead of reason, you get rationalization.
Epistemology
The solution to this corruption isn't better ethics—it's better fundamentals. You need to talk less about morality and more about basic logic, definitions, and reduction. You need to focus on how you know what you know, how you form valid concepts, how you distinguish self-evident truths from arbitrary assertions.
I don't care about the masses of people who will never understand these distinctions. I care about the individuals who should know better—individuals like you who have the capacity for genuine understanding but choose tribal comfort instead. Ethics is only a map for navigating values, not the territory itself. It cannot create values out of nothing, nor can it solve every problem by itself. A map is useless if you don't know how to read it, if you don't understand the relationship between the symbols and the actual landscape.
Your ethical principles are that map—beautifully drawn, exquisitely detailed, but ultimately useless if you cannot connect them to perceptual reality. The tragedy of your approach is that you've become a curator of maps rather than an explorer of territories. You spend your time polishing the map, arguing about its details, showing it to others—but you rarely venture into the actual landscape to test it against reality. All your criticism of religion is aimed at a weak, dummy adversary. But religion is bad architecture, bad architecture is what constitutes the primacy of consciousness, and you've lost to it.
Consistency is regular practice, not a static achievement. The ideal of consistency is the way of knowing whether you're committed to practice or not. You can achieve many things intellectually, but you can betray them only by passivity and dependence in effect. That is what you do. You maintain the appearance of philosophical commitment while engaging in the very evasions that make genuine commitment impossible.
You think only when you're supposed to think, only about what you're supposed to think about. You don't think just to see clearly; you think to adhere to others or to maintain your self-image as an "orthodox Objectivist." This is the ultimate betrayal of the philosophy you claim to represent. Objectivism demands that you place reality above all else—above tradition, above authority, above social acceptance, above your own previous conclusions.
Your non-response to the anarchist critique, your false equivalence between Kirk and historical martyrs of reason, your tribal definition of Objectivism—these aren't minor errors. They're systematic manifestations of a deeper psychological pattern: the preference for tribal safety over philosophical consistency.
I thought you were different. I thought you were a man of genuine integrity, someone who would follow reason wherever it leads regardless of the consequences. I admired your work, your clarity, your apparent commitment to principle. That's why your evasions disappoint me so deeply—they represent the betrayal of what I believed you stood for.
Thank you for what you were before. Thank you for the articles that genuinely advanced understanding, for the moments when you truly championed reason over tribalism. I'll take those moments with me. I'll build on them. But I cannot follow you into the territory of evasion and compromise.
The measure of a philosophy isn't in its elegant formulations but in its consistent practice. By that measure, you've fallen short. But the principles themselves remain valid, waiting for thinkers with the courage to apply them without compromise. Those principles require proper architecture and deep understanding—the basics means to know. Principles are super-condensed integrations of self-evident truths. If not grounded in this understanding, they are lost and betrayed. Ethics is a derivative discipline that depends entirely on getting the basics right.
As usual, a powerful article!
How I have come to understand "morality' is as follows:
Man has "free will." He may exercise this powerful capacity as he chooses. This capacity gives rise to the very concept of morality. Take away his will and his freedom in its exercise, and the need for such a concept as morality logically vanishes.
Morality then defines responsibility. If Man must choose between alternatives that range from the furtherance of his life to its destruction - both materially and spiritually, then he is responsible for the choices he makes. If he is responsible for the choices he makes, then he must have the right(s) necessary to fulfill this responsibility - qua man.
The above reasoning is why I always tout responsibility prior to "rights."