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.
This article appears in the Winter 2025 issue of The Objective Standard.
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."
This was an excellent article.
To quote Dennis Prager, “religion is the ship that holds all the moral cargo.”
While the good can be discovered by the mind apart from religion—something Prager acknowledges—people seem to prefer it or some national narrative (ex: Japan) to philosophy. And since academic philosophy has failed in its charge to furnish the world an objective morality, religion remains the essential vehicle tasked with that goal, which is truly a pity.