| | Whether an Objectivist would have the right to initiate the use of force in an emergency situation, or more generally whether a person should have the right to contradict his moral principles under certain circumstances is an interesting question. The answer to this depends on whether it is possible to derive a moral code which is completely general for dealing with reality. If this is possible, then there would be no reason to ever step outside of it, and if not then it would be under certain circumstances.
Objectivist morality is derived by taking life as the standard of value, reason as the means to knowledge, and reality as the context in which these standards are applied. Constrained by these standards and context, the derived moral code should apply to any person when dealing with any aspect of reality, and therefore be completely general in nature and thus have no exceptions. It is however easy to imagine situations, the "life-boat situations" as they are so-called, in which one's survival may require that this code to be violated. This shows that there is some kind of inconsistency between the standards of the derivation and the result which is produced, ie. there is a contradiction present. The problem is to find this contradiction.
Now life must be held as the standard of value, since it is life that makes all other values possible, and thus if life is lost, all other values are lost as well, and reason must be the standard of truth, since knowledge is necessary for survival and only reason can provide it, and there is no situation in which these will not be true. This leaves the context of reality remaining and thus this must be the source of the problem.
When Rand derives her morality she correctly recognizes that life is a self-sustaining process, and thus men must work in order to produce the values which they require. She also correctly recognizes that in order for this production to take place the mind must be free in order to function, and thus aggression must be limited to strictly self-defense or retaliatory acts. It is at this point that the principle of non-aggression enters Objectivism, and with full universality. This appears to be a valid deduction, however it is flawed in that it fails to consider the fact that the self-sustaining nature of life imposes a limit on the amount of time available for the production of necessary values. This is the key to the contradiction which arises. These life boat situations occur when the amount of time available for the production of the necessary values is less than the time required to produce them. When this happens one has no viable means of survival.
To clarify this observation, consider a simple example. Suppose two people are adrift in a life boat, but there is only enough food to sustain one of them until rescue. The problem isn't that there is no food, or that they will not be rescued, but that the length of time required to acquire adequate food is longer that the time it will take them to starve. After a few moments of thought about this, I believe you can see that this is the essential characteristic of all life-boat situations, since if the length of time for sustainance is sufficiently long, no life-boat situation can ever occur.
As I recall, when confronted with the these life-boats situations Rand simply swept them aside by saying that "men do not live their lives in life-boats." This is true, but only because normally people have sufficient time to produce the values which they require. It is not true that this is always the case. Consequently, the Objectivist ethics are not valid in the general context of reality, but only under in special context that sufficient time is available for the production of necessary values, and thus they do not apply to life-boat situations.
Now can the Objectivist ethics be generalized in some way to subsume all contexts and thus eliminate this contradiction? I do not think this is possible, since productiveness requires that the mind be free and this imposes the condition of non-aggression, but the self-sustaining nature of life imposes a time limit on the duration of the productive process, and it is not in general possible to simultaneously remain within these two constraints, and since this contradiction is written into human existence at the metaphysical level there is no logical resolution for it, it is thus an unalterable fact of life in this world. So, Rand was correct to sweep it aside and derive her moral system as she did.
The conclusion to take away from this is that Objectivism is as general a system of ethics as is possible to create. One should uphold it as best as one can, and the extremes to which one is willing to go to do so would be a measure of one's moral strength, but if the circumstances of existence make consistency impossible, then you must do what survival requires. It also means moral rebuke must be withheld from, and forgiveness given to, people in desperate situations who act in a way that would otherwise be immoral, but only if they did not bring this desperation upon themselves through irrational or reckless action, or step further outside the bounds of Objectivist ethics than was necessary to escape it.
(Edited by Robert E. Milenberg on 6/04, 1:51pm)
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