Rationality
Rationality is the virtue of accepting reason as one's only source of knowledge, only judge of values and only guide to action. Objectivism treats it as the primary virtue, of which the other six are applications to particular kinds of situation.
“The virtue of Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action.”
~ Ayn Rand, "The Objectivist Ethics", The Virtue of Selfishness
What the virtue actually requires
Rationality is not a temperament or a talent for argument. It is a policy, and it has content:
- Full focus. Man's consciousness is volitional: the choice to think is not made once but continuously, and the alternative is not stupidity but drift. Rand called the primary choice "to focus or not to focus".
- Never placing any consideration above one's perception of reality. Not wishes, not fear, not the opinions of others, not the desire for a conclusion to be true. See Objectivity.
- Acting on one's conclusions. A conviction that never reaches action is not a conviction. This is where rationality passes into integrity.
- Accepting nothing on faith or authority — and equally, refusing to treat the arbitrary as though it deserved consideration.
- Never faking reality in any manner, which is honesty considered as an aspect of rationality rather than as a separate rule.
Rationality and emotion
The most persistent misreading is that the virtue demands suppressing feeling. Objectivism holds that emotions are automatic responses to one's value-judgments, and so are neither tools of cognition nor enemies of it. See Emotions and Reason-Emotion Dichotomy.
The practical upshot is not repression but introspection. An emotion is data about what one has accepted as a value, and a persistent emotion that conflicts with a stated conviction is evidence that one of the two is not really held. What rationality forbids is using an emotion as evidence about the world rather than about oneself — treating "I feel that it is so" as a reason to believe that it is so. That substitution is what Rand called whim-worship; see Subjectivism.
Common misunderstandings
- That it means being unemotional. Rationality is sometimes summarised as "using reason and rejecting emotions". That is not the Objectivist position: Rand's account makes happiness — an emotional state — the moral purpose of a life, and treats emotions as consequences of one's values rather than obstacles to them.
- That it means deducing everything from principles. Detaching principles from the concretes that gave rise to them is rationalism, which Objectivism treats as a failure of rationality rather than an excess of it.
- That it licenses "whatever I can rationalise". Rationalising is constructing a case for a conclusion already adopted on other grounds, which is the exact inversion of the virtue.
- That being rational guarantees being right. Rationality is a method, not an oracle. An honest error made in full focus, on the evidence available, is not a moral failing; evasion of available evidence is. See Context and Certainty.
See also
- Reason · Objectivity · Logic · Volition
- Virtues · Honesty · Integrity · Independence
- Emotions · Reason-Emotion Dichotomy · Subjectivism
- Faith · Mysticism · Rationalism · Pragmatism
- Ethics · Life · Egoism
Discussion
- How do you argue with moral relativists?
- Not caring what others think
- A Bible passage which declares the mind evil
References
- Rand, Ayn. "The Objectivist Ethics", The Virtue of Selfishness. New American Library, 1964.
- Rand, Ayn. "Philosophical Detection", Philosophy: Who Needs It.
- Branden, Nathaniel. "The Psychology of Pleasure", The Virtue of Selfishness.
- Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chapter 8.