On Generosity as an Objectivist Virtue
an Open Letter to Craig Biddle,
Publisher and Editor of the quarterly The Objective Standard, and author of the book,
Loving Life:The Morality of Self Interest and the Facts that Support It
This letter is in response to Biddle's call for help:
Help Joshua Lipana fight cancer:
Dear Craig Biddle,
While I don't know young Joshua Lipana, your good friend and assistant editor of your journal's blog, I am answering your call to help Joshua fight his cancer because I feel that I know something essential about you, Mr. Biddle. What I know about you is the result of my reading of your work, which I greatly admire. I am happy to support something that has energized you enough to ask for help.
Now, while I am financially drooping a bit, as a result of my recent divorce and another attack on me by the IRS for yet another $10,000 in alleged back taxes, I do not think of my small donation to this hapless young man as a sacrifice. Rather I think of it as a small token of generosity.
This matter of generosity arouses a thought I have on the subject of virtue in the Objectivist philosophy. Objectivists are widely condemned for their supposedly crabbed and stingy indifference to the suffering of others. Many accuse us of thinking about nothing but me-me-me, and others be damned, for all we are said to care. Clearly your plea for help contradicts this stereotype of Objectivists.
Now, I would call your generosity "charitable," but for the unfortunate connotations of charity. Charity is widely interpreted to mean the supposedly high virtue of self-sacrifice, which is almost everywhere held to be synonymous with morality itself. Objectivists call this ideal of self-sacrifice a self-destructive moral ideal that in practice serves no one's interests. Nevertheless, Charity remains for most people the very insignia of this allegedly virtuous ideal of duty-bound self-sacrifice to the lives of others. In practice, as Ayn Rand has pointed out, self-sacrifice tempts the predatory powerful to come collecting these self-sacrificial offerings for such destructive ends as conscripting cannon fodder in crazy wars, crusades and jihads, and inspiring guilt in those who dare to hold their own happiness as a high value. Therefore this alleged virtue of self-sacrifice exudes a repulsive stench that rises from the mainstream swamp of both religious and secular values, and causes millions of people to throw away their lives for causes that vary from trivial to chimerical, quixotic, and even murderous.
By contrast, I believe that this sort of generosity can be seen as an Objectivist virtue because it supports the value of life itself. Why? Because my generosity promotes the kind of world in which I want to live and is emblematic of an ideal that is something like Aristotle's great souled man. I hold generosity to be a sort of cosmic thank you to the forces of the universe that delivered me into an auspicious time and place. It was my good luck to be born healthy, white (in a world prejudiced against blacks), male (in a world biased in favor of men), tall, free, American, and with a good mind and the opportunity therefore to work hard and make something of myself. I did nothing to deserve this great good fortune. Just deserts, like the very realm of morality, must be confined to actions over which we have some control. Being born with blue eyes or dark skin lie outside the moral realm because these traits are beyond anyone's voluntary control. By contrast, I deserve the money I earn because it comes to me through voluntary trade with others who feel they rightly benefit as much as I from this transaction.
Did I deserve my good birth? I had no control over when and where I was born. I could just as have well been born a girl in sub-Saharan Africa, blighted in every way, infected by AIDS, endowed with an IQ of 70, living in a mud hut, growing up in a culture with no clean water or electricity, living in a place where they burn animal dung and wood for fuel and heat, and are therefore breathing toxic smoke that will doom them to a death by the age of 30 from lung disease or worst. What did this poor girl do to deserve the curse of such a birth? Nothing. What did I do to deserve my great good fortune in the cosmic sweepstakes for a lucky birth? I did nothing to enjoy the good luck of being born in a time and place that affords me the freedom and the wits to figure out how to pursue my own happiness by my own lights.
Ayn Rand believed that "Man is a being of self-made soul." I certainly agree that as human beings we enjoy the power to choose one thought over another, one action instead of others, and by this power of free will we are endowed with the ability to shape our lives by our own lights. But this capacity to shape our own lives is delivered to us within a certain range of possibility that is set by many things entirely beyond our ability to control, namely, to the point here, the circumstances of our birth, our DNA, the politics of our country (whether free or oppressed), and by some essential aspects of our health. What chance does this blighted girl, born into a deadly African dictatorship, stand for putting together a decent life by her own dim lights? Not much. What did she do to deserve this fate? Nada, zippo, rien, nichts, nothing! I hasten to add that we deserve credit for whatever our endowments allow us to make of ourselves, but this is another point.
While I agree with almost nothing else that John Rawls ever said, I do affirm the idea he expressed in his nasty magnum opus, A Theory of Justice: that we do nothing to deserve the lucky or bleak circumstances of our birth. Now Rawls, of course, invoking his "difference principle," then draws the conclusion that we should put in charge of everything an army of socialist government central-planning bureaucrats and bosses so that we may "compensate" for this luck and thereby "redistribute" all this plunder for the benefit of those whom the leaders choose to bless. In contrast to Rawls, I conclude nothing more than that we owe thanks to the impersonal forces of the universe for our good luck in the cosmic sweepstakes.
Generosity, therefore, is my thank you to the universe. Generosity is my benevolent, cheerful offering to those who through no fault of their own have been stricken by some terrible roll of the cosmic dice, like this poor boy, Joshua. I cheerfully offer what I can with no expectation of reward beyond the good feeling it gives me for helping a worthy soul fight his bad luck. This generosity is an example of how I myself would want to be treated, a kind of secular Golden Rule, which is a good practice according to my values, and might be a sort of beacon that could attract others to emulate my example. Following this example can help to create an ascending spiral of benevolence that would certainly go some way towards advancing and affirming the kind of world in which I want to live.
I see nothing wrong, and everything right, about such generosity, and I would encourage all Objectivists to consider tucking this formulation of generosity into their tool box of life-affirming virtues.
I hope that Joshua survives to flourish and live a long, productive, peaceful and happy life by his own lights. May he enjoy the best that life has to offer. He has you, Mr. Biddle, to thank for being a beacon to attract some help to fight his terrible luck.
Best regards,
Eric Paul Nolte
(revised 2013.1118
and 2015.0828
and again, 2017.0904, 4th paragraph, inserted the preposition "of." "...the lives of others.")
