happiness Posted July 10, 2012 Report Share Posted July 10, 2012 (edited) Is it rational to choose another person, i.e. a romantic partner as one's ultimate value? Or the goal of attaining one if your haven't already? Or does doing so subjugate your lower values, choices and actions to another's judgment? Edited July 10, 2012 by happiness Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eiuol Posted July 10, 2012 Report Share Posted July 10, 2012 Is it rational to choose another person, i.e. a romantic partner as one's ultimate value? Or the goal of attaining one if your haven't already? Clarification please. Do you mean "ultimate value" as in above your own life (i.e. altruistic/sacrificial devotion)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdegges Posted July 11, 2012 Report Share Posted July 11, 2012 (edited) Is it rational to choose another person, i.e. a romantic partner as one's ultimate value? Or the goal of attaining one if your haven't already? Or does doing so subjugate your lower values, choices and actions to another's judgment? Virtue of Selfishness: "The three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics–the three values which, together, are the means to and the realization of one’s ultimate value, one’s own life–are: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride." While romantic partners may be important to your own happiness, they shouldn't be your main purpose for living (aka your ultimate value). The way I see it, people, relationships, and feelings are constantly changing. Truly living with someone else as your ultimate value means always putting that person's happiness above your own, and living for that person. But is that even possible, in the true meaning of the phrase "to live for someone else"? The only person you really have control over is yourself. Edited July 11, 2012 by Michele Degges Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happiness Posted July 11, 2012 Author Report Share Posted July 11, 2012 Virtue of Selfishness: "The three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics–the three values which, together, are the means to and the realization of one’s ultimate value, one’s own life–are: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride." While romantic partners may be important to your own happiness, they shouldn't be your main purpose for living (aka your ultimate value). The way I see it, people, relationships, and feelings are constantly changing. Truly living with someone else as your ultimate value means always putting that person's happiness above your own, and living for that person. But is that even possible, in the true meaning of the phrase "to live for someone else"? The only person you really have control over is yourself. That's a good answer, but how do we reconcile that with Galt's willingness to commit suicide over Dagny or Ayn Rand saying that her biggest accomplishment in life was marrying Frank O'Connor? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdegges Posted July 11, 2012 Report Share Posted July 11, 2012 That's a good answer, but how do we reconcile that with Galt's willingness to commit suicide over Dagny or Ayn Rand saying that her biggest accomplishment in life was marrying Frank O'Connor? I can only imagine she said that because Frank made her life so much more enjoyable. I know Andrew Bernstein started dating someone, and he said something along the lines of, 'I've accomplished a lot in my life, but there was always something missing. Now I've found a woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.' In both cases, I wouldn't say the romantic partner is the ultimate value (they lived & worked without their partners before meeting them), but that the person is extremely important because he/she adds so much to their own happiness. In the case of Galt, he would rather die than feel the internal torture of watching Dagny be tortured & killed. But I don't think this makes her his ultimate value. Galt says himself, “Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.” This definition of (romantic) love makes it appear to be self-fufilling (the reason behind it is to make yourself, your #1 value, happy). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicky Posted July 11, 2012 Report Share Posted July 11, 2012 Is it rational to choose another person, i.e. a romantic partner as one's ultimate value? Or the goal of attaining one if your haven't already? Or does doing so subjugate your lower values, choices and actions to another's judgment? If you were some lost soul in search of any meaning for your life, chose a stranger at random and made her life the goal of your life to obsess over, then you could say that she's your ultimate value. You had no values, and now all your values trace back to her. If you fall in love someone so much that you value her life above everything else, then your love has a source: your values. It didn't just happen as a coincidence. Without your values, there would be no love. So she is not your ultimate value, she's only your value because of other values you held before, which cause you to love her. She may be your biggest, most important value, but not your ultimate value. The ultimate value is the source of all your other values. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oso Posted July 11, 2012 Report Share Posted July 11, 2012 Your highest value is the value which contributes most to your life. Your life is your ultimate value. They are two distinct things, which you seem to have confused in your post. Your highest value could be another person but the only possible ultimate value is man's own life. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leonid Posted July 11, 2012 Report Share Posted July 11, 2012 The ultimate value is always the one's own life. But it's quite possible that without another person such a life is not worse living because one's happiness becomes unachievable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dante Posted July 12, 2012 Report Share Posted July 12, 2012 (edited) That's a good answer, but how do we reconcile that with Galt's willingness to commit suicide over Dagny or Ayn Rand saying that her biggest accomplishment in life was marrying Frank O'Connor? Consider this quote from Roark in The Fountainhead: “I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.” The only person whose values you can live out is yourself. Another person can fit into that value structure, even at the highest place, but the foundation of it all is your own life, your values. It can't be any other way. Edited July 12, 2012 by Dante Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
human_murda Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 The only person whose values you can live out is yourself. Another person can fit into that value structure, even at the highest place, but the foundation of it all is your own life, your values. It can't be any other way. But how can your own life and somebody else's life both be at the top of the hierarchy of values? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oso Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 But how can your own life and somebody else's life both be at the top of the hierarchy of values? As a matter of semantics, when someone refers to the top of their hiarchy of values, they may mean the value of most importance to their ultimate value (their own life) which is an end in itself. This could make another person their most important value in the service of their ultimate value but it would not mean that that person is an ultimate value to them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spiral Architect Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 As a matter of contaxt, it is safe to say when dealing with an Objectivist that their life is a given. Everything else proceeds from that. The crisis in society is that this fact is not identifed, confused, ignored, or replaced with the obvious results. I would never insult my wife by telling her anything less than she is the most selfish thing in my life and the reason is that she is the thing that makes my life of great value to me. It is the base of ethics and romance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMeganSnow Posted July 16, 2012 Report Share Posted July 16, 2012 Is it rational to choose another person, i.e. a romantic partner as one's ultimate value? Or the goal of attaining one if your haven't already? Or does doing so subjugate your lower values, choices and actions to another's judgment? This is, among other things, a massive confusion as to just what an "ultimate" value means. The ultimate value, your own life, by its presence or absence sets the stage for all other values and underlies them. So, say, if you love someone, implicit in that fact is that you are alive to love them and you love them BECAUSE they improve your life. Is it possible that you might find the state of your life without them undesirable? Yes, but this doesn't make them your ultimate value--their presence or absence *changes* the value you place on your life. It doesn't *replace* your life. You don't gain the ability to die and keep valuing them. The causal relationship has not changed. Also, it's kind of silly to think that loving someone entails slavishly obeying their every whim and placing their judgment above your own. If you love someone and they're wrong, you'll disagree with them and argue with them *because* you love them and because you wish them well. Doing whatever random crap they claim to want is hardly the way to do well by them. Or, as Ayn Rand so succinctly put it: you cannot say "I love you" without first saying "I". Also, just because something is your overall highest priority value-wise doesn't mean that other things will not frequently take precedence over them. The fact that you love someone doesn't change the fact that you have to eat in order to live. The relative priority of these two things in your value hierarchy (food vs. lover) means that you will only devote a certain minimum amount of time/energy to food, not that you will give up eating altogether because that's time you could be spend in loving adoration. Instead, it'd mean that in a normal, non-emergency situation (you're not starving), all things being equal, you'd be willing to give up a meal in order to spend more time with your lover. Values don't exist in a vacuum--all of your values are interrelated. For instance, I might not forego that meal in order to spend a little extra time with my lover because my lover is currently busy or asleep and that particular block of time would not be very high quality. Or, if I'm hungry, I'd be irritable and that would wreck the value of that time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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