Loving Life by Craig Biddle

[intellectualammo]

Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest And The Facts the Support It by Craig Biddle (Kindle edition)

I think the perfect way in which to start my review of this book, is to quote the perfect way in which it is addressed in the book itself:

Who Should Read This Book—And Why

If you want to live your life to the fullest, if you want to achieve the greatest happiness possible, this book is for you. It is about the essential means to that end: a proper code of values—a proper morality. Contrary to popular myth, morality does not come from God; it is not a matter of divine revelation. Nor is it a matter of social convention or personal opinion. Being moral does not consist in obeying commandments, or in doing whatever is culturally accepted, or in doing whatever one wants to do. The rabbis, the priests, the relativists, and the subjectivists are wrong. Morality is not a matter of faith or conformity or feelings. True morality is a matter of the factual requirements of human life and happiness. It is a matter of reason, logic, and the law of cause and effect. As such, it is an indispensable guide to living well and loving life. This is demonstrated in the pages ahead.

It certainly was demonstrated.

I highlighted so much on my Kindle Fire HD that the whole book is gold. Such books, are the ones I read for whether non-fiction, fiction, poetry...

Firstly, he out rightly rejects religion’s code of morality and authority for a good while in the book. Basically:

“There is no evidence for Him; there are only books and people that say He exists. (This fact can be verified by asking any religionist to present the evidence on which his belief in God rests)”

Pure gold, if I’ve ever seen it.

Then off to reject other forms of subjectivism - social subjectivism and personal subjectivism (both their moral codes and any political-economic social systems that arose from either). So with social subjectivism instead of sacrificing yourself , your own self- interests to God, you should for “society” or personal subjectivism wants you to sacrifice yourself, your own interests for ‘me‘.

Biddle goes into a lot of discussion of all this in the book, about a third of the book deals with just that, but ultimately rejects all those codes of morality, simply because the evidence offered in support of their claims is - zero.

Basically in all the various religions and other subjectivist moralities are sacrificial:

“Either sacrifice yourself or sacrifice others. In other words, your choice is : masochism or sadism”

Thus the morality of altruism in theory and in practice.

But:

“A solution to this dilemma requires the discovery of a morality that neither requires nor permit’s the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. What is need is a non-sacrificial morality - a code of values that accounts for the actual, long-term, material and spiritual requirements of human life. But such a code, to be defended, must be based on a foundation other than faith [religion] and feelings [subjectivism], and such a foundation is thought to be impossible.”

Is there an alternative, a non-sacrificial moral code?

“Fortunately, the problem has been solved […] morality has been tied to reality. An objective standard of value has been rationally proved.”

And who proved it? Ayn Rand with her philosophy of Objectivism.

While the first third of the book dealt with all those that cannot provide evidence for their claims, the rest of the book deals specifically with the ONLY one that did or can.

It’s flows so breathtakingly logically from metaphysics (is) to ethics (ought).

I highlighted so much in the book, when I open it’s e-pages on my Kindle - I bet it looks like I’m holding up a bar of gold. Not only in from all the bright yellow highlighting, but from how valuable it is as well.

To think, how little it cost to obtain all that value within.

Anyone wanting to read about how her objective standard of value was rationally proven by her - this is the book for you, too.

Has anyone else here read it, have anything to say about it, too?