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Altruism and Sacrifice for loved ones

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MentzerLivesOn

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Hello, I am new to the Objectivist philosophy (or any real philosophy for that matter) and have a question about self-sacrifice. I know that Ayn Rand flatly scorned the idea of self sacrifice for the sake of others, but what is the Objectivist view of sacrificing your own life for a loved one in danger? If someone you truly love is in mortal danger and you have the power to save them - at the cost of your own life - is it immoral to do so? There would be a selfish motive for me in that, should I neglect to save my loved one, I would be haunted by it and feel quilty that they are not alive. Should I survive them, I'm sure that it would make me feel uncomfortable with myself for the rest of my life.

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well if you value your loved one's life more than your own....i dont know what to tell you. If you value your life more, then yes it is immoral to sacrifice it. And the first thing you should learn about Objectivism is to not accept unwarranted guilt. If it is not your fault that your loved one died, then any guilt you accept is unwarranted. It is something to definitely morn over, but not to feel guilty about.

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Risking (or even taking) one's life to save a loved one is not self-sacrifice. It is a very selfish act (in the good sense), because a "loved one" is a great value--and staying true to one's values is selfish.

Have you ever read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged? There several examples in there that I think makes clear that that is not "immoral" in any way.

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i suppose it will depend on how much you value the loved one and yourself. I can truly say that I dont love anyone enough at this point in my life to die for them. I might be willing to die for freedom or some principle...but not for any person in particular. I guess thats just me though.

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Risking (or even taking) one's life to save a loved one is not self-sacrifice.  It is a very selfish act (in the good sense), because a "loved one" is a great value--and staying true to one's values is selfish.

Damn! You beat me too it! :lol:

It is all about trading value for value.

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i suppose it will depend on how much you value the loved one and yourself. I can truly say that I dont love anyone enough at this point in my life to die for them. I might be willing to die for freedom or some principle...but not for any person in particular. I guess thats just me though.

You are willing to die for a principle, but not for a person who embodies those principles, and more?

Those principles are not valuable in themselves.

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You are willing to die for a principle, but not for a person who embodies those principles, and more?

Those principles are not valuable in themselves.

i think you didnt read my post. I dont love anyone enough to die for them. I havent found anyone who embodies the principles i love.

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There would be a selfish motive for me in that, should I neglect to save my loved one, I would be haunted by it and feel quilty that they are not alive. Should I survive them, I'm sure that it would make me feel uncomfortable with myself for the rest of my life.

There you go! You said it. A perfectly selfish motive even to sacrifice (or endanger) your own life for the one you love. The main question to ask yourself is: if you do nothing, what would happen? Would the possible death of your loved one make it impossible for you to enjoy your life? If so, then yes, it is moral to sacrifice your own life.

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what is the Objectivist view of sacrificing your own life for a loved one in danger? If someone you truly love is in mortal danger and you have the power to save them - at the cost of your own life - is it immoral to do so?

This is discussed in "The Ethics of Emergencies" in Virtue of Selfishness. Here is an except:

Concern for the welfare of those one loves is a rational part of one's selfish interests. If a man who is passionately in love with his wife spends a fortune to cure her of a dangerous illness, it would be absurd to claim that he does it as a "sacrifice" for her sake, not his own, and that it makes no difference to him, personally and selfishly, whether she lives or dies.

Any action that a man undertakes for the benefit of those he loves is not a sacrifice if, in the hierarchy of his values, in the total context of the choices open to him, it achieves that which is of greatest personal (and rational) importance to him. In the above example, his wife's survival is of greater value to the husband than anything else that his money could buy, it is of greatest importance to his own happiness and, therefore, his action is not a sacrifice.

The extreme scenario that you propose supposes that somebody must die. What kind of situation do you have in mind? If you're talking about running into a burning uilding, you can't really assume that you will die to save a trapped loved one. If you die before you extracate them, that would be totally pointless self-sacrifice. The assumption has to be that you won't die, but you recognise that there is a possibility that you will die. The value you place on the loved one bears on what risk you are willing to take.

Rand mentions a further important consideration: "If it is the man or woman one loves, then one can be willing to give one's own life to save him or her—for the selfish reason that life without the loved person could be unbearable". This is not to be thrown about lightly, but it is a legitimate reason to be willing to die for someone else.

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Ayn Rand herself said she would take a bullet for her husband.

It's not a matter of who's life you value more, but wether or not you can see yourself living without that person.

The most important thing to understand here is that if you truly value something more than your continued physical existence, then it is not a sacrifice to die for it. For example: freedom.

A sacrifice means trading a value for something which is lesser, not greater, than this value.

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I think there's a better way to put this. Your life is your highest value, so there are very few situations in which you would even consider giving it up. Certainly not when it would be a sacrifice. And there's a good reason this seems puzzling: how could you give up your highest value without sacrificing?

I see two types of situations in which it would be appropriate. First, there are situations in which you might risk your life in order to obtain some value. Think, for example, of a person who runs into a burning building to save his nephew. It's not guaranteed that he'll die, but it's possible; nonetheless, the risk may be worthwhile.

The second type of situation is one in which there is guaranteed death. The only time this is worth it is when one faces a meaningless, joyless life if one were to do nothing. So if your lover is standing next to a grenade and you can hop on top of it, and you know that if she were to die your life would be worthless to you, you should do it: you would at least have achieved a value in those last moments, rather than never achieving anything of real meaning to you again.

In neither case is it a sacrifice. The second case seems trickier if you're dealing in unconcretized principles, but it's really the first which I think needs more work. What sort of principles should guide risk evaluation?

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There’s not much I could add to what the others have said. But I’m reminded of something Harry Binswanger said in a lecture on video. I believe it was the Free Will lecture at Harvard.

Imagine a novel with moral heroes (Objectivists) that die at the end similar to Romeo and Juliet. The man saves his wife but dies in the process; she is still alive but cannot remain living so she commits suicide. The novelist would have to be a great plot constructor to maintain this ending and still maintain a benevolent theme. Because what social circumstances could possibly lead two people to such a situation? It would be hard to build a plot where the "bad guys" don’t win. Maybe war might lead to a benevolent theme. But in regular society, the bad guys win, if both characters die. No?

But this is not what Harry Binswanger said. What he did say in the question and answer period is that if America became a dictatorship and there was no where else to go, he would commit suicide. I believe this would be an example of dying for a principle.

If he didn’t say this, then I sincerely apologize. But I’m pretty confident. I know that the I saw the lecture about seven years ago.

Americo.

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  • 4 weeks later...

You may die knowingly to protect your loved one because a life without that person would be unbearable. But what if the person's life you have saved will be unbearable without you, now that you are gone?

I cannot think of a situation where you would have to give up your life knowingly in order to save someone else. For instance, the grenade example. I would not jump on top of it in order to protect someone I value. I would rush up to it, kick it, grab my loved one and flee as fast as possible with my body in protection of theirs.

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  • 2 years later...

[Mod's note: Mrged with earlier thread. -sN]

How would an Objectivist view the act of dying to preserve your family or friends(such as battling an enemy while your children escape)? Would it be against your self-interest and therefore be evil? Or would preserving your children's health be rational and in your self-interest making it good? Sorry if I sound like an idiot but I am very curious and my copy of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal hasn't arrived in the mail yet from Amazon :lol: . Thanks in advance for the responses.

Edited by softwareNerd
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It would be in your self-interest to save them, thats of course assuming that you love your children. If you value someones life above your own, then it is not an act of altruism to sacrifice yourself. You can always sacrifice a lower value for a higher one.

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It would be in your self-interest to save them, thats of course assuming that you love your children. If you value someones life above your own, then it is not an act of altruism to sacrifice yourself. You can always sacrifice a lower value for a higher one.
However, valuing another person's life above your own implies that the other person's life is your ultimate goal. I can't think of a better description of altruism. Also, btw, trading a lesser value for a greater value isn't a sacrifice. It's called "net profit".

Battling an enemy doesn't mean that you are committing suicide. In reality, you do not intend to die -- you intend to make the other poor dumb bastard die. Sometimes you fail. The question has to reduce to this: could I continue to live if I just stood by passively, not acting to save the life of a loved one, and they died? Or would that be an unbearable betrayal of my values, would it show me that I am in fact totally morally depraved?

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Hello, I am new to the Objectivist philosophy (or any real philosophy for that matter) and have a question about self-sacrifice. I know that Ayn Rand flatly scorned the idea of self sacrifice for the sake of others, but what is the Objectivist view of sacrificing your own life for a loved one in danger? If someone you truly love is in mortal danger and you have the power to save them - at the cost of your own life - is it immoral to do so? There would be a selfish motive for me in that, should I neglect to save my loved one, I would be haunted by it and feel quilty that they are not alive. Should I survive them, I'm sure that it would make me feel uncomfortable with myself for the rest of my life.

I am very new to philosophy too. In fact, I've never taken any interest in that subject untill I read about John Galt :lol: I know nothing about old philosophers (one name I heard since Ayn Rand is Aristotle, but I have no clue what sort of philosophy he taught), BUT I beleive tht I can answer your question by Quoting John Galt: "...At the first mention of threat to you, I will kill myself and stop them right there." "...if I do it, it won't be an act of self sacrifice. [and then he says] "...and I do not care to see you enduring a drawn-out murder."

So, yeah, I'd say that the Objectivist view of sacrificing your own life for a loved one in danger is to do it.

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