dying for a loved one

Ethics
1

This questions has been asked of me a few times recently. It’s specifically, dying, and not just risking my life. The example given to me was of diving to take a bullet for my girlfriend (someone else, not she, posed the question).

 

My initial reaction was ‘no’, putting aside the fact that I don’t know how I’d react in the moment as it would be an emotional reaction.

 

I don’t see any way for this to ever be moral. Again, I differentiate risking ones life, and dying for another. Where dying becomes a very high risk (like diving to take a bullet) or certain death. The only way this could be moral is if you both have no other values open to your achievement in life. I say both, because she wouldn’t even be with you if she was your only value. I can’t think of any real world situation where this is true apart from being in a concentration camp. Even if I were to lose her (the person I care most about) surely I can still gain happiness from other values (productive work, art, hobbies, other relationships etc) ?

 

Is my thought process logical?

2

   I think so. I have never agreed with this conclusion by Rand. I would not personally make this choice I mean. 

 

   Still, this video is relevant. 

 

   http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/blog/index.php/2013/07/why-choose-to-live/

3

That’s exactly right.

Since all values are self-chosen, it’s possible that someone could value another person more than anything else on Earth, including their own life. In that case it would be moral for them to die for their love.

 

But that choice of values in the first place wouldn’t be moral (it’s the ultimate selflessness) and wouldn’t be healthy. Deciding that someone else matters more to you than your own life is incompatible with rational selfishness.

 

That said, I think the scenario given is flawed in the first place because it assumes that for a certain goal (the life of your love) there is only one means of achieving it (sacrificing yourself), which simply doesn’t apply to reality. For instance, if the lives of MY loved ones were in danger, I would not sacrifice myself for them OR simply allow them to die- there’s always another option.

People advocating altruism seem to favor such scenarios, though; I think it ties into the ends justifying the means somehow. But whenever they give you such options and try to elicit an “AHA! So you are heartless; you would drown all of the puppies to clothe the orphans!” just stop and ask yourself when, in real life, anyone would actually find themselves in such a predicament.

4

Life is worth living only if one acts in order to pursue, gain and keep values which constitute life. For man here is a difference between life and mere vegetative existence which is in many respects is worse than death. if one cannot keep and protect such a values, like for example  life of the the loved one, his life becomes meaningless. Therefore the choice to die for his/her protection is in fact an affirmation of life and a moral choice par excellence. And this is a profoundly selfish choice. For other hand to choose life of misery without happiness would be a sacrifice.

. 

5

For man here is a difference between life and mere vegetative existence which is in many respects is worse than death. if one cannot keep and protect such a values, like for example  life of the the loved one, his life becomes meaningless. 

 

I don’t understand why life is meaningless without a loved one. I didn’t have a girlfriend before and I was happy and had many values to pursue. I have one now and I’m madly in love with her (having also consciously validated why I’m in love) but I would never give my life for her because I disagree that my life would be meaningless and I think anyone who comes to that conclusion has gone wrong somewhere OR is living in the rare circumstances where this is applicable (unlikely).

 

For example maybe the person is at an age where they are retired, unable to learn anything new (due to cognitive decline). has very few hobbies, no job and then their highest value is the adorable partner they live with. It makes sense then. Or if your in a concentration camp. But these are really the only two situations where it makes sense to me - nothing else does.

 

I see no other possible rational reason for your life to be meaningless when losing a loved one. When should they ever be your highest value apart from those rare circumstances? And if they are I would venture to guess they are with you because they also lack other values - in which case you’ve both been living irrationally.

6

I don’t understand why life is meaningless without a loved one. I didn’t have a girlfriend before and I was happy and had many values to pursue. I have one now and I’m madly in love with her (having also consciously validated why I’m in love) but I would never give my life for her because I disagree that my life would be meaningless and I think anyone who comes to that conclusion has gone wrong somewhere OR is living in the rare circumstances where this is applicable (unlikely).

 

For example maybe the person is at an age where they are retired, unable to learn anything new (due to cognitive decline). has very few hobbies, no job and then their highest value is the adorable partner they live with. It makes sense then. Or if your in a concentration camp. But these are really the only two situations where it makes sense to me - nothing else does.

 

I see no other possible rational reason for your life to be meaningless when losing a loved one. When should they ever be your highest value apart from those rare circumstances? And if they are I would venture to guess they are with you because they also lack other values - in which case you’ve both been living irrationally.

This is a question of hierarchy of your values. IF you can live happily without your girl friend, don’t die for her. If you do, that would be a sacrifice. Concentration camp is altogether different story. It’s like emergency situation where you have to fight for your mere existence. But nobody spend the whole normal life span in the concentration camp. It’s a temporary situation.

7

Right so then how is it rational for you to put a romantic partner as your highest value?

 

And if it is your highest value then why does it’s loss mean the loss of your complete happiness. After you grieve you still have many other values to pursue:

 

Productive work, a new romantic relationship, hobbies, art etc

 

If it is rational to lose your life for a partner then it could also be rational to just commit suicide when you lose a job you highly value? (makes no sense)

8

Right so then how is it rational for you to put a romantic partner as your highest value?

 

And if it is your highest value then why does it’s loss mean the loss of your complete happiness. After you grieve you still have many other values to pursue:

 

Productive work, a new romantic relationship, hobbies, art etc

 

If it is rational to lose your life for a partner then it could also be rational to just commit suicide when you lose a job you highly value? (makes no sense)

 

Depends on your partner. Romantic love in Ayn Rand words could be a highest passion for the highest value.  It’s like to ask is it rational to lose your life, fighting for freedom? After all even a slave can pursue and get many values. Evidently it’s not the same. However, if a value of your partner is not that high and you can live nappy after her demise, don’t die for her. That would be a sacrifice.

9

Right. So then how do we evaluate what is rational to have as a highest value? Without reading ethics I would have thought productive work is the highest value you should have as it is what allows you to live. 

 

If my romantic partner is my highest value then I should give her anything she asks for. I should leave my job for her. I should also commit suicide if she leaves me. All of that seems impossible to me.

10

LoBagola:
 
The first thing I’d like to be sure of is that you aren’t confusing “highest value” with “ultimate value”. I had the feeling you were confusing the two with your first post, though you seem not to in your most recent post – I’m not sure. 
 
From the Ayn Rand Lexicon:

An ultimate value is that final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means—and it sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated. An organism’s life is its standard of value: that which furthers its life is the good, that which threatens it is the evil. – “The Objectivist Ethics” pg. 17

So the ultimate value is always one’s own life and then you must understand what Objectivists mean by “one’s life”. It is not simply the bodily functions that keep one alive. It is not our heartbeat or our brain waves. Life is everything: all the things that make life worth living. All the things that make one happy. All the things that make one think: “This is worth living for” (to paraphrase from the same above)
 
For more on this subject you could search for threads containing the phrase “ultimate value”. Here is my post from a thread entitled “Why should man’s life be his ultimate value?”:
 
I doubt anyone on this forum will ever be faced with such a choice and very few in the country will ever face it so it is a little unrealistic. I mean if you would be willing to die for someone, then most certainly you would be willing to live for them also and I’m sure that is most people’s stance. 

For instance why would someone join the military? Most people don’t volunteer in order to die, their objective is to kill the enemy or as Patton said “to make the other dumb bastard die for his country”. Certainly they are  risking  a great deal when joining the military, so your question might be: why would a rational man do such a thing? Well, knowing that an enemy who has attacked you must be killed and that someone has to do the killing, in order to protect his life and those he loves, and not wanting to live under dictatorship, a man could rationally choose to risk his life to protect those values which are irreplaceable and without which life wouldn’t be worth living.

Could you live with yourself if you saw your child crying in the window of a burning house knowing you could save her but instead you did nothing?

I would like to know if you have read Atlas Shrugged because Ayn Rand illustrates the point there. John Galt tells Dagny that if the government parasites figure out their value to each other and threaten to torture her in order to get to him he would kill himself on the spot. He would not help his destroyers and he could not live in a world in which Dagny had been tortured to get to him. [And as he tells Dagny (paraphrasing): “it wouldn’t be a sacrifice either.”]

But for an egoist/Objectivist the orientation is always a selfish one, [it is always about YOU] . You would never “die for someone else”.  You  might risk your life to preserve a value that is very dear to  you. If living as a slave is something  you  couldn’t live with, then starting a revolution with the most powerful country on earth would be rational. If you saw the love of  your  life drowning,  you  would risk everything to save her knowing how empty  your  life would be without her and knowing that  you  couldn’t live with  yourself  if  you  didn’t do everything  you  could.
 
None of these choices would be considered a sacrifice then. The real sacrifice would be to allow the destruction of the things which make life worth living – what kind of life would you have then?

Fortunately, in a free society, most of us will never be faced with such a choice and instead we can concentrate on living and always gaining values.

11

I would like to connect this topic to another one I created a few months ago. Could the concept of anti-value be connected to dying for a loved one?

 

Value is what someone acts to gain and keep by a certain standard and towards a certain goal. Anti-value is the opposite. Something which a person avoids since is negative by the standard and takes someone further away from their goal.

 

In the case of dying for a loved one, perhaps it is done so for the sake of avoiding anti-value. That is to say, “if my loved one died, I would be filled with such sadness and gried for the rest of my life (anti-value) that I would become depressed and not want to continue living anyway.” There is a key difference here between non-value and anti-value. If someone’s loved one died and for some reason was then completely forgotten, there would only be non-value where there was once value. But when the psychological effects of lost value come into play, value becomes anti-value.

12

I would like to connect this topic to another one I created a few months ago. Could the concept of anti-value be connected to dying for a loved one?

 

Value is what someone acts to gain and keep by a certain standard and towards a certain goal. Anti-value is the opposite. Something which a person avoids since is negative by the standard and takes someone further away from their goal.

 

In the case of dying for a loved one, perhaps it is done so for the sake of avoiding anti-value. That is to say, “if my loved one died, I would be filled with such sadness and gried for the rest of my life (anti-value) that I would become depressed and not want to continue living anyway.” There is a key difference here between non-value and anti-value. If someone’s loved one died and for some reason was then completely forgotten, there would only be non-value where there was once value. But when the psychological effects of lost value come into play, value becomes anti-value.

 

The whole issue has to be re-designed. The main point is that one acts primary not in order to die for the beloved, but to save his or her life. It is seldom a case that certain unavoidable death follows such an action. One only has to evaluate the degree of the risk one prepare to take in order to achieve one’s goal in accordance with his hierarchy of values.But isn’t that apply to all actions?