“If you wish to save the last of your dignity, do not call your best actions a ‘sacrifice’: that term brands you as immoral. If a mother buys food for her hungry child rather than a hat for herself, it is not a sacrifice: she values the child higher than the hat; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat, who would prefer her child to starve and feeds him only from a sense of duty.”
For the latter mother would the “sacrifice” (which is only so by irrational standards) not be considered moral by rational standards? Since it should not in reality be a sacrifice.
I can’t exactly put my finger on it but there is some thing that bugs me with the latter statement, almost as if it would then be moral for the hat loving mother to buy the hat rather then feed her child (I do realize this is not the case).
edit: maybe I’m just looking into it too much…
I overlooked it but I think my question was answered by the next Galt statement:
“Sacrifice could be proper only for those who have nothing to sacrifice—no values, no standards, no judgment—those whose desires are irrational whims, blindly conceived and lightly surrendered. For a man of moral stature, whose desires are born of rational values, sacrifice is the surrender of the right to the wrong, of the good to the evil.”
`I think you are so right. That particular statement has always bugged me, and I believe it demands that we rething “sacrifice.” Indeed, the mother that goes out, buys a nice new hat and lets her child starve is guilty of child abuse. I say that even if she desperately wanted that hat, her responsibility came first. Call it sacrifice if you want. I call it common sense.
I can’t exactly put my finger on it but there is some thing that bugs me with the latter statement, almost as if it would then be moral for the hat loving mother to buy the hat rather then feed her child (I do realize this is not the case).
The issue here is that one decision is immediate, and the other was really initiated at the long term decision to have a child. Someone who values hats more than children is sacrificing themselves, at the point of deciding to have a child. Would it make you feel better if the long term implication is stated rather as:
… it’s perfectly rational to choose not to have children, if you value other things more…
Rand was using this passage to highlight the nature of sacrifice, not to make an ethical statement about the particular. Starving your child to buy hats is indeed child abuse, but the sacrifice was in believing that there is a duty to decide to have children. REad the statement again. Rand is angry that someone would call foregoing a hat to feed your child, sacrifice. She is not saying that it is rational to buy a hat and not feed your child. She is saying that the ONLY person for whom the term sacrifice applies is the hat valuer. What a silly and rare example. Why does the world smear all the other valid and proper value judgements with the term sacrifice?