Kacey Huffman
RLST 405
September 20, 2013
Kacey Huffman
RLST 405
September 20, 2013
Response #1
During a family reunion I was approached by my cousin about some advice she wanted
to give me. As a good cousin I sat there listening to what she had to say, she said, “ as you go
out into the ‘real world,’ you have to know that there is no such thing as right and wrong. ‘Right’
and ‘wrong’ only exist in your head. You have to do whatever you have to do to make it in this
world. You gotta look out for #1. I’ve read Ayn Rand’s work. If you gotta lie, cheat, and steal to
get ahead, then so be it. And don’t worry. I’ve got your back.” With that being said I was
speechless, I was very taken back by how insightful she was. However, my uncle Erik stepped in
to put in his two senses. He said, “ …Everyone knows that ethics has to have a foundation. Only
a strong Catholic faith can provide that foundation without it, chaos reigns and society will rot
from its foundation. We Catholics believe in charity and justice and in the firmness of faith that
will guide us in ethics.” He also had a very good point. At this time I had to step away and think
about both sides of this conversation.
After thinking about both point of views I realized they both have strengths and
weaknesses. As for my cousin’s point of view, I believe that there is such a thing as ‘right’ and
‘wrong’; for example, if your banking account was negative you wouldn’t go rob someone for
money. You know that it is wrong to steal money, and you know the right thing to do is not rob
someone. In Ayn Rand’s work she talks about the difference between humans and animals,
mostly because we humans have a choice. She wrote,
“But an animal has no choice in the knowledge and the skills that it acquires; it can only
repeat them generation after generation. And an animal has no choice in the standard of
value directing its actions: its senses provide it with an automatic code of values, an
automatic knowledge of what is good for it or evil, what benefits or endangers its life.”
“… Man has no automatic code of survival. He has no automatic course of action, no
automatic set of values. His senses do not tell him automatically what is good for him or
evil, what will benefit his life or endanger it, what goals he should pursue and what
means will achieve them, what values his life depends on, what course of action it
requires. His own consciousness has to discover the answers to all these questions – but
his consciousness will not function automatically.” (Ayn Rands 16; McFee Lecture
9/12/13).
What I received from Ayn Rand’s passages, we decide what our future holds and we can decide
what is right and what is wrong. My cousin Harriet mentioned that there is no such thing as right
or wrong, I have to disagree, there is a right or wrong and part of looking out for ourselves is
knowing the difference between the ethical values that we learned. To go along with this Ayn
Rand also mentions that one judges what is good and evil. She states in one of her passages from
The Virtue Of Selfishness:
“ The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics- the standard by which one judges what
is good or evil—is man’s life, or: that which is required for man’s survival qua man.
Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational
being is the good; that which negates, opposes, or destroys it is the evil. Since everything
man needs has to be discovered by his own mind and produced by his own effort, the two
essentials of the method of survival proper to a rational being are : thinking and
productive work.”
On the other side of Ayn Rand’s work she also discusses that we need to be a little
egoistic and we have to fend for ourselves in the ‘real world’. In our readings we learned about
Psychological Egoism which “is a descriptive theory about how things are. Humans by nature
are selfish and out for themselves.” (Boss 20, McFee Lecture 9/10/13). We also learned about
Individual ethical egoism which, “is a normative or moral theory about how things out to be. We
ought to act in our own best self-interests.” (Boss 20, Mcfee Lecture 9/10/13). Based on those
two definitions I do have to agree with my cousin that we have to look out for our #1.
On the other hand, my uncle Erik has a very good point as well. He said that “We
Catholics believe in charity and justice and in the firmness of faith that will guide us in ethics.” I
have to agree with him also that ethics has to have a foundation and those who believe know
charity, and justice. We discussed different thesis’ for Religious Ethics and the first one is that
religion is irrelevant for ethics which Ayn Rand stood by. The second thesis’s was that religion is
necessary for ethics if you don’t have religion it’s not moral. The third one is that religion can
enhance ethical reflection. The last one was religion is destructive when attempting ethical
reflection. Anyways, as for my uncle’s point of view, religious ethics has its positives as for the
Divine Command. In the Divine Command God can command or will anything, he also has
“reasons”. As for example, it mentions the Ten Commandments which we shall follow. As for a
weakness in religious ethics, which I do not believe in, it tells us to follow what God commands
us to do. For example, it people get an epiphany which god tells them to do something, as for a
mom saying that god talked to her and told here to put her two kids into her car and then push it
into a lake and kill her kids. How is that ethical?? Just because God told you to do something that
doesn’t always mean that it is the right thing to do.
In the two positions I was put in I would like some type of clarification to the positions.
As for my cousin Harriet, What do you think is right or wrong ?? How do you distinguish what is
right and wrong ?? I know for my personal interest what is right for me and what is wrong for me
, however I don’t always look out for my own best interest I also look out for others. As for my
Uncle Erik, Why do ethics have to have a foundation? Why would our society rot from its
foundations? I believe that we should "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you"
Matthew [7:12]. Why does only a strong Catholic faith provide that foundation?
In my own opinion, where I stand ethically is in between. I believe that we all have to
have our own best interest in front of us, however, not all the time. I think we all know the
difference between right and wrong and it is based on how we were raised. Based on that we
might not always know the correct answer and that’s the way of life. We make mistakes and then
we learn from them, we learn that, that was the right thing to do or that was a stupid idea and we
learn we grow. As for a religious ethical side, I believe that we should have some type of
structure as for the Ten Commandments. I do not believe that ethics is based on the Catholic
faith .