Virtues

Showing only those parts of the discussion that lead to #3154 and its comments.

See full discussion·See most recent related ideas
  Log in or sign up to participate in this discussion.
With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas.
Discussions can branch out indefinitely. Zoom out for the bird’s-eye view.
Benjamin Davies’s avatar
Benjamin DaviesOP revised about 20 hours ago·#3164
3rd of 3 versions leading to #3154 (7 total)

Core Moral Virtues (influenced by Ayn Rand and CR)

  • Rationality: The commitment to the ongoing deliberate use of conjecture and criticism, and to only adopting ideas that have no pending criticisms.

  • Honesty: A refusal to evade one's thoughts, a commitment to searching for one's own errors, and a refusal to fake reality to others.

  • Integrity: The refusal to permit a breach between one's convictions and one's actions.

  • Independence: The acceptance of one's own mind as the first and final executor of rationality in one’s life.

  • Justice: The application of rationality in judging ideas, people, and actions, and acting on those evaluations proportionately.

  • Productiveness: The application of rationality to sustaining and improving one's life and circumstances.

  • Pride: An insatiable drive to find and fix errors in one's character, knowledge, and creations. “[M]oral ambitiousness”, as Ayn Rand puts it.

Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Dennis Hackethal, 1 day ago·#3154

It’s interesting how connected these virtues are. Rationality, honesty, integrity, justice, all relate to each other or even fall out of each other. For example, you can’t be honest and irrational, you can’t be a rational liar (with some exceptions), you can’t be dishonest and conscientious, etc.

Maybe the underlying, most fundamental principle is rationality. Or maybe it’s the law of identity, and all of these virtues are different expressions of it. Not sure yet.

Benjamin Davies’s avatar
Benjamin DaviesOP, about 20 hours ago·#3168

Some quotes relating to your idea:

Rationality is man’s basic virtue, the source of all his other virtues... [It] means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one’s only source of knowledge, one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide to action.
— Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, ch. 1

and

Since these virtues are expressions of rationality, they are logically interconnected... None can be validated in isolation... nor can a man practice any one of them consistently while defaulting on the others.
— Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, ch. 8