Ayn Rand’s Philosophy of Rights

On Tuesday, October 25, the Dartmouth Libertarians hosted prominent libertarian Craig Biddle, co-founder and director of education and programs at the Objective Standard Institute, co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Objective Standard, executive director of the Prometheus Foundation, and established author. Mr. Biddle delivered a talk entitled “Ayn Rand’s Theory of Rights and Its Economic-Political Implications,” an effort to present Rand’s philosophy of rights and educate young libertarians on the moral strength of their position. The event was organized by President of the Dart- mouth Libertarians Jonathan Nicastro, a rising-star libertarian theorist in his own right and dear colleague of mine at The Review, who, for reasons quite obvious, cannot cover his own event.

The event was attended by about five or so young men, including myself, more than one of which I knew came in hostility and not camaraderie. Mr. Biddle made clear that his motivations for delivering the talk came from a fear that the “liberty movement,” a term that I, perhaps as an outsider, was unfamiliar with, would not succeed because it does not claim the moral high ground, though the only reason it does not claim said high ground is because its constituents, for the most part, do not know that they have such a claim, or at least do not know how to articulate it in discussion with their peers. Where many, especially young, libertarians may be content in their cries for limited government and marijuana legalization, Mr. Biddle believes that a successful advocate for libertarianism must possess a sound argument for the morality of the philosophy of libertarianism. “If you don’t have the moral argument for liberty,” he says, “you don’t have an argument at all”.

He begins his talk by claiming that historically, moral precepts stem from an understanding of rights, such as those espoused by the American founding fathers. To act morally was to respect the rights of another, and vice versa. This includes only what are referred to as negative rights, such as life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and so on. Positive rights, popularly understood as the right to something, such as healthcare or housing, he dismisses as inherently contradictory.

“Where many, especially young, libertarians may be content in their cries for limited government and marijuana legalization, Mr. Biddle believes that a successful advocate for libertarianism must possess a sound argument for the morality of the philosophy of libertarianism.”

Immediately one finds reason to object, for, as any student of philosophy, or comparative literature, or even any of the miscellaneous “studies” fields would know, morality has not historically centered around an understanding of rights. Moral and ethical theories are numerous and diverging and occasionally ancient, whereas an articulated understanding of rights is a recent development of the Enlightenment. This objection, though perhaps worth exploring, I will waive, as I believe Mr. Biddle makes clear in the course of his argument that he finds this morality based on rights to be the only one rational and just, rather than the only one in existence, and I chalk the initial claim up to simple rhetorical blunder.

For those that do believe morality stems from rights, Mr. Biddle argues, they must offer a robust account for the source of rights. They are, of course, an abstraction, yet they must be demonstrably extant in order to hold real moral weight, and since they cannot be physically proffered, their prominence must be definitively determined. He places accounts of the source of rights into three main categories: some say they come from God, some say from government, and some say from nature.

“[Rights] are, of course, an abstraction, yet they must be demonstrably extant in order to hold real moral weight, and since they cannot be physically proffered, their prominence must be definitively determined.”

The first, Mr. Biddle states, is the position of Republicans and conservatives. I might say, rightists of the Reagan and not Schmidtian variety. This is an untenable position, because one must then prove the existence of God. The only evidence of God is that which must be believed on faith. Faith, therefore, becomes a foundation upon which one can make moral claims. Of course, people of different faiths make contradictory moral claims, but, if one has accepted faith as a basis for reason, one cannot refute those of other faiths. It is therefore impossible to offer a robust and unified account of rights in this system. Fair enough.

The second is the position Mr. Biddle attributes to leftists. Mr. Biddle argues that this position conflates laws, which are issued by the state, and rights, which precede the state and respecting which moral laws should be structured. Under this position, rights are dependent upon the whims of the government, and may be taken at any time, and therefore lose their privileged position as the foundation of an absolute morality; they are not rights at all. Mr. Biddle seems to misunderstand the fact that, for all self-proclaimed leftists, except, perhaps, for the fascists that wear hammers and sickles instead of swastikas, this account of rights is not a proclamation of ethics but a lamentation of the precarity of life under a body which holds a monopoly on violence. But of course, this position would hold that morality is not founded in rights, and any such theory Mr. Biddle has already dismissed.

The third theory, which is that of many libertarians, he argues, is really the first in disguise, for, in tracing nature to its origins, one inevitably arrives at some protean divinity for which there is less personality and equally absent evidence. All three positions have been rejected. Where to next?

Ayn Rand, he says, arrived at this very problem, and realized she needed to take a step back, change how she thought about rights, in order to account for their existence. She asks, what are rights, do we need them, and if so, why? In answering these questions, she aims to develop an account of rights that differs from the traditional three and that is able to stand upon its own rationality. Mr. Biddle walks us through her argument.

Rights, if there are such things, are essential to humans; they are inviolable and inseparable from human being. What, then, is significant about human being? To Rand, humanity is distinguished by the faculty of reason. Unlike animals, which she and Mr. Biddle see as irrational and instinctual, humans are born with no innate knowledge, no instinct, but the potential to reason. Human action is uniquely derived from the application of reason, according to what has been learned, and not from instinct. To act as a human, therefore, is to exercise reason, to observe surroundings, to learn and implement knowledge in the pro- cess of rationality, and to act according to this process. To do this is to live a human life.

“Rights, if there are such things, are essential to humans; they are inviolable and inseparable from human being. What, then, is significant about human being? To Rand, humanity is distinguished by the faculty of reason.”

When an outside force is exerted upon a person attempting to undergo this process of rationality, the person is restricted. The link between reasoning and action has been broken, because the action is determined, not by the human process of reasoning, but by some inhuman externality. To live in such a way, therefore, is to live a life that is less than a human life. He states, “When force is used against you and to the extent it is used against you, you cannot live a human existence.”

Rights are an abstracted recognition of this bare fact: that to exert force upon a person is to deny them a human existence. They are articulations of what protections are necessary to prevent a person from losing their humanity. Mr. Biddle did not explicitly state why it would be immoral to deny a person a human existence, and, not being a Rand scholar myself, I do not know what she says about the question, but I imagine it has something vaguely Hegelian to do with the act being inherently irrational and therefore self-defeating, that to deny the humanity of a person is to deny human being, which is the very thing that defines the self.

This is what he terms the objective theory of rights, after Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, and holds that it alone provides a rational basis for rights and morality. Libertarians should therefore be well-versed in the argument in order to demonstrate to their rhetorical opponents that theirs is the only moral position.

“Mr. Biddle did not explicitly state why it would be immoral to deny a person a human existence, and, not being a Rand scholar myself, I do not know what she says about the question, but I imagine it has something vaguely Hegelian to do with the act being inherently irrational and therefore self-defeating[.]”

He ended his talk with an encouragement to audience members to read Rand critically, something I grant should be done by her supporters and detractors alike, but which I myself have been hesitant to do, demotivated as I am by the reputation of her work and the unconvincing arguments provided by her most ardent advocates, which include Mr. Biddle. His argument flows soundly from its assumptions to its conclusions, and should probably be adopted by those who share his assumptions, which, as I understand them and as implied by his argument, are: that a moral theory must include a robust account of rights, that rights are real and actual, that faith claims of any sort are equal in their invalidity, that rights precede the state, that humans are defined by their rationality, that a human being insofar as it is human is purely rational, that humans have no instinct or innate knowledge, that animals have no capacity for reason or reason-based acquisition of knowledge, and that any valid ethical code must stem from a clear, rational, philosophical basis, and please do let me know if I have missed any.

This is a healthy list of assumptions, which anyone not already a libertarian likely holds in contention, and probably with which many libertarians also disagree. Mr. Biddle demonstrates a clear capacity for rational argument, but if he hopes the Randian objectivist theory of rights will be the holy grail of politics, the final moral theory that demonstrates to any other rational actor that libertarianism is the answer, I believe he will be disappointed.