- Independence as a Primary Orientation to Reality, Not to Other Men
- Integrity as Loyalty to Rational Principles
- Honesty as the Rejection of Unreality
- Justice as Rationality in the Evaluation of Men
- Productiveness as the Adjustment of Nature to Man
- Pride as Moral Ambitiousness
- The Initiation of Physical Force as Evil
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An excerpt from chapter 8 on Virtue from Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff.
“Rationality” is a broad abstraction. Now we must learn more fully how to apply it to the concrete choices of human life. We must study the derivative virtues (and values) recognized by the Objectivist ethics.
Since these virtues are expressions of rationality, they are logically interconnected, both in theory and in practice. None can be validated in isolation, apart from the others; nor can a man practice any one of them consistently while defaulting on the others. In defining a series of virtues, Ayn Rand is abstracting, separating out for purposes of specialized study elements of a single whole. What she seeks to clarify by this means, however, is the whole. The Objectivist ethics upholds not disconnected rules, but …
Read the rest in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.
