On Self Sacrifice
Is self sacrifice the ultimate virtue? John Galt, the incorruptible ideal according to Rand, manifests her unconventional conflict with Christianity. Most antagonists of Christianity doubt either the existence of Christ or his divinity, but not Rand. To Rand, the most morally abhorrent thing about Christianity is the atonement of Christ. As the ideal and perfect being, his sacrifice represents the archetype of all that Rand considers to be evil: the sacrifice of virtue for vice (2 Rand). Christ, the creator and redeemer, analogous to the Greek God Atlas, is burdened with the entirety of the world. Christ bears all, and calls for similar forms of sacrifice from those who chose to follow him. Conversely, Rand presents John Galt as the ideal, a god who was never crucified by the masses, and when the burden of society is placed upon him, he goes on strike. One could argue that John Galt is the more merciful god, in the sense that he calls for no self sacrifice, while traditional Christian ideology does. In this sense, Rand’s philosophy offers liberation from the need to “be our brother’s keeper” and sacrifice our wills to the needs of others and to God.
The typical Christian would call Rand’s rational self interest blatant selfishness. Rand challenges this ideal by stating that selfishness is a virtue. This is made manifest by the creed in Galt’s Gulch: “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” (670). Rand parallels the sacrifice of Christ in the description of her industrial avatars in Atlas Shrugged: “[…he went on working] for his despoilers, for his jailers, for his torturers, paying with his life for the privilege of saving theirs[…] to accept the part of a sacrificial animal and, in punishment for the sin of intelligence, to perish on the altars of brutes.” (678). Fundamentally, Christ advocates for spiritual altruism, while Rand shuns it, and instead offers objective individualism.
Further disputes arise on the basis of the original sin. Through consumption of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam became a moral reasoning being. Sentenced to work by the sweat of his brow for his bread, Adam became productive. Cast down to earth to encounter desire and reproduce, he experienced sexual enjoyment. Rand reflects that Adam was damned for his “[…]reason, morality, creativeness, joy—all the cardinal values of his existence.” (2 Rand). Rather than damning man for his vices, traditional Christianity damns him for his innate virtues. Rand asserts, “Whatever he was—that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love—he was not man.” (2 Rand). To Rand, this further condemns Christianity and its disregard for the individual.
However, Rand underestimates the power of Christianity in practice. She decrees that, “Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason.” (2 Rand). However, faith in the caring, charitable, and ultimately altruistic values of Christianity established the underpinnings of American society. After all, the golden rule “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” articulates the basis of American business. While she praises America for its industrialists and creed of individual liberty, she turns a blind eye to the fact that the country was founded on Christian ethics in the first place.
At its root, Rand’s philosophy holds individual empowerment as its greatest strength. Objectivism establishes man as a heroic being, with his own individual happiness as the moral purpose of his life. This is unconventional, as most moralities insist in the precedence of the whole over the individual. Even the classic defence of capitalism asserts that it is the most effective economic system, because it distributes resources in the way that most benefits the whole. Rand contends with this, on the basis that the rights and freedoms of the individual trump the prosperity of the whole.
The prominent minds of today face the classic contradiction between individualism and altruism: Do individuals exist for the betterment of society, or vice versa? The neo marxist philosophy of the modern college campus contests that nothing ought to obstruct the welfare of the lower class, including the individuality and rights of the middle and upper class. To them, wealth exists only to serve the victims of society, rendering all other codes of conduct that say otherwise are immoral. They call for the sacrifice of the very individuals who support their existence, and bear it proudly, as their purest virtue. Christians and conservatives alike claim that money is the root of all evil because their scriptures told them so (Timothy 6:10). Modern men and women of all walks of life loudly rage that industry is greed, success is blind luck, and that ability and intelligence are genetic gifts. They believe that all of these things ought to be punished, and that the most competent individuals in society “pay/serve their fair share”. Among all of these voices calling for the sacrifice of self, Rand alone testifies of the rights of the individual. The simple fact that to her, man is a heroic being, is refreshing in comparison to the countless philosophies that damn man for his intrinsic state of being and instinctive dispositions.
It is the moral obligation of every reasoning individual to determine the validity of what they abide by. Of her own work, Rand journaled, “This, as far as I know, is only me – my kind of fiction writing. May God forgive me (Metaphor!) if this is mistaken conceit! As near as I can now see it, it isn’t.” (8). Was Rand’s philosophy a “mistaken conceit”? It has been 62 years since Rand published Atlas Shrugged, but the dilemmas she addressed are more evident now than ever. Her fundamental conviction that self sacrifice was the gravest sin stands today as the sole contradiction between objectivism and Christianity. If Rand was right, objectivism becomes the superior moral code, and Christianity becomes another fundamentally flawed religion. If Rand was wrong, money is a root of all evil, and self sacrifice is an inescapable necessity of human life. I’ll give you a hint: “Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.” (188) You decide which one.
Works Cited:
- Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. Signet, 2016.
- Rand, Ayn. “Religion.” Ayn Rand Lexicon, aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/religion.html.
- “Rand Excerpt: On Christianity.” Anthem by Ayn Rand (Full Text with Annotations), www.noblesoul.com/orc/texts/jesus.html.