Ethics

Ethics, or morality, is the branch of philosophy that defines a code of values to guide a man's choices and actions. Objectivism holds that such a code is a practical necessity rather than a social convention, because man survives by choices that his nature does not make for him automatically.

“Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice — and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man — by choice; he has to hold his life as a value — by choice; he has to learn to sustain it — by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues — by choice.”
~ Ayn Rand, "The Objectivist Ethics", The Virtue of Selfishness

Why a code of values is needed at all

Most ethical systems begin by asking what a man ought to do. Rand's first question is prior to that: why does the concept "ought" apply to anything?

The answer she gave starts from a fact about living things. Inanimate matter cannot go out of existence; it only changes form. A living organism can. Its existence is conditional, sustained only by a continuous process of self-generated action, and that action can fail. This is the only place in the universe where an alternative exists, and so it is the only place where anything can be good or bad for anything.

Where there is no alternative, nothing can be a value. A rock is not benefited or harmed by anything.
Where there is an alternative, values are not optional. An organism that does not act to sustain itself dies.
Therefore the concept of value presupposes the concept of life, and the ultimate value of any organism is its own life. See Value.

Plants and animals pursue their values automatically, by vegetative function or by instinct and the pleasure-pain mechanism. Man does not. He has no innate knowledge of what will sustain him and no automatic code telling him how to obtain it. His distinctive means of survival is reason, and reason does not operate automatically: it is exercised by choice. A code of morality is what fills that gap. It is not a burden imposed on the desire to live but the knowledge of how to live.

The standard, and the purpose

Objectivism distinguishes two things usually run together:

The standard is man's life qua man — the requirements of survival for a rational being over a whole lifetime, not the bare continuance of a heartbeat and not whatever a given man happens to be doing. It is what makes a moral judgment objective rather than a matter of taste.
The purpose is each individual's own life. The standard is used by a person to guide his own life, not to serve a collective.

Happiness is the emotional state that accompanies the achievement of one's values, and Rand held that man properly lives with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life. It is a consequence of holding the right values, not a substitute for them: pursuing whatever happens to feel good is whim-worship, and it does not work, because feelings are not a means of knowing what a life requires.

“Just as the pleasure-pain mechanism of man's body is an automatic indicator of his body's welfare or injury, a barometer of its basic alternative, life or death — so the emotional mechanism of man's consciousness is geared to perform the same function, as a barometer that registers the same alternative by means of two basic emotions: joy or suffering.”
~ Ayn Rand, "The Objectivist Ethics", The Virtue of Selfishness

The is-ought question

David Hume argued that no set of factual premises can yield an evaluative conclusion. Rand's claim was that the gap closes once you notice that "ought" is always conditional on a goal, and that for a living being the goal is not arbitrary: it is given by the fact that it is alive and that its life is conditional.

The derivation runs: this is what a man is; this is what his survival requires; therefore, if he chooses to live, these are the actions it takes. The choice to live is the fundamental choice, and it is not itself a moral obligation — nothing can obligate a man to want to exist. Everything else follows from it as a matter of fact. See Is-Ought Dichotomy.

This is why Objectivism rejects duty as a moral category. A duty, in the sense Rand attacked, is an obligation grounded in nothing but obedience to an authority, disconnected from any goal of the person acting. On her account no such obligation exists.

Values and virtues

The three cardinal values are reason, purpose and self-esteem. The virtues by which they are achieved are rationality, productiveness and pride. Rationality is the primary virtue, and the others named in the Objectivist ethics — honesty, integrity, independence, justice and productiveness — are its application to particular areas of life.

A virtue is not a sacrifice made to earn moral credit. It is the action by which a value is gained or kept. Honesty is a virtue because faking reality does not make reality go away; justice is a virtue because misjudging people has consequences for the person who misjudges them. See Virtues.

The rejection of altruism

Altruism holds that a man must justify his existence by service to others, and that self-interest is the mark of evil. Objectivism rejects it, and rejects with it the demand for sacrifice — meaning the surrender of a greater value for a lesser one, or of a value for a non-value.

The alternative is not exploitation. Objectivism holds that the rational interests of men do not conflict, and that the proper relation among them is trade: value for value, by mutual consent. See Egoism and Trader Principle.

Common misunderstandings

That it says "do whatever you feel like." It says the opposite. What serves a man's life is a question of fact, discovered by reason, and acting on unexamined impulse is the failure mode the ethics is designed to prevent.
That morality is only needed for dealing with other people. Most of the Objectivist virtues govern a man's relation to reality rather than to others. A man alone on an island would still need rationality, honesty about the facts, and productiveness.
That an emergency refutes it. Lifeboat scenarios are asked constantly, and Rand's answer in "The Ethics of Emergencies" is that a code of values is a guide to living, and cannot be derived from the rare cases where normal life has become impossible. Helping a stranger at some risk to yourself, in an emergency, is consistent with valuing human life; being obligated to do so as a way of life is not.
That "life as the standard" means mere survival. The standard is the life proper to a rational being, which includes everything that makes a long life worth having: work, love, art, the exercise of one's mind.
That it is a version of the Golden Rule or of enlightened self-interest as usually meant. Both of those take the goal for granted. Objectivism argues for the goal.

Actions taken under force

Rand held that a man acting under the immediate threat of force is outside the scope of moral judgment, because morality presupposes choice. She was explicit that this is narrow, and does not extend to people who volunteered for the work:

“For instance, you couldn't claim that the men who served in the Gestapo, or the Russian secret police [...] that they were merely carrying out orders, and that therefore the horrors they committed are not their fault, but are the fault of the chief Nazis. They were not literally under threat of death. They chose that job.”
~ Ayn Rand

This is one reason the initiation of force is treated as the fundamental political evil: it does not merely harm a man, it removes the conditions under which he can act morally at all. See Politics.

Discussion

References

Rand, Ayn. "The Objectivist Ethics", "The Ethics of Emergencies" and "The 'Conflict' of Men's Interests", The Virtue of Selfishness. New American Library, 1964.
Rand, Ayn. "Causality Versus Duty", Philosophy: Who Needs It.
Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chapters 7 and 8.

External links

Morality at the Ayn Rand Lexicon