AR didn't take ethics as a primary; she asked ``What is ethics anyway? Why do we need it? What purpose does it serve?''
One obvious fact about morality is its tremendous motivating power. People have done anything-from killing others to killing themselves or their children-in the name of morality. You may have experienced the emotional grip of morality yourself: that feeling of getting worked up over right and wrong. Ayn Rand recognized the psychological power of ethics; she explained where that power comes from and, unlike most secular thinkers of today, affirmed its importance in human life. However, the emotional power of morality was not her starting point in defining morality; she looked to other facts to ground her theory.
At the foundation of the O'ist morality are two observations. The first is the crucial difference between living organisms and inanimate objects. Living organisms, such as dogs, face the alternative of life and death; inanimate objects, such as rocks, do not. Life is conditional; it requires a specific course of action to maintain. Life requires values: oak trees need water and sunlight, dogs need food and water. It is only to a living organism acting to survive can something be good or bad: the good furthers life, the bad hinders it.
In Objectivism, life is the ultimate value; it is the standard of value against which good and bad are measured. In pursuing a project at work the goals of the project become important measures of relevance: what furthers the goals of the project is valuable, what doesn't further the goals is a hinderence. Now the goals of the project itself where chosen because they, in turn, further the goals of the department, and the department's goals where chosen in reference to the company's goals. In order for this chain of goals to make any sense, it has to stop somewhere; there has to be some ultimate goal, some ``end in itself,'' as philosophers put it, towards which all other goals are a means. Ayn Rand's crucial insight is that this ultimate goal, this end in itself, is life: goals exist because life exists and life, by its nature, requires goal-directed action. As she put it:
Without an ultimate goal or end, there can be no lesser goals or means: a series of means going off into an infinite progression towards a non-existent end is a metaphysical and epistemological impossibility. It is only an ultimate goal, an end in itself, that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept ``value'' is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of ``life.''
The second observation at the base of the O'ist morality is that humans, unlike other living organisms, do not automatically pursue the values they need for survival. Humans have to discover those values and choose to pursue them.
Most living organisms are built to automatically pursue the values they need to survive. You've probably seen your house plants grow towards the window; this is due to an automatic mechanism called ``phototropism'' that causes the plant to grow such that it gets fullest exposure to the light. Animals have built-in cycles of behavior that repeat year after year, e.g., the hibernation-mating-collection cycle of squirrels. Humans however, have no such built-in behavior patterns. They have a few built in reflexes, such as the suckling reflex, which will get them through the first year of life. However, unlike those in animals, the built-in behavior patterns in humans are not sufficient for life-long survival.
Humans need to discover their values and choose their course of action. The drama and the difficulty of human life is that people have to decide what actions to take, and their decisions have real, long-range consequences. This is why the human nurturing period is so long. Parenting is much more than simply protecting children while they are weak; its a process of helping children discover and internalize the values they need to pursue on their own as adults.
To summarize, AR's foundation for morality is based on two observations. First, life requires a specific course of action; living organisms need to pursue values to survive. Second, humans are not built to automatically pursue the correct values; man has to discover his values and choose the course of his life. These two observations come together to form AR's definition of ethics and morality: ``morals'' are a code of values to guide a man's choices and actions, and ``ethics'' is the science of defining and validating such a code. Implicit in the word ``validating'' here is that life is the standard of value: a correct (valid) morality is one that furthers human life. With these definitions in mind, let us examine the content of AR's morality.