Greg Salmieri

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1,054 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2013 last heard Jan 2021

Greg Salmieri’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Elucidations · Episode 73: Greg Salmieri discusses Ayn Rand's moral philosophy · 15 Jul 2015 podcast

The whole life is for its own sake, and everything else is for the sake of that.

And if anything's the most important thing, it's a thing that we identify as the central driving organizing principle in the life.

And for human beings, Rand thinks that principle is reason.

I think that's right.

And one way to to think about um why that wouldn't be where this would lead, or shouldn't be, is surely none of us would be better off in the zombie apocalypse.

So if we find that the way we're acting is bringing us towards zombie apocalypse dumb uh or towards some horrible Hobbesian state, that is pre-state Hobbesian situation, we have good reason to think it's not in our self-interest to keep acting that way.

Now you might have concerns about maybe

Maybe we should free ride on other people not acting that way.

We can get away with it so long as other people do.

But I think that's a first indication that that a the kind of life that would lead to that outcome is not a life that's in anyone's self interest.

Now, there's a certain way of answering this kind of question, why is it in one's self interest to help others, to treat others respectfully, to treat others in some way other than a being indifferent to them, or else even worse than being indifferent to them, treating them as things we ought to exploit as means to our ends.

And there's a kind of first answer to that, which I think you find in Glaucon and Plato's Republic and in Hobbes.

which is sort of right insofar as it goes, but doesn't go far enough, I think, and I don't think Rand would have thought that is if you have a conception of any particular things you might think that are in your interest, like say just crudely making a lot of money or having a house and not having the house burned down, you'll quickly learn that if you start treating other people awfully

or even being indifferent to them, you're going to have a society where you're not going to be as well able to secure those ends.

But I think even that Rand thinks there's a deeper answer to this kind of question than that.

Because what we haven't spoken about much yet is what dear self-interest consists in.

And it's not that whatever things you think are good for you are good for you, whatever things you want are good for you, or even in her view, that things that would in an obvious superficial short-range way have a life-sustaining impact, like more food or more money or something, are always good for you.

You need to be thinking, on her view, about the type of life you're leading and whether this is a life in which you're doing what

It is the essential thing that a human being needs to do to survive.

And what is that?

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