The Morality of Monogamy

[Inspector 0]

Ray already said Dagny Taggart was not available. So, Inspector, would you like another chance to answer the question? I will ask you: If Dagny is the highest obtainable value and she has chosen John Galt, meaning she is no longer available for consideration by any other man, what are Hank Rearden and Francisco to do with their sex lifes from now on?

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I'm sorry, but you seem to be making a distinction between "obtainable" and "available," which I do not understand. Could you clarify?

[Burgess Laughlin 0]

I'm sorry, but you seem to be making a distinction between "obtainable" and "available," which I do not understand. Could you clarify?

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Inspector, here is the question: If Dagny Taggart is "off the market," so to speak, what should Hank Rearden and Francisco D'Anconia each do romantically/sexually in the rest of their lives after losing her?

Now that the essential question has been presented to you, for the third time, we can also discuss the meanings of "obtainable" and "available" if you really think that is the core issue -- and can explain why you think so.

In the meantime you might consult a dictionary for suitable distinctions or consider this informal one:

"Obtainable" in this social situation means "achievable by being equally worthy" or "can be earned."

"Available" in this situation means "on the market," so to speak. If Dagny Taggart were not with John Galt she might, if she so decided, be available for approach by other men. So, if she were available, how many men in her world could obtain her, that is, earn her love? Rearden and D'Anconia come to mind immediately.

[Guest danielshrugged]

Inspector, here is the question: If Dagny Taggart is "off the market," so to speak, what should Hank Rearden and Francisco D'Anconia each do romantically/sexually in the rest of their lives after losing her?

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The answer to this question seems obvious: Rearden and Francisco should each continue to seek the highest obtainable to them, and that category no longer includes Dagny.

I find myself in agreement with Alex in this discussion, by the way, and I think at least some of the opposition to his position is a result of a Platonic view of "the highest obtainable" as opposed to a contextual view that has room for options and change.

[dondigitalia 0]

...I think at least some of the opposition to his position is a result of a Platonic view of "the highest obtainable" as opposed to a contextual view that has room for options and change.

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Would you mind elaborating on this a little?

[RayK 0]

"Sex, in Ayn Rand's identification, is "a celebration of oneself and of existence"; it is a celebration of one's power to gain values and of the world in which one gains them. Sex, therefore, is a form of feeling happiness, but from a special perspective. Sex is the rapture of experiencing emotionally two interconnected achievements: self-esteem and the benevolent-universe conviction." Leonard Peikoff, OPAR, pg 344

"No man desires everyone on earth. Each has some requirements in this regard, however contradictory or unidentified - and the rational man's requirements, here as elsewhere, are the opposite of contradictory. He desires only a woman he can admire, a woman who (to his knowledge) shares his moral standards, his self-esteem, and his view of life. Only with such a partner can he experience the reality of the values he is seeking to celebrate, including his own value." Leonard Peikoff, OPAR, pg 345

"The subject of sex is complex and belongs largely to the science of psychology. I asked Ayn Rand once what philosophy specifically has to say on the subject. She answered: "It says that sex is good." Leonard Peikoff, OPAR, 346

"Sex is moral, it is an exalted pleasure, it is a profound value. Like happiness, therefore, sex is and end in itself; it is not necessarily a means to any further end, such as procreation." Leonard Peikoff, OPAR, 346

I think that through these quotes and my own identification that sex can be seen as a value that can be sought and obtained for itself. If within the moral standards set by the rational person. That is, I would search out the woman of like moral standards and self-esteem, an achiever, rational, etc. To hold sex as a value by itself in accordance with your own set standards is perfectly moral. The woman or man that one searches for as a life long partner can be a totally separate value in which sex can then be incorporated in that value. But, sex does not have to be incorporated to enjoy, it can be achieved as a goal, without contradiction to ones own values and moral standards.

[Burgess Laughlin 0]

The answer to this question seems obvious: Rearden and Francisco should each continue to seek the highest obtainable to them, and that category no longer includes Dagny.

[bold added for emphasis.]

And, who, among the women in Galt's Gulch or (earlier) outside of it, might be in that category?

[Inspector 0]

The answer to this question seems obvious: Rearden and Francisco should each continue to seek the highest obtainable to them, and that category no longer includes Dagny.

Precisely! Dagny is no longer obtainable. She is with Galt and CANNOT be obtained by Francisco or Hank. She is no longer the highest obtainable to them, as she once was. Their goal to seek the highest obtainable remains, even though it is no longer Dagny.

And, who, among the women in Galt's Gulch or (earlier) outside of it, might be in that category?

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Such women are not a part of the story, so we have no information about them. Where are you going with this?

[Guest danielshrugged]

[bold added for emphasis.]

And, who, among the women in Galt's Gulch or (earlier) outside of it, might be in that category?

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(In the following, I abstract away from the complications that loving a woman who is not welcome into Galt's Gulch would pose, since they are irrelevant to the current debate.)

Probably many women fit into that category, if you don't limit Rearden and Francisco's options to characters in the book (which limitation would be entirely unrealistic). Of the characters in the book, the pre-Taggart Cheryl seems like a potential for Rearden, if he were to see her somewhere. But I can't answer your question any further without knowing who else Rearden and Francisco might meet with just a little effort, given some time. Let me emphasize that potential lovers for Rearden and Francisco need not be businessmen or philosophers or geniuses. A shared sense of life is the crucial thing. (An interesting topic for the future, which is important in grasping my full meaning, is: what kinds of sense of life are there? It is my opinion that there are more varieties than benevolent vs malovolent, and I don't just mean that there is a continuum. For instance, some people are more adventurous than others, but the non-adventurous aren't necessarily negative in their senses of life.)

It is also important to note that, Betsy's assertions notwithstanding, I as a man experience no "need," whether "painful" or otherwise, to have sex. Rearden and Francisco would not be driven insane merely by waiting a few years until they find someone who they can love. And I do not think so little of the world, not even of the world as it is in Atlas, that I imagine that four or five years is insufficient time for Rearden and Francisco to find women who share their senses of life and who are in other respects compatible.

In order to address any of the multitude of other issues brought up in the discussion thus far, I need to think on my own more before I share anything in public. In particular, while I do think that one should seek the highest obtainable and base a relationship primarily on shared values, I am not sure what one should do if he can't find anyone to love for an extended period of time.

[Burgess Laughlin 0]

Of the characters in the book, the pre-Taggart Cheryl seems like a potential for Rearden [...]

Though she does not have the stature in accomplishment and perhaps in intellect that Rearden and D'Anconia have, she does have all the right philosophical values and virtues, and perhaps even sense of life.

Let me emphasize that potential lovers for Rearden and Francisco need not be businessmen or philosophers or geniuses.

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Wasn't there another woman, a "fisherwoman" at the dock on the lake -- the woman who had large eyes and was a novelist, if I recall correctly? Perhaps she was a genius, but too intellectually modest to reveal such in the presence of so many ideal men and women!

[Betsy Speicher 0]

Although I would add that the ability to ignore the spiritual emptyness and wrongness of sex without love long enough to gain physical pleasure from it is a form of faking and thus I question the validity of the physical pleasure.

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That is begging the question.

If there ARE some contexts where sex without love is OK, then there is no "wrongness" to ignore and there is nothing to fake.

[Ed from OC 0]

... I as a man experience no "need," whether "painful" or otherwise, to have sex. Rearden and Francisco would not be driven insane merely by waiting a few years until they find someone who they can love. And I do not think so little of the world, not even of the world as it is in Atlas, that I imagine that four or five years is insufficient time for Rearden and Francisco to find women who share their senses of life and who are in other respects compatible.

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Daniel, there are many premises in this post that I suggest you check.

[Free Capitalist 0]

In my opinion, if it's admitted that Cheryl could make a viable alternative to Dagny, then the "other side" has already conceded the point. Cheryl was a nice girl with a great sense of life, but no Dagny. If it's still okay for a Francisco or a Rearden to become intimate with someone like her, then the binary duality of "regular folks" and "hero(ines)" is given up, and it is allowed that there exists a continuum between these two notions, and that one can have a wide variety of choices within it, below those at the very top. That is all I've been trying to say.

[RayK 0]

I will try to make my point as clear as possible which is that sex and a life long love can be two totally separate values. Which means that as long as they are prioritized and not contradicted, can both be achieved. What Danielshrugged, Inspector and Alex seem to think (again let me know if I am wrong), is that one, sex, can not be a value without it being connected to the highest obtainable love in life. SEX CAN BE A VALUE ALL BY ITSELF, THE ACHIEVEMENT OF A GOAL WHICH BRINGS HAPPINESS. That does not mean it has to be, just that it can be if a person so chooses.

An example: A rational person decides that his career goals are more important, a higher value, than marriage and a family. Lets make this person a soldier, one that is gone for more than 11 months a year. He decides by his standards that he can not be the dad or husband that he will want to be at a later time, so he chooses not to pursue a lover at this time. But, he still values sex for its own achievement. Does this means he searches out all the low people on any street to have sex with? NO. He still holds his standards of who he will have sex with. If he is a man of high self-esteem, which I think he would be, than he would search out the same. Not to obtain his life long lover, but to enjoy the exaltation of sex, the good.

To achieve happiness, first requires the achievement of values. So the rational person that seeks sex as a value by itself, knows that they cannot discard their values, nor fake reality. As long as they hold to their own standards, sex as a value can be obtained and enjoyed while still being moral.

[Bill Bucko 0]

... My answer is that Hank Rearden has all the values and virtues that John Galt has. The only essential distinguishing difference between Rearden and Galt is their level of accomplishment.

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For that matter, I distinctly recall hearing Miss Rand say, or, more likely, hearing Dr Peikoff quote her to this effect:

Eddie Willers was as moral a man as John Galt.

Whether Dagny chose to have an affair with Eddie (before she became attracted to Rearden), would, I think, depend entirely on personal factors arising from their own contexts; and whichever choice they made I think would be moral. Who would have the right to criticize them? Who would know them intimately enough to decide, except them? Whose lives are they, after all? As honest people, each would be "taking what they want, and paying for it."

Which reminds me of the dialogue from the screenplay of "You Came Along." [see my post, under Essays] An army flyer tells Bob he wonders whether he should marry the woman he loves, before he leaves for the war. Bob replies along these lines:

"Who can decide that for someone else? That's for each one of us to decide. Whatever choice you make, that's the right choice for you."

I'm glad people are realizing more and more the importance of individual context, and of the many, many perfectly moral options that exist in life. But let me point out one further literary connection:

Jim Davidson (who, among other things, was a profound psychologist) back in the '60s once reminded us that what is presented in a novel is not reality. Specifically, he argued that while John Galt remaining celebate, waiting for Dagny, was literarily effective in dramatizing his struggle and what it cost him, in real life (as opposed to a novel) it would have been perfectly proper for him to have an affair with the fishwife who loved him, back in Galt's Gulch.

Someone else said they wished Eddie Willers and Cheryl Taggart had gotten together! They seemed well matched. Though of course, that would not have served the novel's literary and philosophic purposes, either. And an early affair between Eddie and Dagny would pretty obviously have been disastrous literarily, even while it could be perfectly moral in real life.

[Bill Bucko 0]

Wasn't there another woman, a "fisherwoman" at the dock on the lake -- the woman who had large eyes and was a novelist, if I recall correctly?

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Yes, of course. A writer, not specifically a novelist, "the kind of writer who can't get published, outside." It's been reported that this was Miss Rand's self-portrait, similar to the fleeting appearances Alfred Hitchcock sometimes made in his own movies.

[Jay P 0]

...I would think it would be immoral. As to why: because it would ultimately end in pain: more pain than they could possibly hope to gain in pleasure....

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It isn't the case that the kind of relationship being discussed has to end in pain, nor is it even particularly likely. Any romantic relationship has the potential of ending in pain to one or both people. How about the pain of going through a divorce, when before one had thought he'd found a lifelong soulmate? Or the pain of finding out that a person he had thought to be a good romantic partner, really isn't. I would think that actually the potential for pain is greater in such cases. But that shouldn't stop anyone from pursuing such a relationship. Neither should the possibility of a painful breakup stop one from pursuing a less-permanent relationship.

The best way to avoid pain and disappointment is to be honest with oneself and partner, about one's feelings and intentions, and to make sure one is not trying to pretend that a relationship is more than it is.

Are you married, Jay? Do you know how COMPLETELY you want to be with that person you marry? How EXCLUSIVE you want your relationship to be? How much you want to give yourself to them and how much you want to have them give themself to you? I apologize in advance if I'm getting too personal here...

The question of my marital status and speculation about my desires is not appropriate, so I'll ignore it. But, what is being discussed here is not sexual exclusivity within a marriage, but rather, romantic relationships one's spouse may have had before one ever even met him. I'm not sure what you're trying to imply about what one should or would feel in a marriage about one's spouse's previous romantic relationships, so I will address this in a more general way:

Should or would it bother one if, before he met his spouse, that person had been in a non-permanent sexual relationship of the kind we are discussing? I say this dpends on what one's attitude toward this kind of relationship is in the first place.

That is to say: if one disapproves of these relationships, then I'm sure it would bother him if his spouse had previously been in one. But if one sees nothing wrong with these relationships, I don't see why the fact of one's spouse having had one would bother him. (In fact, in so far as having been in a healthy romantic relationship is likely to make one a better person, one could very well view such a previous relationship as a positive.)

But if one views non-permanent relationships (of the kind being discussed here) as necessarily immoral, one could avoid potential partners who had been in such a relationship.

[Inspector 0]

That is begging the question.

If there ARE some contexts where sex without love is OK, then there is no "wrongness" to ignore and there is nothing to fake.

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I will give you that. However, the spiritual emptyness is still there, and I still do claim that sex without love is not okay.

[Inspector 0]

The question of my marital status and speculation about my desires is not appropriate, so I'll ignore it.

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That is no problem. You have my apologies already given before in case of this contingency.

[Inspector 0]

SEX CAN BE A VALUE ALL BY ITSELF, THE ACHIEVEMENT OF A GOAL WHICH BRINGS HAPPINESS.

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I know that is what you are saying, and I emphatically disagree. While sex is an end in itself, it is not valuable outside of the proper context.

To achieve happiness, first requires the achievement of values.  So the rational person that seeks sex as a value by itself, knows that they cannot discard their values, nor fake reality.  As long as they hold to their own standards, sex as a value can be obtained and enjoyed while still being moral.

What standards? Exactly what type of person is suitable as a sexual partner but which one does not actually love? Can you actually produce a concrete example without realizing that such a person would not in fact be desirable as a sexual partner?

[Inspector 0]

the binary duality of "regular folks" and "hero(ines)" is given up,

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I never had any binary duality. All I have said is that it is not proper to have sex without being in love with the person with whom one is having sex.

[free spirit 0]

I could not have sex with someone whom I know is not the one for me.

Just as I could not pursue a relationship I know is not going anywhere.

I don't believe that there is ultimately ONE person out there for you. I believe that there a few people with whom you could be happy. But I do think there are some people who you connect with on a deeper level, and share more harmonious senses of life with.

So, for me to have sex with someone who shares some of my standards, but not all, I would have to evade or forget about the qualities that I cannot love. And that would not be attractive.

I would want to let myself completely surrender to their whole person, not merely some aspects.

I don't think anyone has a need or urgency, man or woman, to have sex with someone. I think masturbation is a great way to take care of that should the desire arise.

It's a wonderful way to express the love for yourself until you find someone to share it with.

I know from observing it how much it can hurt a person to have sex with just a friend, and have that friend all of a sudden pursue a romantic potential.

Even when you have stated explicitly that each is free to seek a potential and date.

If one has any standards at all, a sexual relationship is special and personal.

Sex should not be done for the convenience of it. It's too special.

~C~

[Inspector 0]

Free Spirit:

Well said!

[free spirit 0]

Thanks!

~Carrie~

[Stephen Speicher 0]

the binary duality of "regular folks" and "hero(ines)" is given up,

I never had any binary duality. All I have said is that it is not proper to have sex without being in love with the person with whom one is having sex.

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That is very disingenuous statement. In a prior post Insprector said:

"I am against ... sex with a person that one knows is not a possible candidate for their long-time life partnership on the basis of values."

It is not just "love" that Inspector has pinned to the propriety of sex, but the knowledge and expectation of a lifetime partnership, i.e., marriage. In fact he has left no middle ground between the purpose of friendship on one end, and marriage on the other. Love can take many forms, in many degrees, and it is not a "binary duality."

[RayK 0]

Inspector,

Sex, which is connected to my pleasure and happiness, can be a value without love. If someone masturbates they are pleasuring themselves without love, why do you see this pleasure different than the other pleasure?

For a fictional example I will quote again the passage in Stephen's earlier post.

"...he has had affairs with women, perfectly cold, emotionless affairs, without the slightest pretense at love. Merely satisfying a physical need and recognized by his mistresses as such."

For a real concrete example (I take it your asking because you want to know if I have had a sexual relationship like the above, because obviously I do not know anyone elses sexual concretes), I am not afraid to use myself. I have had sexual affairs before I was married similar to the description above. And, it was pleasurable, I walked away feeling great, because I selfishly enjoyed my own exaltation. Neither, did I compromise my other values, that is, the sex fit into my overall values of achieving happiness.

If you want to think that this is immoral that is fine, because I do not set my moral standards according to yours, nor do I care what you think of me. I am here for myself. To quote Ayn Rand,

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, WITH HIS OWN HAPPINESS as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

So my reasons for or how I go about achieving happiness do not have to be part of yours. As long as I use reason and do not compromise my own moral standards, I really do not care what anyone else thinks.