Ethics

In thinking about a relationship with a married person we will consider two fairly similar modes of thought. First we will examine the utilitarian ethics of Mill, then Rand’s individualist ethics. Essentially our question is this, I am single, and I’ve met someone who is married that I want to have a romantic relationship with. The moral issue here is not uncertain. Clearly in our society the institution of marriage carries with it several very traditionally dependent modes of morality, and to allow ourselves involvement with a married woman would circumvent the very notion of marital alignment.

Utilitarianism's underlying idea is the morality of action turns on how it figures in advancing human happiness and Mill’s initial statement is, "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." In our dilemma we turn to Mill's theory of the right--to his view about what makes an action right or wrong. First we must consider that this is a moral question in a way that the issue of what is intrinsically good is not. Only the conduct of a moral agent can be right or wrong. Mill would consider our dilemma right if, of those acts available in the circumsta

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X (me), Y (the married woman), Z (the spouse) would be benefited or harmed to the following degrees from each act. nces, it would produce the greatest total net good (happiness). If we gauge ourselves as truly independent then we cannot evaluate our actions based on the effects they will have on the woman’s current husband.

The moral person, in summary, on Rand's account, is someone who acts and is committed to acting in his best self-interest.

Rule utilitarianism (RU) holds that an act is wrong if it is contrary to a rule such that having a practice of enforcing that rule (formally or informally) would promote the greatest total net happiness (in preference to having a practice enforcing some other conflicting rule). If she were to be dependant on her current husband then her husband would be dependent on her, developing a parasitic chain that would ultimately lead to me. It is by living the morality of self-interest that one survives, flourishes, and achieves happiness. In thinking about our relationship with the married woman the utilitarian principle would find that there is no greater duty not to harm than there is to benefit--so long as there is compensating happiness to others. Since what matters for the utilitarian act is the total net happiness, how the happiness and unhappiness that make up the total is distributed across persons is irrelevant, so long as it does not affect the total.

Still, Mill suggests that an act is wrong only if it would maximize happiness to have a practice applying sanctions against it. That is to say that one's own life and happiness are one's highest values, and that one does not exist as a servant or slave to the interests of others. It is in our reasonable interest to obtain a relationship with the married woman there by negating the irrationality of the conflict.

To quickly summarize Rand’s virtue of selfishness is to see oneself as an end in oneself. It may be that he holds a different theory we may call rule utilitarianism or RU.

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