Verbose?
Here goes...
As I understand Kant ( and please tell me if I am wrong ), his morality has two basic tenets:
The first is to act as if each choice were a universal law. This really is simply the golden rule from another frame of reference. Where the golden rule is do unto others etc., the universal law recognizes that each interaction an individual initiates with others, others are initiating with him. It ends up being the same thing. This is not where Rand had her problems with Kant.
In the second tenet, Kant posits that there are two motives for any act:
1) From inclination or desire
2) Out of a sense of duty
Kant holds that an act is virtuous only if it performed out of a sense of duty. Where an individual is inclined to act out of a sense of duty, the greater the sense of duty ( and the the less the inclination to act ), the more virtuous the act is. The short of it is, the less you want to do something, the more virtuous you are when you do it. This is bizarre, as I am about to explain, and the major sticking point with Rand.
Suppose you live in a cookie cutter suburban house in a ubiquitous suburban subdivision, and you have the Smith family living to your left, and the Jones family to the right. Suppose you host a nice Saturday afternoon barbeque, and invite both families, and they both attend, and enjoy themselves. Smith then says "This is a great idea. We should do this again next week at my house." Whereupon, the next Saturday the three families all meet at the Smiths' house and again enjoy the afternoon meal which the Smiths prepared not out of any sense of duty, but because they genuinely enjoyed everyone's company and were inclined to host out of the desire to do so. At this point, Jones looks around, a little guiltily, and realizes that he probably ought to reciprocate. He says "We need to do this at my house next week." Now Jones really does not want to host an afternoon barbeque, in fact, no one in the family enjoys preparing food, or for that matter, shopping for it. They hate the thought of cleaning up before the guests arrive, they hate the thought of cleaning up after the guests leave, and they really would rather spend the weekend alone, but, out of a sense of duty, they prepare a meal comparable to the first two, and everyone again enjoys a fine afternoon barbeque.
Who acted most virtuously? It is the same act performed by all three families, but Kant holds, because the Jones family acted out of a sense of duty, rather than inclination or desire, that they have acted most virtuously. Like I said, bizarre.
Rand's major heartburn comes because this morality eliminates any form of values. In order for an act to be virtuous, it does not have to be good, it only has to be undertaken out of a sense of duty. You can perform tasks in the most slipshod manner possible, but if the act was derived from a sense of duty, then you have behaved virtuously, despite the fact that your inferior work might need to be completely undone and redone. In the above example, the Jones family would still be morally superior despite the relative quality of the meals, if, for example, the Jones family served beans and franks, while the first two events were surf and turf. According to Kant, the sole criteria for virtue is duty. According to Rand, this is ludicrous.
Rand postulates three major values:
1) Reason
2) Purpose
3) Self Esteem
From these descend the three major virtues:
1) Rationality
2) Productivity
3) Pride
As we can see from the above example, Kant's definition of virtue is irrational and incoherent. Asking someone to perform out of duty rather than inclination is counter-productive, and subjugating the self to act only from a sense of duty degrades and eventually eliminates self esteem. This is why Rand despised Kant; that his moral code denied the self and replaced it with duty, and that he failed to identify any objective good.
That wasn't too long, was it?
Eric
