To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve—Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means, is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man’s virtues. -Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand
In her philosophy of Objectivism, Ayn Rand defines reason as “the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses”. It is the process by which humans form conceptual understanding from their perceptions, elevating knowledge beyond the perceptual level shared with animals. Essentially, reason is the thinking mind, distinguishing humans from other beings.
Here’s a more detailed explanation:
Identification and Integration:
Rand emphasizes that reason is not just passively receiving sensory input, but actively analyzing and synthesizing it to create understanding.
“Self-esteem” is a fundamental, positive moral appraisal of oneself—of the process by which one lives and of the person one thereby creates. It is the union of two (inseparable) conclusions, neither of which is innate: I am right and I am good—I can achieve the best and 1 deserve the best I can achieve—I am able to live and 1 am worthy of living.
The independent man, Roark says, ‘‘does not function through [others]. He is not concerned with them in any primary matter. Not in his aim, not in his motive, not in his thinking, not in his desires, not in the source of his energy.”4 The independent man who lives in society learns from others and may choose to work jointly with them, but the essence of his learning and his work is the process of thought, which he has to perform alone. He needs others with whom to trade, but the trade is merely an exchange of creations, and his primary concern is the act of creating; his concern is his own work. He may love another person and even decide that he does not care to live without his beloved; but he chooses his love as a complement to his work, and he chooses by his own rational standards, for the sake of his own happiness. He may enjoy receiving approval from others, but others are not the source of his self-esteem; he esteems himself, then enjoys receiving approval only when he independently approves of the approvers. This kind of man gains many values from mankind and offers many values in return; but mankind is not his motor, his sustainer, or his purpose.
In regard to content, as a result, the intellectually honest man refuses to fake in his own mind any specific item an) fact, field, or value. If one is guided by reason and motivated by the need of action, he does not lie to himself. He has no use for rationalizations, mystic inventions, or any other ver¬ sion of rewriting reality. He does not fake science by pretend¬ ing that feelings prove truth, or self-esteem by pretending that approval from others proves value. He does not fake morality ‘ by feigning anyone’s “right” to receive the unearned or any¬ one’s “duty” to give it. He is not a mediocrity eaten by envy who feigns greatness, or a genius hungry for popularity who feigns mediocrity. The honest man may commit many errors,
“Esteem” is a type of evaluation, and evaluation presupposes a standard of value. The state of a man’s self-esteem, therefore, depends not only on his moral practice, but also on his moral theory; it depends on the standard (usually only implicit) that he uses to gauge self-esteem. Here arises a great divide among men: those who gauge self-esteem by the standard of rationality (of their commitment to full consciousness)—and those who do not so gauge it.
Contrast this approach with the attempt, now epidemic, to gauge self-esteem by a standard other than rationality. An example would be the second-hander who judges his worth by the approval he receives, by the obedience he offers to the authorities, and/or by his willingness to sacrifice. In order to gain a sense of self-value, or at least a pretense at one, such a person must relegate to a secondary position any thinking he does. To feel good about himself, he must continually unfocus and subvert his mind—which action makes him feel out of control, inefficacious, no good. Thus the intractable inferiority complex of so many people today and their insolvable conflict: because they judge their soul by improper standards, they pit the requirements of their self-esteem against the requirements of their life. The ultimate result is to make both these values impossible to themselves.
A man suffering from invalid standards of self-esteem, whether irrational or honest but mistaken, needs to change his moral ideas. He must learn to judge himself not by his relation to others, nor by his knowledge or existential success, but by his maintenance of a certain mental state, one that depends on nothing but his own will: the state of being in full focus. In other words, he must learn to gauge his self- esteem by the standard of moral perfection as conceived by the Objectivist ethics.
Then he must live up to this standard by practicing the virtue of pride. Pride, in the Objectivist definition, is the only means there is to self-esteem and the only cure for a breach in it.
