Objectivism defines an "ethic" as a code of values to guide the choices and actions of human beings, where a "value" is anything which a living organism acts to gain and/or keep.

Metaethics

The Objectivist ethic begins with a meta-ethical question: why do human beings need a code of values? The Objectivist answer is that humans need such a code in order to survive as human beings.

Rand summarized her ethical theories by writing:

To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason, Purpose, Self-esteem.

Objectivism maintains that, alone among all the species of which we know, human beings do not automatically act to further their own survival. A plant seems to have no awareness of any kind and simply grows automatically; an animal that possesses a faculty of sensation relies on its pleasure-pain mechanism; an animal that operates at the level of perception can use its perceptions to muddle its way through its essentially cyclic life; but a human being, who at least potentially operates at the conceptual level, lives a life that consists of an integrated whole.

Objectivism recognizes, of course, that a biologically human being can survive in a physical sense without operating at the conceptual level at all. Indeed, Objectivism regards the conceptual level as a volitional achievement that not everyone in fact attains. In speaking of "survival" here, however, Objectivism is speaking of survival as a "human being" — that is, as a being that has realized its cognitive potential and attained to the conceptual level. It is at this level, Objectivism says, that a life is the sort of continuous whole proper to a human being.

Since operating at the conceptual level remains volitional for the duration of one's life, Objectivism holds, human beings require a code of values — an ethic — in order to guide them in making the choices and taking the actions that will not only keep them biologically alive but preserve their status as fully human beings. For Objectivism, a "human being" who is not operating at the conceptual level is not, in the proper sense of the word, conscious, and indeed is not even properly human: by lapsing from the conceptual level, a human being "can turn himself into a subhuman creature".

The purpose of the Objectivist ethic, then, is to guide human beings in becoming and remaining "fully human" — or, in Rand's language, in promoting their survival as "man qua man". In so doing, it adopts life — the specifically human form of life — as its standard.

However, the purpose of the Objectivist ethic as applied by any particular human being is the preservation and promotion of that person's own life (again, as man qua man). In this context, Objectivism seeks to differentiate between the "standard" and the "purpose" of an ethic, adopting "life" as its standard and "one's own life" as its purpose.

"Value", again, is understood as anything which a living organism seeks to gain and/or keep. Objectivism contends that values make no sense without a single "ultimate value" — and argues that this ultimate value is, for each person, that person's own life.

Objectivism contends, then, that "value" makes no sense apart from the context of "life". Here the Objectivist trichotomy reappears: Objectivism rejects both "intrinsicism" and "subjectivism" with regard to values just as with regard to universals. On the Objectivist account, value (or the "good") is not "intrinsic" to external reality, but neither is it "subjective" (again meaning "arbitrary"); the term "good" denotes an objective evaluation of some aspect of reality with respect to a goal, namely, the life of the human being with respect to whom the evaluation is made.

Objectivism regards the concept of "duty" as one that divorces value from its context in life (and therefore as an "anti-concept"). On its Objectivist definition, a "duty" is a moral obligation rooted in nothing more than obedience to an external authority and independent of one's goals and desires. Such a supposed moral obligation Objectivism sees as particularly destructive; according to Objectivism, one has no obligations other than those one has voluntarily assumed. Even obligations rooted directly in the needs of one's own life count as "voluntary" in this sense, for Objectivism regards the "choice to live" as the fundamental choice from which all other ethical requirements flow.

Virtues and values

In Objectivist parlance, a "virtue" is any act by which one gains and/or keeps a value. It is in this sense of the word that Objectivism speaks of the "virtue of selfishness": the Objectivist view is that adopting one's own life as one's ultimate ethical purpose, and then making the specific choices and taking the specific actions that implement that fundamental choice to live, is an achievement worthy of moral respect. It is in this sense that Rand wrote, "Man is a being of self-made soul."

In fact, Objectivism does not list "selfishness" among its official virtues. The "values" officially recognized by Objectivism are reason, purpose, and self-esteem, and the "virtues" by which these are achieved are said to be rationality, productiveness, and pride. Objectivism maintains that productiveness — work productive of objective value — is the central purpose of a rational human being's life, reason its precondition, pride its outcome.

Objectivism rejects as immoral any action taken for some other ultimate purpose. In particular it rejects as immoral any variant of what it calls "altruism" — by which it means, essentially, any ethical doctrine according to which a human being must justify his or her existence by service to others. According to Objectivism, every ethical or moral action has the agent as its primary beneficiary.

Objectivism especially opposes any ethical demand for sacrifice. Objectivism uses this term in a special sense: a "sacrifice", according to its Objectivist definition, is the giving up of a greater value for a lesser one. (In other worlds of discourse, for example baseball and chess, the term is used to mean the giving up of a lesser or shorter-term value for the sake of a greater or longer-term one. Objectivism does not regard such an exchange as a genuine "sacrifice".)

Not all superficially self-interested actions count as moral, however. Objectivism espouses an ethic of genuine self-interest — that is, of choices and actions that genuinely do promote one's life qua human being, not merely those that we think or hope may do so. The Objectivist ethic can be called one of "rational self-interest" (rational egoism) on the grounds that human beings must discover, through reason, what genuinely is of value to them.

"Conflicts" of interest

What about interpersonal conflict? Might it not happen that two human beings, each pursuing his or her own rational self-interest, come to an ethical impasse in which they are hopelessly at odds with one another?

Objectivism argues that this is not possible under normal circumstances (though it may happen in emergencies). Ordinarily, if human beings behave rationally, do not claim what they have not earned, and recognize that rational, productive human beings are of tremendous value to one another as trading partners, no irresoluble conflicts will arise.

This claim is the one on which the Objectivist political theory is largely founded. On the premise that no such conflicts are possible and that a world of peaceful trade is of benefit to all rational agents, Objectivism supports a principle of nonaggression. This principle is one of the most important moral rules of Objectivism. "Whatever may be open to disagreement," wrote Rand, "there is one act of evil that may not, that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate — do you hear me? No man may start — the use of physical force against others."

Rand's reasoning is that since man's mind and capacity for free will is necessary for morality to exist at all, to take that from him with an immediate threat of force is to prevent and co-opt him from acting morally. Initiation of force is seen by Objectivists as a negation of morality as it precludes choice by interposing the threat of physical destruction between a man and his desired ends. Furthermore, Objectivism holds that physical force is the only kind of force; that is, it holds that physical harm (or threat of physical harm) is the only way a person may be coerced to take an action against his or her will. All actions which are taken in the absence of such threats are voluntary according to Objectivism, and, as a result, they are subject to moral judgment.

However, actions taken under threat of physical force are considered immune from moral judgment, as they occur in a special type of "emergency situation". A man's actions under initiation of force — for instance, if one man points a gun at another man and instructs that man to kill a third man — are neither moral or immoral, as he is not free to choose his actions. In the words of Ayn Rand, "No rights are applicable in such a case. Don't you see that that is one of the reasons why the use, the initiation of force among men, is morally improper and indefensible? Once the element of force is introduced, the element of morality is out. There is no question of right in such a case." This particular emergency situation can only be interpreted literally — as Rand also said, "For instance, you couldn't claim that the men who served in the Gestapo, or the Russian secret police, [...] that they were merely carrying out orders, and that therefore the horrors they committed are not their fault, but are the fault of the chief Nazis. They were not literally under threat of death. They chose that job. Nobody holds a gun on a secret policeman and orders him to function all the time. You could not have enough secret policemen."