”If there are no duties transcending the will, there really are no such things as either rights or duties – no such thing as morality at all, as that concept is understood by almost all people. There is only rational calculation of what will most efficiently gorge whatever appetites happen to occur to us. The calculation of optimally efficient gorging of appetites will often coincide with the constellation of traditional ethical injunctions not to kill, steal, lie, etc. But it will not do so always, and even if it did, that would not make efficiency in the gorging of appetites a moral virtue.”
Greg Forster, on Ayn Rand in the WSJ
The attendant problem with gorging appetites, of course, is that there are those whose appetites go to control of others. This is frequently in the name of some sort of “justice” which must be enforced to right a claimed wrong. And that masquerades as moral virtue under the name, Social Justice.
So taken backwards to the source it looks like this: Social Justice = moral virtue = enforced justice for a claimed wrong = gorging an appetite for controlling others = totalitarianism.
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