Summary: "Ethics in our Time" by Ayn Rand 1961

http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-ideas/the-objectivist-ethics.html

This was a paper read to the University of Wisconsin in 1961 outlining Rand's objectivist philosophy from an ethical perspective.

Rand quotes her fictional character of Atlas Shrugged, John Galt, to describe her concepts of ethics:

“Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. . . . Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality . . . but to discover it.”

The objectivist purview is one in which the individual 'programs' his mind through thought,  and emotions are the feedback from that thinking. Rand's core message is that this cannot be reversed. She describes the starting point of an ethical discussion as identifying the need for a a code of values in the first place. She places that need around survival and separates humans from other animals, and animals from plants. 

Once this foundation is identified, the what of values can beign being translated to the how. She outlines three core values, or "that which one acts to gain and/or keep", as well as well as three complementary virtues, or "that act by which one gains or keeps [a value]":

Values [virtues]

1. Reason [Rationality]
2. Purpose [Productiveness]
3. Self-Esteem [Pride]

The core premise of her argument comes from the fact that you must cognitively evaluate your beliefs and identify their purpose for existence. She declares two concrete activities to do this: 

1. "Commitment to the fullest persception of reality" 
2. "Constant, active expansion of one's perception." 

Put into more actionable and natural language, Rand is asking us to think very intentionally through facts about our world and continue building that up, never leaving our knowledge as it exists today. Later on, she describes it as a "commitment to reason" and a "permanent way of life." 

This is then translated into a small collection of virtues, which Rand describes with a few sentences 

• Virtue of Integrity
• Virtue of Honesty
• Virtue of Productiveness
• Virtue of Pride 

Rand closes by comparing her ethics to three schools of ethics, which Rand categorizes all as altruistic (in contrast to her objectivist school) 

1. Mystic theory, her 'monument' being the middle ages 
2. Social theory, her 'monument' being Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany 
3. Subjectivist theory, her 'monument' being the "present state of our culture (in 1961)