The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at Dr Kenner.com

I understand there's a problem with gage patron. See, yeah, besides the behavior problem, he won't do homework and his test scores are

I'm not interested in any of that. I'm interested in why, when this school is on the brink of winning its first state championship in 15 years you slap a crucial member of that team with a failing mark that would force his removal. Is that? How you show your school spirit? You're asking me to change his grade,

and that's from Buffy, and the idea of the fact that he didn't earn a good grade, and he doesn't deserve a good grade, you know, think of just desserts. What's going on there? What decision Should she make? Should she have more in, quote, school spirit and reward him for failing? Or should she not have more school spirit and instead give him the grade it has nothing to do with school spirit and with me to discuss justice, rewards and punishments is Dr Tara Smith. Dr Smith is a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas Austin. She is the author of Ayn Rand's normative ethics, the virtuous egoist. And she's also written Moral Rights and Political Freedom and Viable Values, the Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality. Welcome to the show, Tara,

thank you for having me.

So what do you think about that case where, No, she doesn't have school spirit because he earned a grade, or did he not earn so what happens with grades? Do you earn them or not?

Sure you earn them, you should earn them and be awarded the grades you deserve. I mean, that sounded like a good example of injustice that is justice treating other people justly is a policy of judging them objectively and treating them accordingly, paying them whatever rewards or punishments they have earned or deserve. But when I say judging people objectively, what is objective, judgment is going to depend on the context. And in that situation, from the clip, we're in a school where we're talking about an educational institution. Schools exist for the purpose of educating students, training them, and in the course of doing that, testing their mastery of the material, as you do by assignments, homework, papers, exams and so on,

which gives the student feedback of where they stand, how much they can know, how much they are learning, how much more they need to do. In so far as it is an educational institution, what's relevant is performance in this math class or that history class or whatever it not. It might be school spirit, and I'm all for school spirit, but that is secondary. That is a kind of compliments that may or may not be achieved at different schools, but it is not, I don't know if it was a principal or whomever would or a coach who was trying to place this pressure on a teacher to change a grade, but that was asking for injustice, asking for the teacher to set aside the actual relevant fact the kid earned, let's say, a C or a D, or whatever it might have been, and to elevate what is irrelevant in that context, namely the success of the football team over it. So that was a really that would be a real example of injustice,

but the coach or the principal was pretending he was trying to take the moral high ground with his intimidating tone, and he was pretending that this was an issue of justice. How can you kick this kid off the team because of that poor grade. Whereas she's not kicking the kid off the team, she's just accurately recording what he he earned

exactly, and he has failed to earn his place as a student eligible to play an extracurricular sport,

and he could have done his homework, he could have done a lot more. And I love her comment, you're asking me to change his grade. I mean, she just hits it straight on rather than being intimidated. So when we talk about justice, I know you've emphasized in your book, Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics, the Virtuous Egoist. I know that you've emphasized that it's important to focus on not just the punishments of getting a grade that you've earned, but the rewards. Tell me a little bit about that.

Hey, I gotta interrupt this, because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds, that's it. A very quick ad, and then Alan will be back.

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Tell me a little bit about that. Well, you know, as I said, justice, you're judging people, and correspondingly, you're treating them as they deserve. And I think sometimes when one defends the idea of judging people, there's a connotation of a kind of negative emphasis on the defects, on the flaws, looking to criticize people. And that is. Not what I or Ayn Rand have in mind when we talk about justice, certainly, where there are defects or flaws or deficiencies, those things need to be honestly assessed and recognized. But so much of what is enjoyable about practicing the virtue of justice is attending to the positive people have so many positive values that they can bring to one another's lives. I know that in the time since I really started examining this virtue, the practice of justice, has enriched my life by tuning me in much more keenly to rewarding the good guys. Now what I mean is a range of things. I mean everything from writing more fan letters, that is, if there's an author who I find I really enjoy, I've read two or three of his books, and I decide, yeah, I really like this or that aspect of the author, I'll just send them a quick note, acknowledging that. It's a way of encouraging that which you find valuable in other people. So it do this by giving the larger tip. You can do this by voting for a person. You can do you know, even at the office, or supporting a person's candidacy again, just sometimes, on a committees at the office, or something like that. You can give a bonus. You can give an afternoon off. You can give the special recognition award. You can give an invitation. You can give the atta boys. They're just, you know, a great variety of ways, small and large, depending on what it is that you want to be rewarding in which we can encourage that which is good and deserves encouragement one another. So, you know, punishments are also a part of justice. But I certainly want to get away from the image that I think the judgmental right this has that, oh, you're just trying to feel super,

always picking on me. You just just want to feel good about yourself. So that whole idea of judgmental is not justice, it's anything. But I find that with my clients, or even in my own life, Tara that I had, I have difficulty in some clients to saying what you love most about the people who matter most to you. I mean, it's easy to write the fan letter. I find sometimes easier than to tell my parents precisely what I love about them. And so I wonder, I'm sure that that's that I'm not alone. I know that from therapy. But can you speak to that a little bit about really telling the top people in your life what you feel about them, the positive things?

Well, I think in part, it is a matter of first identifying what are those things. And that, again, is where I think Justice can help us. That is if I'm feeling this emotion of love or of admiration for another person, be it a family member, a very close, close person or not. You know, it's useful first of all to ask, Why am I feeling this? What's the basis for this? And again, becoming more in tune with what are the specifics? Oh, yeah, I like this about this person, this and this and this, right? So first of all, I think trying to attune yourself to justice, attuned yourself more specifically to the fact, to focus on facts, right, right? To be focused on what are the grounds for this positive emotion? Wonderful. But then definitely, I think, you know, I think we, we take the people close to us for granted. Randy very often. And justice is about how you judge and treat everyone, from those closest to the stranger on the street who you've never laid eyes on before, and everybody in between. But it's about being honest and truthful, and sometimes taking the emotional risk of being honest. Where perhaps you're in a family that doesn't like to talk much about its emotion, or they may be embarrassed if you say something, they may not believe you, and you can still try, you know, you can still make the effort to do so, yeah, in an honest way, in a way that you think that particular person can hear, yeah, you know, you want to think about how is this going to go over, as opposed to making a big announcement at Thanksgiving dinner? I really love your mind. I mean, you right. You have to put it in the context of how that person would best receive it.

Listen. Thank you so much for joining us today. And I hope all of us can focus on those we love and be able to let it come out of our mouths to speak what we genuinely love about a person. This I'm with Dr Tara Smith, author of Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics, the Virtuous Egoist, which you can get at Ayn Rand bookstore.com and thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you for more Dr Kenner podcast. Go to Dr kenner.com and please listen to this ad.

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