Ebenezer Scrooge was not an admirable man. He was bitter, unfriendly, and thrifty past motive. The three spirits of Christmas, nonetheless, didn’t enhance his morality, slightly, they terrified him into embracing what the ghost of Marley known as “the frequent welfare.” Whereas Scrooge rightly dropped lots of his imprudent traits on Christmas Day, following his haunting, this want by no means have required the dropping of the rugged individualism he initially embodied. A fourth spirit ought to’ve visited Scrooge on Christmas Day to point out him the true error of his reformed methods—the spirit of Ayn Rand ought to’ve encounter him!
On Christmas Eve of 1843, Scrooge saved “a tight-fisted hand on the grindstone” of his moneylending, solely to be interrupted by his nephew and charity employees, each of whom solely introduced out his true flaws. But it’s in these exchanges the place we come to see the ethical motivation of Scrooge. When inspired to have “A Merry Christmas, Uncle!” Scrooge reeled off a diatribe with the essential line being: “What’s Christmas however a time for paying payments with out cash?” Whereas this hardly warrants wishing the utterer of “Merry Christmas” is “boiled together with his personal pudding, and buried with a stake of holly by way of his coronary heart,” absolutely stated in deadpan jest, Scrooge was rightly pointing to the injustice of spendthrift folks paying for Christmas on borrowed cash after which defaulting on their moneylender, or, begging for extensions.
Scrooge’s thriftiness could also be out of proportion; certainly, he wept at seeing his fiance break up with him when she stated: “You concern the world an excessive amount of… All different hopes have merged into the hope of being past the possibility of its sordid reproach.” However, in an age with youngster mortality at 27 p.c, having loads of cash for heating and meals might need been very prudent. I doubt the Spirit of Christmas Previous would get pleasure from displaying Scrooge his useless son as a result of he couldn’t afford coal for the fireplace after an unlucky occasion. Scrooge is in the end being lambasted for an admirable want on his half to be unbiased of the charity of others or the help of the state—to face on his personal two ft.
We see this rugged individualism shine by way of drastically when he rejects serving to the poor. He makes his place crystal clear when requested to assist them: “It’s not my enterprise. It’s sufficient for a person to grasp his personal enterprise, and to not intervene with different folks’s. Mine occupies me consistently. Good afternoon, gents.” Many might be pondering Scrooge wouldn’t suppose that if he have been within the situation of Bob Cratchit who lived in freezing circumstances and with a dying Tiny Tim. Scrooge, nonetheless, would morally settle for not being helped in such destitution, as a result of, he by no means assisted in a reciprocal approach by way of charity, as a substitute, he strained each sinew in his thoughts and physique to change into self-reliant. Scrooge embodied self-help.
Scrooge takes the correct pursuit of his life to be his personal enjoyment, which—definitely when he’s outdated—he misjudges to encompass a maximal safety of his monetary place. This contrasts markedly with the ethical view of his nephew who ideally sees every of us as “fellow-passengers to the grave” who implausibly thinks a real dedication to it “will do me [i.e., him] good.” The deadly flaw in Scrooge is a failure of prudence throughout a big a part of the board, not basically a flaw in his ethical thought. When the Spirit of Christmas Previous presents him as a toddler being overly studious or the Spirit of Christmas Current as being “the ogre of the household” of the Cratchit’s or the Spirit of Christmas Future reveals him as the person who dies alone, there’s merely a failure of proportion, an undue bitterness and a misguided shunning of individuals, if that.
The finale of Dickens’s novel has Scrooge get up on Christmas Day as “giddy as a drunk man.” He goes out and buys the Cratchit’s “the prize turkey,” grants an enormous donation to the charity males “with an important many back-payments included in it,” and proceeds to dine together with his nephew and household. “His personal coronary heart laughed; and that was fairly sufficient for him.” The story ends with Scrooge dwelling by the “Complete Abstinence Precept ever after,” i.e., promising to not be egocentric in any respect into the longer term. This image is really a fiction of the best order.
Ought to Scrooge have adopted “the frequent welfare,” of which the ghost of Marley spoke, and saved to the ethical concept that “the poor one” is entitled to dinner over others “as a result of it wants it most,” in accordance with the Spirit of Christmas Previous, he would have been a poor man certainly. As a substitute of waking up joyously on Christmas Day and greeting the world “so fluttered and so glowing,” Scrooge would correctly put his “tight-fisted hand on the grindstone” once more and set about incomes extra money. Because the efficient altruists of the twenty first century, corresponding to Peter Singer, William MacAskill, and Matthew Adelstein have proven, an individual ensures one of the best outcomes for mankind at giant when he places his thoughts to enterprise after which donates to efficient charities, not by giving turkey to middle-class clerks who ought to have their very own affairs so as anyway.
Following utilitarian pondering would require each motion of his being penultimately devoted to making sure the alleviation of struggling on Earth. If Scrooge have been incomes £500, he might have been incomes £1,000 had he put his thoughts to it. In spite of everything, he was a wonderful man of enterprise. With this extra of £950—for who must stay higher than Bob Cratchit, the clerk—he might make investments cash in a fund to offer perpetual aid to the really poor and diseased. Positive, his life can be stuffed with distress, missing in friendship, and his love would stay misplaced, however with a thoughts for money-lending and the large potential for good that would do, such private enjoyment might by no means be countenanced by “the frequent welfare” and an acceptance of the “Complete Abstinence Precept.”
But that is evidently a reductio advert absurdum of the talked about place. The Spirit of Ayn Rand ought to have visited Scrooge on the night time of Christmas Day and returned him to his rugged individualism, and gotten him to understand the best way to correctly lead an excellent life. Such a haunting ought to have made Scrooge rise up and utter Rand’s immortal phrases: “My happiness wants no greater intention to vindicate it. My happiness just isn’t the means to any finish. It’s the finish. It’s its personal objective. It’s its personal objective.” The person correctly pursues his personal happiness in life—by way of the event of friendships, the nurturing of a form disposition, and the balancing of economic safety with dwelling within the second, after all, however these ought to nonetheless in the end serve his happiness, not different folks.
Towards this many a utilitarian will declare, Scrooge would not likely finest serve the higher good ought to he act as I’ve stated he should, so the reductio advert absurdum to bolster Rand’s pondering fails. Perhaps, however an ethical philosophy which dictates even the potential for Scrooge having to immiserate himself for the higher good must be rejected as implausible. Does this Randian morality implausibly say we should always by no means assist others? No. Reciprocity, (i.e., “I’ll allow you to if you happen to assist me”) ensures folks ought to assist others to not directly assist themselves. Scrooge, nonetheless, can’t be criticized for not serving to others, as a result of he by no means requested for or anticipated any assist to start with and he rightly believes he has discharged any reciprocity he ought to have interaction in by way of his taxes when he rhetorically asks: “Are there no workhouses?”
Scrooge is deeply misguided about what makes up an excellent life, nonetheless, his interpersonal ethical compass earlier than the haunting was by no means off form. The Three Spirits of Christmas led him astray right into a morality which implicitly denied his existence was for his personal enjoyment; slightly, they alluded it have to be lived for others (which they falsely made out might be in his curiosity too in order to sugar the capsule). No. As Rand declared with a full vigor for all times: “Man should stay for his personal sake, neither sacrificing himself to others, nor sacrificing others to himself.” Scrooge embraced this rugged individualism earlier than his haunting and he was proper to take action.
