In practice, men have no way of obeying the tenets of hedonism, except by
taking their already formed feelings—their desires and aversions, their
loves and fears—as the given, as irreducible primaries the satisfaction of
which is the purpose of morality, regardless of whether the value-judgments
that caused these feelings are rational or irrational, consistent or
contradictory, consonant with reality or in flagrant defiance of it.
Objectivism holds that such a policy is suicidal; that if man is to survive, he
needs the guidance of an objective and rational morality, a code of values
based on and derived from man’s nature as a specific type of living organism,
and the nature of the universe in which he lives. Objectivism rejects any
subjectivist ethics that begins, not with facts, but with: “I (we, they) wish
. . . . ” Which means: it rejects hedonism of any variety.