Peikoff - The Good - Rationality As The Primary Virtue Flashcards
(59 cards)
What are the principles of human survival?
What objects must man hold as values if he is to preserve his life, and what virtues must he practice in order to achieve them?
The faculty of reason is man’s basic tool of survival.
==> The primary choice is to exercise this faculty or not.
==> If life is the standard, therefore, the basic moral principle is obvious.
==> It tells us the proper evaluation of reason.
According to AR, there are 3 basic values “which together are the means to and the realization of one’s ultimate value …”
“To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: REASON — PURPOSE — SELF-ESTEEM.”
==> Reason — as his only tool of knowledge.
==> Purpose — as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve.
==> Self-esteem — as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: WORTHY OF LIVING.
***These 3 values imply and require all of man’s virtues.
The last two of these I will defer until the next chapter.
The greatest of them, however, which makes the others possible, is the first:
Epistemology tells us that reason is VALID — It is man’s means of knowledge.
Ethics draws the practical conclusion — IF one chooses to live, ONE MUST HOLD REASON AS A VALUE.
To value reason is the opposite NOT ONLY of rejecting it, but also of accepting it dutifully.
In regard to the mind, the Objectivist is NOT …
Disinterested or grudging.
He does NOT say: “I myself would rather be irrational, but, since A is A, I agree not to hold contradictions.”
On the contrary, grasping the VITAL role of consciousness, …
He awards reason the FUNDAMENTAL PLACE in his PERSONAL value structure.
==> He is the man who cherishes his means of survival, who recoils from the prospect of subverting it, who is uplifted by the spectacle of DRY OBJECTIVITY.
***”The noblest act you have ever performed is the act of your mind in the process of grasping that two and two make four.” — She did not intent the statement as hyperbole.
The magnificent fire in AR’s ethics — her inspiring affirmations of man the hero, creative work, selfish joy, individual liberty — all of it is a DERIVATIVE.
The root is …
The primary MORAL estimate of Objectivism — ITS ESTIMATE OF REASON.
Every moral value entails a lifelong course of virtue.
Virtue is …
THE ACTION BY WHICH ONE GAINS AND KEEPS A VALUE.
==> The action in this instance is the virtue that develops, preserves, and applies the faculty of reason, thereby making possible every other human value — RATIONALITY.
Rationality, according to AR, is …
The recognition and acceptance of reason as one’s ONLY source of knowledge — one’s ONLY judge of values and one’s ONLY guide to action.
This means the application of reason to every aspect of one’s life and concerns:
It means choosing and validating one’s opinions, one’s decisions, one’s work, one’s love, in accordance with the normal requirements of a COGNITIVE PROCESS — The requirements of LOGIC, OBJECTIVITY, INTEGRATION.
Put negatively, the virtue means …
NEVER PLACING ANY CONSIDERATION ABOVE ONE’S PERCEPTION OF REALITY.
==> Never attempting to get away with a contradiction, a mystic fantasy, or an indulgence in context-dropping.
Rationality means the acceptance of reason as a principle of human survival and …
AS AN ABSOLUTE.
Animals exercise their faculty of consciousness automatically.
Man does not.
“For an animal, the question of survival is primarily physical — for man, …
PRIMARILY EPISTEMOLOGICAL.”
==> Rationality, accordingly, is the PRIMARY OBLIGATION OF MAN — all the others are derivatives of it.
==> If man needs to choose his actions by reference to principles, this virtue names the ROOT PRINCIPLE.
==> Indeed, it underlies the very need of moral principles.
==> To act on principle is ITSELF an expression of rationality — it is a form of being governed by one’s CONCEPTUAL FACULTY.
By the same token, there is only one PRIMARY VICE, which is the root of all other human evils:
IRRATIONALITY.
==> This is the deliberate suspension of consciousness — the refusal to see, to think, to know — either as a general policy, because one regards awareness as too demanding, or in regard to some specific point, because the FACTS conflict with one’s FEELINGS.
Vice, in the Objectivist view, is NOT a rewarding policy:
It is unconsciousness — willful, self-induced unconsciousness, while one continues to move around and function.
==> To a conscious organism no course of behavior can be more dangerous.
The above is a generalized overview — Now let me consider certain aspects of rationality in greater detail:
To begin with, …
One cannot follow reason UNLESS ONE EXERCISES IT.
==> Rationality demands CONTINUAL MENTAL ACTIVITY — a regular, daily process of functioning on the CONCEPTUAL LEVEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
==> This involves much more than merely FORMING enough concepts to be able to speak or read a book.
In AR’s description, it involves …
“An actively sustained process of IDENTIFYING one’s impressions in conceptual terms, of INTEGRATING every event and every observation into a CONCEPTUAL CONTEXT, of GRASPING relationships, similarities, differences in one’s perceptual material — and of ABSTRACTING them into new concepts, of drawing inferences, of making deductions, or reaching conclusions, of asking new questions and discovering new answers — and expanding one’s knowledge into an ever-growing sum.”
A man does not qualify as rational if he walks around in a daze but once in a while, when someone mentions a fact, he wakes up long enough to say “I ll accept that”, then relapses again.
Rationality requires the SYSTEMATIC USE OF ONE’S INTELLIGENCE.
AR’s novels abound in instructive examples of this aspect of virtue.
Consider, for instance, Howard Roark’s encounter with the Dean at the beginning of “The Fountainhead”.
The Dean tells him that men must always revere tradition.
==> Roark regards this viewpoint as senseless, but he does NOT ignore it.
==> Roark is not a psychologist, nor does the field interest him much — but he does deal with men, he knows that there are many like the Dean, and he is on the premise of UNDERSTANDING WHAT HE DEALS WITH.
==> So he identifies the meaning of the event in terms available to him.
==> There is something here opposite to the way I function, he thinks, some form of behavior I do not grasp — “the principle behind the Dean”, he calls it — and he files this observation in his subconscious with the implicit order to himself — BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR ANY DATA RELEVANT TO THIS PROBLEM.
==> Thereafter, when such information becomes available, he recognizes and integrates it.
==> In the end, Roark reaches the concept of the “second-hander” — and of the opposite kind of man, whom he represents.
Whatever the heroes in AR’s novels deal with, including work, romance, art, people, politics, and philosophy, …
THEY SEEK TO UNDERSTAND IT — by connecting the new to what they already know and by discovering what they do not yet know.
==> They are men and women who like and practice the process of cognition.
==> This is why they are usually efficacious and happy individuals, who achieve their values.
==> Their commitment to THOUGHT leads them to sustained growth of KNOWLEDGE, which maximizes the possibility of successful ACTION.
In citing the Roark example, I do not mean to suggest that rationality has to involve the discovery of new ideas.
The exercise of reason applies within the sphere of each man’s knowledge, concerns, and ability.
==> The point is not that one must become a genius or even an intellectual.
Contrary to a widespread fallacy, reason is a faculty …
Of HUMAN BEINGS not of “supermen”.
==> The moral point here is to ALWAYS TO GROW MENTALLY, to increase one’s knowledge and expand the power of one’s consciousness to the extent one can — whatever one’s profession or the degree of one’s intelligence.
==> MENTAL GROWTH is possible on some scale to every person with an intact brain.
It requires the expenditure of effort, however, the effort of …
INITIATING AND MAINTAINING A STATE OF FULL CONSCIOUSNESS.
Effort does NOT mean pain or duty, but its does mean …
STRUGGLE, because conceptual knowledge is a VOLITIONAL ATTAINMENT that involves the risk of error arid the need of continual, scrupulous MENTAL WORK.
==> The men of virtue are the men who CHOOSE to practice and welcome this kind of struggle ON PRINCIPLE, as a lifelong commitment.
Their opposites are the …
ANTI-EFFORT mentalities, who seek to coast through life, hoping that knowledge and values will SOMEHOW materialize without labor or cost whenever one wishes for them.
