Peikoff - Virtue - Productiveness As The Adjustment Of Nature To Man Flashcards
(34 cards)
Productiveness is the …
Process of creating MATERIAL VALUES, whether goods or services.
==> Such creation is a necessity of human survival in any age.
The other living species, as we have seen, survive by …
Consuming READY-MADE values.
==> From bearskins on up the values required by man’s survival must be conceived and then created.
==> For a conceptual being, the ONLY alternative to creativity is PARASITISM.
The other species survive in essence by adjusting themselves to their background, assuming they have the good FORTUNE to find in nature the things they need.
Man survives by …
ADJUSTING HIS BACKGROUND TO HIMSELF.
==> Since he reshapes the given, he does not have to count on good fortune or even on the absence of disaster.
Just as there cannot be too much rationality, so there cannot be too much of any of its DERIVATIVES, including productiveness:
Just as there is no limit to man’s need of knowledge and therefore of thought, so there is no limit to man’s need of WEALTH and therefore of CREATIVE WORK.
Intellectually, every discovery contributes to human life by enhancing men’s grasp of reality.
Existentially, …
Every material achievement contributes to human life by making increasingly secure, prolonged, and/or pleasurable.
==> There can be no such thing as a man who transcends the need of PROGRESS, WHETHER INTELLECTUAL OR MATERIAL.
==> There is no human life that is “SAFE ENOUGH”, “LONG ENOUGH”, “KNOWLEDGEABLE ENOUGH”, “AFFLUENT ENOUGH”, OR “ENJOYABLE ENOUGH”.
==> NOT IF MAN’S LIFE IS THE STANDARD OF VALUE.
The practical benefits of productiveness are too obvious to be debated.
What I want to focus on is an aspect of productiveness that has been ignored or denied by previous philosophies:
ITS SPIRITUAL MEANING AND NECESSITY.
Productive work, writes AR, …
Is the process by which MAN’S CONSCIOUSNESS CONTROLS HIS EXISTENCE.
==> A constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one’s purpose.
==> Of translating ideas into physical form.
==> Of remaking the earth in the image of one’s values.
As this statement makes clear, productiveness, like every virtue, involves 2 integrated components:
Consciousness + existence.
Thought + action.
Knowledge + material implementation.
==> Neither of these components is dispensable to any productive man or activity.
Knowledge, as Francis Bacon stated, is POWER.
It is an instrument enabling man to support his life.
It is …
A PRODUCT OF CONSCIOUSNESS TO BE APPLIED TO REALITY.
==> To be followed, embodied, used.
This is WHY productiveness is defined as the creation of MATERIAL VALUES:
The discovery of knowledge is the 1st step.
==> But the PURPOSE of knowledge is to make possible an EXISTENTIAL VALUE.
==> a new type of machine, a new method of transportation, or a new method of living.
Contrary to the classic philosophical tradition, knowledge is not something to be gained or enjoyed for its own sake.
It is NOT a fulfillment to be pursued with “disinterest” or because it is “Pure” ie divorced from matter and action.
==> It is a commodity that satisfies a definite practical interest ==> THE INTEREST IN SURVIVAL.
In a division-of-labor society, a man may properly specialize in cognition.
But as long as the knowledge he acquires remains UNEMBODIED, it is not yet …
A PRODUCTIVE ACHIEVEMENT (nor does it work yet to support man’s life).
If the scientist or the scholar is to qualify as productive, he must proceed in due course to the next step:
He must give his discoveries some form of existence in physical reality and not merely in his consciousness — usually, by writing treatises or delivering lectures.
A scientist may not care himself to carry the process of embodiment further.
Life in the ivory tower, however, is not a license to disdain “the practical world”.
In particular, …
It is not a license to turn a discovery over promiscuously to all comers, regardless of its harmful potential and of their character and purpose.
==> This is tantamount to abetting the worst elements of mankind in their work of destruction.
(Project X in Atlas Shrugged).
A treatise or lecture, however brilliant, is NOT AN END IN ITSELF:
The mind-body integration required by productiveness is NOT COMPLETE UNTIL THE KNOWLEDGE IS TURNED INTO SOME FORM OF MATERIAL WEALTH.
==> In this step, too, specialization is typically involved.
==> The most important performers of THIS crucial feat are the inventors, the engineers, the industrialists.
There is no dichotomy between “pure” science and “gadgets.”
Science is related to technology as theory to practice.
As metaphysics and epistemology to ethics and politics.
As philosophy is to life.
As mind to body.
==> In all these cases, THE FIRST APART FROM THE SECOND IS PURPOSELESS. THE SECOND APART FROM THE FIRST IS IMPOSSIBLE.
The converse of “knowledge is power” is the principle that …
WEALTH IS THOUGHT.
Every form of material asset beyond an animal’s level, beyond wild fruit or raw meat eaten in a dank cave, is made POSSIBLE BY MAN’S COGNITIVE FACULTY:
BY INTELLIGENCE, IMAGINATION, INGENUITY.
==> Whoever creates anything of value out of natural resources has to rely on his MIND.
==> He needs a context of conceptual knowledge and a specific idea to guide his action.
This kind of intellectual content is necessary to make a Stone Age club, let alone the tools and weapons of the Iron Age.
The issue becomes obvious, however, when we consider the achievements enjoyed by the West today, the wealth that, in quantity and inventive genius, SURPASSES NOT ONLY THE MEAGER PRODUCTS BUT ALSO THE MOST EXTRAVAGANT FANTASIES OF ALL PREVIOUS AGES COMBINED.
The direct source of today’s wealth was the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION:
That was the great turning point when men moved within the space of a few generations from substinence to plenty.
The cause of the Industrial Revolution — which has had no counterpart in the “inderdeveloped” world — was 2 earlier developments:
- Renaissance — the philosophic revolution in favor of this world.
- The discovery of man’s rights — the political revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries.
==> The cause was REASON + FREEDOM, which made possible KNOWLEDGE + ACTION.
==> MODERN SCIENCE + MODERN ENTREPRENEUR.
The effect was the sudden outpouring of abundance — which most people nowadays take for granted and, thanks to bad philosophy, ascribe to “biological drives”, natural resources, or physical labor.
ALL OF THESE, HOWEVER, …
HAD EXISTED FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL.
==> Only one “drive” was NEW and only that power, therefore, qualifies as the FUNDAMENTAL CREATOR OF WEALTH:
LIBERATED HUMAN THOUGHT.
The fields of art and science are recognized to be realms open to great achievement — their representatives are venerated as men of stature.
They are venerate because …
People do NOT regard such men as producers, but as selfless seekers after PURELY spiritual ends.
==> Inventors, engineers, industrialists, by contrast, the men whom common parlance terms “producers”, have been IGNORED in virtue of this status.
==> Or have been condemned as “selfish materialists”.
In the Objectivist view, productive ability AS SUCH deserves the highest accolades:
Commercial or technological ability, like any other forth of life-sustaining efficacy, is not an amoral “know-how” or “can-do”.
==> Nor is it merely a “Practical asset”.
==> It is a profound MORAL value.
