The Objectivist Ethics Flashcards
(132 cards)
1
Q
The term “metaphysical” means?
A
That which pertains to reality, to the nature of things, to existence.
2
Q
4 introductory questions that are asked about the root of ethics:
A
- Is the concept of VALUE, of “good or evil” an arbitrary human invention, unrelated to, underived from and unsupported by any facts of reality, or is it based on a METAPHYSICAL fact, on an unalterable condition of man’s existence?
- Does an arbitrary human convention, a mere custom, decree that man must guide his actions by a set of principles-or is there a fact of reality that demands it?
- Is ethics the province of WHIMS: of personal emotions, social. edicts and mystic revelations- or is it the province of REASON?
- Is ethics a subjective luxury- or an OBJECTIVE necessity?
3
Q
What is a whim?
A
A desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause.
4
Q
What is the central question to which no philosopher has given a rational, objectively demonstrable, scientific answer?
A
WHY man needs a code of values.
==> So long as that question remained unanswered, no rational, scientific, OBJECTIVE code of ethics could be discovered or defined.
5
Q
The avowed mystics held the arbitrary, unaccountable “will of God” as the standard of the good and as the vaildation of their ethics. The neomystics replaced it with “the good of society”, thus collapsing into the circulatiry of a definition such as “the standard of the good is that which is good for society”.
What does this mean?
A
“Society” stands above any principles of ethics, since:
- IT is the source, standard and criterion of ethics.
- “The good” is whatever IT wills, whatever IT happens to assert as its own welfare and pleasure.
- This meant that “society” may do anything it pleases, since “the good” is whatever it chooses to do BECAUSE it chooses to do it.
==> Since there is no such entity as “society”, since society is only a number of individual men, this meant that SOME men (the majority or any gang that claims to be its spokesman) are ethically entitled to pursue any whims (or any atrocities) they desire to pursue, while OTHER men are ethically obliged to spend their lives in the service of that gang’s desires.
6
Q
Today, as in the past, most philosophers agree that the ultimate standard of ethics is whim (they call it “arbitrary postulate” or “subjective choice” or “emotional commitment”)-and the battle is only over the question of WHOSE whim:
A
- One’s own.
- Society’s.
- Dictator’s.
- God’s.
==> Whatever else they may disagree about, today’s moralists agree that ethics is a SUBJECTIVE issue and that the 3 things barred from its field are: Reason-mind-reality.
7
Q
In ethics, one must begin by asking:
A
- What are VALUES?
2. Why does man need them?
8
Q
What is value?
A
Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep.
9
Q
Is the concept of value primary?
A
NO.
==> It presupposes an answer to the question: Of value to WHOM and for WHAT?
==> It presupposes an entity capable of acting to achieve a goal in the face of an alternative.
==> When no alternative exists, no goals and no values are possible.
10
Q
What is the only fundamental alternative in the universe?
A
Existence or non existence.
==> It pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms.
11
Q
The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, but the existence of life is NOT:
A
It depends on a specific course of action.
==> It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death.
12
Q
Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated. What happens if an organism fails in that action?
A
It dies.
==> Its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence.
==> It is only the concept of “Life” that makes the concept of “Value” possible.
==> It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.
13
Q
What example does Rand utilize in order to make the point clear, that “Only the concept of Life makes the concept of value possible”?
A
Try to imagine an immortal, indestructible robot, an entity which moves and acts, but which cannot be affected by anything, which cannot be changed in any respect, which cannot be damaged, injured or destroyed.
==> Such an entity would not be able to have any values; it would have nothing to gain or to lose; it could not regard anything as FOR or AGAINST it, as serving or threatening its welfare, as fulfilling or frustrating its interests.
==> It could have no interests and no goals. Only a LIVING entity can have goals or can originate them.
==> It is only a living organism that has the capacity for self-generated, goal-directed action.
14
Q
An organism’s life depends on 2 factors:
A
- The material or fuel which it needs from the outside, from its physical background.
- And the action of its own body, the action of using that fuel PROPERLY.
==> What standard determinses what is PROPER in this context? ==> The standard is the organism’s life, or: that which is required for the organism’s survival.
==> No choice is open to an organism in this issue: that which is required for its survival is determined by its NATURE, by the kind of entity it is.
15
Q
What is an ultimate value?
A
The final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means.
==> It sets the standard by which ALL lesser goals are EVALUATED.
==> An organism’s life is its STANDARD OF VALUE ==> That which furthers its life is the GOOD, that which threatens it is the EVIL.
16
Q
What happens without an ultimate goal or end?
A
Without an ultimate goal or end, there can be NO lesser goals or means:
==> A series of means going off into an infinite progression toward a nonexistent end is a metaphysical and epistemological impossibility.
==> It is only an ultimate goal, and END IN ITSELF, that makes the existence of values possible.
17
Q
Metaphysically, LIFE is the only phenomenon that is …?
A
AN END IN ITSELF.
==> A value gained and kept by a constant process of action.
18
Q
Epistemologically, the concept of “value” is genetically dependent upon and derived from the …?
A
Antecedent concept of “life”.
==> To speak of “value” as apart from “life” is worse than a contradiction in terms.
==> It is only the concept of “Life” that makes the concept of “Value” possible.
19
Q
Is/ought issue - In answer to those philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that …?
A
The fact tha living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life.
==> Thus the validation of value judgements is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality.
==> The fact that a living entity IS, determines what it OUGHT to do.
20
Q
In what manner does a human being discover the concept of “VALUE”?
By what means does he first become aware of the issue of “good or evil” in its simplest form?
A
By means of the physical sensations of PLEASURE or PAIN.
==> Just as sensations are the 1st step of the development of a human consciousness in the realm of COGNITION, so they are its 1st step in the realm of EVALUATION.
21
Q
The capacity to experience pleasure or pain is innate in a man’s body:
A
It is part of its NATURE, part of the kind of entity he is.
==> He has no choice about it, and he has no choice about the standard that determines what will make him experience the physical sensation of pleasure or of pain.
==> What is that standard? HIS LIFE.
22
Q
What are the sensations?
A
An automatic response, an automatic form of knowledge, which a consicousness can neither seek nor evade.
==> An organism that possesses only the faculty of sensation is guided by the pleasure-pain mechanism of its body, that is:
==> By an automatic knowledge and an automatic code of values.
==> Its life is the standard of value directing its actions.
23
Q
The higher organisms possess a much more potent form of consciousness:
A
They possess the faculty of RETAINING sensations, which is the faculty of PERCEPTION.
24
Q
A “perception” is a …?
A
Group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism, which gives it the ability to be aware, not of single stimuli, but of ENTITIES, of things.
==> An animal is guided, not merely by immediate sensations, but by PERCEPTS.
25
Man has no automatic code of survival. He has no automatic course of action, no automatic set of values. His senses do not tell him automatically what is good for him or evil, what will benefit his life or endanger it, what goals he should pursue and what means will achieve them, what VALUES his life depends on, what course of action it requires.
==> His own consciousness has to discover the answers to all these questions-but his consciousness will not function AUTOMATICALLY.
==> Man, the highest living species on this earth-the being whose consciousness has a limitless capacity for gaining knowledge-man is the only living entity born without any guarantee of REMAINING conscious at all.
==> Man's particular distinction from all other living species is the fact that ...?
HIS CONSCIOUSNESS IS VOLITIONAL.
26
Just as the automatic values directing the functions of a plant's body are sufficient for its survival, but are not sufficient for an animal's- so the automatic values provided by the sensory-perceptual mechansm of its consciousness are sufficient to guide an animal, but are not sufficient for man.
Man's actions and survival require the guidance of ...?
CONCEPTUAL VALUES derived from CONCEPTUAL knowledge.
==> But conceptual knowledge CANNOT be acquired AUTOMATICALLY.
27
What is a "concept"?
A "concept" is a mental integration of 2 or more perceptual concretes.
==> Isolated by a process of ABSTRACTION and united by means of a specific definition.
28
Every word of man's language, with the exception of proper names, denotes a ...?
Concept.
==> An abstraction that stands for an unlimited number of concretes of a specific kind.
29
Man's sense organs function automatically.
Man's brain integrates his sense data into percepts automatically.
But the process of integrating percepts into concepts ....?
The process of abstraction and of concept-formation ==> IS NOT AUTOMATIC.
30
The process of concept-formation does not consist of merely grasping a few simple abstractions, such as "chair", "table", "hot", "cold", and of learning to speak.
It consists of ...?
A method of using one's consciousness, best designated by the term "CONCEPTUALIZING".
31
CONCEPTUALIZING is ...?
Not a passive state of registering random impressions.
==> An ACTIVELY SUSTAINED PROCESS of
1. Identifying one's impressions in conceptual terms.
2. Integrating every event and every observation into a conceptual context.
3. Grasping relationships, differences, similarities in one's perceptual material.
4. Abstracting them into new concepts.
5. Drawing inferences, making deductions, reaching conclusions, asking new questions, discovering new answers.
==> EXPANDING ONE'S KNOWLEDGE INTO AN EVER-GROWING SUM.
32
What is the faculty and what is the process of "conceptualizing"?
The FACULTY that directs this process, the faculty that works by means of concepts, is: REASON.
The process is THINKING.
33
What is reason?
The faculty that IDENTIFIES + INTEGRATES the material provided by man's senses.
34
Reason is a faculty that has to be exercised by ...?
CHOICE.
==> Thinking is NOT an AUTOMATIC FUNCTION.
==> The act of focusing one's consciousness is VOLITIONAL.
35
Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality. Or he can ...?
Unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any random, associational connections it might happen to make.
==> He may be said to be conscious in a SUBHUMAN sense of the word, since he experiences sensations and perceptions.
36
Psychologically, the choice to "think or not" is ...?
The choice "to focus or not".
37
Existentially, the choice "to focus or not" is ...?
The choice "to be conscious or not".
38
Metaphysically, the choice "to be conscious or not" is ...?
The choice of life or death.
39
Consciousness-for those living organisms which possess it-is the ...?
BASIC MEANS OF SURVIVAL.
40
For man, the basic means of survival is ...?
REASON.
41
Man cannot survive, as animals do, by the guidance of mere percepts:
A sensation of hunger will tell him that he needs food (if he has learned to identify it as "hunger"),
==> But it will NOT tell him HOW to obtain his food and it will NOT tell him what food is good for him or poisonous.
==> HE CANNOT PROVIDE FOR HIS SIMPLEST PHYSICAL NEEDS WITHOUT A PROCESS OF THOUGHT.
42
His percepts might lead him to a cave, if one is available, but to build the simplest shelter, he needs a process of thought:
NO PERCEPTS and NO INSTICTS will tell him how to light a fire, how to weave cloth, how to forge tools, how to make a wheel, how to make an airplane, how to perform an appendectomy, how to produce an electric light bulb or an electronic tube or a cyclotron or a box of matches.
==> Yet his life depends on such knowledge.
==> ONLY A VOLITIONAL ACT OF HIS CONSCIOUSNESS, A PROCESS OF THOUGHT, CAN PROVIDE IT.
43
But man's responsibility goes still further:
A process of thought is NOT ...?
Automatic, nor "instinctive", nor involuntary-nor INFALLIBLE.
==> Man has to initiate it, to sustain it and to bear responsibility for its results.
44
Man has to discover how to tell what is true or false and how to correct his own errors;
He has to discover how to ...?
Validate his concepts, his conclusions, his knowledge.
==> He has to discover the rules of thought, THE LAWS OF LOGIC, to direct his thinking.
==> Nature gives him NO AUTOMATIC GUARANTEE of the efficacy of his mental effort.
45
NOTHING IS GIVEN TO MAN ON EARTH EXCEPT A POTENTIAL AND THE MATERIAL TO ACTUALIZE IT:
==> The potential is a superlative machine:
HIS CONSCIOUSNESS.
==> But it is a machine without a spark plug, a machine of which his own will has to be the spark plug, the self-starter and the driver.
==> HE has to discover how to use it and HE has to keep it in constant action.
46
The material given to man is ...?
THE WHOLE OF THE UNIVERSE, with NO LIMITS set to the knowledge he can acquire and to the enjoyment of life he can achieve.
47
BUT EVERYTHING HE NEEDS OR DESIRES has to be ...?
LEARNED, DISCOVERED, AND PRODUCED BY HIM.
==> By his own choice, by his own effort, by his own mind.
48
A being who does not know automatically what is true or false, ...?
Cannot know automatically what is right or wrong, what is good for him or evil.
==> YET HE NEEDS THAT KNOWLEDGE IN ORDER TO LIVE.
==> He is not exempt from the laws of reality, he is a specific organism of a specific nature that requires specific actions to sustain his life.
==> He cannot achieve his survival by arbitrary means nor by random motions nor by blind urges nor by chance nor by whim.
49
That which his survival requires is set by his nature and is NOT open to his choice.
==> What is open to his choice is ...?
WHETHER HE WILL DISCOVER OR NOT. WHETHER HE WILL CHOOSE THE RIGHT GOALS AND VALUES OR NOT.
==> He is free to make the wrong choice, but not free to succeed with it.
==> He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see.
50
Knowledge, for any conscious organism, is the means of survival.
==> To a living consciousness ...?
EVERY "IS" IMPLIES AN "OUGHT".
==> Man is free to choose not to be conscious, but NOT free to escape the penalty of unconsciousness: Destruction.
==> MAN IS THE ONLY LIVING SPECIES THAT HAS THE POWER TO ACT AS HIS OWN DESTROYER.
51
What, then, are the right goals for man to pursue? What are the values his survival requires?
That is the question to be answered by the science of ETHICS.
==> THIS IS WHY MAN NEEDS A CODE OF ETHICS.
52
Now you can assess the meaning of the doctrines which tell you that ethics is the ...?
Province of the irrational, that reason cannot guide man's life, that his goals and values should be chosen by vote or by whim-that ethics has nothing to do with reality, with existence, with one's practical action and concerns- or that the goal of ethics is beyond the grave, that the dead need ethics, not the living.
53
Ethics is NOT ...?
1. A mystic fantasy.
2. Nor a social convention.
3. Nor a dispensable, subjective luxury, to be switched or discarded in any emergency.
54
Ethics IS ...?
An OBJECTIVE METAPHYSICAL NECESSITY of man's survival.
==> Not by the grace of the supernatural nor of your neighbors nor of your whims, but by the grace of reality and the nature of life.
55
The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics-the standard by which one judges what is good or evil-is ...?
Man's life, or:
==> That which is required for man's survival qua man.
56
Since reason is man's basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the ...?
GOOD.
==> That which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.
57
Since everything man needs has to be discovered by his own mind and produced by his own effort, the 2 essentials of the method of survival proper to a rational being are:
1. Thinking.
| 2. Productive work.
58
If some men do not choose to think, but survive by imitating and repeating, like trained animals, the routine of sounds and motions they learned from others, never making an effort to understand their own work, ...?
IT STILL REMAINS TRUE THAT THEIR SURVIVAL IS MADE POSSIBLE ONLY BY THOSE WHO DID CHOOSE TO THINK AND TO DISCOVER THE MOTIONS THEY ARE REPEATING.
==> The survival of such mental parasites depends on BLIND CHANCE.
==> Their unfocused minds are unable to know WHOM to imitate, WHOSE motions it is safe to follow.
==> They are the men who march into the abyss, trailing after any destroyer who promises them to assume the responsibility they evade: the RESPONSIBILITY OF BEING CONSCIOUS.
59
If some men attempt to survive by means of brute force or fraud, by looting, robbing, cheating or enslaving the men who produce, ...?
It still remains true that their survival is made possible only by their victims, only by the men who choose to think and to produce the goods which they, the looters, are seizing.
==> Such looters are parasites incapable of survival, who exist by destroying those who ARE capable, those who are pursuing a course of action proper to man.
60
The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of ...?
ANIMALS.
==> But just as animals would not be able to survive by attempting the method of plants, by rejecting locomotion and waiting for the soil to feed them ==> So men cannot survive by attempting the method of animals, by rejecting reason and counting on productive MEN to serve as their prey.
==> Such looters may achieve their goals for the range of a moment, at the price of DESTRUCTION: the destruction of their victims and their own.
==> As evidence, I offer you any criminal or any dictatorship.
61
Man's life is a continuous whole: for good or evil, every day, year and decade of his life holds the sum of all the days behind him.
==> If he is to succeed at the task of survival, if his actions are not to be aimed at his own destruction, man has to ...?
# Choose his course, his goals, his values in the context and terms of a lifetime.
==> NO SENSATIONS, PERCEPTS, URGES OR INSTICTS CAN DO IT. ONLY A MIND CAN.
62
The objectivist ethics holds MAN'S LIFE as the ...?
STANDARD OF VALUE.
63
The objectivist ethics holds each MAN'S OWN LIFE as the ...?
ETHICAL PURPOSE of every individual man.
64
The difference between "standard" and "purpose" in this context is as follows:
A "standard" is an ABSTRACT PRINCIPLE that serves as a measurement or gauge to guide a man's choices in the achievement of a concrete specific purpose.
==> "That which is required for the survival of man qua man" is an abstract principle that applies to every individual man.
The task of applying this principle to a concrete, specific purpose- the purpose of living a life proper to a rational being- belongs to every individual man, and the life he has to live is his own.
65
Man must choose his actions, values and goals by the standard of that which is proper to man- in order to ...?
Achieve, maintain, fullfil and enjoy that ultimate value, that end in itself, which is his own life.
66
Value and virtue?
Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep.
Virtue is the ACT by which one gains and/or keeps it.
67
The 3 cardinal valuues of the Objectivist ethics- the 3 values which, together, are the means and the realization of one's ultimate value, one's own life- are:
1. Reason.
2. Purpose.
3. Self-esteem.
68
The 3 corresponing virtues are:
1. Rationality.
2. Productiveness.
3. Pride.
69
Productive work is ...?
THE CENTRAL PURPOSE OF A RATIONAL MAN'S LIFE.
==> THE CENTRAL VALUE that integrates and determines the HIERARCHY of all his other values.
==> REASON IS THE SOURCE, the precondition of his productive work.
==> PRIDE IS THE RESULT.
70
Rationality is man's ...?
BASIC VIRTUE, THE SOURCE OF ALL HIS OTHER VIRTUES.
71
Man's basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the ...?
Act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is NOT blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.
72
Irrationality is ...?
THE REJECTION OF MAN'S MEANS OF SURVIVAL.
==> A commitment to a course of blind destruction.
==> THAT WHICH IS ANTI-MIND, IS ANTI-LIFE.
73
The virtue of rationality means ...?
The recognition + acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action.
==> It means one's total commitment to a state of full, conscious awareness, to the maintenance of a full mental focus in all issues, in all choices, in all of one's waking hours.
==> It means a commitment to the fullest perception of reality within one's power and to the constant, active expansion of one's perception, i.e., of one's knowledge.
==> It means a commitment to the reality of one's own existence, to the principle that all of one's goals, values and actions take place in reality and, therefore, that one must never place any value or consideration whatsoever above one's perception of reality.
74
What does the virtue of Independence mean?
It means one's acceptance of the responsibility of forming one's own judgements and of living by the work of one's own mind.
75
What does the virtue of Integrity mean?
It means that one must never sacrifice one's convictions to the opinions or wishes of others.
76
What does the virtue of Honesty mean?
That one must never attempt to fake reality in any manner.
77
What does the virtue of Justice mean?
That one must never seek or grant the unearned and undeserved, neither in matter nor in spirit.
78
The virtue of Productiveness is ...?
The recognition of the fact that productive work is the process by which man's mind sustains his life.
==> The process that sets man free of the necessity to adjust himself to his background, as all animals do, and gives him the power to adjust his background to himself.
79
Productive work is the road of ...?
MAN'S UNLIMITED achievement and calls upon the highest attributes of his character:
==> His creative ability, his ambitiousness, his self-assertiveness, his refusal to bear uncontested disasters, his dedication to the goal of reshaping the earth in the image of his values.
80
The virtue of Pride is ...?
The recognition of the fact that as man must produce the physical values he needs to sustain his life, so he must acquire the values of character that make his life worth sustaining.
==> THAT AS MAN IS A BEING OF SELF-MADE WEALTH, SO HE IS A BEING OF SELF-MADE SOUL.
81
What does the virtue of Pride mean?
One must EARN the right to hold oneself as one's own highest value by achieving one's own moral perfection.
1. Which one achieves by never accepting any code of irrational virtues impossible to practive and by never failing to practive the virtues one knows to be rational.
2. By never accepting an unearned guilt and never earning any, or, if one has earned it, never leaving it uncorrected.
3. By never resigning oneself passively to any flaws in one's character.
4. By never placing any concern, wish, fear or mood of the moment above the reality of one's own self-esteem.
==> AND ABOVE ALL, it means one's rejection of the role of a sacrificial animal, the rejection of any doctrine that preaches self-immolation as a moral virtue or duty.
82
The basic social principle of the Objectivist ethics is that ...?
Just as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself, NOT THE MEANS TO THE ENDS OR THE WELFARE OF OTHERS.
==> Man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself.
83
What does "to live for his own sake" mean?
THAT THE ACHIEVEMENT OF HIS OWN HAPPINESS IS MAN'S HIGHEST MORAL PURPOSE.
84
In psychological terms, the issue of man's survival does not confront his consciousness as an issue of "life or death", but ...?
As an issue of "happiness or suffering".
==> Happiness is the successful state of life.
==> Suffering is the warning signal of failure.
85
Just as the pleasure-pain mechanism is an automatic indicator of his body's welfare or injury, a barometer of its basic alternative, life or death- so the emotional mechanism of man's consciousness is ...?
Geared to perform the same function, as a barometer that registers the same alternative by means of 2 basic emotions: JOY or SUFFERING.
86
Emotions are ...?
The automatic results of man's value judgements integrated by his subconscious.
==> EMOTIONS ARE ESTIMATES OF THAT WHICH FURTHER MAN'S VALUES OR THREATENS THEM, that which is FOR him or AGAINST him.
==> Lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss.
87
But while the standard of value operating the physical pleasure-pain mechanism of man's body is automatic and innate, determined by the nature of his body- the standard of value operating his emotional mechanism ...?
IS NOT.
==> Since man has no automatic knowledge, he can have no automatic values; since he has no innate ideas, he can have no innate value judgements.
88
Man is born with an emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism; but, at birth, both are ...?
TABULA RASA.
==> It is man's cognitive faculty, his mind, that determines the CONTENT of both.
==> Man's emotional mechanism is like an electronic computer, which his mind has to program- and the programming consists of the values his mind chooses.
89
But since the work of man's mind is not automatic, his values, like all his premises, are the product ...?
EITHER OF HIS THINKING OR OF HIS EVASIONS:
Man chooses his values by a conscious process of thought- or accepts them by default, by subconscious associations, on faith, on someone's authority, by some form of SOCIAL OSMOSIS or BLIND IMITATION.
==> Emotions are produced by man's premises, held consciously or subconsciously, explicitly or implicitly.
90
Man has no choice about his capacity to feel that something is good for him or evil, but ...?
WHAT he will consider good or evil, WHAT will give him joy or pain, WHAT he will love or hate, desire or fear, DEPENDS ON HIS STANDARD OF VALUE.
==> If he chooses irrational values, he switches his emotional mechanism from the role of his guardian to the role of his destroyer.
==> The irrational is the IMPOSSIBLE ==> It is that which contradicts the facts of reality.
==> Facts cannot be altered by wish, but they can destroy the wisher.
91
If a man desires and pursues contradictions- if he wants to have his cake and eat it, too- he ...?
DISINTEGRATES HIS CONSCIOUSNESS.
==> He turns his inner life into a civil war of blind forces engaed in DARK, INCOHERENT, POINTLESS, MEANINGLESS CONFLICTS.
==> Which, incidentally, is the inner state of most people today.
92
Happiness is ...?
That state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.
93
If a man values productive work, his happiness is ...?
The measure of his success in the service of his life.
94
But if a man values destruction, like a sadist- or self-torture, like a masochist- or life beyond the grave, like a mystic- or mindless "kicks", like the driver of a hotrod car ...?
HIS ALLEGED HAPPINESS IS THE MEASURE OF HIS SUCCESS IN THE SERVICE OF HIS OWN DESTRUCTION.
==> It must be added that the emotional state of all those irrationalists cannot be properly designated as happiness or even as pleasure.
==> IT IS MERELY A MOMENT'S RELIEF FROM THEIR CHRONIC STATE OF TERROR.
95
Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims.
Just as man is free to attempt to survive by any random means, as a parasite, a moocher or a looter, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment, SO HE IS ...?
Free to seek his happiness in any irrational fraud, any whim, any delusion, any mindless escape from reality,
==> BUT NOT free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment nor to escape the consequences.
96
Galt about happiness:
Happiness is a state of NON CONTRADICTORY JOY- a joy without penalty or quilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does NOT work for your own destruction.
==> Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.
97
The maintenance of life and the pursuit of happiness are NOT 2 separate issues.
To hold one's own life as one's ultimate value, and one's own happiness as one's highest purpose are 2 aspects of the same achievement.
==> Existentially, the activity of pursuing rational goals is the activity of maintaining one's life.
==> Psychologically, its result, reward and concomitant is an emotional state of happiness.
98
It is by experiencing happiness that one lives one's life, in any hour, year or the whole of it.
And when one experiences the kind of pure happiness that is AN END IN ITSELF ...?
The kind that makes one think: "THIS is worth living for"- what one is greeting and affirming in emotional terms IS THE METAPHYSICAL FACT THAT LIFE IS AN END IN ITSELF.
99
The relationship of cause to effect cannot be reversed:
It is only by accepting "man's life" as one's primary and by pursuing the rational values it requires that one can achieve happiness.
==> NOT BY TAKING "HAPPINESS" AS SOME UNDEFINED, IRREDUCIBLE PRIMARY AND THEN ATTEMPTING TO LIVE BY ITS GUIDANCE.
100
If you achieve that which is the good by a rational standard of value, ...?
It will necessarily make you happy.
==> BUT THAT WHICH MAKES YOU HAPPY, BY SOME UNDEFINED EMOTIONAL STANDARD, IS NOT NECESSARILY THE GOOD.
101
To take "whatever makes one happy" as a guide to action means:
To be guided by nothing but one's emotional whims.
102
Emotions are NOT tools of cognition. To be guided by whims ...?
By desires whose source, nature and meaning one does not know-
==> is to turn oneself into a blind robot, operated by uknowable demons (by one's stale evasions).
==> A robot knocking its stagnant brains out against the walls of reality which it refuses to see.
103
THIS is the fallacy inherent in HEDONISM:
In any variant of ethical hedonism, personal or social, individual or collective.
==> Happiness can properly be the PURPOSE of ethics, but NOT THE STANDARD.
104
The task of ethics is to ...?
Define man's proper code of values and thus to give him the means of achieving happiness.
105
To declare as the ethical hedonists do, that "the proper value is whatever gives you pleasure" is to ...?
Declare that "THE PROPER VALUE IS WHATEVER YOU HAPPEN TO VALUE".
==> Which is an intellectual and philosophical abdication, an act which merely proclaim the futility of ethics and invites all men to play it deuces wild.
106
The philosophers who attempted to devise an allegedly rational code of ethics gave mankind nothing but a choice of whims:
1. The "selfish" pursuit of one's own whims (such as the ethics of Nietzsche).
2. Or "selfless" service to the whims of others (such as the ethics of Bentham, Mill, Comte and of all social hedonists, whether they allowed man to include his own whims among the millions of others or advised him to turn himself into a totally selfless "shmoo" that seeks to be eaten by others).
107
When a "desire", regardless of its nature or cause, is taken as an ethical primary, and the gratification of any and all desires is taken as an ethical goal (such as "the greatest happiness of the greatest number"), then ...?
Men have no choice but to hate, fear and fight one another, because THEIR DESIRES AND THEIR INTERESTS WILL NECESSERILY CLASH.
108
If "desire" is the ethical standard, then ...?
1. One man's desire to produce and another man's desire to rob him have equal ethical validity.
2. One man's desire to be free and another man's desire to enslave him have equal ethical validity.
3. One man's desire to be loved and admired for his virtues and another man's desire for undeserved love and unearned admiration have equal ethical validity.
109
And if the frustration of ANY desire constitutes a SACRIFICE, then ...?
A man who owns an automobile and is robbed of it, is being sacrificed, but so is the man who wants or "aspires to" an automobile which the owner refuses to give him. ==> And these 2 "sacrifices" have equal ethical status.
==> If so, then man's only choice is to rob or be robbed, to destroy or be destroyed, to sacrifice others to any desire of his own or to sacrifice himself to any desire of others.
==> Then man's only ethical alternative is to BE A SADIST OR A MASOCHIST.
110
The MORAL CANNIBALISM of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that ...?
THE HAPPINESS OF ONE MAN NECESSITATES THE INJURY OF ANOTHER.
111
Today, most people hold this premise as an absolute not to be questioned.
And when one speaks of man's right to exist for his own sake, for his own rational self-interest, most people assume automatically that ...?
THIS MEANS HIS RIGHT TO SACRIFICE OTHERS.
==> Such an assumption is a confession of their own belief that to injure, enslave, rob or murder others is in man's self-interest- which he must selflessly renounce.
==> The idea that man's self-interest can be served ONLY BY A NON-SACRIFICIAL RELATIONSHIP with others has never occurred to those humanitarian apostles of unselfishness, who proclaim their desire to achieve the brotherhood of men.
==> And it will not occur to them, or to anyone, so long as the concept "Rational" is omitted from the context of "values", "desires", "self-interest" and ETHICS.
112
The Objectivist ethics holds that HUMAN good does not require ...?
Human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone.
==> It holds that the RATIONAL INTERESTS of men DO NOT CLASH.
==> That there is NO CONFLICT OF INTEREST among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as TRADERS, giving value for value.
113
The principle of TRADE is the only rational ethical principle for all human relationships, personal and social, private and public, spiritual and material.
IT IS THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE.
114
A trader is a ...?
Man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved.
==> He does not treat men as masters or slaves, but as independent equals.
==> He deals with men by means of a free, voluntary, unforced, uncoerced exchange ==> An exchange which benefits both parties by their own independent judgement.
==> A trader does not expect to be paid for his defaults, only for his achievements.
==> He does not switch to others the burden of his failures, and he does not mortgage his life into bondage to the failures of others.
115
In spiritual issues (by "spiritual" I mean: "pertaining to man's consciousness")- the currency or medium of exchange is different, but the principle is the same.
Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the SPIRITUAL PAYMENT GIVEN IN EXCHANGE FOR THE PERSONAL, SELFISH PLEASURE WHICH ONE MAN DERIVES FROM THE VIRTUES OF ANOTHER MAN'S CHARACTER.
==> Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person's virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one's own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut.
116
In spiritual issues, a trader is a man who ...?
Does not seek to be loved for his weaknesses or flaws, only for his virtues, and who does not grant his love to the weaknesses or the flaws of others, only to their virtues.
117
To love is to value.
Only a rationally selfish man, A MAN OF SELF-ESTEEM, is capable of love.
==> BECAUSE HE IS THE ONLY MAN CAPABLE OF HOLDING FIRM, CONSISTENT, UNCOMPROMISING, UNBETRAYED VALUES.
==> The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.
118
Can men derive any personal benefit from living in a human society?
Yes- if it is a HUMAN society.
==> The 2 great values to be gained from social existence are: Knowledge and trade.
119
The benefit of knowledge/trade and of division of labor indicate, delimit and define what kind of men can be of value to one another and in what kind of society:
Only rational, productive, independent men in a rational, productive, free society.
==> Parasites, moochers, looters, brutes and thugs can be of no value to a human being- nor can he gain any benefit from living in a society geared to THEIR needs, demands and protection.
==> A society that treats him as a sacrificial animal and penalizes him for his virtues in order to reward THEM for their vices.
==> Which means: A SOCIETY BASED ON THE ETHICS OF ALTRUISM.
==> NO SOCIETY CAN BE OF VALUE TO MAN'S LIFE IF THE PRICE IS THE SURRENDER OF HIS RIGHT TO HIS LIFE.
120
The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is:
NO MAN MAY INITIATE THE USE OF PHYSICAL FORCE AGAINST OTHERS.
==> No man- or group or society or government- has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man.
==> Men have the right to use physical force ONLY in retaliation and ONLY against those who initiate its use.
==> The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: It is the difference between murder and self-defense.
121
A holdup man seeks to gain a value, wealth, by killing his victim. The victim does not grow richer by killing a holdup man.
The principle is:
NO MAN MAY OBTAIN ANY VALUES FROM OTHERS BY RESORTING TO PHYSICAL FORCE.
122
The only proper, MORAL purpose of a government is to ...?
Protect man's rights, which means:
==> To protect him from physical violence-to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness.
==> WITHOUT PROPERTY RIGHTS, NO OTHER RIGHTS ARE POSSIBLE.
123
Every political system is based on and derived from ...?
A theory of ETHICS.
124
The Objectivist ethics is the moral base needed by that politico-economic system which, today, is being destroyed all over the world, destroyed precisely for lack of a MORAL, philosophical defense and validation:
The original American system, CAPITALISM.
125
Rand has presented the barest essentials of her system, but they are sufficient to indicate in what manner the Objectivist ethics is the MORALITY OF LIFE-
As against the 3 major schools of ethical theory:
1. THE MYSTIC.
2. THE SOCIAL.
3. THE SUBJECTIVE.
==> Which have brought the world to its present state and represent the MORALITY OF DEATH.
126
These 3 schools differ only in their method of approach, not in their content. In content, they are merely variants of ...?
ALTRUISM.
==> The ethical theory which regards man as a sacrificial animal, which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.
==> The differences occur only over the question of WHO IS TO BE SACRIFICED TO WHOM.
127
Altruism holds what as its ultimate goal and standard of value?
DEATH.
==> It is logical that renunciation, resignation, self-denial, and every other form of suffering, including self-destruction, are the VIRTUES it advocates.
==> These are the only things that the practitioners of altruism have achieved and are achieving now.
128
Observe that these 3 schools of ethical theory are anti-life, not merely in content but ALSO IN THEIR METHOD OF APPROACH.
The mystic theory of ethics ...?
Is explicitly based on the premise that THE STANDARD OF VALUE OF MAN'S ETHICS IS SET BEYOND THE GRAVE.
==> By the laws or requirements of another, supernatural dimension, that ethics is IMPOSSIBLE FOR MAN TO PRACTICE, that it is unsuited for and opposed to man's life on earth.
==> That man must take the blame for it and suffer through the whol of his earthly existence, to atone for the guilt of being unable to practice the IMPRACTICABLE.
==> The Dark Ages and the Middle Ages are the existential monument to THIS theory of ethics.
129
The SOCIAL theory of ethics ...?
Substitutes "society" for God.
==> Although it claims that its chief concern is life on earth, it is NOT the life of man, not the life of an individual, BUT THE LIFE OF A DISEMBODIED ENTITY, THE COLLECTIVE, which, in relation to every individual, consists of EVERYBODY EXCEPT HIMSELF.
130
According to the social theory of ethics, as far as the individual is concerned, HIS ethical duty is to ...?
Be selfless, voiceless, rightless SLAVE of any need, claim or demand asserted by others.
==> The motto "dog eat dog"- which is NOT applicable to capitalism nor to dogs- IS applicable to the social theory of ethics.
==> The existential monuments to THIS theory are Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
131
The subjectivist theory of ethics is, strictly speaking, ...?
NOT A THEORY, BUT A NEGATION OF ETHICS.
And more: It is a negation of reality, a negation not merely of man's existence, but of ALL existence.
132
Subjectivist theory of ethics - Only a concept of ...?
A fluid, plastic, indeterminate, Heraclitean universe could permit anyone to think or to preach that man needs NO OBJECTIVE PRINCIPLES of action.
==> That reality gives him a blank check on values.
==> That anything he cares to pick as the good or the evil, will do.
==> That a man's whim is a valid moral standard, and that the only question is how to get away with it.
The existential monument to THIS theory is the present state of out culture.
