The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 18

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. The task of ethics is to define man's proper code of values and thus to give him the means of achieving happiness. 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 act of intellectual and philosophical abdication, an act which merely proclaims the futility of ethics and invites all men to play it deuces wild.

["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS. 26; pb 29.]

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.

[Leonard Peikoff, "Ethical Hedonism," TON, Feb. 1962.7.]

See also EMOTIONS; HAPPINESS; PLEASURE and PAIN; UTILITARIANISM; STANDARD of VALUE; SUBJECTIVISM.

Hierarchy of Knowledge. Concepts have a hierarchical structure, i.e., ... the higher, more complex abstractions are derived from the simpler, basic ones (starting with the concepts of perceptually given concretes).

[ITOE, 41.].

[There is a] long conceptual chain that starts from simple, ostensive definitions and rises to higher and still higher concepts, forming a hierarchical structure of knowledge so complex that no electronic computer could approach it. It is by means of such chains that man has to acquire and retain his knowledge of reality.

["The Psycho-Epistemology of Art," RM. 20; pb 18.]

Starting from the base of conceptual deveiopment-from the concepts that identify perceptual concretes-the process of cognition moves in two interacting directions: toward more extensive and more intensive knowledge, toward wider integrations and more precise differentiations. Following the process and in accordance with cognitive evidence, earlier-formed concepts are integrated into wider ones or subdivided into narrower ones.

[ITOE, 24.].

Observe that the concept "furniture" is an abstraction one step further removed from perceptual reality than any of its const.i.tuent concepts. "Table" is an abstraction, since it designates any table, but its meaning can be conveyed simply by pointing to one or two perceptual objects. There is no such perceptual object as "furniture"; there are only tables, chairs, beds, etc. The meaning of "furniture" cannot be grasped unless one has first grasped the meaning of its const.i.tuent concepts; these are its link to reality. (On the lower levels of an unlimited conceptual chain, this is an ill.u.s.tration of the hierarchical structure of concepts.) [Ibid., 28.]

The first concepts man forms are concepts of ent.i.ties-since ent.i.ties are the only primary existents. (Attributes cannot exist by themselves, they are merely the characteristics of ent.i.ties; motions are motions of ent.i.ties; relationships are relationships among ent.i.ties.) [Ibid., 18.]

Since the definition of a concept is formulated in terms of other concepts, it enables man, not only to identify and retain a concept, but also to establish the relationships, the hierarchy, the integration of all his concepts and thus the integration of his knowledge. Definitions preserve, not the chronological order in which a given man may have learned concepts, but the logical order of their hierarchical interdependence.

[Ibid., 52.]

To know the exact meaning of the concepts one is using, one must know their correct definitions, one must be able to retrace the specific (logical, not chronological) steps by which they were formed, and one must be able to demonstrate their connection to their base in perceptual reality.

[Ibid., 67.]

See also AXlOMATlC CONCEPTS; AXIOMS; GENUS and SPECIES; IRREDUCIBLE PRIMARIES; KNOWLEDGE; LOGIC; PERCEPTION; "STOLEN CONCEPT," FALLACY of; TABULA RASA.

History. Contrary to the prevalent views of today's alleged scholars, history is not an unintelligible chaos ruled by chance and whim-historical trends can be predicted, and changed-men are not helpless, blind, doomed creatures carried to destruction by incomprehensible forces beyond their control.

There is only one power that determines the course of history, just as it determines the course of every individual life: the power of man's rational faculty-the power of ideas. If you know a man's convictions, you can predict his actions. If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society, you can predict its course. But convictions and philosophy are matters open to man's choice.

There is no fatalistic, predetermined historical necessity. Atlas Shrugged is not a prophecy of our unavoidable destruction, but a manifesto of our power to avoid it, if we choose to change our course.

It is the philosophy of the mysticism-altruism-collectivism axis that has brought us to our present state and is carrying us toward a finale such as that of the society presented in Atlas Shrugged. It is only the philosophy of the reason-individualism-capitalism axis that can save us and carry us, instead, toward the Atlantis projected in the last two pages of my novel.

["Is Atlas Shrugging?" CUI, 165.]

Just as a man's actions are preceded and determined by some form of idea in his mind, so a society's existential conditions are preceded and determined by the ascendancy of a certain philosophy among those whose job is to deal with ideas. The events of any given period of history are the result of the thinking of the preceding period. The nineteenth century-with its political freedom, science, industry, business, trade, all the necessary conditions of material progress-was the result and the last achievement of the intellectual power released by the Renaissance. The men engaged in those activities were still riding on the remnants of an Aristotelian influence in philosophy, particularly on an Aristotelian epistemology (more implicitly than explicitly).

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 27; pb 28.]

History is made by minorities-or, more precisely, history is made by intellectual movements, which are created by minorities. Who belongs to these minorities? Anyone who is able and willing actively to concern himself with intellectual issues. Here, it is not quant.i.ty, but quality that counts (the quality-and consistency-of the ideas one is advocating).

["What Can One Do?" PWNI, 245; pb 200.]

The battle of human history is fought and determined by those who are predominantly consistent, those who, for good or evil, are committed to and motivated by their chosen psycho-epistemology and its corollary view of existence.

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 18; pb 21.]

See also ANCIENT GREECE; CIVILIZATION; CULTURE; DARK AGES; ENLIGHTENMENT, AGE of; INTELLECTUALS; MIDDLE AGES; NINETEENTH CENTURY; PHILOSOPHY; RENAISSANCE; TRADITION.

Honesty. Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud-that an attempt to gain a value by deceiving the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality, where you become a p.a.w.n of their blindness, a slave of their non-thinking and their evasions, while their intelligence, their rationality, their perceptiveness becomes the enemies you have to dread and flee-that you do not care to live as a dependent, least of all a dependent on the stupidity of others, or as a fool whose source of values is the fools he succeeds in footing-that honesty is not a social duty, not a sacrifice for the sake of others, but the most profoundly selfish virtue man can practice: his refusal to sacrifice the reality of his own existence to the deluded consciousness of others.

[GS, FNI, 158; pb 129.]

Self-esteem is reliance on one's power to think. It cannot be replaced by one's power to deceive. The self-confidence of a scientist and the self-confidence of a con man are not interchangeable states, and do not come from the same psychological universe. The success of a man who deals with reality augments his self-confidence. The success of a con man augments his panic.

The intellectual con man has only one defense against panic: the momentary relief he finds by succeeding at further and further frauds.

["The Comprachicos," NL, 181.]

The mark of an honest man ... is that he means what he says and knows what he means.

['Textbook of Americanism," 12.]

Intellectual honesty consists in taking ideas seriously. To take ideas seriously means that you intend to live by, to practice, any idea you accept as true.

["Philosophical Detection," PWNI, 19; pb 16.]

Intellectual honesty [involves] knowing what one does know, constantly expanding one's knowledge, and never evading or failing to correct a contradiction. This means: the development of an active mind as a permanent attribute.

["What Can One Do?" PWNI, 247; pb 201.]

See also EVASION; INDEPENDENCE; INTEGRITY; MORALITY; RATIONALITY; TRUTH; VIRTUE.

Honor. Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.

["Philosophy: Who Needs It," PWNI, 12; pb 10.]

See also MORALITY; PRIDE; SELF-ESTEEM; VALUES.

Hostility. Caused by a profound self-doubt, self-condemnation and fear, hostility is a type of projection that directs toward other people the hatred which the hostile person feels toward himself. Blaming the evil of others for his own shortcomings, he feels a chronic need to justify himself by demonstrating their evil, by seeking it, by hunting for it-and by inventing it.

["The Psychology of Psychologizing," TO, March 1971, 3.]

See also AMORALISM; EMOTIONS; ENVYlHATRED of the GOOD for BEING the GOOD; EVASION.

Human Rights and Property Rights. The modern mystics of muscle who offer you the fraudulent alternative of "human rights" versus "property rights," as if one could exist without the other, are making a last, grotesque attempt to revive the doctrine of soul versus body. Only a ghost can exist without material property; only a slave can work with no right to the product of his effort. The doctrine that "human rights" are superior to "property rights" simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others; since the competent have nothing to gain from the incompetent, it means the right of the incompetent to own their betters and to use them as productive cattle. Whoever regards this as human and right, has no right to the t.i.tle of "human."

[GS, FNI, 230; pb 183.]

There is no such dichotomy as "human rights" versus "property rights." No human rights can exist without property rights. Since material goods are produced by the mind and effort of individual men, and are needed to sustain their lives, if the producer does not own the result of his effort, he does not own his life. To deny property rights means to turn men into property owned by the state. Whoever claims the "right" to "redistribute" the wealth produced by others is claiming the "right" to treat human beings as chattel.

["The Monument Builders," VOS, 120; pb 91.]

See also FASCISM and COMMUNISM/SOCIALISM; FREEDOM; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; PROPERTY RIGHTS; SOUL-BODY DICHOTOMY.

Humility. There is no more despicable coward than the man who deserted the battle for his joy, fearing to a.s.sert his right to existence, lacking the courage and the loyalty to life of a bird or a flower reaching for the sun. Discard the protective rags of that vice which you call a virtue: humility-learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your happiness-and when you learn that pride is the sum of all virtues, you will learn to live like a man.

[GS, FNI, 225; pb 179.]

Humility and presumptuousness are always two sides of the same premise, and always share the task of filling the s.p.a.ce vacated by self esteem in a collectivized mentality. The man who is willing to serve as the means to the ends of others, will necessarily regard others as the means to his ends.

["Collectivized Ethics," VOS, 105; pb 81.]

Self-abas.e.m.e.nt is the ant.i.thesis of morality. If a man has acted immorally, but regrets it and wants to atone for it, it is not self-abas.e.m.e.nt that prompts him, but some remnant of love for moral values-and it is not self-abas.e.m.e.nt that he expresses, but a longing to regain his self-esteem. Humility is not a recognition of one's failings, but a rejection of morality. "I am no good" is a statement that may be uttered only in the past tense. To say: "I am no good" is to declare: "-and I never intend to be any better."

["Moral Inflation," ARL, III, 13, 1.]

See also ALTRUISM; MORALITY; PRIDE; SACRIFICE; SELF-ESTEEM.

Humor. Humor is the denial of metaphysical importance to that which you laugh at. The cla.s.sic example: you see a very snooty, very well dressed dowager walking down the street, and then she slips on a banana peel.... What's funny about it? It's the contrast of the woman's pretensions to reality. She acted very grand, but reality undercut it with a plain banana peel. That's the denial of the metaphysical validity or importance of the pretensions of that woman.

Therefore, humor is a destructive element -which is quite all right, but its value and its morality depend on what it is that you are laughing at. If what you are laughing at is the evil in the world (provided that you take it seriously, but occasionally you permit yourself to laugh at it), that's fine. [To] laugh at that which is good, at heroes, at values, and above all at yourself [is] monstrous.... The worst evil that you can do, psychulogically, is to laugh at yourself. That means spitting in your own face.

[Ayn Rand, question period following Lecture 11 of Leonard Peikoff's series "The Philosophy of Objectivism" (1976).]

Humor is not an unconditional virtue; its moral character depends on its object. To laugh at the contemptible, is a virtue; to laugh at the good, is a hideous vice. Too often, humor is used as the camouflage of moral cowardice.

["Bootleg Romanticism," RM, 126; pb 133.]

See also METAPHYSICAL; MORAL COWARDICE; SELF-ESTEEM; VIRTUE.

I.

Ident.i.ty. To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an ent.i.ty of a specific nature made of specific attributes. Centuries ago, the man who was-no matter what his errors-the greatest of your philosophers, has stated the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A. A thing is itself. You have never grasped the meaning of his statement. I am here to complete it: Existence is Ident.i.ty, Consciousness is Identification.

Whatever you choose to consider, be it an object, an attribute or an action, the law of ident.i.ty remains the same. A leaf cannot be a stone at the same time, it cannot be all red and all green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time. A is A. Or, if you wish it stated in simpler language: You cannot have your cake and eat it, too.

Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the disasters that have wrecked your world, came from your leaders' attempt to evade the fact that A is A. All the secret evil you dread to face within you and all the pain you have ever endured, came from your own attempt to evade the fact that A is A. The purpose of those who taught you to evade it, was to make you forget that Man is Man.

[GS, FNI, 152; pb 125.]

A thing is-what it is; its characteristics const.i.tute its ident.i.ty. An existent apart from its characteristics, would be an existent apart from its ident.i.ty, which means: a nothing, a non-existent.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The a.n.a.lytic-Synthetic Dichotomy," lTOE, 142.]

No matter how eagerly you claim that the goal of your mystic wishing is a higher mode of life, the rebellion against ident.i.ty is the wish for non-existence. The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be.

[GS, FNl, 187; pb 150.]

A characteristic is an aspect of an existent. It is not a disembodied, Platonic universal. Just as a concept cannot mean existents apart from their ident.i.ty, so it cannot mean ident.i.ties apart from that which exists. Existence is Ident.i.ty.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The a.n.a.lytic-Synthetic Dichotomy," ITOE, 143. ]

The concept "ident.i.ty" does not indicate the particular natures of the existents it subsumes; it merely underscores the primary fact that they are what they are.

[ITOE, 78.].

The law of ident.i.ty does not permit you to have your cake and eat it, too. The law of causality does not permit you to eat your cake before you have it....

The law of causality is the law of ident.i.ty applied to action. All actions are caused by ent.i.ties. The nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the ent.i.ties that act; a thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature.

[GS, FNI, 188; pb 152.]

The (implicit) concept "existent" undergoes three stages of development in man's mind. The first stage is a child's awareness of objects, of things-which represents the (implicit) concept "ent.i.ty." The second and closely allied stage is the awareness of specific, particular things which he can recognize and distinguish from the rest of his perceptual field-which represents the (implicit) concept "ident.i.ty."

[ITOE, 6.].

They proclaim that there is no law of ident.i.ty, that nothing exists but change, and blank out the fact that change presupposes the concepts of what changes, from what and to what, that without the law of ident.i.ty no such concept as "change" is possible.

[GS, FNI, 192; pb 154.]

See also ARIST0TLE; AXIOMATIC CONCEPTS; AXIOMS; CAc/.M/./rr: CHARACTER; ENt.i.tY; EXISTENCE; IMPLICIT KNOWLEDGE: INFINITY; LOGIC: SUBJECTIVISM; ZERO, REIFICATION of.

Ideology. A political ideology is a set of principles aimed at establishing or maintaining a certain social system; it is a program of long-range action, with the principles serving to unify and integrate particular steps into a consistent course. It is only by means of principles that men can project the future and choose their actions accordingly.

Anti-ideology consists of the attempts to shrink men's minds down to the range of the immediate moment, without regard to past or future, without context or memory-above all, without memory, so that contradictions cannot be detected, and errors or disasters can be blamed on the victims.

In anti-ideological practice, principles are used implicitly and are relied upon to disarm the opposition, but are never acknowledged, and are switched'at will, when it suits the purpose of the moment. Whose purpose? The gang's. Thus men's moral criterion becomes, not "my view of the good-or of the right-or of the truth," but "my gang, right or wrong."

["The Wreckage of the Consensus," CUI, 222.]

A majority without an ideology is a helpless mob, to be taken over by anyone.... Political freedom requires much more than the people's wish. It requires an enormously complex knowledge of political theory and of how to implement it in practice.

["Theory and Practice," CUI, 138.]

See also POLITICS; PHILOSOPHY; PRINCIPLES; REVOLUTION u.s. PUTSCH.

Imagination. Man's imagination is nothing more than the ability to rearrange the things he has observed in reality.

["The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made," PWNI, 31; pb 25.]

Imagination is not a faculty for escaping reality, but a faculty for rearranging the elements of reality to achieve human values; it requires and presupposes some knowledge of the elements one chooses to rearrange. An imagination divorced from knowledge has only one product: a nightmare.... An imagination that replaces cognition is one of the surest ways to create neurosis.

[Ayn Rand, quoted in "The Montessori Method," TO, July 1970, 7.]

See also CONSCIOUSNESS; CREATION; KNOWLEDGE; MENTAL HEALTH.