The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 33

The plot of a novel serves the same function as the steel skeleton of a skysc.r.a.per: it determines the use, placement and distribution of all the other elements. Matters such as number of characters, background, descriptions, conversations, introspective pa.s.sages, etc. have to be determined by what the plot can carry, i.e., have to be integrated with the events and contribute to the progression of the story. Just as one cannot pile extraneous weight or ornamentation on a building without regard for the strength of its skeleton, so one cannot burden a novel with irrelevancies without regard for its plot. The penalty, in both cases, is the same: the collapse of the structure.

If the characters of a novel engage in lengthy abstract discussions of their ideas, but their ideas do not affect their actions or the events of the story, it is a bad novel....

In judging a novel, one must take the events as expressing its meaning, because it is the events that present what the story is about. No amount of esoteric discussions on transcendental topics, attached to a novel in which nothing happens except "boy meets girl," will transform it into anything other than "boy meets girl."

This leads to a cardinal principle of good fiction: the theme and the plot of a novel must be integrated-as thoroughly integrated as mind and body or thought and action in a rational view of man.

[Ibid., 62; pb 84.]

See also ART; LITERATURE; MOTIVATION; NATURALISM; NOVEL; PLOT-THEME; ROMANTICISM; THEME (LITERARY); THRILLERS.

Plot-Theme. The link between the theme and the events of a novel is an element which I call the plot-theme. It is the first step of the translation of an abstract theme into a story, without which the construction of a plot would be impossible. A "plot-theme" is the central conflict or "situation" of a story-a conflict in terms of action, corresponding to the theme and complex enough to create a purposeful progression of events.

The theme of a novel is the core of its abstract meaning-the plot-theme is the core of its events.

For example, the theme of Atlas Shrugged is: "The role of the mind in man's existence." The plot-theme is: "The men of the mind going on strike against an altruist-collectivist society."

The theme of Les Miserable, is: "The injustice of' society toward its lower cla.s.ses." The plot-theme is: "The life-long flight of an ex-convict from the pursuit of a ruthless representative of the law."

The theme of Gone With the Wind is: "The impact of the Civil War on Southern society." The plot-theme is: "The romantic conflict of a woman who loves a man representing the old order, and is loved by another man, representing the new."

["Basic Principles of Literature," RM, 63; pb 85.]

See also PLOT; THEME (LITERARY).

Political Power. See Economic Power vs. Political Power.

Politics. The answers given by ethics determine how man should treat other men, and this determines the fourth branch of philosophy: politics, which defines the principles of a proper social system. As an example of philosophy's function, political philosophy will not tell you how much rationed gas you should be given and on which day of the week-it will tell you whether the government has the right to impose any rationing on anything.

["Philosophy: Who Needs It," PWNI, 4; pb 4.]

The basic and crucial political issue of our age is: capitalism versus socialism, or freedom versus statism. For decades, this issue has been silenced, suppressed, evaded, and hidden under the foggy, undefined rubber-terms of "conservatism" and "liberalism" which had lost their original meaning and could be stretched to mean all things to all men.

[" 'Extremism,' or The Art of Smearing," CUI, 178.]

It is political philosophy that sets the goals and determines the course of a country's practical politics. But political philosophy means: abstract theory to identify, explain and evaluate the trend of events, to discover their causes, project their consequences, define the problems and offer the solutions.

["The Chickens' Homecoming," NL, 109.]

Politics is based on three other philosophical disciplines: metaphysics, epistemology and ethics-on a theory of man's nature and of man's relationship to existence. It is only on such a base that one can formulate a consistent political theory and achieve it in practice. When, however, men attempt to rush into politics without such a base, the result is that embarra.s.sing conglomeration of impotence, futility, inconsistency and superficiality which is loosely designated today as "conservatism." Objectivists are not "conservatives." We are radicals for capitalism; we are fighting for that philosophical base which capitalism did not have and without which it was doomed to perish.

["Choose Your Issues," TON, Jan. 1962, 1.]

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 a.s.sume 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 Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 31; pb 32.]

See: Conceptual Index: Politics.

Pollution. The word "pollution" implies health hazards, such as smog or dirty waters.

["The Left: Old and New," NL, 87.]

As far as the issue of actual pollution is concerned, it is primarily a scientific, not a political, problem. In regard to the political principle involved: if a man creates a physical danger or harm to others, which extends beyond the line of his own property, such as unsanitary conditions or even loud noise, and if this is proved, the law can and does hold him responsible. If the condition is collective, such as in an overcrowded city, appropriate and objective laws can be defined, protecting the rights of all those involved-as was done in the case of oil rights, air-s.p.a.ce rights, etc. But such laws cannot demand the impossible, must not be aimed at a single scapegoat, i.e., the industrialists, and must take into consideration the whole context of the problem, i.e., the absolute necessity of the continued existence of industry-if the preservation of human life is the standard.

It has been reported in the press many times that the issue of pollution is to be the next big crusade of the New Left activists, after the war in Vietnam peters out. And just as peace was not their goal or motive in that crusade, so clean air is not their goal or motive in this one.

[Ibid., 89.]

See also ECOLOGY/ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT; ECONOMIC GROWTH; LAW, OBJECTIVE AND NON-OBJECTIVE; NEW LEFT; TECHNOLOGY.

Potylogism. Polylogism is the doctrine that there is not one correct logic, one correct method of reasoning necessarily binding on all men, but that there are many logics, each valid for some men and invalid for the others. The polylogist divides men into groups, and holds that each group has by nature (or creates for itself by choice) its own distinctive method of inference based on its own distinctive logical laws, so that the inferences that are entirely logical for one group are entirely illogical for the others....

On the polylogist view, there is no common or universal logic to serve as the objective standard and arbiter when men disagree. There is no way for members of opposing groups, with opposing views, to resolve their disputes; it is useless to appeal to facts or to evidence for this purpose, since the minds which engage in the process of reasoning obey different rules of thinking.

In the n.a.z.i version of polylogism, ... there is Aryan logic, British logic, Jewish logic, etc., and these give rise respectively to Aryan truth, British truth, Jewish truth, etc.... The movement that first launched the doctrine of polylogism in a culturally influential form [is] Marxism. Aware of the fact that communism cannot be defended by reason, the Marxists proceeded to turn the fallacy of ad hominem into a formal philosophic doctrine, claiming that logic varies with men's economic cla.s.s, and that objections to communist doctrine may be dismissed as expressions of "bourgeois logic." Thus, vilification of an opponent replaces a.n.a.lysis of his argument.... Kant [is] the real father of polylogism, the first among the major philosophers officially to sever logic from reality. ... In terms of fundamentals, n.a.z.i polylogism, like n.a.z.i subjectivism, is simply a pluralizing and racializing of the Kantian view.

Actually, polylogism is not a theory of logic-it is a denial of logic. The polylogist invests "logic" with the character of a mystic revelation, and turns logic into its ant.i.thesis: instead of being the means of validating objectively men's claims to knowledge, logic becomes a subjective device to be used to "justify" anything anyone wishes.

[Leonard Peikoff, "n.a.z.i Politics," TO, Feb. 1971, 12.]

See also COMMUNISM; FASCISM/n.a.z.iSM; KANT, IMMANUEL; LOGIC; OBJECTIVITY; RACISM.

Popular Literature. Popular literature is fiction that does not deal with abstract problems; it takes moral principles as the given, accepting certain generalized, common-sense ideas and values as its base. (Common-sense values and conventional values are not the same thing; the first can be justified rationally, the second cannot. Even though the second may include some of the first, they are justified, not on the ground of reason, but on the ground of social conformity.) Popular fiction does not raise or answer abstract t questions; it a.s.sumes that man knows what he needs to know in order to live, and it proceeds to show his adventures in living (which is one of the reasons for its popularity among all types of readers, including the problem-laden intellectuals). The distinctive characteristic of popular fiction is the absence of an explicitly ideational element, of the intent to convey intellectual information (or misinformation).

["What Is Romanticism?" RM, 95; pb 110.]

See also LITERATURE; ROMANTICISM; THRILLERS.

Possible. "X is possible" means: in the present context of knowledge, there is some, but not much, evidence in favor of X and nothing known that contradicts X.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976), Lecture 6.]

When you say "maybe," you are saying there is at least some evidence, some reason to suspect X. This is a claim that must be justified. There are many fantasies that are outrightly impossible, because they contradict already known facts. And there are other fantasies that are mere arbitrary inventions; even if you cannot specify facts which contradict these inventions, you have absolutely no basis to hypothesize them.

[Ibid.]

It is possible, the skeptic argument declares, for man to be in error; therefore, it is possible that every individual is in error on every question. This argument is a non sequitur; it is an equivocation on the term "possible."

What is possible to a species under some circ.u.mstances, is not necessarily possible to every individual member of that species under every set of circ.u.mstances. Thus, it is possible for a human being to run the mile in less than four minutes; and it is possible for a human being to be pregnant. I cannot, however, go over to a crippled gentleman in his wheelchair and say: "Perhaps you'll give birth to a son next week, after you've run the mile to the hospital in 3.9 minutes-after all, you're human, and it is possible for human beings to do these things."

The same principle applies to the possibility of error.

[Leonard Peikoff, " 'Maybe You're Wrong,' " TOF, April 1981, 10.]

See also AGNOSTICISM; ARBITRARY; CERTAINTY; CHANCE; CONTEXT; KNOWLEDGE; SKEPTICISM.

Poverty. If concern for human poverty and suffering were one's primary motive, one would seek to discover their cause. One would not fail to ask: Why did some nations develop, while others did not? Why have some nations achieved material abundance, while others have remained stagnant in subhuman misery? History and, specifically, the unprecedented prosperity-explosion of the nineteenth century, would give an immediate answer: capitalism is the only system that enables men to produce abundance-and the key to capitalism is individual freedom.

["Requiem for Man," CUI, 308.]

Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others-misfortune is not a mortgage on achievement-failure is not a mortgage on success-sutfering is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence-man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone's altar nor for anyone's cause -life is not one huge hospital.

["Apollo 11," TO, Sept. 1969, 13.]

See also ALTRUISM; CAPITALISM; CHARITY; FREEDOM; NINETEENTH CENTURY; SACRIFICE; SELFISHNESS.

Pragmatism. [The Pragmatists] declared that philosophy must be practical and that practicality consists of dispensing with all absolute principles and standards-that there is no such thing as objective reality or permanent truth-that truth is that which works, and its validity can be judged only by its consequences -that no facts can be known with certainty in advance, and anything may be tried by rule-of-thumb-that reality is not firm, but fluid and "indeterminate," that there is no such thing as a distinction between an external world and a consciousness (between the perceived and the perceiver), there is only an undifferentiated package-deal labeled "experience," and whatever one wishes to be true, is true. whatever one wishes to exist, does exist, provided it works or makes one feel better.

A later school of more Kantian Pragmatists amended this philosophy as follows. If there is no such thing as an objective reality, men's metaphysical choice is whether the selfish, dictatorial whims of an individual or the democratic whims of a collective are to shape that plastic goo which the ignorant call "reality," therefore this school decided that objectivity consists of collective subjectivism-that knowledge is to be gained by means of public polls among special elites of "competent investigators" who can "predict and control" reat.i.ty-that whatever people wish to he true, is true, whatever people wish to exist, does exist, and anyone who holds any firm convictions of his own is an arbitrary, mystic dogmatist, since reality is indeterminate and people determine its actual nature.

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 35; pb 34.]

In the whirling Herac.l.i.tean flux which is the pragmatist's universe, there are no absolutes. There are no facts, no fixed laws of logic, no certainty, no objectivity.

There are no facts, only provisional "hypotheses" which for the moment facilitate human action. There are no fixed laws of logic, only mutable "conventions," without any basis in reality. (Aristotle's logic, Dewey remarks, worked so well for earlier cultures that it is now overdue for a replacement.) There is no certainty-the very quest for it, says Dewey, is a fundamental aberration, a "perversion." There is no objectivity-the object is created by the thought and action of the subject.

[Leonard Peikoff, OP, 130; pb 126.]

Epistemologically, their dogmatic agnosticism holds, as an absolute, that a principle is false because it is a principle-that conceptual integration (i.e., thinking) is impractical or "simplistic"-that an idea which is clear and simple is necessarily "extreme and unworkable." Along with Kant, their philosophic forefather, the pragmatists claim, in effect: "If you perceive it, it cannot be real," and: "If you conceive of it, it cannot be true."

What, then, is left to man? The sensation, the wish, the whim, the range and the concrete of the moment. Since no solution to any problem is possible, anyone's suggestion, guess or edict is as valid as anyone else's -provided it is narrow enough.

To give you an example: if a building were threatened with collapse and you declared that the crumbling foundation has to be rebuilt, a pragmatist would answer that your solution is too abstract, extreme, unprovable, and that immediate priority must be given to the need of putting ornaments on the balcony railings, because it would make the tenants feel better.

There was a time when a man would not utter arguments of this sort, for fear of being rightly considered a fool. Today, Pragmatism has not merely given him permission to do it and liberated him from the necessity of thought, but has elevated his mental default into an intellectual virtue, has given him the right to dismiss thinkers (or construction engineers) as naive, and has endowed him with that typically modern quality: the arrogance of the concrete-bound, who takes pride in not seeing the forest fire, or the forest, or the trees, while he is studying one inch of bark on a rotted tree stump.

["How to Read (and Not to Write)," ARI., I, 26, 5.]

The two points central to the pragmatist ethics are: a formal rejection of all fixed standards-and an unquestioning absorption of the prevailing standards. The same two points const.i.tute the pragmatist approach to politics, which, developed most influentially by Dewey, became the philosophy of the Progressive movement in this country (and of most of its liberal descendants down to the present day).

[Leonard Peikoff, "Pragmatism Versus America," ARL, III, 17, I.]

By itself, as a distinctive theory, the pragmatist ethics is contentless. It urges men to pursue "practicality," but refrains from specifying any "rigid" set of values that could serve to define the concept. As a result, pragmatists-despite their repudiation of all systems of morality-are compelled, if they are to implement their ethical approach at all, to rely on value codes formulated by other, non-pragmatist moralists. As a rule the pragmatist appropriates these codes without acknowledging them; he accepts them by a process of osmosis, eclectically absorbing the cultural deposits left by the moral theories of his predecessors-and protesting all the while the futility of these theories.

The dominant, virtually the only, moral code advocated by modern intellectuals in Europe and in America is some variant of altruism. This, accordingly, is what most American pragmatists routinely preach....

In politics, also, pragmatism presents itself as opposed to "rigidity," to "dogma," to "extremes" of any kind (whether capitalist or socialist); it avows that it is relativist, "moderate," "experimental." As in ethics, however, so here: the pragmatist is compelled to employ some kind of standard to evaluate the results of his social experiments, a standard which, given his own self-imposed default, he necessarily absorbs from other, non-pragmatist trend-setters.... When Dewey wrote, the political principle imported from Germany and proliferating in all directions, was collectivism.

[Leonard Peikoff, OP, 131; pb 128.]

Pragmatism is the only twentieth-century philosophy to gain broad, national acceptance in the United States.

[Ibid., 138; pb 134.]

The American people were led to embrace the pragmatist philosophy not because of its actual, theoretical content (of which they were and remain largely ignorant), but because of the method by which that content was presented to them. In its terminology and promises, pragmatism is a philosophy calculated to appeal specifically to an American audience....

The pragmatists present themselves as the exponents of a distinctively "American" approach, which consists in enshrining the basic premises of [German philosophy] while rejecting every fundamental idea, from metaphysics to politics, on which this country was founded. Most important of all, the Americans wanted ideas to be good for something on earth, to have tangible, practical significance; and, insistently, the pragmatists stress "practicality," which, according to their teachings, consists in action divorced from thought and reality.

The pragmatists stress the "cash value" of ideas. But the Americans did not know the "cash value" of the pragmatist ideas they were buying. They did not know that pragmatism could not deliver on its promise of this-worldly success because, at root, it is a philosophy which does not believe in this, or any, world.

When the Americans flocked to pragmatism, they believed that they were joining a battle to advance their essential view of reality and of life. They did not know that they were being marched in the opposite direction, that the battle had been calculated for a diametrically opposite purpose, or that the enemy they were being pushed to destroy was: themselves.

[Ibid., 136; pb 132.]

See also ABSOLUTES; ALTRUISM; AMERICA; ANTI-CONCEPTUAL MENTALITY; CERTAINTY; COMPROMISE; EDUCATION; KANT, IMMANUEL; MORAL-PRACTICAL DICHOTOMY; MORALITY: OBJECTIVITY; PRIMACY of EXISTENCE vs. PRIMACY of CONSCIOUSNESS; PRINCIPLES; THEORY-PRACTICE DICHOTOMY; TRUTH; WHIMS/ WHIM-WORSHIP.

Prestige. The desire for the unearned has two aspects: the unearned in matter and the unearned in spirit. (By "spirit" I mean: man's consciousness.) These two aspects are necessarily interrelated, but a man's desire may be focused predominantly on one or the other. The desire for the unearned in spirit is the more destructive of the two and the more corrupt. It is a desire for unearned greatness; it is expressed (but not defined) by the foggy murk of the term "prestige." ...

Unearned greatness is so unreal, so neurotic a concept that the wretch who seeks it cannot identify it even to himself: to identify it, is to make it impossible. He needs the irrational, undefinable slogans of altruism and collectivism to give a semiplausible form to his nameless urge and anchor it to reality-to support his own self-deception more than to deceive his victims.

["The Monument Builders," VOS, 115; pb 88.]

See also ALTRUISM; COLLECTIVISM; SECOND-HANDERS.

Pride. Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man's values, it has to be earned-that of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character-that your character, your actions, your desires, your emotions are the products of the premises held by your mind-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 sou!-[hat to live requires a sense of self-value, but man, who has no automatic values, has no automatic sense of self-esteem and must earn it by shaping his soul in the image of his moral ideal, in the image of Man, the rational being he is born able to create, but must create by choice-that the first precondition of self-esteem is that radiant selfishness of soul which desires the best in all things, in values of matter and spirit, a soul that seeks above all else to achieve its own moral perfection, valuing nothing higher than itsetf-and that the proof of an achieved self-esteem is your soul's shudder of contempt and rebellion against the role of a sacrificial animal, against the vile impertinence of any creed that proposes to immolate the irreplaceable value which is your consciousness and the incomparable glory which is your existence to the blind evasions and the stagnant decay of others.

[GS, FNI. 160: pb 130.]

The virtue of Pride can best be described by the term: "moral ambitiousness." It means that one must earn the right to hold oneself as one's own highest value by achieving one's own moral perfection-which one achieves by never accepting any code of irrational virtues impossible to practice and by never failing to practice the virtues one knows to he rationa!-by never accepting an unearned guilt and never earning any, or, if one has earned it, never leaving it uncorrected-by never resigning oneself pa.s.sively to any flaws in one's character-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.

["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 22; pb 27.]

See also AMBITION; ARISTOTLE; CHARACTER; EMOTIONS; FREE WILL; HONOR; RATIONALITY; SACRIFICE; SELF-ESTEEM; SELFISHNESS; VIRTUE.

Primacy of Existence vs. Primacy of Consciousness. The basic metaphysical issue that lies at the root of any system of philosophy [is] the primary of existence or the primacy of consciousness.

The primacy of existence (of reality) is the axiom that existence exists, i.e., that the universe exists independent of consciousness (of any consciousness), that things are what they are, that they possess a specific nature, an ident.i.ty. The epistemological corollary is the axiom that consciousness is the faculty of perceiving that which exists-and that man gains knowledge of reality by looking outward. The rejection of these axioms represents a reversal: the primacy of consciousness-the notion that the universe has no independent existence, that it is the product of a consciousness (either human or divine or both). The epistemological corollary is the notion that man gains knowledge of reality by looking inward (either at his own consciousness or at the revelations it receives from another, superior consciousness).

The source of this reversal is the inability or unwillingness fully to grasp the difference between one's inner state and the outer world, i.e., between the perceiver and the perceived (thus blending consciousness and existence into one indeterminate package-deal). This crucial distinction is not given to man automatically; it has to be learned. It is implicit in any awareness, but it has to be grasped conceptually and held as an absolute.

["The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made," PWNI, 29; pb 24.]

Observe that the philosophical system based on the axiom of the primacy of existence (i.e., on recognizing the absolutism of reality) led to the recognition of man's ident.i.ty and rights. But the philosophical systems based on the primacy of consciousness (i.e., on the seemingly megalomaniacal notion that nature is whatever man wants it to be) lead to the view that man possesses no ident.i.ty, that he is infinitely flexible, malleable, usable and disposable. Ask yourself why.

[Ibid., 34; pb 28.]

They want to cheat the axiom of existence and consciousness, they want their consciousness to be an instrument not of perceiving but of creating existence, and existence to be not the object but the subject of their consciousness-they want to be that G.o.d they created in their image and likeness, who creates a universe out of a void by means of an arbitrary whim. But reality is not to be cheated. What they achieve is the opposite of their desire. They want an omnipotent power over existence; instead, they lose the power of their consciousness. By refusing to know, they condemn themselves to the horror of a perpetual unknown.

[GS, FNI, 187; pb 151.]

It is important to observe the interrelation of these three axioms [existence, consciousness, and ident.i.ty]. Existence is the first axiom. The universe exists independent of consciousness. Man is able to adapt his background to his own requirements, but "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" (Francis Bacon). There is no mental process that can change the laws of nature or erase facts. The function of consciousness is not to create reality, but to apprehend it. "Existence is Ident.i.ty, Consciousness is Identification."

The philosophic source of this viewpoint and its major advocate in the history of philosophy is Aristotle. Its opponents are all the other major traditions, including Platonism, Christianity, and German idealism. Directly or indirectly, these traditions uphold the notion that consciousness is the creator of reality. The essence of this notion is the denial of the axiom that existence exists.

[Leonard Peikoff, OP, 329; pb 303.]

See also ABSOLUTES; AXIOMATIC CONCEPTS; AXIOMS; CONSCIOUSNESS; CREATION; EVASION; EXISTENCE; G.o.d; IDENt.i.tY; IMAGINATION; KANT, IMMANUEL; METAPHYSICS; MYSTICISM; NATURE; OBJECTIVITY, PHILOSOPHY; PLATONIC REALISM; PRAGMATISM; PRIOR CERTAINTY of CONSCIOUSNESS; SUBJECTIVISM; UNIVERSE.