The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 46

Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is a union of hedonism and Christianity. The first teaches man to love pleasure; the second, to love his neighbor. The union consists in teaching man to love his neighbor's pleasure. To be exact, the Utilitarians teach that an action is moral if its result is to maximize pleasure among men in general. This theory holds that man's duty is to serve-according to a purely quant.i.tative standard of value. He is to serve not the well-being of the nation or of the economic cla.s.s, but "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," regardless of who comprise it in any given issue. As to one's own happiness, says [John Stuart] Mill, the individual must he "disinterested" and "strictly impartial"; he must remember that he is only one unit out of the dozens, or millions, of men affected by his actions. "All honor to those who can abnegate for themselves the personal enjoyment of life," says Mill, "when by such renunciation they contribute worthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world."

[Leonard Peikoft, OP, 122; pb 119.]

"The greatest good for the greatest number" is one of the most vicious slogans ever foisted on humanity.

This slogan has no concrete, specific meaning. There is no way to interpret it benevolently, but a great many ways in which it can be used to justify the most vicious actions.

What is the definition of "the good" in this slogan? None, except: whatever is good for the greatest number. Who, in any particular issue, decides what is good fot the greatest number? Why, the greatest number.

If you consider this moral, you would have to approve of the following examples, which are exact applications of this slogan in practice: fifty-one percent of humanity enslaving the other forty-nine; nine hungry cannibals eating the tenth one; a lynching mob murdering a man whom they consider dangerous to the community.

There were seventy million Germans in Germany and six hundred thousand Jews. The greatest number (the Germans) supported the n.a.z.i government which told them that their greatest good would be served by exterminating the smaller number (the Jews) and grabbing their property. This was the horror achieved in practice by a vicious slogan accepted in theory.

But, you might say, the majority in all these examples did not achieve any real good for itself either? No. It didn't. Because "the good" is not determined by counting numbers and is not achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone.

["Textbook of Americanism," pamphlet, 10.]

See also ALTRUISM; COLLECTIVISM; GOOD, the; HAPPINESS; HEDONISM; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; MILL, JOHN STUART; MORALITY; PLEASURE and PAIN; SACRIFICE; SELFISHNESS.

V.

Validation. "Validation" in the broad sense includes any process of relating mental contents to the facts of reality. Direct perception, the method of validating axioms, is one such process. "Proof" designates another type of validation. Proof is the process of deriving a conclusion logically from antecedent knowledge.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976), question period, Lecture 3.]

See also AXIOMS; COROLLARIES; EPISTEMOLOGY; INDUCTION and DEDUCTION; LOGIC; OBJECTIVITY; PROOF; SELF-EVIDENT.

Values. To challenge the basic premise of any discipline, one must begin at the beginning. In ethics, one must begin by asking: What are values? Why does man need them?

"Value" is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. The concept "value" is not a primary; it presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? It presupposes an ent.i.ty capable of acting to achieve a goal in the face of an alternative. Where no alternative exists, no goals and no values are possible.

I quote from Galt's speech: "There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence-and it pertains to a single cla.s.s of ent.i.ties: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, 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 ent.i.ty that things can be good or evil."

To make this point fully clear, try to imagine an immortal, indestructible robot, an ent.i.ty 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 ent.i.ty 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.

["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 5; pb 15.]

"Value" is that which one acts to gain and keep, "virtue" is the action by which one gains and keeps it. "Value" presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? "Value" presupposes a standard, a purpose and the necessity of action in the face of an alternative. Where there are no alternatives, no values are possible.

[GS, FNI, 147; pb 121.]

It is only an ultimate goal, an end in itself, that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept of "value" is genetically dependent upon and derived from the 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."

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 the fact that living ent.i.ties exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living ent.i.ty is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living ent.i.ty is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the issue of the relation between "is" and "ought."

Now 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? By means of the physical sensations of Pleasure or pain. Just as sensations are the first step of the development of a human consciousness in the realm of cognition, so they are its first step in the realm of evaluation.

The capacity to experience pleasure or pain is innate in a man's body; it is part of his nature, part of the kind of ent.i.ty 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.

["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 7; pb 17.) Since a value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep, and the amount of possible action is limited by the duration of one's lifespan, it is a part of one's life that one invests in everything one values. The years, months, days or hours of thought, of interest, of action devoted to a value are the currency with which one pays for the enjoyment one receives from it.

[ITOE, 44.].

Material objects as such have neither value nor disvalue; they acquire value.-significance only in regard to a living being-particularly, in regard to serving or hindering man's goals.

["From the Horse's Mouth," PWNI, 96; pb 79.]

Values are the motivating power of man's actions and a necessity of his survival, psychologically as well as physically.

Man's values control his subconscious emotional mechanism that functions like a computer adding up his desires, his experiences, his fulfillments and frustrations-like a sensitive guardian watching and constantly a.s.sessing his relations.h.i.+p to reality. The key question which this computer is programmed to answer, is: What is possible to me?

There is a certain similarity between the issue of sensory perception and the issue of values....

If severe and prolonged enough, the absence of a norrnal, active flow of sensory stimuli may disintegrate the complex organization and the interdependent functions of man's consciousness.

Man's emotional mechanism works as the barometer of the efficacy or impotence of his actions. If severe and prolonged enough, the absence of a normal, active flow of value-experiences may disintegrate and paralyze man's consciousness-by telling him that no action is possible.

The form in which man experiences the reality of his values is pleasure.

["Our Cultural Value-Deprivation," TO, April 1966, 3.]

The objective theory of values is the only moral theory incompatible with rule by force. Capitalism is the only system based implicitly on an objective theory of values-and the historic tragedy is that this has never been made explicit.

If one knows that the good is objective-i.e., determined by the nature of reality, but to be discovered by man's mind-one knows that an attempt to achieve the good by physical force is a monstrous contradiction which negates morality at its root by destroying man's capacity to recognize the good, i.e., his capacity to value. Force invalidates and paralyzes a man's judgment, demanding that he act against it, thus rendering him morally impotent. A value which one is forced to accept at the price of surrendering one's mind, is not a value to anyone; the forcibly mindless can neither judge nor choose nor value. An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes. Values cannot exist (cannot be valued) outside the full context of a man's life, needs, goals, and knowledge.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 23.]

See also AMBITION; CHARACTER; CYNICISM; "DUTY"; EMOTIONS; ENVY/HATRED of the GOOD for BEING the GOOD; EVIL; GOAL-DIRECTED ACTION; GOOD, the; HAPPINESS; "INSTINCT"; INTRINSIC THEORY of VALUES; "IS"-"OUGHT' DICHOTOMY; LIFE; LOVE; MAN; MARKET VALUE; MORALITY; MOTIVATION; MOTIVATION by LOVE us. by FEAR; NORMATIVE ABSTRACTIONS; OBJECTIVE THEORY of VALUES; PHYSICAL FORCE; PLEASURE and PAIN; PURPOSE; ROMANTICISM; SECOND-HANDERS; SELF-INTEREST; SELFISHNESS; s.e.x; STANDARD of VALUE; "STOLEN CONCEPT," FALLACY of; SUBCONSCIOUS; SUBJECTIVISM; TELEOLOCICAL MEASUREMENT; TRADER PRINCIPLE; ULTIMATE VALUE; VIRTUE.

Virtue. "Value" is that which one acts to gain and keep, "virtue" is the action by which one gains and keeps it.

[GS, FNI, 147; pb 121.]

Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality-not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.

[Ibid., 224; pb 178.]

My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists-and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason-Purpose-Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge-Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve-Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man's virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride.

[Ibid., 156; pb 128.]

Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.

[Ibid., 161; pb 131.]

See also CHARACTER; CHARITY; "DUTY"; EVIL; FREE WILL; HAPPINESS; HONESTY; HONOR; INDEPENDENCE; INTEGRITY; JUS-VALUES.

Visual Arts. The so-called visual arts (painting, sculpture, architecture) produce concrete, perceptually available ent.i.ties and make them convey an abstract, conceptual meaning....

The visual arts do not deal with the sensory field of awareness as such, but with the sensory field as perceived by a conceptual consciousness.

The sensory-perceptual awareness of an adult does not consist of mere sense data (as it did in his infancy), but of automatized integrations that combine sense data with a vast context of conceptual knowledge. The visual arts refine and direct the sensory elements of these integrations. By means of selectivity, of emphasis and omission, these arts lead man's sight to the conceptual context intended by the artist. They teach man to see more precisely and to find deeper meaning in the field of his vision.

It is a common experience to observe that a particular painting-for example, a still life of apples-makes its subject "more real than it is in reality." The apples seem brighter and firmer, they seem to possess an almost self-a.s.sertive character, a kind of heightened reality which neither their real-life models nor any color photograph can match. Yet if one examines them closely, one sees that no real-life apple ever looked like that. What is it, then, that the artist has done? He has created a visual abstraction.

He has performed the process of concept-formation-of isolating and integrating-but in exclusively visual terms. He has isolated the essential, distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics of apples, and integrated them into a single visual unit. He has brought the conc-eptual method of functioning to the operations of a single sense organ, the organ of sight.

["Art and Cognition." RM, pb 47.]

See also ABSTRACTION (PROCESS of); ART; ARTISTIC CREATION; CONCEPTS; DECORATIVE ARTS; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); PAINTING; PERCEPTION; PHOTOGRAPHY; SCULPTURE; STYLIZATION.

Volition. See Free Will.

Volitional. "Volitional" means selected from two or more alternatives that were possible under the circ.u.mstances, the difference being made by the individual's decision, which could have been otherwise.

[Leonard Peikoff. "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976). Lecture 3.]

See also FREE WILL.

Voting. The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system-and its value depends on the const.i.tutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.

["The Lessons of Vietnam," ARL, III, 24, 3.]

A majority vote is not an epistemological validation of an idea. Voting is merely a proper political device-within a strictly, const.i.tutionally delimited sphere of action-for choosing the practical means of implementing a society's basic principles. But those principles are not determined by vote.

["Who Is the Final Authority in Ethics?" TON, Feb. 1965, 8.]

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority.

["Collectivized 'Rights,' VOS, 140; pb 104.]

The citizens of a free nation may disagree about the specific legal procedures or methods of implementing their rights (which is a complex problem, the province of political science and of the philosophy of law), but they agree on the basic principle to be implemented: the principle of individual rights. When a country's const.i.tution places individual rights outside the reach of public authorities, the sphere of political power is severely delimited-and thus the citizens may, safely and properly, agree to abide by the decisions of a majority vote in this delimited sphere. The lives and property of minorities or dissenters are not at stake, are not subject to vote and are not endangered by any majority decision; no man or group holds a blank check on power over others.

[Ibid., 138; pb 103.]

See also CONSt.i.tUTION; DEMOCRACY; ECONOMIC POWER vs. POLITICAL POWER; GOVERNMENT; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT; REPUBLIC; STATISM; TYRANNY.

W.

War. Wars are the second greatest evil that human societies can perpetrate. (The first is dictators.h.i.+p, the enslavement of their own citizens, which is the cause of wars.) ["The Wreckage of the Consensus," CUI, 224.]

Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relations.h.i.+ps. By the nature of its basic principles and interests, it is the only system fundamentally opposed to war.

Men who are free to produce, have no incentive to loot; they have nothing to gain from war and a great deal to lose. Ideologically, the principle of individual rights does not permit a man to seek his own livelihood at the point of a gun, inside or outside his country. Economically, wars cost money; in a free economy, where wealth is privately owned, the costs of war come out of the income of private citizens-there is no overblown public treasury to hide that fact-and a citizen cannot hope to recoup his own financial losses (such as taxes or business dislocations or property destruction) by winning the war. Thus his own economic interests are on the side of peace.

In a statist economy, where wealth is "publicly owned," a citizen has no economic interests to protect by preserving peace-he is only a drop in the common bucket-while war gives him the (fallacious) hope of larger handouts from his master. Ideologically, he is trained to regard men as sacrificial animals; he is one himself; he can have no concept of why foreigners should not be sacrificed on the same public altar for the benefit of the same state.

The trader and the warrior have been fundamental antagonists throughout history. Trade does not flourish on battlefields, factories do not produce under bombardments, profits do not grow on rubble. Capitalism is a society of traders-for which it has been denounced by every would-be gunman who regards trade as "selfish" and conquest as "n.o.ble."

Let those who are actually concerned with peace observe that capitalism gave mankind the longest period of peace in history-a period during which there were no wars involving the entire civilized world-from the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

["The Roots of War," CUl, 38.]

Statism-in fact and in principle-is nothing more than gang rule. A dictators.h.i.+p is a gang devoted to looting the effort of the productive citizens of its own country. When a statist ruler exhausts his own country's economy, he attacks his neighbors. It is his only means of postponing internal collapse and prolonging his rule. A country that violates the rights of its own citizens, will not respect the rights of its neighbors. Those who do not recognize individual rights, will not recognize the rights of nations: a nation is only a number of individuals.

Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production.

Observe that the major wars of history were started by the more controlled economies of the time against the freer ones. For instance, World War I was started by monarchist Germany and Czarist Russia, who dragged in their freer allies. World War II was started by the alliance of n.a.z.i Germany with Soviet Russia and their joint attack on Poland.

Observe that in World War II, both Germany and Russia seized and dismantled entire factories in conquered countries, to s.h.i.+p them home -while the freest of the mixed economies, the semi-capitalistic United States, sent billions worth of lend-lease equipment, including entire factories, to its allies.

Germany and Russia needed war; the United States did not and gained nothing. (In fact, the United States lost, economically, even though it won the war: it was left with an enormous national debt, augmented by the grotesquely futile policy of supporting former allies and enemies to this day.) Yet it is capitalism that today's peace-lovers oppose and statism that they advocate-in the name of peace.

[Ibid., 37.]

If men want to oppose war, it is stalism that they must oppose. So long as they hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some (any) alleged "good" can justify it-there can be no peace within a nation and no peace among nations.

[Ibid., 42.]

Just as, in domestic affairs, all the evils caused by statism and government controls were blamed on capitalism and the free market-so, in foreign affairs, all the evils of statist policies were blamed on and ascribed to capitalism. Such myths as "capitalistic imperialism," "war-profiteering," or the notion that capitalism has to win "markets" by military conquest are examples of the superficiality or the unscrupulousness of statist commentators and historians.

The essence of capitalism's foreign policy is free trade-i.e., the abolition of trade barriers, of protective tariffs, of special privileges-the opening of the world's trade routes to free international exchange and compet.i.tion among the private citizens of all countries dealing directly with one another. During the nineteenth century, it was free trade that liberated the world, undercutting and wrecking the remnants of feudalism and the statist tyranny of absolute monarchies.

[Ibid., 38.]

Capitalism wins and holds its markets by free compet.i.tion, at home and abroad. A market conquered by war can be of value (temporarily) only to those advocates of a mixed economy who seek to close it to international compet.i.tion, impose restrictive regulations, and thus acquire special privileges by force.

[Ibid., 39.]

Remember that private citizens-whether rich or poor, whether businessmen or workers-have no power to start a war. That power is the exclusive prerogative of a government. Which type of government is more likely to plunge a country into war: a government of limited powers, bound by const.i.tutional restrictions-or an unlimited government, open to the pressure of any group with warlike interests or ideologies, a government able to command armies to march at the whim of a single chief executive?

[Ibid., 40.]

It is true that nuclear weapons have made wars too horrible to contemplate. But it makes no difference to a man whether he is killed by a nuclear bomb or a dynamite bomb or an old-fas.h.i.+oned club. Nor does the number of other victims or the scale of the destruction make any difference to him.

[Ibid., 42.]

If nuclear weapons are a dreadful threat and mankind cannot afford war any longer, then mankind cannot afford statism any longer. Let no man of good will take it upon his conscience to advocate the rule of force-outside or inside his own country. Let all those who are actually concerned with peace-those who do love man and do care about his survival-realize that if war is ever to be outlawed, it is the use of force that has to be outlawed.

[Ibid., 43.]

See also CAPITALISM; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; DRAFT; FOREIGN POLICY; FREEDOM; GENOCIDE; NINETEENTH CENTURY; PEACE MOVEMENTS; PHSICAL FORCE; SOVIET RUSSIA; STATISM; TRADER PRINCIPLE; TRIBALISM; UNITED NATIONS.

Welfare State. Since the things man needs for survival have to be produced, and nature does not guarantee the success of any human endeavor, there is not and cannot be any such thing as a guaranteed economic security. The employer who gives you a job, has no guarantee that his business will remain in existence, that his customers will continue to buy his products or services. The customers have no guarantee that they will always be able and willing to trade with him, no guarantee of what their needs, choices and incomes will be in the future. If you retire to a self-sustaining farm, you have no guarantee to protect you from what a Hood or a hurricane might do to your land and your crops. If you surrender everything to the government and give it total power to plan the whole economy, this will not guarantee your economic security, but it will guarantee the descent of the entire nation to a level of miserable poverty-as the practical results of every totalitarian economy, communist or fascist, have demonstrated.

Morally, the promise of an impossible "right" to economic security is an infamous attempt to abrogate the concept of rights. It can and does mean only one thing: a promise to enslave the men who produce, for the benefit of those who don't. "If some men are ent.i.tled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor." ("Man's Rights" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.) There can be no such thing as the right to enslave, i.e., the right to destroy rights.

["A Preview," ARL, I, 22, 2.]