The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 6

We have only two sources of information about the character of the people around us: we judge them by what they do and by what they say (particularly the first).

["Basic Principles of Literature," RM, 66; pb 87.]

As'man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul.

[GS,FNI, 160; pb 131.]

Just as man's physical survival depends on his own effort, so does his psychological survival. Man faces two corollary, interdependent fields of action in which a constant exercise of choice and a constant creative process are demanded of him: the world around him and his own soul (by "soul," I mean his consciousness). Just as he has to produce the material values he needs to sustain his life, so he has to acquire the values of character that enable him to sustain it and that make his life worth living. He is born without the knowledge of either. He has to discover both-and translate them into reat.i.ty-and survive by shaping the world and himself in the image of his values.

["The Goal of My Writing," RM, 169; pb 169.]

See also AUTOMATIZATION; FREE WILL; IDENt.i.tY; MORALITY; VALUES.

Characterization. Characterization is the portrayal of those essential traits which form the unique, distinctive personality of an individual human being.

Characterization requires an extreme degree of selectivity. A human being is the most complex ent.i.ty on earth; a writer's task is to select the essentials out of that enormous complexity, then proceed to create an individual figure, endowing it with all the appropriate details down to the telling small touches needed to give it full reality. That figure has to be an abstraction, yet look like a concrete; it has to have the universality of an abstraction and, simultaneously, the unrepeatable uniqueness of a person.

In real life, we have only two sources of information about the character of the people around us: we judge them by what they do and by what they say (particularly the first). Similarly, characterization in a novel can be achieved only by two major means: action and dialogue. Descriptive pa.s.sages dealing with a character's appearance, manner, etc. can contribute to a characterization; so can introspective pa.s.sages dealing with a character's thoughts and feelings; so can the comments of other characters. But all these are merely auxiliary means, which are of no value without the two pillars: action and dialogue. to re-create the reality of a character, one must show what he does and what he says.

["Basic Principles of Literature," RM, 66; pb 87.]

See also CHARACTER; LITERATURE; MOTIVATION.

Charity. My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.

["Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand," pamphlet, 10.]

The fact that a man has no claim on others (i.e., that it is not their moral duty to help him and that he cannot demand their help as his right) does not preclude or prohibit good will among men and does not make it immoral to offer or to accept voluntary, non-sacrificial a.s.sistance.

It is altruism that has corrupted and perverted human benevolence by regarding the giver as an object of immolation, and the receiver as a helplessly miserable object of pity who holds a mortgage on the lives of others-a doctrine which is extremely offensive to both parties, leaving men no choice but the roles of sacrificial victim or moral cannibal....

To view the question in its proper perspective, one must begin by rejecting altruism's terms and all of its ugly emotional aftertaste-then take a fresh look at human relations.h.i.+ps. It is morally proper to accept help, when it is offered, not as a moral duty, but as an act of good will and generosity, when the giver can afford it (i.e., when it does not involve self-sacrifice on his part), and when it is offered in response to the receiver's vir-tues, not in response to his flaws, weaknesses or moral failures, and not on the ground of his need as such.

["The Question of Scholars.h.i.+ps." TO, June 1966, 11.]

The proper method of judging when or whether one should help another person is by reference to one's own rational self-interest and one's own hierarchy of values: the time, money or effort one gives or the risk one takes should be proportionate to the value of the person in relation to one's own happiness.

To ill.u.s.trate this on the altruists' favorite example: the issue of saving a drowning person. If the person to be saved is a stranger, it is morally proper to save him only when the danger to one's own life is minimal; when the danger is great, it would be immoral to attempt it: only a lack of self-esteem could permit one to value one's life no higher than that of any random stranger. (And, conversely, if one is drowning, one cannot expect a stranger to risk his life for one's sake, remembering that one's life cannot be as valuable to him as his own.) If the person to be saved is not a stranger, then the risk one should be willing to take is greater in proportion to the greatness of that person's value to oneself. If it is the man or woman one loves, then one can be willing to give one's own life to save him or her-for the selfish reason that life without the loved person could be unbearable.

["The Ethics of Emergencies," VOS, 50; pb 45.]

The small minority of adults who are unable rather than unwilling to work, have to rely on voluntary charity; misfortune is not a claim to slave labor; there is no such thing as the right to consume, control, and destroy those without whom one would be unable to survive.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 26.]

See also ALTRUISM; "DUTY"; EMERGENCIES; POVERTY; SACRIFICE ; SELFISHNESS; VIRTUE; WELFARE STATE.

Ch.o.r.eographer. Dancers are performing artists; music is the primary work they perform-with the help of an important intermediary: the ch.o.r.eographer. His creative task is similar to that of a stage director, but carries a more demanding responsibility: a stage director translates a primary work, a play, into physical action-a ch.o.r.eographer has to translate a primary work, a composition of sounds, into another medium, into a composition of movements, and create a structured, integrated work: a dance.

This task is so difficult and its esthetically qualified pract.i.tioners so rare that the dance has always been slow in its development and extremely vulnerable. Today, it is all but extinct.

[Art and Cognition," RM, pb 70.]

See also ART; BALLET; DANCE ; DIRECTOR; PERFORMING ARTS.

Christmas. [In answer to the question of whether it is appropriate for an atheist to celebrate Christmas:]

Yes, of course. A national holiday, in this country, cannot have an exclusively religious meaning. The secular meaning of the Christmas holiday is wider than the tenets of any particular religion: it is good will toward men-a frame of mind which is not the exclusive property (though it is supposed to be part, but is a largely un.o.bserved part) of the Christian religion.

The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way. One says: "Merry Christmas"-not "Weep and Repent." And the good will is expressed in a material, earthly form-by giving presents to one's friends, or by sending them cards in token of remembrance....

The best aspect of Christmas is the aspect usually decried by the mystics: the fact that Christmas has been commercialized. The gift-buying ... stimulates an enormous outpouring of ingenuity in the creation of products devoted to a single purpose: to give men pleasure. And the street decorations put up by department stores and other inst.i.tutions-the Christmas trees, the winking lights, the glittering colors-provide the city with a spectacular display, which only "commercial greed" could afford to give us. One would have to be terribly depressed to resist the wonderful gaiety of that spectacle.

[The Objectivist Calendar, Dec. 1976.]

See also AMERICA; ATHEISM; MYSTICISM; RELIGION; THANKSGIVING.

Civil Disobedience. Civil disobedience may be justifiable, in some cases, when and if an individual disobeys a law in order to bring an issue to court, as a test case. Such an action involves respect for legality and a protest directed only at a particular law which the individual seeks an opportunity to prove to be unjust. The same is true of a group of individuals when and if the risks involved are their own.

But there is no justification, in a civilized society, for the kind of ma.s.s civil disobedience that involves the violation of the rights of others-regardless of whether the demonstrators' goal is good or evil. The end does not justify the means. No one's rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others. Ma.s.s disobedience is an a.s.sault on the concept of rights: it is a mob's defiance of legality as such.

The forcible occupation of another man's property or the obstruction of a public thoroughfare is so blatant a violation of rights that an attempt to justify it becomes an abrogation of morality. An individual has no right to do a "sit-in" in the home or office of a person he disagrees with-and he does not acquire such a right by joining a gang. Rights are not a matter of numbers-and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.

The only power of a mob, as against an individual, is greater muscular strength-i.e., plain, brute physical force. The attempt to solve social problems by means of physical force is what a civilized society is established to prevent. The advocates of ma.s.s civil disobedience admit that their purpose is intimidation. A society that tolerates intimidation as a means of settling disputes-the physical intimidation of some men or groups by others-)oses its moral right to exist as a social system, and its collapse does not take long to follow.

Politically, ma.s.s civil disobedience is appropriate only as a prelude to civil war-as the declaration of a total break with a country's political inst.i.tutions.

["The Cas.h.i.+ng-In: The Student 'Rebellion,' " CUI, 256.]

See also INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; LAW, OBJECTIVE and NON-OBJECTIVE; NEW LEFT; PHYSICAL FORCE.

Civilization. Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

["The Soul of an Individualist," FNI, 98; pb 84.]

The precondition of a civiliced society is the barring of physical force from social relations.h.i.+ps-thus establis.h.i.+ng the principle that if men wish to deal with one another, they may do so only by means of reason: by discussion, persuasion and voluntary, uncoerced agreement.

The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use.

["The Nature of Government," VOS, 146; pb 108.]

See also CULTURE; FREEDOM; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; PHYSICAL FORCE.

Cla.s.sicism. Cla.s.sicism... was a school that had devised a set of arbitrary, concretely detailed rules purporting to represent the final and absolute criteria of esthetic value, In literature, these rules consisted of specific edicts, loosely derived from the Greek (and French) tragedies, which prescribed every formal aspect of a play (such as the unity of time, place and action) down to the number of acts and the number of verses permitted to a character in every act. Some of that stuff was based on Aristotle's esthetics and can serve as an example of what happens when concrete-bound mentalities, seeking to by-pa.s.s the responsibility of thought, attempt to transform abstract principles into concrete prescriptions and to replace creation with imitation. (For an example of Cla.s.sicism that survived well into the twentieth century, I refer you to the architectural dogmas represented by Howard Roark's antagonists in The Fountainhead.) Even though the Cla.s.sicists had no answer to why their rules were to be accepted as valid (except the usual appeal to tradition, to scholars.h.i.+p and to the prestige of antiquity), this school was regarded as the representative of reason.(!) ["What Is Romanticism?" RM, 87; pb 104.J See also ABSTRACTIONS and CONCRETES; ART; NATURALISM; PRINCIPLES; ROMANTICISM.

Coercion. See Physical Force.

"Collective Rights." Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression "individual rights" is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today's intellectual chaos). But the expression "collective rights" is a contradiction in terms.

Any group or "collective," large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members.

["Collectivized 'Rights,' " VOS, 136; pb 101.1 A group, as such, has no rights. A man can neither acquire new rights by joining a group nor lose the rights which he does possess. The principle of individual rights is the only moral base of all groups or a.s.sociations.

Any group that does not recognize this principle is not an a.s.sociation, but a gang or a mob....

The notion of "collective rights" (the notion that rights belong to groups, not to individuals) means that "rights" belong to some men, but not to others-that some men have the "right" to dispose of others in any manner they please-and that the criterion of such privileged position consists of numerical superiority.

[Ibid., 137; pb 102.]

The notion that "Anything society does is right because society chose to do it," is not a moral principle, but a negation of moral principles and the banishment of morality from social issues.

[Ibid., 136; pb 101.]

See also COLLECTIVISM; FOREIGN POLICY; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; MORALITY; NATIONAL RIGHTS; SELF-DETERMINATION of NATIONS.

Collectivism. Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group-whether to a race, cla.s.s or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called "the common good."

["The Only Path to Tomorrow," Reader's Digest, Jan. 1944, 8.]

Collectivism holds that, in human affairs, the collective-society, the community, the nation, the proletariat, the race, etc.-is the unit of reality and the standard of value. On this view, the individual has reality only as part of the group, and value only insofar as he serves it.

[Leonard Peikoff, OP, 7; pb 17.]

Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group ... and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force-and statism has always been the political corollary of collectivism.

["Racism," VUS, 175; pb 128.]

Fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory ... both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state.

[" 'Extremism,' or the Art of Smearing," CUI, 180.]

Modern collectivists ... see society as a super-organism, as some supernatural ent.i.ty apart from and superior to the sum of its individual members.

["Collectivized 'Rights,' " VOS, 138; pb 103. J The philosophy of collectivism upholds the existence of a mystic (and unperceivable) social organism, while denying the reality of perceived individuals-a view which implies that man's senses are not a valid instrument for perceiving reality. Collectivism maintains that an elite endowed with special mystic insight should rule men-which implies the existence of an elite source of knowledge, a fund of revelations inaccessible to logic and transcending the mind. Collectivism denies that men should deal with one another by voluntary means, settling their disputes by a process of rational persuasion; it declares that men should live under the reign of physical force (as wielded by the dictator of the omnipotent state)-a position which jettisons reason as the guide and arbiter of human relations.h.i.+ps.

From every aspect, the theory of collectivism points to the same conclusion: collectivism and the advocacy of reason are philosophically ant.i.thetical ; it is one or the other.

[Leonard Peikoff, "n.a.z.ism vs. Reason," TO, Oct. 1969, 1.]

The political philosophy of collectivism is based on a view of man as a congenital incompetent, a helpless, mindless creature who must be fuoled and ruled by a special elite with some unspecified claim to superior wisdom and a l.u.s.t for power.

["Who Will Protect Us from Our Protectors?" TON, May 1962, 17.]

What subjectivism is in the realm of ethics, collectivism is in the realm of politics. Just as the notion that "Anything I do is right because I chose to do it," is not a moral principle, but a negation of morality-so the notion that "Anything society does is right because society chose to do it," is not a moral principle, but a negation of moral principles and the banishment of morality from social issues.

["Collectivized 'Rights,' " VOS, 135; pb 101.]

As a cultural-intellectual power and a moral ideal, collectivism died in World War II. If we are still rolling in its direction, it is only by the inertia of a void and the momentum of disintegration. A social movement that began with the ponderous, brain-cracking, dialectical constructs of Hegel and Marx, and ends up with a horde of morally unwashed children stamping their foot and shrieking: "I want it now!" -is through.

["The Cas.h.i.+ng-In : The Student 'Rebellion,' " CUI, 266.]

Collectivism has lost the two crucial weapons that raised it to world power and made all of its victories possible: intellectuality and idealism, or reason and morality. It had to lose them precisely at the height of its success, since its claim to buth was a fraud: the full, actual reality of socialist-cornnrunist-fascist states has demonstrated the brute irrationality of collectivist systems and the inhumanity of altruism as a moral code.

[Ibid., 269.]

Collectivism does not preach sacrifice as a temporary means to some desirable end. Sacrifice is its end-sacrifice as a way of life. It is man's independence, success, prosperity, and happiness that collectivists wish to destroy.

Observe the snarling, hysterical hatred with which they greet any suggestion that sacrifice is not necessary, that a non-sacrificial society is possible to men, that it is the only society able to achieve man's well-being.

["Theory and Practice," CUI, 137.]

The advocates of collectivism are motivated not by a desire for men's happiness, but by hatred for man ... hatred of the good for being the good; ... the focus of that hatred, the target of its pa.s.sionate fury, is the man of ability.

["An Unt.i.tled Letter," PWNI, 123; pb 102.) See also ALTRUISM; "COLLECTIVE RIGHTS"; "COMMON GOOD"; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; INDIVIDUALISM; SELFISHNESS; SOCIAL SYSTEM; SOCIETY; STATISM; TRIBALISM; TRIBAL PREMISE (in ECONOMICS).

"Common Good." The tribal notion of "the common good" has served as the moral justification of most social systems-and of all tyrannies-in history. The degree of a society's enslavement or freedom corresponded to the degree to which that tribal slogan was invoked or ignored.

"The common good" (or "the public interest") is an undefined and undefinable concept: there is no such ent.i.ty as "the tribe" or "the public" ; the tribe (or the public or society) is only a number of individual men. Nothing can be good for the tribe as such; "good" and "value" pertain only to a living organism-to an individual living organism-not to a disembodied aggregate of relations.h.i.+ps.

"The common good" is a meaningless concept, unless taken literally, in which case its only possible meaning is: the sum of the good of all the individual men involved. But in that case, the concept is meaningless as a moral criterion: it leaves open the question of what is the good of individual men and how does one determine it?

It is not, however, in its literal meaning that that concept is generally used. It is accepted precisely for its elastic, undefinable, mystical character which serves, not as a moral guide, but as an escape from morality. Since the good is not applicable to the disembodied, it becomes a moral blank check for those who attempt to embody it.

When "the common good" of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals. It is tacitly a.s.sumed, in such cases, that "the common good" means "the good of the majority" as against the minority or the individual. Observe the significant fact that that a.s.sumption is tacit: even the most collectivized mentalities seem to sense the impossibility of justifying it morally. But "the good of the majority," too, is only a pretense and a delusion: since, in fact, the violation of an individual's rights means the abrogation of all rights, it delivers the helpless majority into the power of any gang that proclaims itself to be "the voice of society" and proceeds to rule by means of physical force, until deposed by another gang employing the same means.

If one begins by defining the good of individual men, one will accept as proper only a society in which that good is achieved and achievable. But if one begins by accepting "the common good" as an axiom and regarding individual good as its possible but not necessary consequence (not necessary in any particular case), one ends up with such a gruesome absurdity as Soviet Russia, a country professedly dedicated to "the common good," where, with the exception of a minuscule clique of rulers, the entire population has existed in subhuman misery for over two generations.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 20.]

Only on the basis of individual rights can any good-private or public -be defined and achieved. Only when each man is free to exist for his own sake-neither sacrificing others to himself nor being sacrificed to others-onty then is every man free to work for the greatest good he can achieve for himself by his own choice and by his own effort. And the sum total of such individual efforts is the only kind of general, social good possible.

["Textbook of Americanism," pamphlet. 1 1.]

See also ALTRUISM; COLLECTIVISM; DEMOCRACY; lNDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: MINORITY RIGHTS; "PUBLIC INTEREST," the; SOVIET RUSSIA; TRIBALISM.

Common Sense. Common sense is a simple and non-self-conscious use of logic.

[Ayn Rand, question period following Lecture I 1 of Leonard Peikoff's series "The Philosophy of Objectivism" (1976).]

That which today is called "common sense" is the remnant of an Aristotelian influence.

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 45; pb 41.]

Americans are the most reality-oriented people on earth. Their outstanding characteristic is the childhood form of reasoning: common sense. It is their only protection. But common sense is not enough where theoretical knowledge is required: it can make simple, concrete-bound connections-it cannot integrate complex issues, or deal with wide abstractions, or forecast the future.

["Don't Let It Go," PWNI, 257; pb 211.]

See also AMERICA; ARISTOTLE; LOGIC.