The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 9

See also ALTRUISM; CAPITALISM; COMPROMISE; "CONSERVATIVES " vs. "LIBERALS"; FAITH; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; "LIBERALS"; "LIBERTARIANS"; ORIGINAL SIN; RELIGION; STATISM; TRADITION.

"Conservatives" vs. "Liberals." Both [conservatives and liberals] hold the same premise-the mind-body dichotomy-but choose opposite sides of this lethal fallacy.

The conservatives want freedom to act in the material realm; they tend to oppose government control of production, of industry, of trade, of business, of physical goods, of material wealth. But they advocate government control of man's spirit, i.e., man's consciousness; they advocate the State's right to impose censors.h.i.+p, to determine moral values, to create and enforce a governmental establishment of morality, to rule the intellect. The liberals want freedom to act in the spiritual realm; they oppose censors.h.i.+p, they oppose government control of ideas, of the arts, of the press, of education (note their concern with "academic freedom"). But they advocate government control of material production, of business, of employment, of wages, of profits, of all physical property-they advocate it all the way down to total expropriation.

The conservatives see man as a body freely roaming the earth, building sand piles or factories-with an electronic computer inside his skull, controlled from Was.h.i.+ngton. The liberals see man as a soul freewheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe-but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread.

Yet it is the conservatives who are predominantly religionists, who proclaim the superiority of the soul over the body, who represent what I call the "mystics of spirit." And it is the liberals who are predominantly materialists, who regard man as an aggregate of meat, and who represent what I call the "mystics of muscle."

This is merely a paradox, not a contradiction: each camp wants to control the realm it regards as metaphysically important; each grants freedom only to the activities it despises. Observe that the conservatives insult and demean the rich or those who succeed in material production, regarding them as morally inferior-and that the liberals treat ideas as a cynical con game. "Control," to both camps, means the power to rule by physical force. Neither camp holds freedom as a value. The conservatives want to rule man's consciousness; the liberals, his body.

["Censors.h.i.+p: Local and Express," PWNI, 228; pb 186.]

See also CENSORs.h.i.+P; "CONSERVATIVES"; FREEDOM; "LIBERALS"; MYSTICS of SPIRIT and MUSCLE; PROPERTY RIGHTS; RELIGION; RIGHTISTS and LEFTISTS; SOUL-BODY DICHOTOMY; "WINDOW-DRESSING. "

Const.i.tution. Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Const.i.tution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals-that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government-that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens' protection against the government.

["The Nature of Government," VOS, 154; pb 114.]

Ours was the first government based on and strictly limited by a written doc.u.ment-the Const.i.tution-which specifically forbids it to violate individual rights or to act on whim. The history of the atrocities perpetrated by all the other kinds of governments-unrestricted governments acting on unprovable a.s.sumptions-demonstrates the value and validity of the original political theory on which this country was built.

["Censors.h.i.+p: Local and Express," PWNI, 221; pb 181.]

A complex legal system, based on objectively valid principles, is required to make a society free and to keep it free-a system that does not depend on the motives, the moral character or the intentions of any given official, a system that leaves no opportunity, no legal loophole for the development of tyranny.

The American system of checks and balances was just such an achievement. And although certain contradictions in the Const.i.tution did leave a loophole for the growth of statism, the incomparable achievement was the concept of a const.i.tution as a means of limiting and restricting the power of the government.

["The Nature of Government," VOS, 154; pb 113.]

The clause giving Congress the power to regulate interstate cornmerce is one of the major errors in the Const.i.tution. That clause, more than any other, was the crack in the Const.i.tution's foundation, the entering wedge of' statism, which permitted the gradual establishment of the welfare state. But I would venture to say that the framers of the Const.i.tution could not have conceived of what that clause has now become. If, in writing it, one of their goals was to facilitate the flow of trade and prevent the establishment of trade barriers among the states, that clause has reached the opposite destination.

["Censors.h.i.+p: Local and Express," PWNI, 225; pb 184.]

See also AMERICA; FOUNDING FATHERS; GOVERNMENT; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; LAW, OBJECTIVE and NON-OBJECTIVE; PHYSICAL FORCE.

"Consumerism." No "anti-concept" launched by the "liberals" goes so far so crudely as the [conservatives'] tag "consumerism." It implies loudly and clearly that the status of "consumer" is separate from and superior to the status of "producer"; it suggests a social system dedicated to the service of a new aristocracy which is distinguished by the ability to "consume" and vested with a special claim on the caste of serfs marked by the ability to produce.

["The Obliteration of Capitalism," CUI, 185.]

There is no such thing as "consumers' rights," just as there can be no "rights" belonging to some special group or race and to no others. There are only the rights of man-rights possessed by every individual man and by all men as individuals. The right to be protected from physical injury or fraud belongs to all men, not merely to "consumers," and does not require any special protection other than that provided by the criminal law....

If a businessman-or any other citizen-willfully and knowingly cheats or injures others ("consumers" or otherwise), it is a matter to be proved and punished in a criminal court. But the precedent which [the "consumer protection" movement] is here attempting to establish is the legal hallmark of a dictators.h.i.+p: preventive law-the concept that a man is guilty until he is proved innocent by the permissive rubber stamp of a commissar or a Gauleiter.

What protects us from any private citizen who may choose to turn criminal and injure or defraud us? That, precisely, is the proper duty of a government. But if the government a.s.sumes a totalitarian power and its officials are not subject to any law, then who will protect us from our protectors? What will be our recourse against the dishonesty, vindictiveness, cupidity or stupidity of a bureaucrat?

If matters such as science are to be placed into the unanswerable power of a single bureau, what will guarantee the superior wisdom, justice and integrity of the bureaucrats? Why, the vote of the people, a statist would answer-of the people who choose the ruler who then appoints the bureaucrats-of the same people whom [he] does not consider competent to choose electric toasters, credit contracts, face lotions, laxative tablets or canned vegetables.

["Who Will Protect Us from Our Protectors?" TON, May 1962, 20.]

You propose to establish a social order based on the following tenets: that you're incompetent to run your own life, but competent to run the lives of others-that you're unfit to exist in freedom, but fit to become an omnipotent ruler-that you're unable to earn your living by the use of your own intelligence, but able to judge politicians and to vote them into jobs of total power over arts you have never seen, over sciences you have never studied, over achievements of which you have no knowledge, over the gigantic industries where you, by your own definition of your capacity, would be unable successfully to fill the job of a.s.sistant greaser.

[GS, FNI, 208; pb 167.]

See also "ANTI-CONCEPTS"; CONSUMPTION; FRAUD; GOVERNMENT; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; PRODUCTION; SERVICE; TRIBAL PREMISE (in ECONOMICS).

Consumption. Consumption is the final, not the efficient, cause of production. The efficient cause is savings, which can be said to represent the opposite of consumption: they represent unconsumed goods. Consumption is the end of production, and a dead end, as far as the productive process is concerned. The worker who produces so little that he consumes everything he earns, carries his own weight economically, but contributes nothing to future production. The worker who has a modest savings account, and the millionaire who invests a fortune (and all the men in between), are those who finance the future. The man who consumes without producing is a parasite, whether he is a welfare recipient or a rich playboy.

["Egalitarianism and Inflation," PWNI, 160; pb 132.]

Trained in college to believe that to look beyond the immediate moment-to look for causes or to foresee consequences-is impossible, modern men have developed context-dropping as their normal method of cognition. Observing a bad, small-town shopkeeper, the kind who is doomed to fail, they believe-as he does-that lack of customers is his only problem; and that the question of the goods he sells, or where these goods come from, has nothing to do with it. The goods, they believe, are here and will always be here. Therefore, they conclude, the consumer -not the producer-is the motor of an economy. Let us extend credit, i.e., our savings, to the consumers-they advise-in order to expand the market for our goods.

But, in fact, consumers qua consumers are not part of anyone's market; qua consumers, they are irrelevant to economics. Nature does not grant anyone an innate t.i.tle of "consumer"; it is a t.i.tle that has to be earned-by production. Only producers const.i.tute a market-only men who trade products or services for products or services. In the role of producers, they represent a market's "supply"; in the role of consumers, they represent a market's "demand." The law of supply and demand has an implicit subclause: that it involves the same people in both capacities.

When this subclause is forgotten, ignored or evaded-you get the economic situation of today.

[Ibid., 157; pb 130.]

See also "CONSUMERISM"; FINAL CAUSATION; INVESTMENT; PRODUCTION; PURCHASING POWER; SAVINGS.

Context. Knowledge is contextual.... By "context" we mean the sum of cognitive elements conditioning the acquisition, validity or application of any item of human knowledge. Knowledge is an organization or integration of interconnected elements, each relevant to the others.... Knowledge is not a mosaic of independent pieces each of which stands apart from the rest....

In regard to any concept, idea, proposal, theory, or item of knowledge, never forget or ignore the context on which it depends and which conditions its validity and use.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976), Lecture 5.1 Concepts are not and cannot be formed in a vacuum; they are formed in a context; the process of conceptualization consists of observing the differences and similarities of the existents within the field of one's awareness (and organizing them into concepts accordingly). From a child's grasp of the simplest concept integrating a group of perceptually given concretes, to a scientist's grasp of the most complex abstractions integrating long conceptual chains-all conceptualization is a contextual process; the context is the entire field of a mind's awareness or knowledge at any level of its cognitive development.

This does not mean that conceptualization is a subjective process or that the content of concepts depends on an individual's subjective (i.e., arbitrary) choice. The only issue open to an individual's choice in this matter is how much knowledge he will seek to acquire and, consequently, what conceptual complexity he will be able to reach. But so long as and to the extent that his mind deals with concepts (as distinguished from memorized sounds and floating abstractions), the content of his concepts is determined and dictated by the cognitive content of his mind, i.e., by his grasp of the facts of reality. If his grasp is noncontradictory, then even if the scope of his knowledge is modest and the content of his concepts is primitive, it will not contradict the content of the same concepts in the mind of the most advanced scientists.

The same is true of definitions. All definitions are contextual, and a primitive definition does not contradict a more advanced one: the latter merely expands the former.

[ITOE, 55. ].

No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge.

[GS, FNI, 154; pb 126.]

One must never make any decisions, form any convictions or seek any values out of context, i.e., apart from or against the total, integrated sum of one's knowledge.

["The Ohjectivist Ethics," VOS, 21; pb 26.]

See also CERTAINTY; CONTEXT-DROPPING; CONTRADlCTIONS; DEFINITIONS; HIERARCHY of KNOWLEDGE; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); KNOWLEDGE; PRINCIPLES.

Context-Dropping. Context-dropping is one of the chief psychological tools of evasion. In regard to one's desires, there are two major ways of context-dropping: the issues of range and of means.

A rational man sees his interests in terms of a lifetime and selects his goals accordingly. This does not mean that he has to be omniscient, infallible or clairvoyant. It means that he does not live his life short-range and does not drift like a b.u.m pushed by the spur of the moment. It means that he does not regard any moment as cut off from the context of the rest of his life, and that he allows no conflicts or contradictions between his short-range and long-range interests. He does not become his own destroyer by pursuing a desire today which wipes out all his values tomorrow.

A rational man does not indulge in wistful longings for ends divorced from means. He does not hold a desire without knowing (or learning) and considering the means by which it is to be achieved.

["The 'Conflicts' of Men's Interests," VOS, 60; pb 51.]

Whenever you tear an idea from its context and treat it as though it were a self-sufficient, independent item, you invalidate the thought process involved. If you omit the context, or even a crucial aspect of it, then no matter what you say it will not be valid....

A context-dropper forgets or evades any wider context. He stares at only one element, and he thinks, "I can change just this one point, and everything else will remain the same." In fact, everything is interconnected. That one element involves a whole context, and to a.s.sess a change in one element, you must see what it means in the whole context.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976), Lecture 5.]

See also CONTEXT; EVASION; SELF- INTEREST.

"Contingent Truth." See a.n.a.lytic-Synthetic Dichotomy.

Contracts. In a free society, men are not forced to deal with one another. They do so only by voluntary agreement and, when a time element is involved, by contract. If a contract is broken by the arbitrary decision of one man, it may cause a disastrous financial injury to the other.... This leads to one of the most important and most complex functions of the government: to the function of an arbiter who settles disputes among men according to objective laws.

["The Nature of Government," VOS, 149; pb 110.]

A unilateral breach of contract involves an indirect use of physical force: it consists, in essence, of one man receiving the material values, goods or services of another, then refusing to pay for them and thus keeping them by force (by mere physical possession), not by right-i.e., keeping them without the consent of the owner.

[Ibid., 150; pb 111.]

In a free society, the "rights" of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary, individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking. Every legitimate group undertaking is based on the partic.i.p.ants' right of free a.s.sociation and free trade. (By "legitimate," I mean: noncriminal and freely formed, that is, a group which no one was forced to join.) For instance, the right of an industrial concern to engage in business is derived from the right of its owners to invest their money in a productive venture-from their right to hire employees-from the right of the employees to sell their services-from the right of all those involved to produce and to sell their products-from the right of the customers to buy (or not to buy) those products. Every link of this complex chain of contractual relations.h.i.+ps rests on individual rights, individual choices, individual agreements. Every agreement is delimited, specified and subject to certain conditions, that is, dependent upon a mutual trade to mutual benefit.

["Collectivized 'Rights,' " VOS, 136; pb 102.]

See also COOPERATION; GOVERNMENT; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; PHYSICAL FORCE; PROPERTY RIGHTS.

Contradictions. A contradiction cannot exist. An atom is itself, and so is the universe; neither can contradict its own ident.i.ty; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

[GS, FNI, 154; pb 126.]

[Objectivism agrees with Aristotle's formulation of the Law of Non-Contradiction]: These truths hold good for everything that is, and not for some special genus apart from others. And all men use them, because they are true of being qua being.... For a principle which everyone must have who understands anything that is, is not a hypothesis.... Evidently then such a principle is the most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect.

[Aristotle, Metaphysics, IV, 3 (W. 1). Ross, trans.).]

The Law of Ident.i.ty (A is A) is a rational man's paramount consideration in the process of determining his interests. He knows that the contradictory is the impossible, that a contradiction cannot be achieved in reality and that the attempt to achieve it can lead only to disaster and destruction. Therefore, he does not permit himself to hold contradictory values, to pursue contradictory goals, or to imagine that the pursuit of a contradiction can ever be to his interest.

["The 'Conflicts' of Men's Interests," VOS, 58; pb 51.]

See also ARISTOTLE; AXIOMATIC CONCEPTS; AXIOMS; CAUSALITY; EXISTENCE; IDENt.i.tY; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); LOGIC.

Cooperation. Cooperation is the free a.s.sociation of men who work together by voluntary agreement, each deriving from it his own personal benefit.

["Screen Guide for Americans," Plain Talk, Nov. 1947, 40.]

A proper a.s.sociation is united by ideas, not by men, and its members are loyal to the ideas, not to the group. It is eminently reasonable that men should seek to a.s.sociate with those who share their convictions and values. It is impossible to deal or even to communicate with men whose ideas are fundamentally opposed to one's own (and one should be free not to deal with them). All proper a.s.sociations are formed or joined by individual choice and on conscious, intellectual grounds (philosophical, political, professional, etc.)-not by the physiological or geographical accident of birth, and not on the ground of tradition. When men are united by ideas, i.e., by explicit principles, there is no room for favors, whims, or arbitrary power: the principles serve as an objective criterion for determining actions and for judging men, whether leaders or members.

This requires a high degree of conceptual development and independence.... But this is the only way men can work together justly, benevolently and safely.

["The Missing Link," PWNI, 54; pb 45.]

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.

["Collectivized 'Rights,' " VOS, 137; pb 102.]

See also INDEPENDENCE; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; INDIVIDUALISM; TRIBALISM.

Copyrights. See Patents and Copyrights.

Corollaries. A corollary is a self-evident implication of already established knowledge.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976), Lecture 2.]

Many of the most important truths in philosophy are neither primary axioms nor theorems susceptible of discursive proof; rather, they are corollaries-most often, corollaries of axioms.

[Ibid.]

See also AXIOMS; LOGIC; PROOF; SELF-EVIDENT; VALIDATION.

Corporations. A corporation is a union of human beings in a voluntary, cooperative endeavor. It exemplifies the principle of free a.s.sociation, which is an expression of the right to freedom. Any attributes which corporations have are attributes (or rights) which the individuals have-inctuding the right to combine in a certain way, offer products under certain terms, and deal with others according to certain rules, for instance, limited liability.

An individual can say to a storekeeper, "I would like to have credit, but I put you on notice that if I can't pay, you can't attach my home-take it or leave it." The storekeeper is free to accept those terms, or not. A corporation is a cooperative productive endeavor which gives a similar warning explicitly. It has no mystical attributes, no attributes that don't go back to the rights of individuals, including their right of free a.s.sociation.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976), question period, Lecture 9.]

See also BUSINESSMEN; CONTRACTS; COOPERATION; FREEDOM; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS.

Courage and Confidence. Courage and confidence are practical necessities... courage is the practical form of being true to existence, of being true to truth, and confidence is the practical form of being true to one's own consciousness.

[GS, FNI, 158; pb 129.]

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

Creation. The power to rearrange the combinations of natural elements is the only creative power man possesses. It is an enormous and glorious power-and it is the only meaning of the concept "creative." "Creation" does not (and metaphysically cannot) mean the power to bring something into existence out of nothing. "Creation" means the power to bring into existence an arrangement (or combination or integration) of natural elements that had not existed before. (This is true of any human product, scientific or esthetic: man's imagination is nothing more than the ability to rearrange the things he has observed in reality.) The best and briefest identification of man's power in regard to nature is Francis Bacon's "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." In this context, "to be commanded" means to be made to serve man's purposes; "to be obeyed" means that they cannot be served unless man discovers the properties of natural elements and uses them accordingly.

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

See also ARTISTIC CREATION; EXISTENCE; IMAGINATION; MATTER; METAPHYSlCAL vs. MAN-MADE.

Creators. Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received-hatred. The great creators-the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors-stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.

No creator was prompted by a desire to serve his brothers, for his brothers rejected the gift he offered and that gift destroyed the slothful routine of their lives. His truth was his only motive. His own truth, and his own work to achieve it in his own way. A symphony, a book, an engine, a philosophy, an airplane or a building-that was his goal and his life. Not those who heard, read, operated, believed, flew or inhabited the thing he had created. The creation, not its users. The creation, not the benefits others derived from it. The creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things and against all men.

His vision, his strength, his courage came from his own spirit. A man's spirit, however, is his self. That ent.i.ty which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.

The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power-that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing and no one. He lived for himself.

And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement.

["The Soul of an Individualist," FNl, 90; pb 77.]

We inherit the products of the thought of other men. We inherit the wheel. We make a cart. The cart becomes an automobile. The automobile becomes an airplane. But all through the process what we receive from others is only the end product of their thinking. The moving force is the creative faculty which takes this product as material, uses it and originates the next step. This creative faculty cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed. It belongs to single, individual men. That which it creates is the property of the creator. Men learn from one another. But all learning is only the exchange of material. No man can give another the capacity to think. Yet that capacity is our only means of survival.