Part 5 (2/2)
In this sense, a man of limited ability who rises by his own purposeful effort from unskilled laborer to shop-foreman, is a career-man in the proper, ethical meaning of the word-whi!e an intelligent man who stagnates in the role of a company president, using one-tenth of his potential ability, is a mere job-holder. And so is a parasite posturing in a job too big for his ability. It is not the degree of a man's ability that is ethically relevant in this issue, but the full, purposeful use of his ability.
[”From My 'Future File,' ” ARL, III, 26, 3.]
A career requires the ability to sustain a purpose over a long period of time, through many separate steps, choices, decisions, adding up to a steady progression toward a goal.... In the course of a career, every achievement is an end in itself and, simultaneously, a step toward further achievements.... In a career, there is no such thing as achieving too much: the more one does, the more one loves one's work.
[”Why I Like Stamp Collecting,” Minkus Stamp Journal, v. 6 (1971), no. 2, 2.]
PLAYBOY: Do you believe that women as well as men should organize their lives around work-and if so, what kind of work?
RAND: Of course. I believe that women are human beings. What is proper for a man is proper for a woman. The basic principles are the same. I would not attempt to prescribe what kind of work a man should do, and I would not attempt it in regard to women. There is no particular work which is specifically feminine. Women can choose their work according to their own purpose and premises in the same manner as men do.
PLAYBOY: In your opinion, is a woman immoral who chooses to devote herself to home and family instead of a career?
RAND: Not immoral-I would say she is impractical, because a home cannot be a full-time occupation, except when her children are young. However, if she wants a family and wants to make that her career, at least for a while, it would be proper-if she approaches it as a career, that is, if she studies the subject, if she defines the rules and principles by which she wants to bring up her children, if she approaches her task in an intellectual manner. It is a very responsible task and a very important one, but only when treated as a science, not as a mere emotional indulgence.
[”Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand,” pamphlet, 7.]
See also AMBITION ; PRODUCTIVENESS ; PURPOSE.
Causality. The law of causality is the law of ident.i.ty applied to action. All actions are caused by ent.i.ties. The nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the ent.i.ties that act; a thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature.... The law of ident.i.ty does not permit you to have your cake and eat it, too. The law of causality does not permit you to eat your cake before you have it.
[GS, FNI, 188; pb 151.]
To grasp the axiom that existence exists, means to grasp the fact that nature, i.e., the universe as a whole, cannot be created or annihilated, that it cannot come into or go out of existence. Whether its basic const.i.tuent elements are atoms, or subatomic particles, or some yet undiscovered forms of energy, it is not ruled by a consciousness or by will or by chance, but by the law of ident.i.ty. All the countless forms, motions, combinations and dissolutions of elements within the universe-from a floating speck of dust to the formation of a galaxy to the emergence of tife-are caused and determined by the ident.i.ties of the elements involved.
[”The Metaphysical vs. the Man-Made,” PWNI, 30; pb 25.]
Since things are what they are, since everything that exists possesses a specific ident.i.ty, nothing in reality can occur causelessly or by chance.
[Leonard Peikoff, ”The a.n.a.lytic-Synthetic Dichotomy,” IT'OE, 147.1 Choice ... is not chance. Volition is not an exception to the Law of Causality: it is a type of causation.
(Ibid., 149.]
See also CHANGE; FINAL CAUSATION; FREE WILL; IDENt.i.tY; MIRACLES; NECESSITY.
Censors.h.i.+p. ”Censors.h.i.+p” is a term pertaining only to governmental action. No private action is censors.h.i.+p. No private individual or agency can silence a man or suppress a publication; only the government can do so. The freedom of speech of private individuals includes the right not to agree, not to listen and not to finance one's own antagonists.
[”Man's Rights,” VO.S, 132; pb 98.]
Censors.h.i.+p, in its old-fas.h.i.+oned meaning, is a government edict that forbids the discussion of some specific subjects or ideas-such, for instance, as s.e.x, religion or criticism of government officials-an edict enforced by the government's scrutiny of all forms of communication prior to their public release. But for stifling the freedom of men's minds the modern method is much more potent; it rests on the power of non-objective law; it neither forbids nor permits anything; it never defines or specifies; it merely delivers men's lives, fortunes, careers, ambitions into the arbitrary power of a bureaucrat who can reward or punish at whim. It spares the bureaucrat the troublesome necessity of committing himself to rigid rules-and it places upon the victims the burden of discovering how to please him, with a fluid unknowable as their only guide.
No, a federal commissioner may never utter a single word for or against any program. But what do you suppose will happen if and when, with or without his knowledge, a third-a.s.sistant or a second cousin or just a nameless friend from Was.h.i.+ngton whispers to a television executive that the commissioner does not like producer X or does not approve of writer Y or takes a great interest in the career of starlet Z or is anxious to advance the cause of the United Nations?
[”Have Gun, Will Nudge,” TON, March 1962, 9.) For years, the collectivists have been propagating the notion that a private individual's refusal to finance an opponent is a violation of the opponent's right of free speech and an act of ”censors.h.i.+p.”
It is ”censors.h.i.+p,” they claim, if a newspaper refuses to employ or publish writers whose ideas are diametrically opposed to its policy.
It is ”censors.h.i.+p,” they claim, if businessmen refuse to advertise in a magazine that denounces, insults and smears them....
And then there is Newton N. Minow [then chairman of the Federal Communications Commission] who declares: ”There is censors.h.i.+p by ratings, by advertisers, by networks, by affiliates which reject programming offered to their areas.” It is the same Mr. Minow who threatens to revoke the license of any station that does not comply with his views on programming-and who claims that that is not censors.h.i.+p....
[This collectivist notion] means that the ability to provide the material tools for the expression of ideas deprives a man of the right to hold any ideas. It means that a publisher has to publish books he considers worthless, false or evil-that a TV sponsor has to finance commentators who choose to affront his convictions-that the owner of a newspaper must turn his editorial pages over to any young hooligan who clamors for the enslavement of the press. It means that one group of men acquires the ”right” to unlimited license-while another group is reduced to helpless irresponsibility.
[”Man's Rights,” VOS, I 31; pb 98.]
See also ”CONSERVATIVES” vs. ”LIBERALS”; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; FREE SPEECH; GOVERNMENT; GOVERNMENT GRANTS and SCHOLARs.h.i.+PS; PROPERTY RIGHTS.
Certainty. ”Certain” represents an a.s.sessment of the evidence for a conclusion; it is usually contrasted with two other broad types of a.s.sessment : ”possible” and ”probable.” ...
Idea X is ”certain” if, in a given context of knowledge, the evidence for X is conclusive. In such a context, all the evidence supports X and there is no evidence to support any alternative....
You cannot challenge a claim to certainty by means of an arbitrary declaration of a counter-possibility, ... you cannot manufacture possibilities without evidence....
All the main attacks on certainty depend on evading its contextual character....
The alternative is not to feign omniscience, erecting every discovery into an out-of-context absolute, or to embrace skepticism and claim that knowledge is impossible. Both these policies accept omniscience as the standard: the dogmatists pretend to have it, the skeptics bemoan their lack of it. The rational policy is to discard the very notion of omniscience. Knowledge is contextuat-it is knowledge, it is valid, contextually.
[Leonard Peikoff, ”The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), Lecture 6.]
Infallibility is not a precondition of knowing what one does know, of firmness in one's convictions, and of loyalty to one's values.
[”The Shanghai Gesture.” ARL, 1, 14, 3.]
”Don't be so sure-n.o.body can be certain of anything.” Bertrand Russell's gibberish to the contrary notwithstanding, that p.r.o.nouncement includes itself; therefore, one cannot be sure that one cannot be sure of anything. The p.r.o.nouncement means that no knowledge of any kind is possible to man, i.e., that man is not conscious. Furthermore, if one tried to accept that catch phrase, one would find that its second part contradicts its first: if n.o.body can be certain of anything, then everybody can be certain of everything he pteases-since it cannot be refuted, and he can claim he is not certain he is certain (which is the purpose of that notion).
[”Philosophical Detection,” PWNI, 17; pb 14.]
See also ABSOLUTES ; AGNOSTICISM; ARBITRARY; AXIOMS; CONTEXT;KNOWLEDGE; ”OPEN MIND” and ”CLOSED MIND”; POSSIBLE; REASON.
Chance. Since things are what they are, since everything that exists possesses a specific ident.i.ty, nothing in reality can occur causelessly or by chance.
[Leonard Peikoff, ”The a.n.a.lytic-Synthetic Dichotomy,” ILOF, 147.]
Choice, however, is not chance. Volition is not an exception to the I.aw of Causality: it is a type of causation.
[Ibid., 149.]
See also CAUSALITY; FREE WILL; IDENt.i.tY; POSSIBLE.
Change. They proclaim that there is no law of ident.i.ty, that nothing exists but change, and blank out the fact that change presupposes the concepts of what changes, from what and to what, that without the law of ident.i.ty no such concept as ”change” is possible.
[GS, FNI, 192; pb 154.]
See also CAUSALITY; ENt.i.tY; IDENt.i.tY; MOTION; ”STOLEN CONCEPT,” .. FALLACY of Character. ”Character” means a man's nature or ident.i.ty insofar as this is shaped by the moral values he accepts and automatizes. By ”moral values” I mean values which are volitionally chosen, and which are fundamental, i.e., shape the whole course of a man's action, not merely a specialized, delimited area of his life.... So a man's character is, in effect, his moral essence-his self-made ident.i.ty as expressed in the principles he lives by.
[Leonard Peikoff, ”The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), question period, Lecture 2.]
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