Part 9 (2/2)
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.
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