Part 17 (2/2)
In these conditions, a scientist is morally justified in accepting government grants_so long as he opposes forms of welfare statism.As in case of scholars.h.i.+p-recipients, a scientist does not have to add self-martyrdom to the injustices he suffers.
[”The Question of Scholars.h.i.+ps,” TO, June 1966, II.]
See also ALTRUISM; CENSORs.h.i.+P; CHARITY; FREE SPEECH; WEL-PARE STATE.
Grammar. Grammar is a science dealing with the formulation of the proper methods of verbal expression and communication, i.e., the methods of organizing words (concepts) into sentences. Grammar pertains to the actions of consciousness, and involves a number of special concepts-such as conjunctions, which are concepts denoting relations.h.i.+ps among thoughts (”and,” ”but,” ”or,” etc.). These concepts are formed by retaining the distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics of the relations.h.i.+p and omitting the particular thoughts involved. [ITOE, 48.]
[ITOE, 48.].
Adverbs are concepts of the characteristics of motion (or action); they are formed by specifying a characteristic and omitting the measurements of the motion and of the ent.i.ties invoked-e.g., ”rapidly,” which may be applied to ”walking” or ”swimming” or ”speaking,” etc., with the measurement of what is ”rapid” left open and depending, in any given case, on the type of motion involved.
Prepositions are concepts of relations.h.i.+ps, predominantly of spatial or temporal relations.h.i.+ps, among existents; they are formed by specifying the relations.h.i.+p and omitting the measurements of the existents and of the s.p.a.ce or time involved-e.g., ”on,” ”in,” ”above,” ”after,” etc.
Adjectives are concepts of attributes or of characteristics. p.r.o.nouns belong to the category of concepts of ent.i.ties. Conjunctions. are concepts of relations.h.i.+ps among thoughts, and belong to the category of concepts of consciousness.
[Ibid.,20.J The purpose of conjunctions is verbal economy: they serve to integrate and/or condense the content of certain thoughts.
For instance, the word ”and” serves to integrate a number of facts into one thought. If one says: ”Smith, Jones and Brown are walking,” the ”and” indicates that the observation ”are walking” applies to the three individuals named. Is there an object in reality corresponding to the word ”and”? No. Is there a fact in reality corresponding to the word ”and”? Yes. The fact is that three men are walking-and that the word ”and” integrates into one thought a fact which otherwise would have to be expressed by: ”Smith is walking. Jones is walking. Brown is walking.”
The word ”but” serves to indicate an exception to or a contradiction of the possible implications of a given thought. If one says: ”She is beautiful, but dumb,” the ”but” serves to condense the following thoughts: ”This girl is beautiful. Beauty is a positive attribute, a value. Before you conclude that this girl is valuable, you must consider also her negative attribute: she is dumb.” If one says: ”I work every day, but not on Sunday,” the ”but” indicates an exception and condenses the following: ”I work on Monday. I work on Tuesday. (And so on, four more times.) My activity on Sunday is different: I do not work on Sunday.”
(These examples are for the benefit of those victims of modern philosophy who are taught by Linguistic a.n.a.lysis that there is no way to derive conjunctions from experience, i.e., from the facts of reality.) [Ibid., 48.]
See also COMMUNICATION; CONCEPTS; LANGUAGE; LINGUISTIC a.n.a.lYSIS; PROPOSITIONS; WORDS.
Greece. See Ancient Greece.
Guild Socialism. The particulai form of economic organization, which is becoming more and more apparent in this country, as an outgrowth of the power of pressure groups, is one of the worst variants of statism: guild socialism. Guild socialism robs the talented young of their future-by freezing men into professional castes under rigid rules. It represents an open embodiment of the basic motive of most statists, though they usually prefer not to confess it: the entrenchment and protection of mediocrity from abler compet.i.tors, the shackling of the men of superior ability down to the mean average of their professions. That theory is not too popular among socialists (though it has its advocates) -but the most famous instance of its large-scale practice was Fascist Italy.
In the 1930's, a few perceptive men said that Roosevelt's New Deal was a form of guild socialism and that it was closer to Mussolini's system than to any other. They were ignored. Today, the evidence is unmistakable.
It was also said that if fascism ever came to the United States, it would come disguised as socialism.
[”The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus,” CUI, 218.]
The [student] rebels' notion that universities should be run by students and faculties was an open, explicit a.s.sault on the right attacked implicitly by all their other notions: the right of private property. And of all the various statist-collectivist systems, the one they chose as their goal is, politico-economically, the least practical; intellectually, the least defensible; morally, the most shameful: guild socialism.
Guild socialism is a system that abolishes the exercise of individual ability by chaining men into groups according to their line of work, and delivering the work into the group's power, as its exclusive domain, with the group dictating the rules, standards, and practices of how the work is to be done and who shall or shall not do it.
Guild socialism is the concrete-bound, routine-bound mentality of a savage, elevated into a social theory. Just as a tribe of savages seizes a piece of jungle territory and claims it as a monopoly by reason of the fact of being there-so guild socialism grants a monopoly, not on a jungle forest or waterhole, but on a factory or a university-not by reason of a man's ability, achievement, or even ”public service,” but by reason of the fact that he is there.
Just as savages have no concept of causes or consequences, of past or future, and no concept of efficacy beyond the muscular power of their tribe-so guild socialists, finding themselves in the midst of an industrial civilization, regard its inst.i.tutions as phenomena of nature and see no reason why the gang should not seize them.
If there is any one proof of a man's incompetence, it is the stagnant mentality of a worker (or of a professor) who, doing some small, routine job in a vast undertaking, does not care to look beyond the lever of a machine (or the lectern of a cla.s.sroom), does not choose to know how the machine (or the cla.s.sroom) got there or what makes his job possible, and proclaims that the management of the undertaking is parasitical and unnecessary. Managerial work-the organization and integration of human effort into purposeful, large-scale, long-range activities-is. in the realm of action, what man's conceptual faculty is in the realm of cognition. It is beyond the grasp and, therefore, is the first target of the self-arrested, sensory-perceptual mentality.
If there is any one way to confess one's own mediocrity, it is the willingness to place one's work in the absolute power of a group, particularly a group of one's professional colleagues. Of any forms of tyranny, this is the worst; it is directed against a single human attribute: the mind -and against a single enemy: the innovator. The innovator, by definition, is the man who challenges the established practices of his profession. To grant a professional monopoly to any group, is to sacrifice human ability and abolish progress; to advocate such a monopoly, is to confess that one has nothing to sacrifice.
Guild socialism is the rule of, by, and for mediocrity. Its cause is a society's intellectual collapse; its consequence is a quagmire of stagnation ; its historical example is the guild system of the Middle Ages (or, in modern times, the fascist system of Italy under Mussolini).
[”The Cas.h.i.+ng-in: The Student 'Rebellion,' ” CUI, 261.]
What makes guild socialism cruder than (but not different from) most statist-collectivist theories is the fact that it represents the other, the usually unmentioned, side of altruism: it is the voice, not of the givers, but of the receivers. While most altruistic theorists proclaim ”the common good” as their justification, advocate self-sacrificial service to the ”community.” and keep silent about the exact nature or ident.i.ty of the recipients of sacrifices-guild socialists brazenly declare themselves to he the recipients and present their claims to the community, demanding its services. If they want a monopoly on a given profession, they claim, the rest of the community must give up the right to practice it. If they want a university. they claim, the community must provide it.
[Ibid., 263.]
See also ALTRUISM; COLLECTIVISM; FASCISMIn.a.z.iSM; MEDIOCRITY; NEW LEFT; SOCIALISM; STATISM.
H.
Happiness. Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values. A morality that dares to tell you to find happiness in the renunciation of your happiness-to value the failure of your values-is an insolent negation of morality. A doctrine that gives you, as an ideal, the role of a sacrificial animal seeking slaughter on the altars of others, is giving you death as your standard. By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man-every man-is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose.
But neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive in any random manner, but will perish unless he lives as his nature requires, so he is free to seek his happiness in any mindless fraud, but the torture of frustration is all he will find, unless he seeks the happiness proper to man. The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.
[GS, FNI, 150; pb 123.]
Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy -a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind's fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.
Just as I support my life, neither by robbery nor alms, but by my own effort, so I do not seek to derive my happiness from the injury or the favor of others, but earn it by my own achievement. Just as I do not consider the pleasure of others as the goal of my life, so I do not consider my pleasure as the goal of the lives of others. Just as there are no contradictions in my values and no conflicts among my desires-so there are no victims and no conflicts of interest among rational men, men who do not desire the unearned and do not view one another with a cannibal's l.u.s.t, men who neither make sacrifices nor accept them.
[Ibid., 162; pb 132.]
In psychological terms, the issue of man's survival does not confront his consciousness as an issue of ”life or death,” but as an issue of ”happiness or suffering.” Happiness is the successful state of life, suffering is the warning signal of failure, of death. Just as the pleasure-pain mechanism of man's body is an automatic indicator of his body's welfare or injury, a barometer of its basic alternative, life or death-so the emotional mechanism of man's consciousness is geared to perform the same function, as a barometer that registers the same alternative by means of two basic emotions: joy or suffering. Emotions are the automatic results of man's value judgments integrated by his subconscious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers man's values or threatens them, that which is for him or against him-Hghtning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss.
But while the standard of value operating the physical pleasure-pain mechanism of man's body is automatic and innate, determined by the nature of his body-the standard of value operating his emotional mechanism, is not. Since man has no automatic knowledge, he can have no automatic values; since he has no innate ideas, he can have no innate value judgments.
[”The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS. 23; pb 27.]
Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values. If a man values productive work, his happiness is the measure of his success in the service of his life. But if a man values destruction, like a s.a.d.i.s.t-or self-torture, like a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t-or life beyond the grave, like a mystic-or mindless ”kicks,” like the driver of a hotrod car-his alleged happiness is the measure of his success in the service of his own destruction. It must be added that the emotional state of all those irrationalists cannot be properly designated as happiness or even as pleasure: it is merely a moment's relief from their chronic state of terror.
Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive by any random means, as a parasite, a moocher or a looter, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment-so he is free to seek his happiness in any irrational fraud, any whim, any delusion, any mindless escape from reality, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment nor to escape the consequences.
[Ibid., 24; pb 28.]
The maintenance of life and the pursuit of happiness are not two separate issues. To hold one's own life as one's ultimate value, and one's own happiness as one's highest purpose are two aspects of the same achievement. Existentially, the activity of pursuing rational goals is the activity of maintaining one's life; psychologically, its result, reward and concomitant is an emotional state of happiness. It is by experiencing happiness that one lives one's life, in any hour, year or the whole of it. And when one experiences the kind of pure happiness that is an end in itself-the kind that makes one think: ”This is worth living for”-what one is greeting and affirming in emotional terms is the metaphysical fact that life is an end in itself.
But the relations.h.i.+p of cause to effect cannot be reversed. It is only by accepting ”man's life” as one's primary and by pursuing the rational values it requires that one can achieve happiness-not by taking ”happiness” as some undefined, irreducible primary and then attempting to live by its guidance. If you achieve that which is the good by a rational standard of value, it will necessarily make you happy; but that which makes you happy, by some undefined emotional standard, is not necessarily the good. To take ”whatever makes one happy” as a guide to action means: to be guided by nothing but one's emotional whims. Emotions are not tools of cognition; to be guided by whims-by desires whose source, nature and meaning one does not know-is to turn oneself into a blind robot, operated by unknowable demons (by one's stale evasions), a robot knocking its stagnant brains out against the walls of reality which it refuses to see.
[Ibid., 25; pb 29.]
See also BENEVOLENT UNIVERSE PREMISE; EMOTIONS; HEDONISM; LIFE; PLEASURE AND PAIN; SUFFERING; ULTIMATE VALUE; VALUES; WHIMSIWHIM-WORs.h.i.+P.
Hatred of the Good for Being the Good. See EnvylHatred of the Good for Being the Good..
Hedonism. I am profoundly opposed to the philosophy of hedonism. Hedonism is the doctrine which holds that the good is whatever gives you pleasure and, therefore, pleasure is the standard of morality. Objectivism holds that the good must be defined by a rational standard of value, that,pleasure is not a first cause, but only a consequence, that only the pleasure which proceeds from a rational value judgment can be regarded as moral, that pleasure, as such, is not a guide to action nor a standard of morality. To say that pleasure should be the standard of morality simply means that whichever values you happen to have chosen, consciously or subconsciously, rationally or irrationally, are right and moral. This means that you are to be guided by chance feelings, emotions and whims, not by your mind. My philosophy is the opposite of hedonism. I hold that one cannot achieve happiness by random, arbitrary or subjective means. One can achieve happiness only on the basis of rational values. By rational values, I do not mean anything that a man may arbitrarily or blindly declare to be rational. It is the province of morality, of the science of ethics, to define for men what is a national standard and what are the rational values to pursue.
[”Playboy's, Interview with Ayn Rand.” pamphlet. 8.]
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