Part 18 (1/2)
This is the fallacy inherent in hedonism-in any variant of ethical hedonism, personal or social, individual or collective. ”Happiness” can properly be the purpose of ethics, but not the standard. The task of ethics is to define man's proper code of values and thus to give him the means of achieving happiness. To declare, as the ethical hedonists do, that ”the proper value is whatever gives you pleasure” is to declare that ”the proper value is whatever you happen to value”-which is an act of intellectual and philosophical abdication, an act which merely proclaims the futility of ethics and invites all men to play it deuces wild.
[”The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS. 26; pb 29.]
In practice, men have no way of obeying the tenets of hedonism, except by taking their already formed feelings-their desires and aversions, their loves and fears-as the given, as irreducible primaries the satisfaction of which is the purpose of morality, regardless of whether the value judgments that caused these feelings are rational or irrational, consistent or contradictory, consonant with reality or in flagrant defiance of it.
Objectivism holds that such a policy is suicidal; that if man is to survive, he needs the guidance of an objective and rational morality, a code of values based on and derived from man's nature as a specific type of living organism, and the nature of the universe in which he lives. Objectivism rejects any subjectivist ethics that begins, not with facts, but with: ”I (we, they) wish...” Which means: it rejects hedonism of any variety.
[Leonard Peikoff, ”Ethical Hedonism,” TON, Feb. 1962.7.]
See also EMOTIONS; HAPPINESS; PLEASURE and PAIN; UTILITARIANISM; STANDARD of VALUE; SUBJECTIVISM.
Hierarchy of Knowledge. Concepts have a hierarchical structure, i.e., ... the higher, more complex abstractions are derived from the simpler, basic ones (starting with the concepts of perceptually given concretes).
[ITOE, 41.].
[There is a] long conceptual chain that starts from simple, ostensive definitions and rises to higher and still higher concepts, forming a hierarchical structure of knowledge so complex that no electronic computer could approach it. It is by means of such chains that man has to acquire and retain his knowledge of reality.
[”The Psycho-Epistemology of Art,” RM. 20; pb 18.]
Starting from the base of conceptual deveiopment-from the concepts that identify perceptual concretes-the process of cognition moves in two interacting directions: toward more extensive and more intensive knowledge, toward wider integrations and more precise differentiations. Following the process and in accordance with cognitive evidence, earlier-formed concepts are integrated into wider ones or subdivided into narrower ones.
[ITOE, 24.].
Observe that the concept ”furniture” is an abstraction one step further removed from perceptual reality than any of its const.i.tuent concepts. ”Table” is an abstraction, since it designates any table, but its meaning can be conveyed simply by pointing to one or two perceptual objects. There is no such perceptual object as ”furniture”; there are only tables, chairs, beds, etc. The meaning of ”furniture” cannot be grasped unless one has first grasped the meaning of its const.i.tuent concepts; these are its link to reality. (On the lower levels of an unlimited conceptual chain, this is an ill.u.s.tration of the hierarchical structure of concepts.) [Ibid., 28.]
The first concepts man forms are concepts of ent.i.ties-since ent.i.ties are the only primary existents. (Attributes cannot exist by themselves, they are merely the characteristics of ent.i.ties; motions are motions of ent.i.ties; relations.h.i.+ps are relations.h.i.+ps among ent.i.ties.) [Ibid., 18.]
Since the definition of a concept is formulated in terms of other concepts, it enables man, not only to identify and retain a concept, but also to establish the relations.h.i.+ps, the hierarchy, the integration of all his concepts and thus the integration of his knowledge. Definitions preserve, not the chronological order in which a given man may have learned concepts, but the logical order of their hierarchical interdependence.
[Ibid., 52.]
To know the exact meaning of the concepts one is using, one must know their correct definitions, one must be able to retrace the specific (logical, not chronological) steps by which they were formed, and one must be able to demonstrate their connection to their base in perceptual reality.
[Ibid., 67.]
See also AXlOMATlC CONCEPTS; AXIOMS; GENUS and SPECIES; IRREDUCIBLE PRIMARIES; KNOWLEDGE; LOGIC; PERCEPTION; ”STOLEN CONCEPT,” FALLACY of; TABULA RASA.
History. Contrary to the prevalent views of today's alleged scholars, history is not an unintelligible chaos ruled by chance and whim-historical trends can be predicted, and changed-men are not helpless, blind, doomed creatures carried to destruction by incomprehensible forces beyond their control.
There is only one power that determines the course of history, just as it determines the course of every individual life: the power of man's rational faculty-the power of ideas. If you know a man's convictions, you can predict his actions. If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society, you can predict its course. But convictions and philosophy are matters open to man's choice.
There is no fatalistic, predetermined historical necessity. Atlas Shrugged is not a prophecy of our unavoidable destruction, but a manifesto of our power to avoid it, if we choose to change our course.
It is the philosophy of the mysticism-altruism-collectivism axis that has brought us to our present state and is carrying us toward a finale such as that of the society presented in Atlas Shrugged. It is only the philosophy of the reason-individualism-capitalism axis that can save us and carry us, instead, toward the Atlantis projected in the last two pages of my novel.
[”Is Atlas Shrugging?” CUI, 165.]
Just as a man's actions are preceded and determined by some form of idea in his mind, so a society's existential conditions are preceded and determined by the ascendancy of a certain philosophy among those whose job is to deal with ideas. The events of any given period of history are the result of the thinking of the preceding period. The nineteenth century-with its political freedom, science, industry, business, trade, all the necessary conditions of material progress-was the result and the last achievement of the intellectual power released by the Renaissance. The men engaged in those activities were still riding on the remnants of an Aristotelian influence in philosophy, particularly on an Aristotelian epistemology (more implicitly than explicitly).
[”For the New Intellectual,” FNI, 27; pb 28.]
History is made by minorities-or, more precisely, history is made by intellectual movements, which are created by minorities. Who belongs to these minorities? Anyone who is able and willing actively to concern himself with intellectual issues. Here, it is not quant.i.ty, but quality that counts (the quality-and consistency-of the ideas one is advocating).
[”What Can One Do?” PWNI, 245; pb 200.]
The battle of human history is fought and determined by those who are predominantly consistent, those who, for good or evil, are committed to and motivated by their chosen psycho-epistemology and its corollary view of existence.
[”For the New Intellectual,” FNI, 18; pb 21.]
See also ANCIENT GREECE; CIVILIZATION; CULTURE; DARK AGES; ENLIGHTENMENT, AGE of; INTELLECTUALS; MIDDLE AGES; NINETEENTH CENTURY; PHILOSOPHY; RENAISSANCE; TRADITION.
Honesty. Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud-that an attempt to gain a value by deceiving the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality, where you become a p.a.w.n of their blindness, a slave of their non-thinking and their evasions, while their intelligence, their rationality, their perceptiveness becomes the enemies you have to dread and flee-that you do not care to live as a dependent, least of all a dependent on the stupidity of others, or as a fool whose source of values is the fools he succeeds in footing-that honesty is not a social duty, not a sacrifice for the sake of others, but the most profoundly selfish virtue man can practice: his refusal to sacrifice the reality of his own existence to the deluded consciousness of others.
[GS, FNI, 158; pb 129.]
Self-esteem is reliance on one's power to think. It cannot be replaced by one's power to deceive. The self-confidence of a scientist and the self-confidence of a con man are not interchangeable states, and do not come from the same psychological universe. The success of a man who deals with reality augments his self-confidence. The success of a con man augments his panic.
The intellectual con man has only one defense against panic: the momentary relief he finds by succeeding at further and further frauds.
[”The Comprachicos,” NL, 181.]
The mark of an honest man ... is that he means what he says and knows what he means.
['Textbook of Americanism,” 12.]
Intellectual honesty consists in taking ideas seriously. To take ideas seriously means that you intend to live by, to practice, any idea you accept as true.
[”Philosophical Detection,” PWNI, 19; pb 16.]
Intellectual honesty [involves] knowing what one does know, constantly expanding one's knowledge, and never evading or failing to correct a contradiction. This means: the development of an active mind as a permanent attribute.
[”What Can One Do?” PWNI, 247; pb 201.]
See also EVASION; INDEPENDENCE; INTEGRITY; MORALITY; RATIONALITY; TRUTH; VIRTUE.
Honor. Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.
[”Philosophy: Who Needs It,” PWNI, 12; pb 10.]
See also MORALITY; PRIDE; SELF-ESTEEM; VALUES.
Hostility. Caused by a profound self-doubt, self-condemnation and fear, hostility is a type of projection that directs toward other people the hatred which the hostile person feels toward himself. Blaming the evil of others for his own shortcomings, he feels a chronic need to justify himself by demonstrating their evil, by seeking it, by hunting for it-and by inventing it.
[”The Psychology of Psychologizing,” TO, March 1971, 3.]
See also AMORALISM; EMOTIONS; ENVYlHATRED of the GOOD for BEING the GOOD; EVASION.
Human Rights and Property Rights. The modern mystics of muscle who offer you the fraudulent alternative of ”human rights” versus ”property rights,” as if one could exist without the other, are making a last, grotesque attempt to revive the doctrine of soul versus body. Only a ghost can exist without material property; only a slave can work with no right to the product of his effort. The doctrine that ”human rights” are superior to ”property rights” simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others; since the competent have nothing to gain from the incompetent, it means the right of the incompetent to own their betters and to use them as productive cattle. Whoever regards this as human and right, has no right to the t.i.tle of ”human.”
[GS, FNI, 230; pb 183.]