Part 19 (2/2)
Therefore, we can draw a clear-cut division between the rights of one man and those of another. It is an objective division-not subject to differences of opinion, nor to majority decision, nor to the arbitrary decree of society. No man has the right to initiate the useof physical force against another man.
[ Ibid., 6.]
There is no such thing as ”a right to a job”-there is only the right of free trade, that is: a man's right to take a job if another man chooses to hire him. There is no ”right to a home,” only the right of free trade: the right to build a home or to buy it. There are no ”rights to a 'fair' wage or a 'fair' price” if no one chooses to pay it, to hire a man or to buy his product. There are no ”rights of consumers” to milk, shoes, movies or champagne if no producers choose to manufacture such items (there is only the right to manufacture them oneself). There are no ”rights” of special groups, there are no ”rights of farmers, of workers, of businessmen, of employees, of employers, of the old, of the young, of the unborn.” There are only the Rights of Man-rights possessed by every individual man and by all men as individuals.
[”Man's Rights,” VOS, 130; pb 97.]
If some men are ent.i.tled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.
Any alleged ”right” of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.
No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as ”the right to enslave.”
[Ibid., 129; pb 96.]
The end does not justify the means. No one's rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others.
[”The Cas.h.i.+ng-In: The Student 'Rebellion,' ” CUI, 256.]
Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression ”individual rights” is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today's intellectual chaos). But the expression ”collective rights” is a contradiction in terms.
[”Collectivized 'Rights,' ” VOS, 136; pb 101.]
A group, as such, has no rights. A man can neither acquire new rights by joining a group nor lose the rights which he does possess. The principle of individual rights is the only moral base of all groups or a.s.sociations.
[Ibid., 137; pb 102.]
Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).
[Ibid., 140; pb 104.]
When individual rights are abrogated, there is no way to determine who is ent.i.tled to what; there is no way to determine the justice of anyone's claims, desires, or interests. The criterion, therefore, reverts to the tribal concept of: one's wishes are limited only by the power of one's gang. In order to survive under such a system, men have no choice but to fear, hate, and destroy one another; it is a system of underground plotting, of secret conspiracies, of deals, favors, betrayals, and sudden, b.l.o.o.d.y coups.
[”The Roots of War,” CUI, 37.]
One of the notions used by all sides to justify the draft, is that ”rights impose obligations. Obligations, to whom?-and imposed, by whom? Ideologically, that notion is worse than the evil it attempts to justify: it implies that rights are a gift from the state, and that a man has to buy them by offering something (his life) in return. Logically, that notion is a contradiction: since the only proper function of a government is to protect man's rights, it cannot claim t.i.tle to his life in exchange for that protection.
The only ”obligation” involved in individual rights is an obligation imposed, not by the state, but by the nature of reality (i.e., by the law of ident.i.ty): consistency, which, in this case, means the obligation to respect the rights of others, if one wishes one's own rights to be recognized and protected.
[”The Wreckage of the Consensus,” CUI, 227.]
An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).
[”Of Living Death,” TO, Oct. 1968, 6.]
The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few men grasp it fully-and two hundred years have not been enough for other countries to understand it. But this is the concept to which we owe our lives-the concept which made it possible for us to bring into reality everything of value that any of us did or will achieve or experience.
[”A Nation's Unity,” ARL, II,2,3.]
See also AMERICA; CAPITALISM; COLLECTIVISM; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; FREEDOM; HUMAN RIGHTS and PROPERTY RIGHTS; INALIENABILITY; INDIVIDUALISM; LIFE, RIGHT to; PERMISSION (vs. RIGHTS); PHYSICAL FORCE; POLITICS; PRINCIPLES; PROPERTY RIGHTS; PURSUIT of HAPPINESS, RIGHT to; RETALIATORY FORCE; SELF-DEFENSE; STATISM; TYRANNY.
Individualism. Individualism regards man-every man-as an independent, sovereign ent.i.ty who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of a.s.sociation, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights-and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members.
[”Racism,” VOS, 176; pb 129.]
Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: ”I'll do as I please at everybody else's expense.” An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man-his own and those of others.
An individualist is a man who says: ”I will not run anyone's life-nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule nor be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave.will not sacrifice myself to anyone-nor sacrifice anyone to myself.”
[”Textbook of Americanism,” pamphlet, 6.]
The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act-the process of reason-must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.
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.
[”The Soul of an Individualist,” FNI, 91; pb 78.]
Mankind is not an ent.i.ty, an organism, or a coral bush. The ent.i.ty involved in production and trade is man. It is with the study of man- not of the loose aggregate known as a ”community”-that any science of the humanities has to begin....
A great deal may be learned about society by studying man; but this process cannot be reversed: nothing can be learned about man by studying society-by studying the inter-relations.h.i.+ps of ent.i.ties one has never identified or defined.
[”What Is Capitalism?” CUI, 15.]
See also CAPITALISM; COLLECTIVISM; ”COMMON GOOD”; COOPERATION; FREE WILL; FREEDOM; INDEPENDENCE; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH; REASON; SACRIFICE; SELFISHNESS; SOCIAL SYSTEM; SOCIETY.
Induction and Deduction. The process of forming and applying concepts contains the essential pattern of two fundamental methods of cognition: induction and deduction.
The process of observing the facts of reality and of integrating them into concepts is, in essence, a process of induction. The process of subsuming new instances under a known concept is, in essence, a process of deduction.
[ITOE, 36.].
See also CONCEPT-FORMATION; LOGIC; PROPOSITIONS; RATIONALISM vs. EMPIRICISM.
Infinity. There is a use of [the concept) ”infinity” which is valid, as Aristotle observed, and that is the mathematical use. It is valid only when used to indicate a potentiality, never an actuality. Take the number series as an example. You can say it is infinite in the sense that, no matter how many numbers you count, there is always another number. You can always keep on counting; there's no end. In that sense it is infinite-as a potential. But notice that, actually, however many numbers you count, wherever you stop, you only reached that point, you only got so far.... That's Aristotle's point that the actual is always finite. Infinity exists only in the form of the ability of certain series to be extended indefinitely; but however much they are extended, in actual fact, wherever you stop it is finite.
[Leonard Peikoff, ”The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), question period, Lecture 3.]
An arithmetical sequence extends into infinity, without implying that infinity actually exists; such extension means only that whatever number of units does exist, it is to be included in the same sequence.
[ITOE, 22.].
Every unit of length, no matter how small, has some specific extension; every unit of time,' no matter how small, has some specific duration. The idea of an infinitely small amount of length or temporal duration has validity only as a mathematical device useful for making certain calculations, not as a description of components of reality. Reality does not contain either points or instants (in the mathematical sense). By a.n.a.logy: the average family has 2.2 children, but no actual family has 2.2 children; the ”average family” exists only as a mathematical device.
[Harry Binsw.a.n.ger, ”Q & A Department: Ident.i.ty and Motion,” TOF, Dec. 1981, 13.]
See also IDENt.i.tY; MATHEMATICS; NUMBERS; UNIVERSE.
Inflation. ”Inflation” is defined in the dictionary as ”undue expansion or increase of the currency of a country, esp. by the issuing of paper money not redeemable in specie” (Random House Dictionary). It is interesting to note that the word ”inflated” is defined as ”distended with air or gas; swollen.”
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