Part 21 (1/2)
Investment. If a man does not consume his goods at once, but saves them for the future, whether he wants to enlarge his production or to live on his savings (which he holds in the form of money)-in either case, he is counting on the fact that he will be able to exchange his money for the things he needs, when and as he needs them. This means that he is relying on a continuous process of production-which requires an uninterrupted flow of goods saved to fuel further and further production. This How is ”investment capital,” the stock seed of industry. When a rich man lends money to others, what he lends to them is the goods which he has not consumed.
This is the meaning of the concept ”investment.” If you have wondered how one can start producing, when nature requires time paid in advance, this is the beneficent process that enables men to do it: a successful man lends his goods to a promising beginner (or to any reputable producer)-in exchange for the payment of interest. The payment is for the risk he is taking: nature does not guarantee man's success, neither on a farm nor in a factory. If the venture fails, it means that the goods have been consumed without a productive return, so the investor loses his money; if the venture succeeds, the producer pays the interest out of the new goods, the profits, which the investment enabled him to make.
Observe, and bear in mind above all else, that this process applies only to financing the needs of production, not of consumption-and that its success rests on the investor's judgment of men's productive ability, not on his compa.s.sion for their feelings, hopes or dreams.
[”Egalitarianism and Inflation,” PWNI, 159; pb 131.]
See also CONSUMPTION; CREDIT; PRODUCTION; SAVINGS.
Irrationalism. Reason is the faculty that identifies, in conceptual terms, the material provided by man's senses. ”Irrationalism” is the doctrine that reason is not a valid means of knowledge or a proper guide to action.
[Leonard Peikoff, OP, 41 ; pb 47.]
See also IRRATIONALITY; MYSTICISM; REASON; SKEPTICISM.
Irrationality. Man's basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know. Irrationality is the rejection of man's means of survival and, therefore, a commitment to a course of blind destruction; that which is anti-mind, is anti-life.
[”The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 20; pb 25.]
To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.
[GS, FNl, 156; pb 127.]
The irrational is the impossible; it is that which contradicts the facts of reality; facts cannot be altered by a wish, but they can destroy the wisher.
[”The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 24; pb 28.]
Irrationality is a state of default, the state of an unachieved human stature. When men do not choose to reach the conceptual level, their consciousness has no recourse but to its automatic, perceptual, semi-animal functions.
[”For the New Intellectual,” FNI, 19; pb 21.]
See also CONTRADICTIONS; EMOTIONS; EVASION; EVIL; FOCUS; RATIONALITY; REASON; WHIMS/WHIM-WORs.h.i.+P.
Irreducible Primaries. An irreducible primary is a fact which cannot be a.n.a.lyzed (i.e., broken into components) or derived from antecedent facts.
[”Philosophical Detection,” PWNI, 15; pb 13.]
See also AXIOMATIC CONCEPTS; AXIOMS; COROLLARIES; HIERARCHY of KNOWLEDGE; OSTENSIVE DEFINITION; SELF-EVIDENT.
”Is”-”Ought” Dichotomy. It is only an ultimate goal, and end in itself, that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept of ”value” is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of ”life.” To speak of ”value” as apart from ”life” is worse than a contradiction in terms. ”It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible.”
In answer to those philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living ent.i.ties exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living ent.i.ty is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living ent.i.ty is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the issue of the relation between ”is” and ”ought.”
[”The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 7; pb 17.]
See also GOAL-DIRECTED ACTION; GOOD, the; LIFE; MORALITY; STANDARD of VALUE; ULTIMATE VALUE; VALUES.
”Isolationism.” A large-scale instance [of political smear-tactics], in the 1930's, was the introduction of the word ”isolationism” into our political vocabulary. It was a derogatory term, suggesting something evil, and it had no clear, explicit definition. It was used to convey two meanings: one alleged, the other real-and to d.a.m.n both.
The alleged meaning was defined approximately like this: ”Isolationism is the att.i.tude of a person who is interested only in his own country and is not concerned with the rest of the world.” The real meaning was: ”Patriotism and national self-interest.”
What, exactly, is ”concern with the rest of the world”? Since n.o.body did or could maintain the position that the state of the world is of no concern to this country, the term ”isolationism” was a straw man used to misrepresent the position of those who were concerned with this country's interests. The concept of patriotism was replaced by the term ”isolationism” and vanished from public discussion.
The number of distinguished patriotic leaders smeared, silenced, and eliminated by that tag would be hard to compute. Then, by a gradual, imperceptible process, the real purpose of the tag took over: the concept of ”concern” was switched into ”selfless concern.” The ultimate result was a view of foreign policy which is wrecking the United States to this day: the suicidal view that our foreign policy must be guided, not by considerations of national self-interest, but by concern for the interests and welfare of the world, that is, of all countries except our own.
[” 'Extremism,' or The Art of Smearing,” CUI, 175.]
Observe the double-standard switch of the anti-concept of ”isolationism.” The same intellectual groups (and even some of the same aging individuals) who coined that anti-concept in World War II-and used it to denounce any patriotic opponent of America's self-immolation-the same groups who screamed that it was our duty to save the world (when the enemy was Germany or Italy or fascism), are now rabid isolationists who denounce any U.S. concern with countries fighting for freedom, when the enemy is communism and Soviet Russia.
[”The Lessons of Vietnam,” ARL, III, 24, 4.]
See also ”ANTI-CONCEPTS”; COMMUNISM; FOREIGN POLlCY; SOVIET RUSSIA.
J.
Judgment. See Moral Judgment.
Justice. Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification-that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly, that just as you do not pay a higher price for a rusty chunk of sc.r.a.p than for a piece of s.h.i.+ning metal, so you do not value a rotter above a hero-that your moral appraisal is the coin paying men for their virtues or vices, and this payment demands of you as scrupulous an honor as you bring to financial transactions-that to withhold your contempt from men's vices is an act of moral counterfeiting, and to withhold your admiration from their virtues is an act of moral embezzlement-that to place any other concern higher than justice is to devaluate your moral currency and defraud the good in favor of the evil, since only the good can lose by a default of justice and only the evil can profit-and that the bottom of the pit at the end of that road, the act of moral bankruptcy, is to punish men for their virtues and reward them for their vices, that that is the collapse to full depravity, the Black Ma.s.s of the wors.h.i.+p of death, the dedication of your consciousness to the destruction of existence.
[GS, FNI, 158; pb 129.]
What fact of reality gave rise to the concept ”justice”? The fact that man must draw conclusions about the things, people and events around him, i.e., must judge and evaluate them. Is his judgment automatically right? No. What causes his judgment to be wrong? The lack of sufficient evidence, or his evasion of the evidence, or his inclusion of considerations other than the facts of the case. How, then, is he to arrive at the right judgment? By basing it exclusively on the factual evidence and by considering all the relevant evidence available. But isn't this a description of ”objectivity”? Yes, ”objective judgment” is one of the wider categories to which the concept ”justice” belongs. What distinguishes ”justice” from other instances of objective judgment? When one evaluates the nature or actions of inanimate objects, the criterion of judgment is determined by the particular purpose for which one evaluates them. But how does one determine a criterion for evaluating the character and actions of men, in view of the fact that men possess the faculty of volition? What science can provide an objective criterion of evaluation in regard to volitional matters? Ethics. Now, do I need a concept to designate the act of judging a man's character and/or actions exclusively on the basis of all the factual evidence available, and of evaluating it by means of an objective moral criterion? Yes. That concept is ”justice.”
[ITOE, 67.].
It is not justice or equal treatment that you grant to men when you abstain equally from praising men's virtues and from condemning men's vices. When your impartial att.i.tude declares, in effect, that neither the good nor the evil may expect anything from you-whom do you betray and whom do you encourage?
[”How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society,” VOS, 89; pb 71.]
Since men are born tabula rasa, both cognitively and morally, a rational man regards strangers as innocent until proved guilty, and grants them that initial good will in the name of their human potential. After that, he judges them according to the moral character they have actualized. If he finds them guilty of major evils, his good will is replaced by contempt and moral condemnation. (If one values human life, one cannot value its destroyers.) If he finds them to be virtuous, he grants them personal, individual value and appreciation, in proportion to their virtues.
[”The Ethics of Emergencies,” VOS, 52: pb 47.]
The new ”theory of justice” [of John Rawls] demands that men counteract the ”injustice” of nature by inst.i.tuting the most obscenely unthinkable injustice among men: deprive ”those favored by nature” (i.e., the talented, the intelligent, the creative) of the right to the rewards they produce (i.e., the right to life)-and grant to the incompetent, the stupid, the slothful a right to the effortless enjoyment of the rewards they could not produce, could not imagine, and would not know what to do with.
[”An Unt.i.tled Letter,” PWNI, 132; pb 110.]
See also CAPITALISM; COMPa.s.sION; EGALITARIANISM; HONESTY; MERCY; MORAL JUDGMENT; MORALITY; OBJECTIVITY; RATIONALITY; TRADER PRINCIPLE; VIRTUE.
K.
Kant, Immanuel. On every fundamental issue, Kant's philosophy is the exact opposite of Objectivism.
[”Brief Summary,” TO, Sept. 1971, 4.]
Metaphysics and Epistemology The man who ... closed the door of philosophy to reason, was Immanuel Kant....
Kant's expressly stated purpose was to save the morality of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice. He knew that it could not survive without a mystic base-and what it had to be saved from was reason.
Attila's share of Kant's universe includes this earth, physical reality, man's senses, perceptions, reason and science, all of it labeled the ”phenomenal” world. The Witch Doctor's share is another, ”higher,” reality, labeled the ”noumenal” world, and a special manifestation, labeled the ”categorical imperative,” which dictates to man the rules of morality and which makes itself known by means of a feeling, as a special sense of duty.