Part 29 (2/2)
The Naturalists object that the events of men's lives are inconclusive, diffuse and seldom fall into the clear-cut, dramatic situations required by a plot structure. This is predominantly true-and this is the chief esthetic argument against the Naturalist position. Art is a selective recreation of reality, its means are evaluative abstractions, its task is the concretization of metaphysical essentials. To isolate and bring into clear focus, into a single issue or a single scene, the essence of a conflict which, in ”real life,” might be atomized and scattered over a lifetime in the form of meaningless clashes, to condense a long, steady drizzle of buckshot into the explosion of a blockbuster-that is the highest, hardest and most demanding function of art. To default on that function is to default on the essence of art and to engage in child's play along its periphery.
[Ibid., 61; pb 83.]
Although Naturalism is a product of the nineteenth century, its spiritual father, in modern history, was Shakespeare. The premise that man does not possess volition, that his destiny is determined by an innate ”tragic flaw,” is fundamental in Shakespeare's work. But, granted this false premise, his approach is metaphysical, not journalistic. His characters are not drawn from ”real life,” they are not copies of observed concretes nor statistical averages: they are grand-scale abstractions of the character traits which a determinist would regard as inherent in human nature: ambition, power-l.u.s.t, jealousy, greed, etc.
[”What Is Romanticism?” RM, 102; pb 115.]
No matter how concrete-bound their theories forced them to be, the writers of the Naturalist school still had to exercise their power of abstraction to a significant extent: in order to reproduce ”real-life” characters, they had to select the characteristics they regarded as essential, differentiating them from the non-essential or accidental. Thus they were led to subst.i.tute statistics for values as a criterion of selectivity: that which is statistically prevalent among men, they held, is metaphysically significant and representative of man's nature; that which is rare or exceptional, is not. (See Chapter 7.) At first, having rejected the element of plot and even of story, the Naturalists concentrated on the element of characterization-and psychological perceptiveness was the chief value that the best of them had to offer. With the growth of the statistical method, however, that value shrank and vanished: characterization was replaced by indiscriminate recording and buried under a catalogue of trivia, such as minute inventories of a character's apartment. clothing and meals. Naturalism lost the attempted universality of Shakespeare or Tolstoy, descending from metaphysics to photography with a rapidly shrinking lens directed at the range of the immediate moment-until the final remnants of Naturalism became a superficial, meaningless, ”unserious” school that had nothing to say about human existence.
[Ibid., 104; pb 117.]
The obvious question, to which the heirs of statistical Naturalism have no answer, is: if heroes and geniuses are not to be regarded as representative of mankind, by reason of their numerical rarity, why are freaks and monsters to be regarded as representative? Why are the problems of a bearded lady of greater universal significance than the problems of a genius? Why is the soul of a murderer worth studying, but not the soul of a hero?
The answer lies in the basic metaphysical premise of Naturalism, whether its pract.i.tioners ever chose it consciously or not: as an outgrowth of modern philosophy, that basic premise is anti-man, anti-mind, anti-life; and, as an outgrowth of the altruist morality, Naturalism is a frantic escape from moral judgment-a long, wailing plea for pity, for tolerance, for the forgiveness of anything.
[”The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age,” RM. 116; pb 125.]
See also ART; CHARACTERIZATION; DETERMINISM; FREE WILL; LITERATURE; PLOT; ROMANTICISM; SENSE of LIFE; STYLIZATION; VALUES.
Nature. What is nature? Nature is existence-the sum of that which is. It is usually called ”nature” when we think of it as a system of interconnected, interacting ent.i.ties governed by law. So ”nature” really means the universe of ent.i.ties acting and interacting in accordance with their ident.i.ties.
[Leonard Peikoff. ”The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), Lecture 2.]
See also ATHEISM; CAUSALITY; EXISTENCE; SUPERNATURALISM; UNIVERSE.
n.a.z.ism. See Fascism/n.a.z.ism.
Necessity. As far as metaphysical reality is concerned (omitting human actions from consideration, for the moment), there are no ”facts which happen to be but could have been otherwise” as against ”facts which must be.” There are only: facts which are.... Since things are what they are, since everything that exists possesses a specific ident.i.ty, nothing in reality can occur causelessly or by chance. The nature of an ent.i.ty determines what it can do and, in any given set of circ.u.mstances, dictates what it will do. The Law of Causality is entailed by the Law of Ident.i.ty. Ent.i.ties follow certain laws of action in consequence of their ident.i.ty, and have no alternative to doing so. Metaphysically, all facts are inherent in the ident.i.ties of the ent.i.ties that exist; i.e., all facts are ”necessary.” In this sense, to be is to be ”necessary.” The concept of ”necessity,” in a metaphysical context, is superfluous.
[Leonard Peikoff, ”The a.n.a.lytic-Synthetic Dichotomy,” ITOE, 146.]
A typical package-deal, used by professors of philosophy, runs as follows: to prove the a.s.sertion that there is no such thing as ”necessity” in the universe, a professor declares that just as this country did not have to have fifty states, there could have been forty-eight or fifty-two-so the solar system did not have to have nine planets, there could have been seven or eleven. It is not sufficient, he declares, to prove that something is, one must also prove that it had to be-and since nothing had to be, nothing is certain and anything goes.
The technique of undercutting man's mind consists in palming off the man-made as if it were the metaphysically given, then ascribing to nature the concepts that refer only to men's lack of knowledge, such as ”chance” or ”contingency,” then reversing the two elements of the package-deal. From the a.s.sertion: ”Man is unpredictable, therefore nature is unpredictable,” the argument goes to: ”Nature possesses volition, man does not-nature is free, man is ruled by unknowable forces-nature is not to be conquered, man is.”
[”The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made,” PWNI, 34; pb 28.]
See also a.n.a.lYTIC-SYNTHETIC DICHOTOMY; CAUSALITY; IDENt.i.tY; FREE WILL; METAPHYSICAL vs. MAN-MADE; ”PACKAGE-DEALING,” FALLACY of; PRIMACY of EXISTENCE vs. PRIMACY of CONSCIOUSNESS.
Neurosis vs. Psychosis. A man who has psychological problems is a conscious being; his cognitive faculty is hampered, burdened, slowed down, but not destroyed. A neurotic is not a psychotic. Only a psychotic is presumed to suffer from a total break with reality and to have no control over his actions or the operations of his consciousness (and even this is not always true). A neurotic retains the ability to perceive reality, and to control his consciousness and his actions (this control is merely more difficult for him than for a healthy person). So long as he is not psychotic, this is the control that a man cannot lose and must not abdicate.
[”The Psychology of 'Psychologizing,' ” TO, March 1971, 5.]
See also FREE WILL; MENTAL HEALTHY: ”PSYCHOLOGIZING”; PSYCHOLOGY; RATIONALITY.
New Left. Old-line Marxists claimed [falsely] that they were champions of reason, that socialism or communism was a scientific social system, that an advanced technology could not function in a capitalist society, but required a scientifically planned and organized human community to bring its maximum benefits to every man, in the form of material comforts and a higher standard of living.... [T]oday we see the spectacle of old Marxists blessing, aiding and abetting the young hoodlums [of the New Left] (who are their products and heirs) who proclaim the superiority of feelings over reason, of faith over knowledge, of leisure over production, of spiritual concerns over material comforts, of primitive nature over technology, of astrology over science, of drugs over consciousness.
[”The Left: Old and New,” NL, 90.]
If concern with poverty and human suffering were the collectivists' motive, they would have become champions of capitalism long ago; they would have discovered that it is the only political system capable of producing abundance. But they evaded the evidence as long as they could. When the issue became overwhelmingly clear to the whole world, the collectivists were faced with a choice: either turn to the right, in the name of humanity-or to the left, in the name of dictatorial power. They turned to the left-the New Left.
Instead of their old promises that collectivism would create universal abundance and their denunciations of capitalism for creating poverty, they are now denouncing capitalism for creating abundance. Instead of promising comfort and security for everyone, they are now denouncing people for being comfortable and secure.
[”The Anti-Industrial Revolution,” NL, 141.]
Intellectually, the activists of the New Left are the most docile conformists. They have accepted as dogma all the philosophical beliefs of their elders for generations: the notions that faith and feeling are superior to reason, that material concerns are evil, that love is the solution to all problems, that the merging of one's self with a tribe or a community is the n.o.blest way to live. There is not a single basic principle of today's Establishment which they do not share. Far from being rebels, they embody the philosophic trend of the past 200 years (or longer): the mysticism-altruism-collectivism axis, which has dominated Western philosophy from Kant to Hegel to James and on down.
[”From a Symposium,” NL, 97.]
See also ALTRUISM; CAPITALISM; CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE; COLLECTIVISM; COMMUNISM; ECOLOGY/ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT; ECONOMIC GROWTH; GUILD SOCIALISM; MYSTICISM; PHYSICAL FORCE; SOCIALISM.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Philosophically, Nietzsche is a mystic and an irrationalist. His metaphysics consists of a somewhat ”Byronic” and mystically ”malevolent” universe; his epistemology subordinates reason to ”will,” or feeling or instinct or blood or innate virtues of character. But, as a poet, he projects at times (not consistently) a magnificent feeling for man's greatness, expressed in emotional, not intellectual, terms, [”Introduction to The Fountainhead,” TO, March 1968, 6.]
Nietzsche's rebellion against altruism consisted of replacing the sacrifice of oneself to others by the sacrifice of others to oneself. He proclaimed that the ideal man is moved, not by reason, but by his ”blood,” by his innate instincts, feelings and will to power-that he is predestined by birth to rule others and sacrifice them to himself, while they are predestined by birth to be his victims and slaves-that reason, logic, principles are futile and debilitating, that morality is useless, that the ”superman” is ”beyond good and evil,” that he is a ”beast of prey” whose ultimate standard is nothing but his own whim. Thus Nietzsche's rejection of the Witch Doctor consisted of elevating Attila into a moral ideal-which meant: a double surrender of morality to the Witch Doctor.
[”For the New Intellectual,” FNI, 39; pb 36.]
See also ALTRUISM; BYRONIC VIEW of EXISTENCE; COLLECTIVISM; ”INSTINCT”; IRRATIONALISM; MALEVOLENT UNIVERSE PREMISE; PRINCIPLES; REASON; SELFISHNESS; WHIMS/WHIM-WORs.h.i.+P.
Nineteenth Century. If you want to prove to yourself the power of ideas and, particularly, of morality-the intellectual history of the nineteenth century would be a good example to study. The greatest, unprecedented, undreamed of events and achievements were taking place before men's eyes-but men did not see them and did not understand their meaning, as they do not understand it to this day. I am speaking of the industrial revolution, of the United States and of capitalism. For the first time in history, men gained control over physical nature and threw off the control of men over men-that is: men discovered science and political freedom. The creative energy, the abundance, the wealth, the rising standard of living for every level of the population were such that the nineteenth century looks like a fiction-Utopia, like a blinding burst of sunlight, in the drab progression of most of human history. If life on earth is one's standard of value, then the nineteenth century moved mankind forward more than all the other centuries combined.
Did anyone appreciate it? Does anyone appreciate it now? Has anyone identified the causes of that historical miracle?
They did not and have not. What blinded them? The morality of altruism.
Let me explain this. There are, fundamentally, only two causes of the progress of the nineteenth century-the same two causes which you will find at the root of any happy, benevolent, progressive era in human history. One cause is psychological, the other existential-or: one pertains to man's consciousness, the other to the physical conditions of his existence. The first is reason, the second is freedom. And when I say ”freedom,” I do not mean poetic sloppiness, such as ”freedom from want” or ”freedom from fear” or ”freedom from the necessity of earning a living.” I mean ”freedom from compulsion-freedom from rule by physical force.” Which means: political freedom.
[”Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World,” PWNI, 79; pb 65.]
See also AMERICA; CAPITALISM; FREEDOM; HISTORY; PHYSICAL FORCE; WAR.
Nominalism. The ”nominalists” ... hold that all our ideas are only images of concretes, and that abstractions are merely ”names” which we give to arbitrary groupings of concretes on the basis of vague resemblances.... (There is also the extreme nominalist position, the modern one, which consists of declaring that the problem [of universals] is a meaningless issue, that ”reality” is a meaningless term, that we can never know whether our concepts correspond to anything or not, that our knowledge consists of words-and that words are an arbitrary social convention.) [ITOE, 2.].
Denying that concepts have an objective basis in the facts of reality, nominalists declare that the source of concepts is a subjective human decision: men arbitrarily select certain characteristics to serve as the basis (the ”essentials”) for a cla.s.sification; thereafter, they agree to apply the same term to any concretes that happen to exhibit these ”essentials,” no matter how diverse these concretes are in other respects. On this view, the concept (the term) means only those characteristics initially decreed to be ”essential.” The other characteristics of the subsumed concretes bear no necessary connection to the ”essential” characteristics, and are excluded from the concept's meaning.
Observe that, while condemning Plato's mystic view of a concept's meaning, the nominalists embrace the same view in a skeptic version. Condemning the essence-accident dichotomy as implicitly arbitrary, they inst.i.tute an explicitly arbitrary equivalent. Condemning Plato's ”intuitive” selection of essences as a disguised subjectivism, they spurn the disguise and adopt subjectivism as their official theory-as though a concealed vice were heinous, but a brazenly flaunted one, rational. Condemning Plato's supernaturally-determined essences, they declare that essences are socially-determined, thus transferring to the province of human whim what had once been the prerogative of Plato's divine realm. The nominalists' ”advance” over Plato consisted of secularizing his theory. To secularize an error is still to commit it.
Its form, however, changes. Nominalists do not say that a concept designates only an ent.i.ty's ”essence,” excluding its ”accidents.” Their secularized version is: A concept is only a shorthand tag for the characteristics stated in its definition; a concept and its definition are interchangeable; a concept means only its definition.
It is the Platonic-nominalist approach to concept-formation, expressed in such views as these, that gives rise to the theory of the a.n.a.lytic-synthetic dichotomy.
[Leonard Peikoff, ”The a.n.a.lytic-Synthetic Dichotomy,” ITOE, 129.]
The nominalist view that a concept is merely a shorthand tag for its definition, represents a profound failure to grasp the function of a definition in the process of concept-formation. The penalty for this failure is that the process of definition, in the hands of the nominalists, achieves the exact opposite of its actual purpose. The purpose of a definition is to keep a concept distinct from all others, to keep it connected to a specific group of existents. On the nominalist view, it is precisely this connection that is severed: as soon as a concept is defined, it ceases to designate existents; and designates instead only the defining characteristic.
And further: On a rational view of definitions, a definition organizes and condenses-and thus helps one to retain-a wealth of knowledge about the characteristics of a concept's units. On the nominalist view, it is precisely this knowledge that is discarded when one defines a concept: as soon as a defining characteristic is chosen, all the other characteristics of the units are banished from the concept, which shrivels to mean merely the definition. For instance, as long as a child's concept of ”man” is retained ostensively, the child knows that man has a head, two eyes, two arms, etc.; on the nominalist view, as soon as the child defines ”man,” he discards all this knowledge; thereafter, ”man” means to him only: ”a thing with rationality and animality.”
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