Part 37 (1/2)
Renaissance. The Renaissance was specifically the rebirth of reason, the liberation of man's mind, the triumph of rationality over mysticism -a faltering, incomplete, but impa.s.sioned triumph that led to the birth of science, of individualism, of freedom.
[”The Left: Old and New,” NL, 83.]
The Renaissance-the rebirth of man's mind-btasted the rule of the [mystics] sky-high, setting the earth free of [their] power. The liberation was not total, nor was it immediate: the convulsions lasted for centuries, but the cultural influence of mysticism-of avowed mysticism-was broken. Men could no longer be told to reject their mind as an impotent tool, when the proof of its potency was so magnificently evident that the lowest perceptual-level mentality was not able fully to evade it: men were seeing the achievements of science.
[”For the New Intellectual,” FNI, 21; pb 24.]
The Renaissance represented a rebirth of the Aristotelian spirit. The results of that spirit are written across the next two centuries, which men describe, properly, as the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment. The results include the rise of modern science; the rise of an individualist political philosophy (the work of John Locke and others); the consequent spread of freedom across the civilized world; and the birth of the freest country in history, the United States of America. The great corollary of these results, the product of men who were armed with the knowledge of the scientists and who were free at last to act, was the Industrial Revolution, which turned poverty into abundance and transformed the face of the West. The Aristotelianism released by Aquinas and the Renaissance was sweeping away the dogmas and the shackles of the past. Reason, freedom, and production were replacing faith, force, and poverty. The age-old foundations of statisrn were being challenged and undercut.
[Leonard Peikoff, OP, 22; pb 31.]
The Renaissance was the great rebirth intellectually, but not politically. Still seeking order and unity, men attempted to solve the problem of feudal tyranny by replacing many small tyrants with a single big one. 'I'his was the birth of modern absolute monarchies.
[”A Nation's Unity,” ARL, 11, 2, 2.]
The Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was a conscious rebellion against the anti-human, otherworldly values of medieval Christendom. In its metaphysics and epistemology, the Renaissance was essentially Aristotelian. Every aspect of the period, from science to literature to art, reflected the Aristotelian view that man is a worthy being, capable of understanding the universe, and that the universe is worthy of man's interest and study. Mysticism, which had saturated every aspect of medieval life and culture, lost its stranglehold on man's mind. A rebirth of reason and of concern with this earth, was the base of all the achievements of the Renaissance.
In terms of its morality, the Renaissance was split in two: it was part-Aristotelian, part-Christian. As Aristotelians, the men of the Renaissance displayed the virtues of intelligence and pride, and pursued the value of happiness on earth. As Christians, they upheld the virtues of humility, renunciation and self-sacrifice, and the value of rewards in Heaven. Thus the existentially brilliant era of the Renaissance was marred, spiritually, by a profound moral conflict.
That conflict appeared, in different degrees, in virtually all of the Renaissance art. For the most part, sculpture did reflect an affirmative view of man. Although the subject matter was largely Christian, scalp-tors abandoned the stylistic features of medieval art. They testored weight, three-dimensionality and natural proportions to the human body. They reintroduced free-standing figures. They were keenly aware of human anatomy, and created images of potentially active bodies, or of bodies engaged in energetic movement. And, equally significant, the naked body was featured in the representation of both Christian and pagan subjects.
The statues present men who have intelligence, courage. determination and strength of character; but they do not convey a sense of happiness. The moral conflict tinged the Renaissance view of life, and in the faces of the statues there is a touch of sadness or uncertainty of tragedy, an expression of longing for an ideal never fully reached.
[Mary Ann Sures, ”Metaphysics in Marble,” TO. March 1969. 11.]
See also ARISTOTLE; ART; DARK AGES; ENLIGHTENMENT, AGE of; FREEDOM; HISTORY; HUMILITY; MIDDLE AGES; MYSTICISM; REASON; RELIGION; TYRANNY.
Representative Government. The theory of representative government rests on the principle that man is a rational being, i.e., that he is able to perceive the facts of reality, to evaluate them, to form rational judgments, to make his own choices, and to bear responsibility for the course of his life.
Politically, this principle is implemented by a man's right to choose his own agents, i.e., those whom he authorizes to represent him in the government of his country. To represent him, in this context, means to represent his views in terms of political principles. Thus the government of a free country derives its ”just powers from the consent of the governed.” (For the basis of this discussion, see ”Man's Rights” and ”The Nature of Government” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.) As a corroboration of the link between man's rational faculty and a representative form of government, observe that those who are demonstrably (or physiologically) incapable of rational judgment cannot exercise the right to vote. (Voting is a derivative, not a fundamental, right; it is derived from the right to life, as a political implementation of the requirements of a rational being's survival.) Children do not vote, because they have not acquired the knowledge necessary to form a rational judgment on political issues; neither do the feeble-minded or the insane, who have lost or never developed their rational faculty. (The possession of a rational faculty does not guarantee that a man will use it, only that he is able to use it and is, therefore, responsible for his actions.) [”Representation Without Authorization,” ARL, I, 21, 1.]
See also CONSt.i.tUTION; DEMOCRACY; GOVERNMENT; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; POLITICS; REPUBLIC; VOTING.
Republic. The American system is not a democracy. It is a const.i.tutional republic. A democracy, if you attach meaning to terms, is a system of unlimited majority rule ... a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights.... The American system is a const.i.tutionally limited republic, restricted to the protection of individual rights. In such a system, majority rule is applicable only to lesser details, such as the selection of certain personnel. But the majority has no say over the basic principles governing the government. It has no power to ask for or gain the infringement of individual rights.
[Leonard Peikoff, ”The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), Lecture 9.]
See also AMERICA; COLLECTIVISM; CONSt.i.tUTION; DEMOCRACY; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; POLITICS; REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT; VOTING.
Responsibility/Obligation. In reality and in the Objectivist ethics, there is no such thing as ”duty.” There is only choice and the full, clear recognition of a principle obscured by the notion of ”duty”: the Law of Causality.
The proper approach to ethics, the start from a metaphysically clean slate, untainted by any touch of Kantianism, can best be ill.u.s.trated by the following story. In answer to a man who was telling her that she's got to do something or other, a wise old Negro woman said: ”Mister, there's nothing I've got to do except die.”
Life or death is man's only fundamental alternative. To live is his basic act of choice. If he chooses to live, a rational ethics will tell him what principles of action are required to implement his choice. If he does not choose to live, nature will take its course.
Reality confronts man with a great many ”musts,” but all of them are conditional; the formula of realistic necessity is: ”You must, if-” and the ”if” stands for man's choice: ”-if you want to achieve a certain goal.” You must eat, if you want to survive. You must work, if you want to eat. You must think, if you want to work. You must look at reality, if you want to think-if you want to know what to do-if you want to know what goals to choose-if you want to know how to achieve them.
In order to make the choices required to achieve his goals, a man needs the constant, automatized awareness of the principle which the anti-concept ”duty” has all but obliterated in his mind: the principle of causality-specifically, of Aristotelian final causation (which, in fact, applies only to a conscious being), i.e., the process by which an end determines the means, i.e., the process of choosing a goal and taking the actions necessary to achieve it.
In a rational ethics, it is causality-not ”duty”-that serves as the guiding principle in considering, evaluating and choosing one's actions, particularly those necessary to achieve a long-range goal. Following this principle, a man does not act without knowing the purpose of his action. In choosing a goal, he considers the means required to achieve it, he weighs the value of the goal against the difficulties of the means and against the full, hierarchical context of all his other values and goals. He does not demand the impossible of himself, and he does not decide too easily which things are impossible. He never drops the context of the knowledge available to him, and never evades reality, realizing fully that his goal will not be granted to him by any power other than his own action, and, should he evade, it is not some Kantian authority that he would be cheating, but himself....
A disciple of causation is profoundly dedicated to his values, knowing that he is able to achieve them. He is incapable of desiring contradictions, of relying on a ”somehow,” of rebelling against reality. He knows that in all such cases, it is not some Kantian authority that he would be defying and injuring, but himsetf-and that the penalty would be not some mystic brand of ”immorality,” but the frustration of his own desires and the destruction of his values....
Accepting no mystic ”duties” or unchosen obligations, he is the man who honors scrupulously the obligations which he chooses. The obligation to keep one's promises is one of the most important elements in proper human relations.h.i.+ps, the element that leads to mutual confidence and makes cooperation possible among men....
The acceptance of full responsibility for one's own choices and actions (and their consequences) is such a demanding moral discipline that many men seek to escape it by surrendering to what they believe is the easy, automatic, unthinking safety of a morality of ”duty.” They learn better, often when it is too late.
The disciple of causation faces life without inexplicable chains, unchosen burdens, impossible demands or supernatural threats. His metaphysical att.i.tude and guiding moral principle can best be summed up by an old Spanish proverb: ”G.o.d said: 'Take what you want and pay for it.' ” But to know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.
[”Causality Versus Duty,” PWNI, 118; pb 98.]
See also CONTRACTS; ”DUTY”; FREE WILL; KANT, IMMANUEL; LIFE; MORALITY; RATIONALITY; SELFISHNESS; VALUES.
Retaliatory Force. The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No man-or group or society or government-has the right to a.s.sume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. A holdup man seeks to gain a value, wealth, by killing his victim; the victim does not grow richer by killing a holdup man. The principle is: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force.
[”The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 31; pb 32.]
It is only as retaliation that force may be used and only against the man who starts its use. No, I do not share his evil or sink to his concept of morality: I merely grant him his choice, destruction, the only destruction he had the right to choose: his own. He uses force to seize a value; I use it only to destroy destruction.
[GS, FNI, 166; pb 135.]
The principle of using force only in retaliation against those who initiate its use, is the principle of subordinating might to right.
[”Philosophy: Who Needs It,” PWNI, 13; pb 10.]
See also ANARCHISM; CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE; GOVERNMENT; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; JUSTICE; PACIFISM; PEACE MOVEMENTS; PHYSICAL FORCE; SELF-DEFENSE; WAR.
Retroactive Law. Retroactive (or ex post facto) law-i.e., a law that punishes a man for an action which was not legally defined as a crime at the time he committed it-is rejected by and contrary to the entire tradition of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. It is a form of persecution practiced only in dictators.h.i.+ps and forbidden by every civilized code of law. It is specifically forbidden by the United States Const.i.tution. It is not supposed to exist in the United States and it is not applied to anyone -except to businessmen. A case in which a man cannot know until he is convicted whether the action he took in the past was legal or illegal, is certainly a case of retroactive law.
[”America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business,” CUl, 50.]
See also ANt.i.tRUST LAWS; BUSINESSMEN; CONSt.i.tUTION; GOVERNMENT; LAW, OBJECTIVE AND NON-OBJECTIVE.
Revolution vs. Putsch. The New Left does not portend a revolution, as its press agents claim, but a Putsch. A revolution is the climax of a long philosophical development and expresses a nation's profound discontent; a Putsch is a minority's seizure of power. The goal of a revolution is to overthrow tyranny; the goal of a Putsch is to establish it.
Tyranny is any political system (whether absolute monarchy or fascism or communism) that does not recognize individual rights (which necessarily include property rights). The overthrow of a political system by force is justified only when it is directed against tyranny: it is an act of self-defense against those who rule by force. For example, the American Revolution. The resort to force, not in defense, but in violation, of individual rights, can have no moral justification; it is not a revolution, but gang warfare.
[”From a Symposium,” NL, 96.]
See also AMERICA; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; NEW LEFT; PHYSICAL FORCE; STATISM.
”Rewriting Reality.” Unable to determine what they can or cannot change, some men attempt to ”rewrite reality,” i.e., to alter the nature of the metaphysically given. Some dream of a universe in which man experiences nothing but happiness-no pain, no frustration, no illness-and wonder why they lose the desire to improve their life on earth. Some feel that they would be brave, honest, ambitious in a world where everyone automatically shared these virtues-but not in the world as it is. Some dread the thought of eventual death-and never undertake the task of living.
[”The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made,” PWNI, 36; pb 30.]
By the ”metaphysically given,” we mean any fact inherent in reality as such, apart from human action (whether mental or physical)-as against ”man-made facts,” i.e., objects, inst.i.tutions, practices, or rules of conduct that are of human origin....
As soon as you say about a metaphysically given fact: ”it is”-just that much-the whole Objectivist metaphysics is implicit. If the fact is, it is what it is (the law of ident.i.ty); it is what it is independent of consciousness, of anyone's or everyone's desires, hopes, fears (the primacy of existence); and it is lawful, inherent in the ident.i.ties of the relevant ent.i.ties (the law of causality). Given the circ.u.mstances involved, such a fact is necessary; it had to be; any alternative would have entailed a contradiction. In short, once you say about a metaphysical fact: ”it is,” that means that, within the relevant circ.u.mstances, it is immutable, inexorable, inescapable, absolute. ”Absolute” in this context means necessitated by the nature of existence and, therefore, unchangeable by human (or any other) agency....
The attempt to alter the nature of the metaphysically given is described by Ayn Rand as the fallacy of ”rewriting reality.” Those who commit it regard metaphysical facts as non-absolute and, therefore, feel free to imagine an alternative to them. In effect, they regard the universe as though it were merely a first draft of reality, which anyone may decide at will to rewrite.