Part 44 (2/2)
See also PLATONIC REALISM; PRAGMATISM; PRINCIPLES; RATIONALISM vs. EMPIRICISM; SOUL-BODY DICHOTOMY.
Thought/Thinking. The process of thinking ... is the process of defining ident.i.ty and discovering causal connections.
[GS, FNI, 189; pb 152.]
The faculty that works by means of concepts, is: reason. The process is thinking.
[”The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 12; pb 20.]
All thinking is a process of identification and integration. Man perceives a blob of color; by integrating the evidence of his sight and his touch, he learns to identify it as a solid object; he learns to identify the object as a table; he learns that the table is made of wood; he learns that the wood consists of cells, that the cells consist of molecules, that the molecules consist of atoms. All through this process, the work of his mind consists of answers to a single question: What is it? His means to establish the truth of his answers is logic, and logic rests on the axiom that existence exists. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. A contradiction cannot exist. An atom is itself, and so is the universe; neither can contradict its own ident.i.ty; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.
[GS, FNI, 153; pb 125.]
That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call ”free will” is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.
[Ibid., 155; pb 127.]
Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness. The act of focusing one's consciousness is volitional.
[”The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 13; pb 20.]
Psychologically, the choice ”to think or not” is the choice ”to focus or not.” Existentially, the choice ”to focus or not” is the choice ”to be conscious or not.” Metaphysically, the choice ”to be conscious or not” is the choice of life or death.
[Ibid., 13; pb 21.]
Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think-not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment-on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not p.r.o.nounce the verdict ”It is.” Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say ”It is,” you are refusing to say ”I am.” By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: 'Who am I to know?'-he is declaring: ”Who am I to live?”
This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, ent.i.ty or zero.
[GS, FNI, 155; pb 127.]
If devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, n.o.bler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who a.s.sumes the responsibility of thinking.
[Ibid.]
Thinking is a delicate, difficult process, which man cannot perform unless knowledge is his goal, logic is his method, and the judgment of his mind is his guiding absolute. Thought requires selfishness, the fundamental selfishness of a rational faculty that places nothing above the integrity of its own function.
A man cannot think if he places something-anything-above his perception of reality. He cannot follow the evidence unswervingly or uphold his conclusions intransigently, while regarding compliance with other men as his moral imperative, self-abas.e.m.e.nt as his highest virtue, and sacrifice as his primary duty. He cannot use his brain while surrendering his sovereignty over it, i.e., while accepting his neighbors as its owner and term-setter.
[Leonard Peikoff, OP, 334; pb 308.]
The concept ”thought” is formed by retaining the distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics of the psychological action (a purposefully directed process of cognition) and by omitting the particular contents as well as the degree of the intellectual effort's intensity.
[ITOE, 41.].
The intensity of a process of thought and of the intellectual effort required varies according to the scope of its content; it varies when one grasps the concept ”table” or the concept ”justice,” when one grasps that 2 + 2 = 4 or that e = mc2.
[[bid., 40.]
See also CAUSALITY; CONCEPT-FORMATION; CONCEPTS; CREATION ; EVASION; FOCUS; FREE WILL; IDENt.i.tY; IMAGINATION; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); IRRATIONALITY; LOGIC; RATIONALITY; REASON ; SELFISHNESS; UNDERSTANDING; VIRTUE.
Thrillers. ”Thrillers” are detective, spy or adventure stories. Their basic characteristic is conflict, which means: a clash of goals, which means: purposeful action in pursuit of values. Thrillers are the product, the popular offshoot, of the Romantic school of art that sees man, not as a helpless p.a.w.n of fate, but as a being who possesses volition, whose life is directed by his own value-choices. Romanticism is a value-oriented, morality-centered movement: its material is not journalistic minutiae, but the abstract, the essential, the universal principles of man's nature -and its basic literary commandment is to portray man ”as he might be and ought to be.”
Thrillers are a simplified, elementary version of Romantic literature. They are not concerned with a delineation of values, but, taking certain fundamental values for granted, they are concerned with only one aspect of a moral being's existence: the battle of good against evil in terms of purposeful action-a dramatized abstraction of the basic pattern of: choice, goal, conflict, danger, struggle, victory.
Thrillers are the kindergarten arithmetic, of which the higher mathematics is the greatest novels of world literature. Thrillers deal only with the skeleton-the plot structure-to which serious Romantic literature adds the Hesh, the blood, the mind. The plots in the novels of Victor Hugo or Dostoevsky are pure thriller-plots, unequaled and unsurpa.s.sed by the writers of thrillers....
Thrillers are the last refuge of the qualities that have vanished from modern literature: life, color, imagination; they are like a mirror still holding a distant reflection of man.
[”Bootleg Romanticism,” RM, 124; pb 132.]
n.o.body takes thrillers literally, nor cares about their specific events, nor harbors any frustrated desire to become a secret agent or a private eye. Thrillers are taken symbolically; they dramatize one of man's widest and most crucial abstractions: the abstraction of moral conflict.
What people seek in thrillers is the spectacle of man's efficacy: of his ability to fight for his values and to achieve them. What they see is a condensed, simplified pattern, reduced to its essentials: a man fighting for a vital goal-overcoming one obstacle after another-facing terrible dangers and risks-persisting through an excruciating struggle-and winning.
[Ibid., 133; pb 138.]
What men find in the spectacle of the ultimate triumph of the good is the inspiration to fight for one's own values in the moral conflicts of one's own life.
[Ibid., 134; pb 139.]
See also LITERATURE; POPULAR LITERATURE; ROMANTICISM; VALUES.
Time. Time is a measurement of motion; as such, it is a type of relations.h.i.+p. Time applies only within the universe, when you define a standard-such as the motion of the earth around the sun. If you take that as a unit, you can say: ”This person has a certain relations.h.i.+p to that motion; he has existed for three revolutions; he is three years old.” But when you get to the universe as a whole, obviously no standard is applicable. You cannot get outside the universe. The universe is eternal in the literal sense: non-temporal, out of time.
[Leonard Peikoff, ”The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), question period, Lecture 2.]
See also EXISTENCE; MEASUREMENT; MOTION; s.p.a.cE; UNIVERSE.
Trader Principle. The symbol of all relations.h.i.+ps among [rational] men, the moral symbol of respect for human beings, is the trader. We, who live by values, not by loot, are traders, both in matter and in spirit. A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. A trader does not ask to be paid for his failures, nor does he ask to be loved for his flaws. A trader does not squander his body as fodder or his soul as alms. Just as he does not give his work except in trade for material values, so he does not give the values of his spirit-his love, his friends.h.i.+p, his esteem-except in payment and in trade for human virtues, in payment for his own selfish pleasure, which he receives from men he can respect. The mystic parasites who have, throughout the ages, reviled the traders and held them in contempt, while honoring the beggars and the looters, have known the secret motive of their sneers: a trader is the ent.i.ty they dread-a man of justice.
[GS, FNI, 163; pb 133.]
There is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value.
The principle of trade is the only rational ethical principle for all human relations.h.i.+ps, personal and social, private and public, spiritual and material. It is the principle of justice.
A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. He does not treat men as masters or slaves, but as independent equals. He deals with men by means of a free, voluntary, unforced, uncoerced exchange-an exchange which benefits both parties by their own independent judgment. A trader does not expect to be paid for his defaults, only for his achievements. He does not switch to others the burden of his failures, and he does not mortgage his life into bondage to the failures of others.
In spiritual issues-(by ”spiritual” I mean: ”pertaining to man's consciousness”) -the currency or medium of exchange is different, but the principle is the same. Love, friends.h.i.+p, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man's character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person's virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one's own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a s.l.u.t. In spiritual issues, a trader is a man who does not seek to be loved for his weaknesses or flaws, only for his virtues, and who does not grant his love to the weaknesses or the flaws of others, only to their virtues [”The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 28; pb 31.]
The trader and the warrior have been fundamental antagonists throughout history. Trade does not flourish on battlefields, factories do not produce under bombardments, profits do not grow on rubble. Capitalism is a society of traders-for which it has been denounced by every would-be gunman who regards trade as ”selfish” and conquest as ”n.o.ble.”
[”The Roots of War,” CUI, 38.]
See also ALTRUISM CAPITALISM; ECONOMIC POWER vs. POLITICAL POWER; FREE MARKET ; FREEDOM; JUSTICE; LOVE; MARKET VALUE; PHYSICAL. FORCE; PURCHASING POWER; SELFISHNESS; SERVICE; SOUL-BODY DICHOTOMY; VALUES; WAR.
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