Part 46 (1/2)
Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is a union of hedonism and Christianity. The first teaches man to love pleasure; the second, to love his neighbor. The union consists in teaching man to love his neighbor's pleasure. To be exact, the Utilitarians teach that an action is moral if its result is to maximize pleasure among men in general. This theory holds that man's duty is to serve-according to a purely quant.i.tative standard of value. He is to serve not the well-being of the nation or of the economic cla.s.s, but ”the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” regardless of who comprise it in any given issue. As to one's own happiness, says [John Stuart] Mill, the individual must he ”disinterested” and ”strictly impartial”; he must remember that he is only one unit out of the dozens, or millions, of men affected by his actions. ”All honor to those who can abnegate for themselves the personal enjoyment of life,” says Mill, ”when by such renunciation they contribute worthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world.”
[Leonard Peikoft, OP, 122; pb 119.]
”The greatest good for the greatest number” is one of the most vicious slogans ever foisted on humanity.
This slogan has no concrete, specific meaning. There is no way to interpret it benevolently, but a great many ways in which it can be used to justify the most vicious actions.
What is the definition of ”the good” in this slogan? None, except: whatever is good for the greatest number. Who, in any particular issue, decides what is good fot the greatest number? Why, the greatest number.
If you consider this moral, you would have to approve of the following examples, which are exact applications of this slogan in practice: fifty-one percent of humanity enslaving the other forty-nine; nine hungry cannibals eating the tenth one; a lynching mob murdering a man whom they consider dangerous to the community.
There were seventy million Germans in Germany and six hundred thousand Jews. The greatest number (the Germans) supported the n.a.z.i government which told them that their greatest good would be served by exterminating the smaller number (the Jews) and grabbing their property. This was the horror achieved in practice by a vicious slogan accepted in theory.
But, you might say, the majority in all these examples did not achieve any real good for itself either? No. It didn't. Because ”the good” is not determined by counting numbers and is not achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone.
[”Textbook of Americanism,” pamphlet, 10.]
See also ALTRUISM; COLLECTIVISM; GOOD, the; HAPPINESS; HEDONISM; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; MILL, JOHN STUART; MORALITY; PLEASURE and PAIN; SACRIFICE; SELFISHNESS.
V.
Validation. ”Validation” in the broad sense includes any process of relating mental contents to the facts of reality. Direct perception, the method of validating axioms, is one such process. ”Proof” designates another type of validation. Proof is the process of deriving a conclusion logically from antecedent knowledge.
[Leonard Peikoff, ”The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), question period, Lecture 3.]
See also AXIOMS; COROLLARIES; EPISTEMOLOGY; INDUCTION and DEDUCTION; LOGIC; OBJECTIVITY; PROOF; SELF-EVIDENT.
Values. To challenge the basic premise of any discipline, one must begin at the beginning. In ethics, one must begin by asking: What are values? Why does man need them?
”Value” is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. The concept ”value” is not a primary; it presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? It presupposes an ent.i.ty capable of acting to achieve a goal in the face of an alternative. Where no alternative exists, no goals and no values are possible.
I quote from Galt's speech: ”There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence-and it pertains to a single cla.s.s of ent.i.ties: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible. It is only to a living ent.i.ty that things can be good or evil.”
To make this point fully clear, try to imagine an immortal, indestructible robot, an ent.i.ty which moves and acts, but which cannot be affected by anything, which cannot be changed in any respect, which cannot be damaged, injured or destroyed. Such an ent.i.ty would not be able to have any values; it would have nothing to gain or to lose; it could not regard anything as for or against it, as serving or threatening its welfare, as fulfilling or frustrating its interests. It could have no interests and no goals.
[”The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 5; pb 15.]
”Value” is that which one acts to gain and keep, ”virtue” is the action by which one gains and keeps it. ”Value” presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? ”Value” presupposes a standard, a purpose and the necessity of action in the face of an alternative. Where there are no alternatives, no values are possible.
[GS, FNI, 147; pb 121.]
It is only an ultimate goal, an 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.”
Now in what manner does a human being discover the concept of ”value”? By what means does he first become aware of the issue of ”good or evil” in its simplest form? By means of the physical sensations of Pleasure or pain. Just as sensations are the first step of the development of a human consciousness in the realm of cognition, so they are its first step in the realm of evaluation.
The capacity to experience pleasure or pain is innate in a man's body; it is part of his nature, part of the kind of ent.i.ty he is. He has no choice about it, and he has no choice about the standard that determines what will make him experience the physical sensation of pleasure or of pain. What is that standard? His life.
[”The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS, 7; pb 17.) Since a value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep, and the amount of possible action is limited by the duration of one's lifespan, it is a part of one's life that one invests in everything one values. The years, months, days or hours of thought, of interest, of action devoted to a value are the currency with which one pays for the enjoyment one receives from it.
[ITOE, 44.].
Material objects as such have neither value nor disvalue; they acquire value.-significance only in regard to a living being-particularly, in regard to serving or hindering man's goals.
[”From the Horse's Mouth,” PWNI, 96; pb 79.]
Values are the motivating power of man's actions and a necessity of his survival, psychologically as well as physically.
Man's values control his subconscious emotional mechanism that functions like a computer adding up his desires, his experiences, his fulfillments and frustrations-like a sensitive guardian watching and constantly a.s.sessing his relations.h.i.+p to reality. The key question which this computer is programmed to answer, is: What is possible to me?
There is a certain similarity between the issue of sensory perception and the issue of values....
If severe and prolonged enough, the absence of a norrnal, active flow of sensory stimuli may disintegrate the complex organization and the interdependent functions of man's consciousness.
Man's emotional mechanism works as the barometer of the efficacy or impotence of his actions. If severe and prolonged enough, the absence of a normal, active flow of value-experiences may disintegrate and paralyze man's consciousness-by telling him that no action is possible.
The form in which man experiences the reality of his values is pleasure.
[”Our Cultural Value-Deprivation,” TO, April 1966, 3.]
The objective theory of values is the only moral theory incompatible with rule by force. Capitalism is the only system based implicitly on an objective theory of values-and the historic tragedy is that this has never been made explicit.
If one knows that the good is objective-i.e., determined by the nature of reality, but to be discovered by man's mind-one knows that an attempt to achieve the good by physical force is a monstrous contradiction which negates morality at its root by destroying man's capacity to recognize the good, i.e., his capacity to value. Force invalidates and paralyzes a man's judgment, demanding that he act against it, thus rendering him morally impotent. A value which one is forced to accept at the price of surrendering one's mind, is not a value to anyone; the forcibly mindless can neither judge nor choose nor value. An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes. Values cannot exist (cannot be valued) outside the full context of a man's life, needs, goals, and knowledge.
[”What Is Capitalism?” CUI, 23.]
See also AMBITION; CHARACTER; CYNICISM; ”DUTY”; EMOTIONS; ENVY/HATRED of the GOOD for BEING the GOOD; EVIL; GOAL-DIRECTED ACTION; GOOD, the; HAPPINESS; ”INSTINCT”; INTRINSIC THEORY of VALUES; ”IS”-”OUGHT' DICHOTOMY; LIFE; LOVE; MAN; MARKET VALUE; MORALITY; MOTIVATION; MOTIVATION by LOVE us. by FEAR; NORMATIVE ABSTRACTIONS; OBJECTIVE THEORY of VALUES; PHYSICAL FORCE; PLEASURE and PAIN; PURPOSE; ROMANTICISM; SECOND-HANDERS; SELF-INTEREST; SELFISHNESS; s.e.x; STANDARD of VALUE; ”STOLEN CONCEPT,” FALLACY of; SUBCONSCIOUS; SUBJECTIVISM; TELEOLOCICAL MEASUREMENT; TRADER PRINCIPLE; ULTIMATE VALUE; VIRTUE.
Virtue. ”Value” is that which one acts to gain and keep, ”virtue” is the action by which one gains and keeps it.
[GS, FNI, 147; pb 121.]
Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality-not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.
[Ibid., 224; pb 178.]
My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists-and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason-Purpose-Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge-Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve-Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man's virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride.
[Ibid., 156; pb 128.]
Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.
[Ibid., 161; pb 131.]
See also CHARACTER; CHARITY; ”DUTY”; EVIL; FREE WILL; HAPPINESS; HONESTY; HONOR; INDEPENDENCE; INTEGRITY; JUS-VALUES.
Visual Arts. The so-called visual arts (painting, sculpture, architecture) produce concrete, perceptually available ent.i.ties and make them convey an abstract, conceptual meaning....
The visual arts do not deal with the sensory field of awareness as such, but with the sensory field as perceived by a conceptual consciousness.