The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 11

It is important to remember that a definition implies all the characteristics of the units, since it identifies their essential, not their exhaustive, characteristics; since it designates existents, not their isolated aspects; and since it is a condensation of, not a subst.i.tute for, a wider knowledge of the existents involved.

[Ibid., 55.]

When "rational animal" is selected as the definition of "man," this does not mean that the concept "man" becomes a shorthand tag for "anything whatever that has rationality and animality." It does not mean that the concept "man" is interchangeable with the phrase "rational animal," and that all of man's other characteristics are excluded from the concept. It means: A certain type of ent.i.ty, including all its characteristics, is, in the present context of knowledge, most fundamentally distinguished from all other ent.i.ties by the fact that it is a rational animal. All the presently available knowledge of man's other characteristics is required to validate this definition, and is implied by it. All these other characteristics remain part of the content of the concept "man."

[Leonard Peikoff, '"The a.n.a.lytic-Synthetic Dichotomy," ITOE, 139.]

See also a.n.a.lYTIC-SYNTHETIC DICHOTOMY; ARISTOTLE; COMMUNICATION; CONCEPTS; CONCEPTUAL COMMON DENOMINATOR; CONTEXT; GENUS and SPECIES; HIERARCHY of KNOWLEDGE; LANGUAGE; OSTENSIVE DEFINITION; SENSATIONS; UNIT; UNIT-ECONOMY; WORDS.

Democracy. "Democratic" in its original meaning [refers to] unlimited majority rule ... a social system in which one's work, one's property, one's mind, and one's life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose.

["How to Read (and Not to Write)," ARL, I, 26, 4.]

If we discard morality and subst.i.tute for it the Collectivist doctrine of unlimited majority rule, if we accept the idea that a majority may do anything it pleases, and that anything done by a majority is right because it's done by a majority (this being the only standard of right and wrong) -how are men to apply this in practice to their actual lives? Who is the majority? In relation to each particular man, all other men are potential members of that majority which may destroy him at its pleasure at any moment. Then each man and all men become enemies; each has to fear and suspect all; each must try to rob and murder first, before he is robbed and murdered.

["Textbook of Americanism," pamphlet, 9.]

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; the cla.s.sic example is ancient Athens. And the symbol of it is the fate of Socrates, who was put to death legally, because the majority didn't like what he was saying, although he had initiated no force and had violated no one's rights.

Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom....

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 COLLECTIVISM; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; FREEDOM; GOVERNMENT; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; MINORITY RIGHTS; REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT; REPUBLIC; SOCIALISM; STATISM; TYRANNY; VOTING.

Deontological Theory of Ethics. See "Duty."

Determinism. Determinism is the theory that everything that happens in the universe-including every thought, feeling, and action of man-is necessitated by previous factors, so that nothing could ever have happened differently from the way it did, and everything in the future is already pre-set and inevitable. Every aspect of man's life and character, on this view, is merely a product of factors that are ultimately outside his control. Objectivism rejects this theory.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series, Lecture 1.]

Dictators.h.i.+p and determinism are reciprocally reinforcing corollaries. if one seeks to enslave men, one has to destroy their reliance on the validity of their own judgments and choices-if one believes that reason and volition are impotent, one has to accept the rule of force.

["Representation Without Authorization," ARL, I, 21, I.]

See also AXIOMS; CAUSALITY; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; EMOTIONS; FREE WILL; METAPHYSICAL vs. MAN-MADE; NATURALISM; NECESSITY.

Dictator. A mystic is driven by the urge to impress, to cheat, to flatter, to deceive, to force that omnipotent consciousness of others. "They" are his only key to reality, he feels that he cannot exist save by harnessing their mysterious power and extorting their unaccountable consent. "They" are his only means of perception and, like a blind man who depends on the sight of a dog, he feels he must leash them in order to live. To control the consciousness of others becomes his only pa.s.sion; power-l.u.s.t is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.

Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his a.s.sertions, his edicts, his wishes, his whims-as his consciousness is surrendered to theirs. He wants to deal with men by means of faith and force-he finds no satisfaction in their consent if he must earn it by means of facts and reason. Reason is the enemy he dreads and, simultaneously, considers precarious; reason, to him, is a means of deception; he feels that men possess some power more potent than reason-and only their causeless belief or their forced obedience can give him a sense of security, a proof that he has gained control of the mystic endowment he lacked. His l.u.s.t is to command, not to convince: conviction requires an act of independence and rests on the absolute of an objective reality. What he seeks is power over reality and over men's means of perceiving it, their mind, the power to interpose his will between existence and consciousness, as if, by agreeing to fake the reality he orders them to fake, men would, in fact, create it.

[GS, FNI, 201; pb 161.]

Destruction is the only end that the mystics' creed has ever achieved, as it is the only end that you see them achieving today, and if the ravages wrought by their acts have not made them question their doctrines, if they profess to be moved by love, yet are not deterred by piles of human corpses, it is because the truth about their souls is worse than the obscene excuse you have allowed them, the excuse that the end justifies the means and that the horrors they practice are means to n.o.bler ends. The truth is that those horrors are their ends.

You who're depraved enough to believe that you could adjust yourself to a mystic's dictators.h.i.+p and could please him by obeying his orders-there is no way to please him; when you obey, he will reverse his orders; he seeks obedience for the sake of obedience and destruction for the sake of destruction. You who are craven enough to believe that you can make terms with a mystic by giving in to his extortions-there is no way to buy him off, the bribe he wants is your life, as slowly or as fast as you are willing to give it in-and the monster he seeks to bribe is the hidden blank-out in his mind, which drives him to kill in order not to learn that the death he desires is his own.

[Ibid., 203; pb 162.]

Perhaps the most craven att.i.tude of all is the one expressed by the injunction "don't be certain." As stated explicitly by many intellectuals, it is the suggestion that if n.o.body is certain of anything, if n.o.body holds any firm convictions, if everybody is willing to give in to everybody else, no dictator will rise among us and we will escape the destruction sweeping the rest of the world. This is the secret voice of the Witch Doctor confessing that he sees a dictator, an Attila, as a man of confident strength and uncompromising conviction. Nothing but a psycho-epistemological panic can blind such intellectuals to the fact that a dictator, like any thug, runs from the first sign of confident resistance; that he can rise only in a society of precisely such uncertain, compliant, shaking compromisers as they advocate, a society that invites a thug to take over; and that the task of resisting an Attila can be accomplished only by men of intransigent conviction and moral certainty.

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 51; pb 45.]

See also COMPROMISE; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; MYSTICISM; PHYSICAL. FORCE; SECOND-HANDERS; STATISM; TYRANNY.

Dictators.h.i.+p. A dictators.h.i.+p is a country that does not recognize individual rights, whose government holds total, unlimited power over men.

["Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand," pamphlet, 15.]

There are four characteristics which brand a country unmistakably as a dictators.h.i.+p: one-party rule-executions without trial or with a mock trial, for political offenses-the nationalization or expropriation of private property-and censors.h.i.+p. A country guilty of these outrages forfeits any moral prerogatives, any claim to national rights or sovereignty, and becomes an outlaw.

["Collectivized 'Rights,' " VOS, 141; pb 105.]

Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictators.h.i.+p, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?

["Foreword," WTL, viii.]

The right of a nation to determine its own form of government does not include the right to establish a slave society (that is, to legalize the enslavement of some men by others). There is no such thing as "the right to enslave." A nation can do it, just as a man can become a criminal-but neither can do it by right.

It does not matter, in this context, whether a nation was enslaved by force, like Soviet Russia, or by vote, like n.a.z.i Germany. Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual). Whether a slave society was conquered or chose to be enslaved, it can claim no national rights and no recognition of such "rights" by civilized countries....

Dictators.h.i.+p nations are outlaws. Any free nation had the right to invade n.a.z.i Germany and, today, has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba or any other slave pen. Whether a free nation chooses to do so or not is a matter of its own self-interest, not of respect for the non-existent "rights" of gang rulers. It is not a free nation's duty to liberate other nations at the price of self-sacrifice, but a free nation has the right to do it, when and if it so chooses.

This right, however, is conditional. Just as the suppression of crimes does not give a policeman the right to engage in criminal activities, so the invasion and destruction of a dictators.h.i.+p does not give the invader the right to establish another variant of a slave society in the conquered country.

["Collectivized 'Rights,' " VOS, 139; pb 104.]

Dictators.h.i.+p and determinism are reciprocally reinforcing corollaries: if one seeks to enslave men, one has to destroy their reliance on the validity of their own judgments and choices-if one believes that reason and volition are impotent, one has to accept the rule of force.

["Representation Without Authorization," ARL, I, 21, 1.]

It is a grave error to suppose that a dictators.h.i.+p rules a nation by means of strict, rigid laws which are obeyed and enforced with rigorous, military precision. Such a rule would be evil, but almost bearable; men could endure the harshest edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific and stable; it is not the known that breaks men's spirits, but the unpredictable. A dictators.h.i.+p has to be capricious; it has to rule by means of the unexpected, the incomprehensible, the wantonly irrational; it has to deal not in death, but in sudden death; a state of chronic uncertainty is what men are psychologically unable to bear.

["Ant.i.trust: The Rule of Unreason," TON, Feb. 1962. 5.]

The legal hallmark of a dictators.h.i.+p [is] preventive law-the concept that a man is guilty until he is proved innocent by the permissive rubber stamp of a commissar or a Gauleiter.

["Who Will Protect Us from Our Protectors?" TON, May 1962, 20.]

A dictators.h.i.+p has to promulgate some sort of distant goals and moral ideals in order to justify its rule and the people's immolation; the extent to which it succeeds in convincing its victims, is the extent of its own danger; sooner or later, its contradictions are thrown in its face by the best of its subjects: the ablest, the most intelligent, the most honest. Thus a dictators.h.i.+p is forced to destroy and to keep on destroying the best of its "human resources." And be it fifty years or five centuries later, ambitious thugs and lethargic drones are all a dictators.h.i.+p will have left to exploit and rule; the rest will die young, physically or spiritually.

["The 'Inexplicable Personal Alchemy,"' NL, 119.]

Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictators.h.i.+p or potential dictators.h.i.+p, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in n.a.z.i Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen.

["America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business," CUI, 45.]

It makes no difference whether government controls allegedly favor the interests of labor or business, of the poor or the rich, of a special cla.s.s or a special race: the results are the same. The notion that a dictators.h.i.+p can benefit any one social group at the expense of others is a worn remnant of the Marxist mythology of cla.s.s warfare, refuted by half a century of factual evidence. All men are victims and losers under a dictators.h.i.+p; n.o.body wins-except the ruling clique.

["The Fascist New Frontier," pamphlet, 13.]

See also COLLECTIVISM; COMMUNISM; DETERMINISM; DICTATOR; FASCISM/n.a.z.iSM; FASCISM and COMMUNISM/SOCIALISM; FOREIGN POLICY; FREEDOM; GOVERNMENT; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; SOVIET RUSSIA; SELF-DETERMINATION of NATIONS; STATISM; TYRANNY.

Director. In all the arts that involve more than one performer, a crucially important artist is the director. (In music, his counterpart is the conductor.) The director is the link between the performing and the primary arts. He is a performer in relation to the primary work, in the sense that his task is the means to the end set by the work-he is a primary artist in relation to the cast, the set designer, the cameraman, etc., in the sense that they are the means to his end, which is the translation of the work into physical action as a meaningful, stylized, integrated whole. In the dramatic arts, the director is the esthetic integrator.

This task requires a first-hand understanding of all the arts, combined with an unusual power of abstract thought and of creative imagination. Great directors are extremely rare. An average director alternates between the twin pitfalls of abdication and usurpation. Either he rides on the talents of others and merely puts the actors through random motions signifying nothing, which results in a hodgepodge of clas.h.i.+ng intentions-or he hogs the show, putting everyone through senseless tricks unrelated to or obliterating the play (if any), on the inverted premise that the play is the means to the end of exhibiting his skill, thus placing himself in the category of circus acrobats, except that he is much less skillful and much less entertaining.

["Art and Cognition," RM, pb 71.]

See also ART; Ch.o.r.eOGRAPHER; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); MOTION PICTURES: PERFORMING ARTS.

Distinguis.h.i.+ng Characteristic. See Concept-Formation.

Dogma. A dogma is a set of beliefs accepted on faith; that is, without rational justification or against rational evidence. A dogma is a matter of blind faith.

["Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand," pamphlet, 9.]

PLAYBOY: If widely accepted, couldn't Objectivism harden into a dogma?

RAND: No. I have found that Objectivism is its own protection against people who might attempt to use it as a dogma. Since Objectivism requires the use of one's mind, those who attempt to take broad principles and apply them unthinkingly and indiscriminately to the concretes of their own existence find that it cannot be done. They are then compelled either to reject Objectivism or to apply it. When I say apply, I mean that they have to use their own mind, their own thinking, in order to know how to apply Objectivist principles to the specific problems of their own lives.

[Ibid.]

See also FAITH; LOGIC; MYSTICISM; OBJECTIVISM; PROOF; REASON; RF.I,IGION.

Draft. Of all the statist violations of individual rights in a mixed economy, the military draft is the worst. It is an abrogation of rights. It negates man's fundamental right-the right to life-and establishes the fundamental principle of statism: that a man's life belongs to the state, and the state may claim it by compelling him to sacrifice it in battle. Once that principle is accepted, the rest is only a matter of time.

If the state may force a man to risk death or hideous maiming and crippling, in a war declared at the state's discretion, for a cause he may neither approve of nor even understand, if his consent is not required to send him into unspeakable martyrdom-then, in principle, all rights are negated in that state, and its government is not man's protector any longer. What else is there left to protect?

The most immoral contradiction-in the chaos of today's anti-ideological groups-is that of the so-called "conservatives," who posture as defenders of individual rights, particularly property rights, but uphold and advocate the draft. By what infernal evasion can they hope to justify the proposition that creatures who have no right to life, have the right to a bank account? A slightly higher-though not much higher-rung of h.e.l.l should be reserved for those "liberals" who claim that man has the "right" to economic security, public housing, medical care, education, recreation, but no right to life, or: that man has the right to livelihood, but not to life.

One of the notions used by all sides to justify the draft, is that "rights impose obligations." Obligations, to whom?-and imposed, by whom? Ideologically, that notion is worse than the evil it attempts to justify: it implies that rights are a gift from the state, and that a man has to buy them by offering something (his life) in return. Logically, that notion is a contradiction: since the only proper function of a government is to protect man's rights, it cannot claim t.i.tle to his life in exchange for that protection.

The only "obligation" involved in individual rights is an obligation imposed, not by the state, but by the nature of reality (i.e., by the law of ident.i.ty): consistency, which, in this case, means the obligation to respect the rights of others, if one wishes one's own rights to be recognized and protected.

Politically, the draft is clearly unconst.i.tutional. No amount of rationalization, neither by the Supreme Court nor by private individuals, can alter the fact that it represents "involuntary servitude."

A volunteer army is the only proper, morat-and practical-way to defend a free country. Should a man volunteer to fight, if his country is attacked? Yes-if he values his own rights and freedom. A free (or even semi-free) country has never lacked volunteers in the face of foreign aggression. Many military authorities have testified that a volunteer army-an army of men who know what they are fighting for and why -is the best, most effective army, and that a drafted one is the least effective.

It is often asked: "But what if a country cannot find a sufficient number of volunteers?" Even so, this would not give the rest of the population a right to the lives of the country's young men. But, in fact, the lack of volunteers occurs for one of two reasons: (1) If a country is demoralized by a corrupt, authoritarian government, its citizens will not volunteer to defend it. But neither will they fight for long, if drafted. For example, observe the literal disintegration of the Czarist Russian army in World War I. (2) If a country's government undertakes to fight a war for some reason other than self-defense, for a purpose which the citizens neither share nor understand, it will not find many volunteers. Thus a volunteer army is one of the best protectors of peace, not only against foreign aggression, but also against any warlike ideologies or projects on the part of a country's own government.

Not many men would volunteer for such wars as Korea or Vietnam. Without the power to draft, the makers of our foreign policy would not be able to embark on adventures of that kind. This is one of the best practical reasons for the abolition of the draft.

["The Wreckage of the Consensus," CUI, 226.]

The years from about fifteen to twenty-five are the crucial formative years of a man's life. This is the time when he confirms his impressions of the world, of other men, of the society in which he is to live, when he acquires conscious convictions, defines his moral values, chooses his goals, and plans his future, developing or renouncing ambition. These are the years that mark him for life. And it is these years that an allegedly humanitarian society forces him to spend in terror-the terror of knowing that he can plan nothing and count on nothing, that any road he takes can be blocked at any moment by an unpredictable power, that, barring his vision of the future, there stands the gray shape of the barracks, and, perhaps, beyond it, death for some unknown reason in some alien jungle.

[Ibid., 229.]

Once in a while, I receive letters from young men asking me for personal advice on problems connected with the draft. Morally, no one can give advice in any issue where choices and decisions are not voluntary: "Morality ends where a gun begins." As to the practical alternatives available, the best thing to do is to consult a good lawyer.

There is, however, one moral aspect of the issue that needs clarification. Some young men seem to labor under the misapprehension that since the draft is a violation of their rights, compliance with the draft law would const.i.tute a moral sanction of that violation. This is a serious error. A forced compliance is not a sanction. All of us are forced to comply with many laws that violate our rights, but so long as we advocate the repeal of such laws, our compliance does not const.i.tute a sanction. Unjust laws have to be fought ideologically; they cannot be fought or corrected by means of mere disobedience and futile martyrdom. To quote from an editorial on this subject in the April 1967 issue of Persuasion: "One does not stop the juggernaut by throwing oneself in front of it...."

[Ibid., 235.]

See also COLLECTIVISM; "DUTY"; FREEDOM; INDIVIDUAI. RIGHTS; LIFE, RIGHT to; RESPONSIBILITY/OBLIGATION; WAR.

"Duty." One of the most destructive anti-concepts in the history of moral philosophy is the term "duty."

An anti-concept is an artificial, unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept. The term "duty" obliterates more than single concepts; it is a metaphysical and psychological killer: it negates all the essentials of a rational view of life and makes them inapplicable to man's actions....

The meaning of the term "duty" is: the moral necessity to perform certain actions for no reason other than obedience to some higher authority, without regard to any personal goal, motive, desire or interest.

It is obvious that that anti-concept is a product of mysticism, not an abstraction derived from reality. In a mystic theory of ethics, "duty" stands for the notion that man must obey the dictates of a supernatural authority. Even though the anti-concept has been secularized, and the authority of G.o.d's will has been ascribed to earthly ent.i.ties, such as parents, country, State, mankind, etc., their alleged supremacy still rests on nothing but a mystic edict. Who in h.e.l.l can have the right to claim that sort of submission or obedience? This is the only proper form-and locality-for the question, because nothing and no one can have such a right or claim here on earth.

The arch-advocate of "duty" is Immanuel Kant; he went so much farther than other theorists that they seem innocently benevolent by comparison. "Duty," he holds, is the only standard of virtue; but virtue is not its own reward: if a reward is involved, it is no longer virtue. The only moral motivation, he holds, is devotion to duty for duty's sake; only an action motivated exclusively by such devotion is a moral action....

If one were to accept it, the anti-concept "duty" destroys the concept of reality: an unaccountable, supernatural power takes precedence over facts and dictates one's actions regardless of context or consequences.

"Duty" destroys reason: it supersedes one's knowledge and judgment, making the process of thinking and judging irrelevant to one's actions.

"Duty" destroys values: it demands that one betray or sacrifice one's highest values for the sake of an inexplicable command-and it transforms values into a threat to one's moral worth, since the experience of pleasure or desire casts doubt on the moral purity of one's motives.

"Duty" destroys love: who could want to be loved not from "inclination," but from "duty"?

"Duty" destroys self-esteem: it leaves no self to be esteemed.

If one accepts that nightmare in the name of morality, the infernal irony is that "duty" destroys morality. A deontological (duty-centered) theory of ethics confines moral principles to a list of prescribed "duties" and leaves the rest of man's life without any moral guidance, cutting morality off from any application to the actual problems and concerns of man's existence. Such matters as work, career, ambition, love, friends.h.i.+p, pleasure, happiness, values (insofar as they are not pursued as duties) are regarded by these theories as amoral, i.e., outside the province of morality. If so, then by what standard is a man to make his daily choices, or direct the course of his life?

In a deontological theory, all personal desires are banished from the realm of morality; a personal desire has no moral significance, be it a desire to create or a desire to kill. For example, if a man is not supporting his life from duty, such a morality makes no distinction between supporting it by honest labor or by robbery. If a man wants to be honest, he deserves no moral credit; as Kant would put it, such honesty is "praiseworthy," but without "moral import." Only a vicious represser, who feels a profound desire to lie, cheat and steal, but forces himself to act honestly for the sake of "duty," would receive a recognition of moral worth from Kant and his ilk.

This is the sort of theory that gives morality a bad name.

["Causality Versus Duty," PWNI, 114; pb 95.]

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....

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.

[Ibid., 118; pb 98.]

A Kantian or even a semi-Kantian cannot permit himself to value anything profoundly, since an inexplicable "duty" may demand the sacrifice of his values at any moment, wiping out any long-range plan or struggle he might have undertaken to achieve them....

The notion of "duty" is intrinsically anti-causal. In its origin, a "duty" defies the principle of efficient causation-since it is causeless (or supernatural); in its effects, it defies the principle of final causation-since it must be performed regardless of consequences.