The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 4

The function of psychological integrations is to make certain connections automatic, so that they work as a unit and do not require a conscious process of thought every time they are evoked.

["Art and Sense of Life," RM, 45; pb 36.1 A mind's cognitive development involves a continual process of automatization. For example, you cannot perceive a table as an infant perceives it-as a mysterious object with four legs. You perceive it as a table, i.e., a man-made piece of furniture, serving a certain purpose belonging to a human habitation, etc.; you cannot separate these attributes from your sight of the table, you experience it as a single, indivisible percept-yet all you see is a four-legged object; the rest is an automatized integration of a vast amount of conceptual knowledge which, at one time, you had to learn bit by bit. The same is true of everything you perceive or experience; as an adult, you cannot perceive or experience in a vacuum, you do it in a certain automatized context-and the efficiency of your mental operations depends on the kind of context your subconscious has automatized.

["The Comprachicos," NL, 192.]

The status of automatized knowledge in his mind is experienced by man as if it had the direct, effortless, self-evident quality (and certainty) of perceptual awareness. But it is conceptual knowtedge-and its validity depends on the precision of his concepts, which require as strict a precision of meaning (i.e., as strict a knowledge of what specific referents they subsume) as the definitions of mathematical terms. (It is obvious what disasters will follow if one automatizes errors, contradictions and undefined approximations.) [ITOE, 86.).

See also INTEGRATION (MENTAL); LEARNING; PSYCHO-EPISTF. MOLOGY; SUBCONSCIOUS.

Awareness. See Consciousness.

Axiomatic Concepts. Axioms are usually considered to be propositions identifying a fundamental, self-evident truth. But explicit propositions as such are not primaries: they are made of concepts. The base of man's knowledge-of all other concepts, all axioms, propositions and thought-consists of axiomatic concepts.

An axiomatic concept is the identification of a primary fact of reality, which cannot be a.n.a.lyzed, i.e., reduced to other facts or broken into component parts. It is implicit in all facts and in all knowledge. It is the fundamentally given and directly perceived or experienced, which requires no proof or explanation, but on which all proofs and explanations rest.

The first and primary axiomatic concepts are "existence," "ident.i.ty" (which is a corollary of "existence") and "consciousness." One can study what exists and how consciousness functions; but one cannot a.n.a.lyze (or "prove") existence as such, or consciousness as such. These are irreducible primaries. (An attempt to "prove" them is self-contradictory: it is an attempt to "prove" existence by means of non-existence, and consciousness by means of unconsciousness.) [ITOE, 73.1.

[The] underscoring of primary facts is one of the crucial epistemological functions of axiomatic concepts. It is also the reason why they can be translated into a statement only in the form of a repet.i.tion (as a base and a reminder): Existence exists-Consciousness is conscious-A is A. (This converts axiomatic concepts into formal axioms.) [Ibid., 78.]

Epistemologically, the formation of axiomatic concepts is an act of abstraction, a selective focusing on and mental isolation of metaphysical fundamentals; but metaphysically, it is an act of integration-the widest integration possible to man: it unites and embraces the total of his experience.

The units of the concepts "existence" and "ident.i.ty" are every ent.i.ty, attribute, action, event or phenomenon (including consciousness) that exists, has ever existed or will ever exist. The units of the concept "consciousness" are every state or process of awareness that one experiences, has ever experienced or will ever experience (as well as similar units, a similar faculty, which one infers in other living ent.i.ties).

[Ibid., 74.]

Since axiomatic concepts refer to facts of reality and are not a matter of "faith" or of man's arbitrary choice, there is a way to ascertain whether a given concept is axiomatic or not: one ascertains it by observing the fact that an axiomatic concept cannot be escaped, that it is implicit in all knowledge, that it has to be accepted and used even in the process of any attempt to deny it.

For instance, when modern philosophers declare that axioms are a matter of arbitrary choice, and proceed to choose complex, derivative concepts as the alleged axioms of their alleged reasoning, one can observe that their statements imply and depend on "existence," "consciousness," "ident.i.ty," which they profess to negate, but which are smuggled into their arguments in the form of unacknowledged, "stolen" concepts.

It is worth noting, at this point, that what the enemies of reason seem to know, but its alleged defenders have not discovered, is the fact that axiomatic concepts are the guardians of man's mind and the foundation of reason -the keystone, touchstone and hallmark of reason-and if reason is to be destroyed, it is axiomatic concepts that have to be destroyed.

[Ibid., 79.J It is only conceptual awareness that can grasp and hold the total of its experience-extrospectivety, the continuity of existence; introspectively, the continuity of consciousness-and thus enable its possessor to project his course long-range. It is by means of axiomatic concepts that man grasps and holds this continuity, bringing it into his conscious awareness and knowledge. It is axiomatic concepts that identify the precondition of knowledge: the distinction between existence and consciousness, between reality and the awareness of reality, between the object and the subject of cognition. Axiomatic concepts are the foundation of objectivity.

[Ibid., 75.]

It is only man's consciousness, a consciousness capable of conceptual errors, that needs a special identification of the directly given, to embrace and delimit the entire field of its awareness-to delimit it from the void of unreality to which conceptual errors can lead. Axiomatic concepts are epistemological guidelines. They sum up the essence of all human cognition: something exists of which I am conscious; I must discover its ident.i.tv.

Ibid., 78.]

Since axiomatic concepts are identifications of irreducible primaries, the only way to define one is by means of an ostensive definition-e.g., to define "existence," one would have to sweep one's arm around and say: "I mean this."

[Ibid., 53.]

See also AXIOMS; CONCEPTS; CONSCIOUSNESS; COROLLARIES; EXISTENCE ; HIERARCHY of KNOWLEDGE; IDENt.i.tY; IMPLICIT KNOWLEDGE; IRREDUCIBLE PRIMARIES; OBJECTIVITY; PRIMACY of EXISTENCE vs. PRIMACY nf CONSCIOUSNESS; "STOLEN CONCEPT," FALLACY of.

Axioms. An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it.

[GS, FNI, 193; pb 155.]

Existence exists-and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.

If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness.

Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two-existence and consciousness-are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge and in its sum, from the first ray of light you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you might acquire at its end. Whether you know the shape of a pebble or the structure of a solar system, the axioms remain the same: that it exists and that you know it.

To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of nonexistence, it is to be an ent.i.ty of a specific nature made of specific attributes. Centuries ago, the man who was-no matter what his errors -the greatest of your philosophers, has stated the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A. A thing is itself. You have never grasped the meaning of his statement. I am here to complete it: Existence is Ident.i.ty, Consciousness is Identification.

[Ibid., 152; pb 124.]

"You cannot prove that you exist or that you're conscious," they chatter, blanking out the fact that proof presupposes existence, consciousness and a complex chain of knowledge: the existence of something to know, of a consciousness able to know it, and of a knowledge that has learned to distinguish between such concepts as the proved and the unproved.

When a savage who has not learned to speak declares that existence must be proved, he is asking you to prove it by means of non-existence -when he declares that your consciousness must be proved, he is asking you to prove it by means of unconsciousness-he is asking you to step into a void outside of existence and consciousness to give him proof of both-he is asking you to become a zero gaining knowledge about a zero.

When he declares that an axiom is a matter of arbitrary choice and he doesn't choose to accept the axiom that he exists, he blanks out the fact that he has accepted it by uttering that sentence, that the only way to reject it is to shut one's mouth, expound no theories and die.

[Ibid., 192; pb 154.]

See also AXIOMATIC CONCEPTS; CONSCIOUSNESS; COROLLARIES; EXISTENCE; HIERARCHY of KNOWLEDGE; IDENt.i.tY; IMPLICIT KNOWLEDGE; OBJECTIVITY ; PRIMACY of EXISTENCE vs. PRIMACY of CONSCIOUSNESS; SELF-EVIDENT; "STOLEN CONCEPT," FALLACY of.

B.

Ballet. The keynote of the stylization achieved in ballet is: weightlessness. Paradoxically, ballet presents man as almost disembodied: it does not distort man's body, it selects the kinds of movements that are normally possible to man (such as walking on tiptoe) and exaggerates them, stressing their beauty-and defying the law of gravitation. A gracefully effortless floating, flowing and flying are the essentials of the ballet's image of man. It projects a fragile kind of strength and a certain inflexible precision, but it is man with a fine steel skeleton and without flesh, man the spirit, not controlling, but transcending this earth....

Strong pa.s.sions or negative emotions cannot be projected in ballet, regardless of its librettos; it cannot express tragedy or fear-or s.e.xuality ; it is a perfect medium for the expression of spiritual love.

["Art and Cognition," RM, pb 68.]

See also ART; Ch.o.r.eOGRAPHER; DANCE; MUSIC; PERFORMING ARTS.

Beauty. Beauty is a sense of harmony. Whether it's an image, a human face, a body, or a sunset, take the object which you call beautiful, as a unit [and ask yourself]: what parts is it made up of, what are its const.i.tuent elements, and are they all harmonious? If they are, the result is beautiful. If there are contradictions and clashes, the result is marred or positively ugly.

For instance, the simplest example would be a human face. You know what features belong in a human face. Well, if the face is lopsided, [with a] very indefinite jawline, very small eyes, beautiful mouth, and a long nose, you would have to say that's not a beautiful face. But if all these features are harmoniously integrated, if they all fit your view of the importance of all these features on a human face, then that face is beautiful.

In this respect, a good example would be the beauty of different races of people. For instance, the black face, or an Oriental face, is built on a different standard, and therefore what would be beautiful on a white face will not be beautiful for them (or vice-versa), because there is a certain racial standard of features by which you judge which features, which face, in that cla.s.sification is harmonious or distorted.

That's in regard to human beauty. In regard to a sunset, for instance, or a landscape, you will regard it as beautiful if all the colors complement each other, or go well together, or are dramatic together. And you will call it ugly if it is a bad rainy afternoon, and the sky isn't exactly pink nor exactly gray, but sort of "modern."

Now since this is an objective definition of beauty, there of course can be universal standards of beauty-provided you define the terms of what objects you are going to cla.s.sify as beautiful and what you take as the ideal harmonious relations.h.i.+p of the elements of that particular object. To say, "It's in the eyes of the beholder"-that, of course, would be pure subjectivism, if taken literally. It isn't [a matter of] what you, for unknown reasons, decide to regard as beautiful. It is true, of course, that if there were no valuers, then nothing could be valued as beautiful or ugly, because values are created by the observing consciousness-but they are created by a standard based on reality. So here the issue is: values, including beauty, have to be judged as objective, not subjective or intrinsic.

[Ayn Rand, question period following Lecture 11 of Leonard Peikoft's series "The Philosophy of Objectivism" (1976).]

See also ART; ESTHETICS; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); OBJECTIVITY.

Behaviorism. Many psychologists are envious of the prestige-and the achievements-of the physical sciences, which they try not to emulate, but to imitate. [B.F.] Skinner is archetypical in this respect: he is pa.s.sionately intent on being accepted as a "scientist" and complains that only [the concept of] "Autonomous Man" stands in the way of such acceptance (which, I am sure, is true). Mr. Skinner points out scornfully that primitive men, who were unable to see the difference between living beings and inanimate objects, ascribed the objects' motions to conscious G.o.ds or demons, and that science could not begin until this belief was discarded. In the name of science, Mr. Skinner switches defiantly to the other side of the same basic coin: accepting the belief that consciousness is supernatural, he refuses to accept the existence of man's mind.

["The Stimulus and the Response," PWNI, 169; pb 140.]

Apparently to appease man's defenders, Mr. Skinner offers the fullowing: "In s.h.i.+fting control from autonomous man to the observable environment we do not leave an empty organism. A great deal goes on inside the skin, and physiology will eventually tell us more about it" [Beyond Freedom and Dignity, p. 195]. This means: No, man is not empty, he is a solid piece of meat.

[Ibid., 175; pb 144.]

Behaviorists define psychology as the study of "observable behavior" (their term for action) and claim that man's behavior is controlled by the environment. In Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner states that "a person does not act upon the world, the world acts upon him." Thoughts do not cause actions, according to Skinner, but are simply another type of behavior: "covert behavior." Learning is not defined cognitively (as the acquisition of knowledge) but as a change in behavior, caused by the environment. Behaviorism dispenses with such concepts as the self or personality, emotion, and mental illness, and replaces them with behaviorally defined notions such as response repertoire, bodily reaction, and abnormal behavior.

[Edwin A. Locke, "Behaviorism and Psychoa.n.a.lysis," TOF, Feb. 1980, 10.]

Behaviorism's subst.i.tute for the mind is certain ent.i.ties in the environment called "reinforcers." A "reinforcer," say the Behaviorists, is an event which follows a response and makes subsequent responses of the same type more likely. "What type of events change the probability of responding?" we ask. "Reinforcing events," we are told. "What is a reinforcing event?" we inquire. "One which modifies response probability," they reply. "Why does a reinforcer reinforce?" we ask. "'That's not a relevant question," they answer.... To understand why a "reinforcer" reinforces, Behaviorists would have to make reference to the individual's mental contents and processes-i.e., they would have to abandon Behaviorism.

[Ibid., 14.]

See also CONSCIOUSNESS; DETERMINISM; FREE WILL; FREUD; MAN; PSYCHOLOGY.

Benevolent Universe Premise. There is a fundamental conviction which some people never acquire, some hold only in their youth, and a few hold to the end of their days-the conviction that ideas matter.... That ideas matter means that knowledge matters, that truth matters, that one's mind matters....

Its consequence is the inability to believe in the power or the triumph of evil. No matter what corruption one observes in one's immediate background, one is unable to accept it as normal, permanent or metaphysically right. One feels: "This injustice (or terror or falsehood or frustration or pain or agony) is the exception in life, not the rule." One feels certain that somewhere on earth-even if not anywhere in one's surroundings or within one's reach-proper, human way of life is possible to human beings, and justice matters.

["The Inexplicable Personal Alchemy," NL, 118.]

Although accidents and failures are possible, they are not, according to Objectivism, the essence of human life. On the contrary, the achievement of values is the norm-speaking now for the moral man, moral by the Objectivist definition. Success and happiness are the metaphysically to-be-expected. In other words, Objectivism rejects the view that human fulfillment is impossible, that man is doomed to misery, that the universe is malevolent. We advocate the "benevolent universe" premise.

The "benevolent universe" does not mean that the universe feels kindly to man or that it is out to help him achieve his goals. No, the universe is neutral; it simply is; it is indifferent to you. You must care about and adapt to it, not the other way around. But reality is "benevolent" in the sense that if you do adapt to it-i.e., if you do think, value, and act rationally, then you can (and barring accidents you will) achieve your values. You will, because those values are based on reality.

Pain, suffering, failure do not have metaphysical significance-they do not reveal the nature of reality. Ayn Rand's heroes, accordingly, refuse to take pain seriously, i.e., metaphysically. You remember when Dagny asks Ragnar in the valley how his wife can live through the months he is away at sea, and he answers (I quote just part of this pa.s.sage): "We do not think that tragedy is our natura) state. We do not live in chronic dread of disaster. We do not expect disaster until we have specific reason to expect it, and when we encounter it, we are free to fight it. It is not happiness, but suffering, that we consider unnatural. It is not success but calamity that we regard as the abnormal exception in human life."

This is why Ayn Rand's heroes respond to disaster, when it does strike, with a single instantaneous response: action-what can they do? If there's any chance at all, they refuse to accept defeat. They do what they can to counter the danger, because they are on the premise that success, not failure, is the to-be-expected.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976), Lecture 8.J See also EVIL; MALEVOLENT UNIVERSE PREMISE; METAPHYSICAL VALUE-JUDGMENTS; SENSE of LIFE; SUFFERING.

Birth Control. The capacity to procreate is rnerely a potential which man is not obligated to actualize. The choice to have children or not is morally optional. Nature endows man with a variety of potentials -and it is his mind that must decide which capacities he chooses to exercise, according to his own hierarchy of rational goals and values. The mere fact that man has the capacity to kill, does not mean that it is his duty to become a murderer; in the same way, the mere fact that man has the capacity to procreate, does not mean that it is his duty to commit spiritual suicide by making procreation his primary goal and turning himself into a stud-farm animal....

To an animal, the rearing of its young is a matter of temporary cycles. To man, it is a lifelong responsibit.i.ty-a grave responsibility that must not be undertaken causelessly, thoughtlessly or accidentally.

In regard to the moral aspects of birth control, the primary right involved is not the "right" of an unborn child, nor of the family, nor of society, nor of G.o.d. The primary right is one which-in today's public clamor on the subject-few, if any, voices have had the courage to uphold: the right of man and woman to their own life and happiness-the right not to be regarded as the means to any end.

["Of Living Death," TO, Oct. 1968, 3.]

See also ABORTION; LIFE; MAN; RELIGION; s.e.x.

Blanking Out. See Evasion.

Businessmen. The professional businessman is the field agent of the army whose lieutenant-commander-in-chief is the scientist. The businessman carries scientific discoveries from the laboratory of the inventor to industrial plants, and transforms them into material products that fill men's physical needs and expand the comfort of men's existence. By creating a ma.s.s market, he makes these products available to every income level of society. By using machines, he increases the productivity of human labor, thus raising labor's economic rewards. By ot ganizing human effort into productive enterprises, he creates employment for men of countless professions. He is the great liberator who, in the short span of a century and a half, has released men from bondage to their physical needs, has released them from the terrible drudgery of an eighteen-hour workday of manual labor for their barest subsistence, has released them from famines, from pestilences, from the stagnant hopelessness and terror in which most of mankind had lived in all the precapitalist centuries-and in which most of it still lives, in non-capitalist countries.

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 26; pb 27.1 America's industrial progress, in the short span of a century and a half, has acquired the character of a legend: it has never been equaled anywhere on earth, in any period of history. The American businessmen, as a cla.s.s, have demonstrated the greatest productive genius and the most spectacular achievements ever recorded in the economic history of mankind. What reward did they receive from our culture and its intellectuals? The position of a hated, persecuted minority. The position of a scapegoat for the evils of the bureaucrats.

["America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business," CUI, 48.]

If a small group of men were always regarded as guilty, in any dash with any other group, regardless of the issues or circ.u.mstances involved, would you call it persecution? If this group were always made to pay for the sins, errors, or failures of any other group, would you call that persecution? If this group had to live under a silent reign of terror, under special laws, from which all other people were immune, laws which the accused could not grasp or define in advance and which the accuser could interpret in any way he pleased-would you call that persecution? If this group were penalized, not for its faults, but for its virtues, not for its incompetence, but for its ability, not for its failures, but for its achievements, and the greater the achievement, the greater the penalty-would you call that persecution?

If your answer is "yes"-then ask yourself what sort of monstrous injustice you are condoning, supporting, or perpetrating. That group is the American businessmen....

Every ugly, brutal aspect of injustice toward racial or religious minorities is being practiced toward businessmen.... 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.

[Ibid., 44.]

The legal treatment accorded to actual criminals is much superior to that accorded to businessmen. The criminal's rights are protected by objective laws, objective procedures, objective rules of evidence. A criminal is presumed to be innocent until he is proved guilty. Only businessmen -the producers, the providers, the supporters, the Atlases who carry our whole economy on their shoulders-are regarded as guilty by nature and are required to prove their innocence, without any definable criteria of innocence or proof, and are left at the mercy of the whim, the favor, or the malice of any publicity-seeking politician, any scheming statist, any envious mediocrity who might chance to work his way into a bureaucratic job and who feels a yen to do some trust-busting.

[Ibid., 51.]

All the evils, abuses, and iniquities, popularly ascribed to businessmen and to capitalism, were not caused by an unregulated economy or by a free market, but by government intervention into the economy. The giants of American industry-such as James Jerome Hill or Commodore Vanderbilt or Andrew Carnegie or J. P. Morgan-were self-made men who earned their fortunes by personal ability, by free trade on a free market. But there existed another kind of businessmen, the products of a mixed economy, the men with political pull, who made fortunes by means of special privileges granted to them by the government, such men as the Big Four of the Central Pacific Railroad. It was the political power behind their activities-the power of forced, unearned, economically unjustified privileges-that caused dislocations in the country's economy, hards.h.i.+ps, depressions, and mounting public protests. But it was the free market and the free businessmen that took the blame.

[Ibid., 48.]

As a group, businessmen have been withdrawing for decades from the ideological battlefield, disarmed by the deadly combination of altruism and Pragmatism. Their public policy has consisted in appeasing, compromising and apologizing: appeasing their crudest, loudest antagonists ; compromising with any attack, any lie, any insult; apologizing for their own existence. Abandoning the field of ideas to their enemies, they have been relying on lobbying, i.e., on private rnanipulations, on pull, on seeking momentary favors from government officials. Today, the last group one can expect to fight for capitalism is the capitalists.

['1'he Moratorium on Brains," ARL, I, 3, 2.]

Businessmen are the one group that distinguishes capitalism and the American way of life from the totalitarian statism that is swallowing the rest of the world. All the other social groups-workers, farmers, professional men, scientists, soldiers-exist under dictators.h.i.+ps, even though they exist in chains, in terror, in misery, and in progressive self-destruction. But there is no such group as businessmen under a dictalors.h.i.+p. Their place is taken by armed thugs: by bureaucrats and commissars. Businessmen are the symbol of a free society-the symbol of America. If and when they perish, civilization will perish. But if you wish to fight for freedom, you must begin by fighting for its unrewarded, unrecognized, unacknowledged, yet best representatives-the American businessmen.

["America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business," CUI, 62.J See also ANt.i.tRUST LAWS; BUSINESSMEN v,s. BUREAUCRATS; CAPITALISM; COMPEt.i.tION; CREATORS; LAW, OBJECTIVE and NON-OBJECTIVE; MANAGERIAL WORK; PRAGMATISM; RETROACTIVE LAW.

Businessmen vs. Bureaucrats. A businessman's success depends on his intelligence, his knowledge, his productive ability, his economic judgment-and on the voluntary agreement of all those he deals with: his customers, his suppliers, his employees, his creditors or investors. A bureaucrat's success depends on his political pull. A businessman cannot force you to buy his product; if he makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences; if he fails, he takes the loss. A bureaucrat forces you to obey his decisions, whether you agree with him or not-and the more advanced the stage of a country's statism, the wider and more discretionary the powers wielded by a bureaucrat. If he makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences; if he fails, he pa.s.ses the loss on to you, in the form of heavier taxes.

A businessman cannot force you to work for him or to accept the wages he offers; you are free to seek employment elsewhere and to accept a better offer, if you can find it. (Remember, in this context, that jobs do not exist "in nature," that they do not grow on trees, that someone has to create the job you need, and that that someone, the businessman, will go out of business if he pays you more than the market permits him to pay you.) A bureaucrat can force you to work for him, when he achieves the totalitarian power he seeks; he can force you to accept any payment he offers-or none, as witness the forced labor camps in the countries of full statism.

["From My 'Future File,' " ARL, III, 26. 5.]

1 he businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear.

["America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business," CUI, 48.]

See also BUSINESSMEN ; CAPITALISM; ECONOMIC POWER vs. POLITICAL POWER; PHYSICAL FORCE.

Byronic View of Existence. There are Romanticists whose hasic premise, in effect, is that man possesses volition in regard to consciousness, but not to existence, i.e., in regard to his own character and choice of values, but not in regard to the possibility of achieving his goals in the physical world. The distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics of such writers are grand-scale themes and characters, no plots and an overwhelming sense of tragedy, the sense of a "malevolent universe." The chief exponents of this category were poets. The leading one is Byron, whose name has been attached to this particular, "Byronic," view of existence: its essence is the belief that man must lead a heroic life and fight for his values even though he is doomed to defeat by a malevolent fate over which he has no control.

["What Is Romanticism?" RM, 94; pb 109.]

See also ART; FREE WILL; MALEVOLENT UNIVERSE PREMISE; ROMANTICISM ; SENSE of LIFE.

C.

Capitalism.

Theory Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privatelv owned.

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relations.h.i.+ps: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man's rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man's right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 19.]

When I say "capitalism," I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism-with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.