"The Virtue of Selfishness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rand Ayn)

Man cannot survive as anything but man. He can abandon his means of survival, his mind, he can turn himself into a subhuman creature and he can turn his life into a brief span of agonyЧjust as his body can exist for a while in the process of disintegration by disease. But he cannot succeed, as a subhuman, in achieving anything but the subhumanЧas the ugly horror of the antirational periods of mankindТs history can demonstrate. Man has to be man by choiceЧand it is the task of ethics to teach him how to live like man.
The Objectivist ethics holds manТs life as the standard of valueЧand his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man.
The difference between УstandardФ and УpurposeФ in this context is as follows: a УstandardФ is an abstract principle that serves as a measurement or gauge to guide a manТs choices in the achievement of a concrete, specific purpose. УThat which is required for the survival of man qua manФ is an abstract principle that applies to every individual man. The task of applying this principle to a concrete, specific purposeЧthe purpose of living a life proper to a rational beingЧbelongs to every individual man, and the life he has to live is his own.
Man must choose his actions, values and goals by the standard of that which is proper to manЧin order to achieve, maintain, fulfill and enjoy that ultimate value, that end in itself, which is his own life.
Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keepЧvirtue is the act by which one gains and/or keeps it. The three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethicsЧthe three values which, together, are the means to and the realization of oneТs ultimate value, oneТs own lifeЧare: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride.
Productive work is the central purpose of a rational manТs life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive workЧpride is the result.
Rationality is manТs basic virtue, the source of all his other virtues. ManТs basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know. Irrationality is the rejection of manТs means of survival and, therefore, a commitment to a course of blind destruction; that which is anti-mind, is anti-life.
The virtue of Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as oneТs only source of knowledge, oneТs only judge of values and oneТs only guide to action. It means oneТs total commitment to a state of full, conscious awareness, to the maintenance of a full mental focus in all issues, in all choices, in all of oneТs waking hours. It means a commitment to the fullest perception of reality within oneТs power and to the constant, active expansion of oneТs perception, i.e., of oneТs knowledge. It means a commitment to the reality of oneТs own existence, i.e., to the principle that all of oneТs goals, values and actions take place in reality and, therefore, that one must never place any value or consideration whatsoever above oneТs perception of reality. It means a commitment to the principle that all of oneТs convictions, values, goals, desires and actions must be based on, derived from, chosen and validated by a process of thoughtЧas precise and scrupulous a process of thought, directed by as ruthlessly strict an application of logic, as oneТs fullest capacity permits. It means oneТs acceptance of the responsibility of forming oneТs own judgments and of living by the work of oneТs own mind (which is the virtue of Independence). It means that one must never sacrifice oneТs convictions to the opinions or wishes of others (which is the virtue of Integrity)Чthat one must never attempt to fake reality in any manner (which is the virtue of Honesty)Чthat one must never seek or grant the unearned and undeserved, neither in matter nor in spirit (which is the virtue of Justice). It means that one must never desire effects without causes, and that one must never enact a cause without assuming full responsibility for its effectsЧthat one must never act like a zombie, i.e., without knowing oneТs own purposes and motivesЧthat one must never make any decisions, form any convictions or seek any values out of context, i.e., apart from or against the total, integrated sum of oneТs knowledgeЧand, above all, that one must never seek to get away with contradictions. It means the rejection of any form of mysticism, i.e., any claim to some nonsensory, nonrational, nondefinable, supernatural source of knowledge. It means a commitment to reason, not in sporadic fits or on selected issues or in special emergencies, but as a permanent way of life.
The virtue of Productiveness is the recognition of the fact that productive work is the process by which manТs mind sustains his life, the process that sets man free of the necessity to adjust himself to his background, as all animals do, and gives him the power to adjust his background to himself. Productive work is the road of manТs unlimited achievement and calls upon the highest attributes of his character: his creative ability, his ambitiousness, his self-assertiveness, his refusal to bear uncontested disasters, his dedication to the goal of reshaping the earth in the image of his values. УProductive workФ does not mean the unfocused performance of the motions of some job. It means the consciously chosen pursuit of a productive career, in any line of rational endeavor, great or modest, on any level of ability. It is not the degree of a manТs ability nor the scale of his work that is ethically relevant here, but the fullest and most purposeful use of his mind.
The virtue of Pride is the recognition of the fact Уthat as man must produce the physical values he needs to sustain his life, so he must acquire the values of character that make his life worth sustainingЧthat as man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul.Ф (Atlas Shrugged.) The virtue of Pride can best be described by the term: Уmoral ambitiousness.Ф It means that one must earn the right to hold oneself as oneТs own highest value by achieving oneТs own moral perfectionЧwhich one achieves by never accepting any code of irrational virtues impossible to practice and by never failing to practice the virtues one knows to be rationalЧby never accepting an unearned guilt and never earning any, or, if one has earned it, never leaving it uncorrectedЧby never resigning oneself passively to any flaws in oneТs characterЧby never placing any concern, wish, fear or mood of the moment above the reality of oneТs own self-esteem. And, above all, it means oneТs rejection of the role of a sacrificial animal, the rejection of any doctrine that preaches self-immolation as a moral virtue or duty.
The basic social principle of the Objectivist ethics is that just as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself, not the means to the ends or the welfare of othersЧand, therefore, that man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. To live for his own sake means that the achievement of his own happiness is manТs highest moral purpose.
In psychological terms, the issue of manТs survival does not confront his consciousness as an issue of Уlife or death,Ф but as an issue of Уhappiness or suffering.Ф Happiness is the successful state of life, suffering is the warning signal of failure, of death. Just as the pleasure-pain mechanism of manТs body is an automatic indicator of his bodyТs welfare or injury, a barometer of its basic alternative, life or deathЧso the emotional mechanism of manТs consciousness is geared to perform the same function, as a barometer that registers the same alternative by means of two basic emotions: joy or suffering. Emotions are the automatic results of manТs value judgments integrated by his subconscious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers manТs values or threatens them, that which is for him or against himЧlightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss.
But while the standard of value operating the physical pleasure-pain mechanism of manТs body is automatic and innate, determined by the nature of his bodyЧthe standard of value operating his emotional mechanism, is not. Since man has no automatic knowledge, he can have no automatic values; since he has no innate ideas, he can have no innate value judgments.
Man is born with an emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism; but, at birth, both are Уtabula rasa.Ф It is manТs cognitive faculty, his mind, that determines the content of both. ManТs emotional mechanism is like an electronic computer, which his mind has to programЧand the programming consists of the values his mind chooses.
But since the work of manТs mind is not automatic, his values, like all his premises, are the product either of his thinking or of his evasions: man chooses his values by a conscious process of thoughtЧor accepts them by default, by subconscious associations, on faith, on someoneТs authority, by some form of social osmosis or blind imitation. Emotions are produced by manТs premises, held consciously or subconsciously, explicitly or implicitly.
Man has no choice about his capacity to feel that something is good for him or evil, but what he will consider good or evil, what will give him joy or pain, what he will love or hate, desire or fear, depends on his standard of value. If he chooses irrational values, he switches his emotional mechanism from the role of his guardian to the role of his destroyer. The irrational is the impossible; it is that which contradicts the facts of reality; facts cannot be altered by a wish, but they can destroy the wisher. If a man desires and pursues contradictionsЧif he wants to have his cake and eat it, tooЧhe disintegrates his consciousness; he turns his inner life into a civil war of blind forces engaged in dark, incoherent, pointless, meaningless conflicts (which, incidentally, is the inner state of most people today).
Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of oneТs values. If a man values productive work, his happiness is the measure of his success in the service of his life. But if a man values destruction, like a sadistЧor self-torture, like a masochistЧor life beyond the grave, like a mysticЧor mindless Уkicks,Ф like the driver of a hotrod carЧhis alleged happiness is the measure of his success in the service of his own destruction. It must be added that the emotional state of all those irrationalists cannot be properly designated as happiness or even as pleasure: it is merely a momentТs relief from their chronic state of terror.
Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive by any random means, as a parasite, a moocher or a looter, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the momentЧso he is free to seek his happiness in any irrational fraud, any whim, any delusion, any mindless escape from reality, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment nor to escape the consequences.
I quote from GaltТs speech: УHappiness is a state of non-contradictory joyЧa joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction. ... Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.Ф
The maintenance of life and the pursuit of happiness are not two separate issues. To hold oneТs own life as oneТs ultimate value, and oneТs own happiness as oneТs highest purpose are two aspects of the same achievement. Existentially, the activity of pursuing rational goals is the activity of maintaining oneТs life; psychologically, its result, reward and concomitant is an emotional state of happiness. It is by experiencing happiness that one lives oneТs life, in any hour, year or the whole of it. And when one experiences the kind of pure happiness that is an end in itselfЧthe kind that makes one think: УThis is worth living forФЧwhat one is greeting and affirming in emotional terms is the metaphysical fact that life is an end in itself.
But the relationship of cause to effect cannot be reversed. It is only by accepting УmanТs lifeФ as oneТs primary and by pursuing the rational values it requires that one can achieve happinessЧnot by taking УhappinessФ as some undefined, irreducible primary and then attempting to live by its guidance. If you achieve that which is the good by a rational standard of value, it will necessarily make you happy; but that which makes you happy, by some undefined emotional standard, is not necessarily the good. To take Уwhatever makes one happyФ as a guide to action means: to be guided by nothing but oneТs emotional whims. Emotions are not tools of cognition; to be guided by whimsЧby desires whose source, nature and meaning one does not knowЧis to turn oneself into a blind robot, operated by unknowable demons (by oneТs stale evasions), a robot knocking its stagnant brains out against the walls of reality which it refuses to see.
This is the fallacy inherent in hedonismЧin any variant of ethical hedonism, personal or social, individual or collective. УHappinessФ can properly be the purpose of ethics, but not the standard. The task of ethics is to define manТs proper code of values and thus to give him the means of achieving happiness. To declare, as the ethical hedonists do, that Уthe proper value is whatever gives you pleasureФ is to declare that Уthe proper value is whatever you happen to valueФЧwhich is an act of intellectual and philosophical abdication, an act which merely proclaims the futility of ethics and invites all men to play it deuces wild.
The philosophers who attempted to devise an allegedly rational code of ethics gave mankind nothing but a choice of whims: the УselfishФ pursuit of oneТs own whims (such as the ethics of Nietzsche)Чor УselflessФ service to the whims of others (such as the ethics of Bentham, Mill, Comte and of all social hedonists, whether they allowed man to include his own whims among the millions of others or advised him to turn himself into a totally selfless УshmooФ that seeks to be eaten by others).
When a Уdesire,Ф regardless of its nature or cause, is taken as an ethical primary, and the gratification of any and all desires is taken as an ethical goal (such as Уthe greatest happiness of the greatest numberФ)Чmen have no choice but to hate, fear and fight one another, because their desires and their interests will necessarily clash. If УdesireФ is the ethical standard, then one manТs desire to produce and another manТs desire to rob him have equal ethical validity; one manТs desire to be free and another manТs desire to enslave him have equal ethical validity; one manТs desire to be loved and admired for his virtues and another manТs desire for undeserved love and unearned admiration have equal ethical validity. And if the frustration of any desire constitutes a sacrifice, then a man who owns an automobile and is robbed of it, is being sacrificed, but so is the man who wants or Уaspires toФ an automobile which the owner refuses to give himЧand these two УsacrificesФ have equal ethical status. If so, then manТs only choice is to rob or be robbed, to destroy or be destroyed, to sacrifice others to any desire of his own or to sacrifice himself to any desire of others; then manТs only ethical alternative is to be a sadist or a masochist.
The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another.
Today, most people hold this premise as an absolute not to be questioned. And when one speaks of manТs right to exist for his own sake, for his own rational self-interest, most people assume automatically that this means his right to sacrifice others. Such an assumption is a confession of their own belief that to injure, enslave, rob or murder others is in manТs self-interestЧwhich he must selflessly renounce. The idea that manТs self-interest can be served only by a non-sacrificial relationship with others has never occurred to those humanitarian apostles of unselfishness, who proclaim their desire to achieve the brotherhood of men. And it will not occur to them, or to anyone, so long as the concept УrationalФ is omitted from the context of Уvalues,Ф Уdesires,Ф Уself-interestФ and ethics.
The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishnessЧwhich means: the values required for manТs survival qua manЧwhich means: the values required for human survivalЧnot the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the Уaspirations,Ф the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered an industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment.
The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clashЧthat 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 relationships, 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 exchangeЧan 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 issuesЧ(by УspiritualФ I mean: Уpertaining to manТs consciousnessФ)Чthe currency or medium of exchange is different, but the principle is the same. Love, friendship, 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 manТs character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another personТs virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as oneТs 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 slut. 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.
To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of loveЧbecause he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.
It is only on the basis of rational selfishnessЧon the basis of justiceЧthat men can be fit to live together in a free, peaceful, prosperous, benevolent, rational society.
Can man derive any personal benefit from living in a human society? YesЧif it is a human society. The two great values to be gained from social existence are: knowledge and trade. Man is the only species that can transmit and expand his store of knowledge from generation to generation; the knowledge potentially available to man is greater than any one man could begin to acquire in his own life-span; every man gains an incalculable benefit from the knowledge discovered by others. The second great benefit is the division of labor: it enables a man to devote his effort to a particular field of work and to trade with others who specialize in other fields. This form of cooperation allows all men who take part in it to achieve a greater knowledge, skill and productive return on their effort than they could achieve if each had to produce everything he needs, on a desert island or on a self-sustaining farm.
But these very benefits indicate, delimit and define what kind of men can be of value to one another and in what kind of society: only rational, productive, independent men in a rational, productive, free society. Parasites, moochers, looters, brutes and thugs can be of no value to a human beingЧnor can he gain any benefit from living in a society geared to their needs, demands and protection, a society that treats him as a sacrificial animal and penalizes him for his virtues in order to reward them for their vices, which means: a society based on the ethics of altruism. No society can be of value to manТs life if the price is the surrender of his right to his life.
The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No manЧor group or society or governmentЧhas the right to assume 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 only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect manТs rights, which means: to protect him from physical violenceЧto protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
I will not attempt, in a brief lecture, to discuss the political theory of Objectivism. Those who are interested will find it presented in full detail in Atlas Shrugged. I will say only that every political system is based on and derived from a theory of ethicsЧand that the Objectivist ethics is the moral base needed by that politico-economic system which, today, is being destroyed all over the world, destroyed precisely for lack of a moral, philosophical defense and validation: the original American system, Capitalism. If it perishes, it will perish by default, undiscovered and unidentified: no other subject has ever been hidden by so many distortions, misconceptions and misrepresentations. Today, few people know what capitalism is, how it works and what was its actual history.
When I say Уcapitalism,Ф I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalismЧwith a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. A pure system of capitalism has never yet existed, not even in America; various degrees of government control had been undercutting and distorting it from the start. Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of the futureЧif mankind is to have a future.
For those who are interested in the history and the psychological causes of the philosophersТ treason against capitalism, I will mention that I discuss them in the title essay of my book For the New Intellectual.3
The present discussion has to be confined to the subject of ethics. I have presented the barest essentials of my system, but they are sufficient to indicate in what manner the Objectivist ethics is the morality of lifeЧas against the three major schools of ethical theory, the mystic, the social, the subjective, which have brought the world to its present state and which represent the morality of death.
These three schools differ only in their method of approach, not in their content. In content, they are merely variants of altruism, the ethical theory which regards man as a sacrificial animal, which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value. The differences occur only over the question of who is to be sacrificed to whom. Altruism holds death as its ultimate goal and standard of valueЧand it is logical that renunciation, resignation, self-denial, and every other form of suffering, including self-destruction, are the virtues it advocates. And, logically, these are the only things that the practitioners of altruism have achieved and are achieving now.
Observe that these three schools of ethical theory are anti-life, not merely in content, but also in their method of approach.
The mystic theory of ethics is explicitly based on the premise that the standard of value of manТs ethics is set beyond the grave, by the laws or requirements of another, supernatural dimension, that ethics is impossible for man to practice, that it is unsuited for and opposed to manТs life on earth, and that man must take the blame for it and suffer through the whole of his earthly existence, to atone for the guilt of being unable to practice the impracticable. The Dark Ages and the Middle Ages are the existential monument to this theory of ethics.
The social theory of ethics substitutes УsocietyФ for GodЧand although it claims that its chief concern is life on earth, it is not the life of man, not the life of an individual, but the life of a disembodied entity, the collective, which, in relation to every individual, consists of everybody except himself. As far as the individual is concerned, his ethical duty is to be the selfless, voiceless, rightless slave of any need, claim or demand asserted by others. The motto Уdog eat dogФЧwhich is not applicable to capitalism nor to dogsЧis applicable to the social theory of ethics. The existential monuments to this theory are Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
The subjectivist theory of ethics is, strictly speaking, not a theory, but a negation of ethics. And more: it is a negation of reality, a negation not merely of manТs existence, but of all existence. Only the concept of a fluid, plastic, indeterminate, Heraclitean universe could permit anyone to think or to preach that man needs no objective principles of actionЧthat reality gives him a blank check on valuesЧthat anything he cares to pick as the good or the evil, will doЧthat a manТs whim is a valid moral standard, and that the only question is how to get away with it. The existential monument to this theory is the present state of our culture.
It is not menТs immorality that is responsible for the collapse now threatening to destroy the civilized world, but the kind of moralities men have been asked to practice. The responsibility belongs to the philosophers of altruism. They have no cause to be shocked by the spectacle of their own success, and no right to damn human nature: men have obeyed them and have brought their moral ideals into full reality.
It is philosophy that sets menТs goals and determines their course; it is only philosophy that can save them now. Today, the world is facing a choice: if civilization is to survive, it is the altruist morality that men have to reject.
I will close with the words of John Galt, which I address, as he did, to all the moralists of altruism, past or present:
УYou have been using fear as your weapon and have been bringing death to man as his punishment for rejecting your morality. We offer him life as his reward for accepting ours.Ф