Hypothesis: Dictators aren't altruists

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael: I am puzzled that you think I "conveniently" left out that "self as the standard of evil" part of the quote. It's there, still, and would have been pointless if not included.

Tony,

Oops...

Sorry.

How did I miss that? It had to be your fault somehow!

On a serious note, I still think you need to learn the difference between a code and a description and/or inference when you attribute Rand with ideas. It's no biggie to me to disagree with her. I do take issue when the idea is misrepresented (not just by you, but by me, too--I've had my own screw-ups).

Michael

[anthony]

Selflessness is the dead-end of altruism in Objectivism. That's what happened to Katherine in The Fountainhead. Altruism is dynamic, maybe a negative or confused or wrong expression of the life force. There might be something particularly positive in there. Selflessness belongs to psychology or the graveyard. Altruism belongs, at least significantly, to philosophy.

--Brant

not trying to represent Rand save coincidentally except maybe in my first sentence

Authentic thoughts I believe. While she brought (coaxed, occasionally) everything into the realm of the conscious, she gave many tacit nods to psychology. As for the abdication of self, it can only occur along a continuum: from alienation from one's subconscious and emotions, to rejecting the evidence of one's senses, on through to seized-up conscious cognition and discarding one's conceptual faculty - I see as her pivotal dictum. Altruism, therefore, as the self-destructive moral code which places another's life as the standard of life (as impossible as it is, ultimately) could only be anathema to her.

[anthony]

On a serious note, I still think you need to learn the difference between a code and a description and/or inference when you attribute Rand with ideas. It's no biggie to me to disagree with her. I do take issue when the idea is misrepresented (not just by you, but by me, too--I've had my own screw-ups).

Michael

Touche, Michael. Seems I often make that same caution to folks about misinterpretation and misrepresentation, too.

Broadly, I am vastly more interested in uncovering Rand's totality of meaning, then in examining and interpreting her each and every statement. This may not be the best academic method, but I have a little less interest in scholarship than I have in applying it to my experience.

Taken as a whole, inducing from many, many of her observations, I'm still left with the over-riding conviction that she considered altruism as a far wider concept than is generally accepted by Objectivists. (For certain, one won't go too far wrong thinking too big, in the attempt to elicit Rand's total intent.)

Otherwise there is the risk we end up with a narrow concept of altruism - and therefore, of egoism. Altruism (in Rand's estimation) must be far larger in scope and hierarchy than (politically)forced taxation - or, (personally) voluntarily helping people in trouble out- and so on. I am being just a bit silly - and of course you didn't claim that.

[anthony]

Getting back to the literature.

"Isn't that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of self."

[...]

They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They're concerned only with people.

[...]

After centuries of being pounded with the doctrine that altruism is the ultimate ideal, men have accepted it the only way it could be accepted. By seeking self-esteem through others. By living second-hand."

----

For me, all the above indicates that Rand viewed altruism as synonymous with absence of self(although, not exclusively by way of altruism): through the premises of altruism, and altruism's consequences, as well as by its definition. i.e. its cause and its effects, and its crystal-clear advocacy as a moral code.

From many sources I've been picking up an interesting ambivalence about altruism.

A tacit acceptance that altruism is sometimes for 'the good'. Or, a separation of second-handedness and power-lusting from the concept. Or, reducing it to a floating abstraction. Or, that Rand might have made too much fuss about its evil.

Given her first quote above, we should see why she did. Compromise on altruism, hands the battle over to the Attilas - and devastates the concept of good-will among men, almost as bad as the sacrifice of self it entails.

[Ellen Stuttle]

I read the whole set of entries for "Altruism" in the Lexicon.

I think that having entries from different contexts juxtaposed makes Rand's habits of invention even easier to see.

The on-line set can be found here.

Printed-page format is much handier for looking back and forth amongst entries, but the on-line format is readily copyable if folks want to do copy-pasting. I'll do some of that next week.

Ellen

[anthony]

The thing of dictators being altruistic seems best explained that any presumption that one should live for (and by and through) others, or that others live for oneself - or any mixture - is by definition altruism. To claim the sacrifice of others or to willingly permit one's own, then has no distinction since taker and giver accept the same moral premise.

[Samson Corwell]

The thing of dictators being altruistic seems best explained that any presumption that one should live for (and by and through) others, or that others live for oneself - or any mixture - is by definition altruism. To claim the sacrifice of others or to willingly permit one's own, then has no distinction since taker and giver accept the same moral premise.

If you're going to shoehorn all of that into one word, then it becomes entirely useless.

[anthony]

The thing of dictators being altruistic seems best explained that any presumption that one should live for (and by and through) others, or that others live for oneself - or any mixture - is by definition altruism. To claim the sacrifice of others or to willingly permit one's own, then has no distinction since taker and giver accept the same moral premise.

If you're going to shoehorn all of that into one word, then it becomes entirely useless.

Or entirely useful. Altruism could be only about being nice to others, end of story. But take it back to Comte - his view, his meaning - and a larger picture emerges of a lifetime of automatic servitude to the collective, like an individual bee to a hive. Evidently, Rand really only examined the deterministic premises and life-destructive consequences- and judged accordingly.

A larger shoe is needed. More than "a word", a concept.

[anthony]

For every 'taker' there's a 'giver'. The latter sacrifices the products of his mind -and so his mind- and in claiming or demanding that sacrifice- the taker implicitly has already sacrificed his. They both end up in the same place of living by each others' standards and through each others' sanction.

[Ellen Stuttle]

The thing of dictators being altruistic seems best explained that any presumption that one should live for (and by and through) others, or that others live for oneself - or any mixture - is by definition altruism. To claim the sacrifice of others or to willingly permit one's own, then has no distinction since taker and giver accept the same moral premise.

If you're going to shoehorn all of that into one word, then it becomes entirely useless.

Tony,

I'm grateful for a succinct post. I agree with Samson that the meaning you provide is so broad as to become useless.

The first issue on which I take exception is your "by definition altruism." I've seen you do that elsewhere, proclaiming your own definition as if it were THE definition used by everyone. But it isn't.

For starters on your definition, I wouldn't lump living for, by, and through others together as if they were the same (or continua in a process). To me, the three respective prepositions indicate different psychologies.

The first indicates someone engaged in service to others, the second someone seeking reflected glory from and/or control over others (I can see a dictator in that class, but I wouldn't call it "altruism"), the third someone who's living vicariously through one or more others. An example which comes readily to my mind is that of a woman I knew who was living through her daughter's hopeful career as an actress and whose life became a long litany of moaning when the daughter died in an accident. I would not classify this woman as "altruistic" by any typical meaning of the word.

Regarding your second sentence - "To claim the sacrifice of others or to willingly permit one's own, then has no distinction since taker and giver accept the same moral premise.":

Do you see "no distinction" morally between, for instance, someone who gives a dime to a beggar out of believing that he or she should practice charity and someone who sends people to concentration camps and firing squads?

Ellen

[anthony]

Ellen, it's broad and it's huge.

Hold on to your hat, it gets vast, if one considers the full concept: altruism-collectivism. The two are interdependent and overlap. Especially considering Comte's full meaning based on his skewed sociological, biological-determinist premises. Very ugly they are, too. Without the presupposition of collectivist existence, it is likely altruism could not gain much purchase. Rand didn't invent anything, she only analysed and extrapolated the whole ball of wax (from my understanding).

After all, in her 'razor', she herself warned against multiplying concepts beyond necessity, but also not integrating them without necessity - and even so, this is one concept that defies complete isolation of its sub-categories. They all stem from one common root.

Although, of course, one does temporarily isolate, for purposes of identification and comparison.

As I've mentioned, there are so many levels- from psychological (or personal and emotional) altruism, on up to political - and implicit and explicit- altruism, that the mind boggles. It's also important to not seek and find altruists 'under every bed'!

I concede that I may have been a little too sweeping with 'my' definition, but can add that this was partly arrived at from a limited reading of Comte I've done - but hugely more so from my gleaning of the over-all gist of Rand, in her fiction and essays, as well as my own experiences.

Much more another time about those doubts you raised.

[Brant Gaede]

If one agrees with it it's rational self-interest. If one disagrees with it it's altruism. Now put the saddle on the horse and ride, ride, ride! But all you're doing is trying to figure out what to call the saddle. The horse doesn't care. In fact you're the only horse in the barn and not to be saddled because you're not an altruist. Not being an altruist you don't put saddles on horses. You let them run wild and free, just as long as they don't initiate force.

--Brant

~whinny~(where are the mares?)

[anthony]

If one agrees with it it's rational self-interest. If one disagrees with it it's altruism. Now put the saddle on the horse and ride, ride, ride! But all you're doing is trying to figure out what to call the saddle. The horse doesn't care. In fact you're the only horse in the barn and not to be saddled because you're not an altruist. Not being an altruist you don't put saddles on horses. You let them run wild and free, just as long as they don't initiate force.

--Brant

Aye, there's the thing, and end of the day, it's not rational and not egoistic to take on the whole world's bad principles. Just stay out of my hair, is all I ask. If only. Altruist-collectivism creeps up to bite us all on the bum. Here comes Greece for one, as usual bouncing between Socialism and Fascism and believing there is a difference.

[Brant Gaede]

If one agrees with it it's rational self-interest. If one disagrees with it it's altruism. Now put the saddle on the horse and ride, ride, ride! But all you're doing is trying to figure out what to call the saddle. The horse doesn't care. In fact you're the only horse in the barn and not to be saddled because you're not an altruist. Not being an altruist you don't put saddles on horses. You let them run wild and free, just as long as they don't initiate force.

--Brant

Aye, there's the thing, and end of the day, it's not rational and not egoistic to take on the whole world's bad principles. Just stay out of my hair, is all I ask. If only. Altruist-collectivism creeps up to bite us all on the bum. Here comes Greece for one, as usual bouncing between Socialism and Fascism and believing there is a difference.

Beware of Greeks bearing philosophy.

--Brant

[Samson Corwell]

For every 'taker' there's a 'giver'. The latter sacrifices the products of his mind -and so his mind- and in claiming or demanding that sacrifice- the taker implicitly has already sacrificed his. They both end up in the same place of living by each others' standards and through each others' sanction.

You need to shoot this into your head daily to begin thinking like this.

[anthony]

For every 'taker' there's a 'giver'. The latter sacrifices the products of his mind -and so his mind- and in claiming or demanding that sacrifice- the taker implicitly has already sacrificed his. They both end up in the same place of living by each others' standards and through each others' sanction.

You need to shoot this into your head daily to begin thinking like this.

That's a thought. Not much for myself (when something's become long clear, you don't have to shoot it in daily) but for what happens when people implicitly accept an erroneous morality. I think an individual's consciousness is not frozen in time and position but is an expanding aggregate of past action -thought, emotion, conviction. If one lacks conscious conviction he unconsciously absorbs everyone else's. Where did they get it from, if not there also? Collectivist-altruist acts require ongoing affirmation from others- and so the wheel turns. Regardless of how 'good' or 'bad' one began if we play in the same mud long enough, we all get equally muddy.

[Brant Gaede]

For every 'taker' there's a 'giver'. The latter sacrifices the products of his mind -and so his mind- and in claiming or demanding that sacrifice- the taker implicitly has already sacrificed his. They both end up in the same place of living by each others' standards and through each others' sanction.

You need to shoot this into your head daily to begin thinking like this.

That's a thought. Not much for myself (when something's become long clear, you don't have to shoot it in daily) but for what happens when people implicitly accept an erroneous morality. I think an individual's consciousness is not frozen in time and position but is an expanding aggregate of past action -thought, emotion, conviction. If one lacks conscious conviction he unconsciously absorbs everyone else's. Where did they get it from, if not there also? Collectivist-altruist acts require ongoing affirmation from others- and so the wheel turns. Regardless of how 'good' or 'bad' one began if we play in the same mud long enough, we all get equally muddy.

I suggest this is rhetorical reasoning.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Hey, I'm the covert persuasion guy around here!

If anybody needs affirmations, self-hypnosis, or even advanced brainwashing techniques, all you need to do is ask.

Jeez...

Michael

[william.scherk]

Here comes Greece for one, as usual bouncing between Socialism and Fascism and believing there is a difference.

Tony, are you referring to the Golden Dawn party when you mention Greek fascism? If so, are you sure there is no difference between the programmes of the 'socialist' parties in Greece and Golden Dawn? I don't see any 'bounce' ... whatever you may mean by that.

I am not Greek, but I believe there are vast differences between Golden Dawn and the ruling (Socialist) coalition.

[anthony]

The thing of dictators being altruistic seems best explained that any presumption that one should live for (and by and through) others, or that others live for oneself - or any mixture - is by definition altruism. To claim the sacrifice of others or to willingly permit one's own, then has no distinction since taker and giver accept the same moral premise.

If you're going to shoehorn all of that into one word, then it becomes entirely useless.

Tony,

I'm grateful for a succinct post. I agree with Samson that the meaning you provide is so broad as to become useless.

The first issue on which I take exception is your "by definition altruism." I've seen you do that elsewhere, proclaiming your own definition as if it were THE definition used by everyone. But it isn't.

For starters on your definition, I wouldn't lump living for, by, and through others together as if they were the same (or continua in a process). To me, the three respective prepositions indicate different psychologies.

The first indicates someone engaged in service to others, the second someone seeking reflected glory from and/or control over others (I can see a dictator in that class, but I wouldn't call it "altruism"), the third someone who's living vicariously through one or more others. An example which comes readily to my mind is that of a woman I knew who was living through her daughter's hopeful career as an actress and whose life became a long litany of moaning when the daughter died in an accident. I would not classify this woman as "altruistic" by any typical meaning of the word.

Regarding your second sentence - "To claim the sacrifice of others or to willingly permit one's own, then has no distinction since taker and giver accept the same moral premise.":

Do you see "no distinction" morally between, for instance, someone who gives a dime to a beggar out of believing that he or she should practice charity and someone who sends people to concentration camps and firing squads?

Ellen

Ellen,

Taking Comtean altruism at face value -which it seems to me Rand did- we have his view of a civilisation which one is born into: one that is the product of generations of a selfless collective.

("You didn't build that").

All one can do to afford, or claim one's place in it, is to continue that dutiful servitude. Imagine a termite mound built on the drudgery and bodies of its inhabitants, to see how cynically anti-life Comte was. Whether a society is purely metaphysically man-made, or does in fact have elements of the metaphysical 'given' (to the newcomer child) would be an interesting discussion. But Comte's thrust ignored the volition of individuals and people's co-operative endeavour which drove forward progress, by increments and by leaps - all he saw was only self- and other- sacrifice. Biological determinism was all. The only choice is who gets sacrificed? You- or others to you? Victim of force... or wielder of force?

I don't have any doubt that it was not altruism-collectivism that Rand primarily condemned. We know from all her writing that it is the negation and surrender of man's inviolable mind that she always gave centre stage. No greater culprit for a partial loss of ego -of consciousness - than immersion in the 'collective mind' and the 'need' of others, has ever existed, I think. That mind-sovereignty I believe, is the source of her beef against altruism-collectivism.

I also have little doubt that all atrocities committed by men on men have that exact common premise - if you drill down deep enough. The dissipation and compromise of self, entails and accompanies loss of regard for all life. Our secular-humanist friends will aver that the cause of atrocity is a break-down of humanity and compassion. Only as a partial outcome could this be true; first has to occur selflessness and evasion of reality.

This puts in perspective - and places way, way down the totem pole - the helping out of other people (in my view). Done self-fully, it is not a self-sacrifice but an act of a conscious, valuing human being.

"I swear - by my life...that I will never live for the sake of another man..."

"LIVE for", is the key.

[anthony]

For every 'taker' there's a 'giver'. The latter sacrifices the products of his mind -and so his mind- and in claiming or demanding that sacrifice- the taker implicitly has already sacrificed his. They both end up in the same place of living by each others' standards and through each others' sanction.

You need to shoot this into your head daily to begin thinking like this.

That's a thought. Not much for myself (when something's become long clear, you don't have to shoot it in daily) but for what happens when people implicitly accept an erroneous morality. I think an individual's consciousness is not frozen in time and position but is an expanding aggregate of past action -thought, emotion, conviction. If one lacks conscious conviction he unconsciously absorbs everyone else's. Where did they get it from, if not there also? Collectivist-altruist acts require ongoing affirmation from others- and so the wheel turns. Regardless of how 'good' or 'bad' one began if we play in the same mud long enough, we all get equally muddy.

I suggest this is rhetorical reasoning.

--Brant

A rhetorical assertion deserves no less and no more in reply.

[Brant Gaede]

For every 'taker' there's a 'giver'. The latter sacrifices the products of his mind -and so his mind- and in claiming or demanding that sacrifice- the taker implicitly has already sacrificed his. They both end up in the same place of living by each others' standards and through each others' sanction.

You need to shoot this into your head daily to begin thinking like this.

That's a thought. Not much for myself (when something's become long clear, you don't have to shoot it in daily) but for what happens when people implicitly accept an erroneous morality. I think an individual's consciousness is not frozen in time and position but is an expanding aggregate of past action -thought, emotion, conviction. If one lacks conscious conviction he unconsciously absorbs everyone else's. Where did they get it from, if not there also? Collectivist-altruist acts require ongoing affirmation from others- and so the wheel turns. Regardless of how 'good' or 'bad' one began if we play in the same mud long enough, we all get equally muddy.

I suggest this is rhetorical reasoning.

--Brant

A rhetorical assertion deserves no less and no more in reply.

No, because that's one on one. The rhetorical assertion on a public board merely needs to be identified as such otherwise it is sanctioned as such.

--Brant

so my comment applies to both statements (using my rear-view mirror, so you win that one)

[anthony]

No, winning has hardly ever been my concern, perhaps just making myself clear is enough. I doubt I've ever "won" a debate - who has? We feed each other thinking material to chew on for the long run. (But back when I was a keen poker player, watch out! I was killer.)

[Selene]

A rhetorical assertion deserves no less and no more in reply.

Tony:

Do not take this personally. It infuriates me that Aristotle's Rhetoric has, through the banal interpretation of folks that have never read it, evolved, connotively, to demean it's essence.

Aristotle's Rhetoric has had an enormous influence on the development of the art of rhetoric.

Not only authors writing in the peripatetic tradition, but also the famous Roman teachers of rhetoric, such as Cicero and Quintilian, frequently used elements stemming from the Aristotelian doctrine. Nevertheless, these authors were interested neither in an authentic interpretation of the Aristotelian works nor in the philosophical sources and backgrounds of the vocabulary that Aristotle had introduced to rhetorical theory.

Thus, for two millennia the interpretation of Aristotelian rhetoric has become a matter of the history of rhetoric, not of philosophy.

In the most influential manuscripts and editions, Aristotle's Rhetoric was surrounded by rhetorical works and even written speeches of other Greek and Latin authors, and was seldom interpreted in the context of the whole Corpus Aristotelicum.

It was not until the last few decades that the philosophically salient features of the Aristotelian rhetoric were rediscovered: in construing a general theory of the persuasive, Aristotle applies numerous concepts and arguments that are also treated in his logical, ethical, and psychological writings.

His theory of rhetorical arguments, for example, is only one further application of his general doctrine of the sullogismos, which also forms the basis of dialectic, logic, and his theory of demonstration.

Another example is the concept of emotions: though emotions are one of the most important topics in the Aristotelian ethics, he nowhere offers such an illuminating account of single emotions as in the Rhetoric. Finally, it is the Rhetoric, too, that informs us about the cognitive features of language and style.

Like Ayn, he was a genius.

Folks should read it.

His definitional statement that Rhetoric was developing "...all the available means of persuasion in the given case," was based on the fundamental belief that if both good and evil were armed with the same rhetorical skills, good would always preval.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-rhetoric/

A...

[Brant Gaede]

Callow me. That's okay, but I've no longer the youth that came with it.

--Brant

that's not okay!

rhetoric away!--out, out, damn spot!