Love defined in one sentence?


Revamp

Recommended Posts

I love the notion of sacrifice of a great value for a greater value.

I think Rand's primary reference was the sacrifice demanded of citizens to the state by the totalitarians she escaped from. Bad. Now that's out of a destructive social context. In a constructive one Jonathan makes sense.

The implication is Rand didn't properly make the switch from collectivism to individualism. That may be why there are so few true Americans in AS.

But she absolutely understood the importance of morality respecting politics as up into politics not just implied by the politics. That's the Objectivist-libertarian divide.

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 291
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Love requires self-sacrifice(s) to be love ... or such self-contradictory sentimentality lacking a rational value hierarchy.

It's looks to be hard for J. to accept that a man selling-out a higher value in favor of a lesser one is the only definition of self-sacrifice that can possibly make objective and real sense. Altruism, the timid renunciation and ultimate devaluation of one's values - i.e. one's capacity to value - i.e. one's self - has nothing noble or wonderful. In love, most of all.

Back to The Virtue of Selfishness, J! Show Rand up, see if you can dismantle the ethics from the beginning.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmmm...

Sacrifice Etymology:

sacrifice (n.) dictionary.gif late 13c., "offering of something (especially a life) to a deity as an act of propitiation or homage;" mid-14c., "that which is offered in sacrifice," from Old French sacrifise "sacrifice, offering" (12c.), from Latin sacrificium, from sacrificus "performing priestly functions or sacrifices," from sacra "sacred rites" (properly neuter plural of sacer "sacred;" see sacred) + root of facere "to do, perform" (see factitious).

Latin sacrificium is glossed in Old English by ansegdniss. Sense of "act of giving up one thing for another; something given up for the sake of another" is first recorded 1590s. Baseball sense first attested 1880. sacrifice (v.) dictionary.gif c. 1300, "to offer something (to a deity, as a sacrifice)," from sacrifice (n.). Meaning "surrender, give up, suffer to be lost" is from 1706. Related: Sacrificed; sacrificing. Agent noun forms include sacrificer, sacrificator (both 16c., the latter from Latin); and sacrificulist (17c.).
(Wiktionary):
Verb

sacrifice ‎(third-person singular simple present sacrifices, present participle sacrificing, simple past and past participle sacrificed)

  1. (transitive) To offer (something) as a gift to a deity.
  2. (transitive) To give away (something valuable) to get at least a possibility to gain something else of value (such as self-respect, trust, love, freedom, prosperity), or to avoid an even greater loss.  [quotations ▼]
  3. (transitive) To trade (a value of higher worth) for one of lesser worth in order to gain something else valued more such as an ally or business relationship or to avoid an even greater loss; to sell without profit to gain something other than money.  [quotations ▼]
  4. (transitive, chess) To intentionally give up (a piece) in order to improve one’s position on the board.
  5. (transitive, baseball) To advance (a runner on base) by batting the ball so it can be caught or fielded, placing the batter out, but with insufficient time to put the runner out.
  6. (dated, tradesmen's slang) To sell at a price less than the cost or actual value.
  7. To destroy; to kill. (Can we find and add a quotation of Johnson to this entry?)
Synonyms

Rand never addresses the etymology, AFAIK, but seems to address the criticism that she is using the word against its dictionary meaning ("surrendering a value for a greater value"), and, specifically, the religious connotation, in these quotes referenced from Galt's speech:
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/sacrifice.html

"A sacrifice is the surrender of a value. Full sacrifice is full surrender of all values...

"You are told that moral perfection is impossible to man—and, by this standard, it is. You cannot achieve it so long as you live, but the value of your life and of your person is gauged by how closely you succeed in approaching that ideal zero which is death.

and

"Do not remind me [emphasis mine] that it [moral perfection] pertains only to this life on earth. I am concerned with no other. Neither are you."

-Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 139

That last part seems to be a direct challenge to those pointing out that the definition holds the religious promise of gaining a greater value for a lesser one (in the afterlife), as it's related to the idea of moral perfection, while using her atheism to deny such a thing, and, hence, denying the validity of the concept of sacrifice being able to produce a greater value (Craig Biddle's argument, see below...). I could be reaching, there...but also, after reading that passage, it reminded me of a quote I once read attributed to Nietzsche: "They knew of no better way to honor their god by hanging him on the cross." (Paraphrased from memory, I can't find the source of this exact quote, as I heard it.) This is the closest I can find, but the spirit is the same, and more explicit:

"When the lesser men begin to doubt whether there are higher men, then the danger is great...When Nero and Caracalla sat up there, the paradox originated that "the lowest man is worth more than the man up there." And an image of God was spread which was as far removed as possible from the image of the most powerful-the god on the cross." (The Portable Nietzsche, pg. 440).

Given the influence of Nietzsche on the early Ayn Rand, that could be what's behind her challenging the dictionary definition in the way she did...

(For those interested, Craig Biddle addresses the topic of Rand's usage versus the dictionary.)
https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2013/04/why-sacrifice-means-loss-not-gain/

That's all I have. From "the sublime", to "sacrifice", thanks again for peaking my interest with questions of etymology.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In fact, let's for a minute forget the so-called "Queen sacrifice" (or any lesser piece).

Could it be agreed that sacrificing the King would be and is a ~true~ self-sacrifice?

No, moron, that's not what the word "sacrifice" means.

Approach this as a philosopher. Try to see that "sacrifice" has for millennia been elevated as "a good thing". A virtue, to meekly surrender or renege on whatever makes life good for one. Point out the cruel contradiction by exposing the common definition for the lie it is: giving up a personal value to the 'greater good' - a vague collective of people or to God. (And gain their approval by one's willing loss). Or it is demanded by another person. Or/and, simply because value is 'subjective' and one is too weak to hold onto it.

If the King is deliberately 'sacrificed' by a player, that's real self-sacrifice, instant defeat and end of game. Yes?

The Queen 'sacrifice' ~ to win the game ~ is therefore no sacrifice. Do you feel like having it both ways?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

" (transitive) To trade (a value of higher worth) for one of lesser worth in order to gain something else valued more . . . or to avoid an even greater loss "

This is the part that is problematic and why Ayn Rand reconstructed, but never changed the essentials of the definition and still opposed it. Sacrifice is something which can be immediately physically beneficial in the short term, such as under a serious external threat, but never "moral", "good" or beneficial in the long term, according to objectivism.

It should be very clear (at least other than possibly in the quoted definition above) that to "sacrifice" is not at all the same or part of a rational trade, where you only trade in order to gain what you value more than your expected cost. As in the case of love, it doesn't need to be a strictly monetary gain or cost of course.

It seems a lot of people in this thread hold strong opinions of Rands writing either without having read it or without fully comprehending its implications.

To claim her philosophy clashes with reality is one thing, but to do so on simple anecdotals when one can not show one has even understood why she chose her definitions is riddicilus. You are starting to "philosophize mid stream", just like she warned you not to do. Not that this actually proves her writing.

Question; Do you whom oppose her definitions also disagree with the implications that her philosophy would have in the context of if her definitions were accepted? Do you find there to be logical coherence then ?

whyNOT makes several good points I think.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If the King is sacrificed in chess he is checkmated or the game conceded. One would think a better example of "sacrifice" would better serve the discussion.

There is no such thing as King sacrifice in chess. Bobby Fisher once famously sacrificed his Queen to win a game. That's a great example of a great value being sacrificed for a greater value.

--Brant

getting tired, btw, of un-referenced Ayn Rand quotes expecting a discussion off them (and Rand's pursuit of "moral perfection" is the worst part of her "philosophy"--it's garbage)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Literally yes. But King or Queen, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. By deliberately exposing your King, it would be truly said that you sacrificed the game. Which shows up "sacrificing the Queen" in order to win for what it is, metaphorical chess parlance with not much reference to reality. The chess analogy shouldn't even come up but it usually does, to blur the issue seemingly.

Chess is win- or- lose. Rational values in hierarchy hardly ever need to be.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Literally yes. But King or Queen, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. By deliberately exposing your King, it would be truly said that you sacrificed the game. Which shows up "sacrificing the Queen" in order to win for what it is, metaphorical chess parlance with not much reference to reality. The chess analogy shouldn't even come up but it usually does, to blur the issue seemingly.

Chess is win- or- lose. Rational values in hierarchy hardly ever need to be.

Tony: when you say that chess is "win or lose", you are saying that there is an objective outcome to the choice(s) at hand.

There is a philosophy that makes more or less the same claim: it goes by the name of Objectivism.

Nobody "deliberately" exposes his king in chess: the king's exposure is inherent to the game. There are only 64 squares, after all. It thus occasionally becomes necessary to "sacrifice" your queen now and then.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is a philosophy that makes more or less the same claim: it goes by the name of Objectivism.

Nobody "deliberately" exposes his king in chess:

It may be also said that nobody "deliberately" sacrifices his/her values and virtues. Except, they have done and do, constantly. The chess analogy breaks down completely, but I'm only clarifying that, I'm not the one who brings it in.

Your or my values (and virtues) are *objective* - from the cardinal values, down through all of one's subsequent values that depend on them, hierarchically - that's the center of Objectivist ethics.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Literally yes. But King or Queen, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. By deliberately exposing your King, it would be truly said that you sacrificed the game. Which shows up "sacrificing the Queen" in order to win for what it is, metaphorical chess parlance with not much reference to reality. The chess analogy shouldn't even come up but it usually does, to blur the issue seemingly.

Chess is win- or- lose. Rational values in hierarchy hardly ever need to be.

Tony: when you say that chess is "win or lose", you are saying that there is an objective outcome to the choice(s) at hand.

There is a philosophy that makes more or less the same claim: it goes by the name of Objectivism.

Nobody "deliberately" exposes his king in chess: the king's exposure is inherent to the game. There are only 64 squares, after all. It thus occasionally becomes necessary to "sacrifice" your queen now and then.

. . . and this is not the kind of "sacrifice" that Ayn Rand and Objectivism is opposed to. "Sacrifice", as very well explained by Rand, is done at an absolute loss and is not a matter of giving up something in order that one might win something that would objectively be worth more, or required by mans nature, but rather it consists of choosing what rationally is worth less to oneself when a choice is avaible or giving up what one rationally values the most.

In the exact words of Rand, from "The Virtue of Selfishness";

"Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue.

On the topic of love, it feels like this thread has already been answered as well as it could. But anything quoted from this page or its original sources should be quiet enough. (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/love.html)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nobody "deliberately" exposes his king in chess: the king's exposure is inherent to the game. There are only 64 squares, after all. It thus occasionally becomes necessary to "sacrifice" your queen now and then.

I understand your point, however, it is possible that you could "expose" your king to a check by the other players Queen in line with that players king and then with another forced move, unveil your bishop which would then block the check with their bishop reverse pinning the Queen to the King and winning the Queen.

A rare situation, however, it has occurred.

A...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This should not be 'about me', but I very well recall degrees of personal self-sacrifice of some values and virtues. Not recommended even as a learning experience, but I have that experience to learn from. (It's why I am so insistent about it, I suppose).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My question for proponents of "sacrifice" in the name of love stands.

However I do have one question for whyNOT about his signature; Do you mean to say that altruism and selfishess are not true opposites? If so, then I would like to ask if you could show me how, because so far this would seem incorrect to me. And independence would certainly stand against altruism, but would also require selfishness.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you take a human being as an integrated organism, then classical Objectivism cleaves him in two parts, one labelled "selfish" and the other "selfless," AKA in the philosophy as selfishness and altruism.

This is why Objectivism per se isn't workable.

You can say, however--as I do--that selfishness is the base or foundational condition upon which through growing up (maturation) one builds an edifice of selfishness and altuism held in rational balance respecting the particular person.

I think Rand got hung up as an adolescent hearing the communists declaim about "sacrifice" as justification for their evil doings and existence. She did not consider that they may have been lying through their teeth--that there was no moral justification at all for them and that it wasn't altruism that was immoral, only the commies.

The commies would also them naturally declaim that selfishness was immoral, getting two birds with one stone. This hijacks religion's doing the same thing for the sake of power. If religions had claimed altruism bad and selfishness good for the sake of their evil or other doings, then the secular totalitarians would have done the same. Both groups would only be pragmatically going with what works.

Considering the biology--social biology and necessity--of a normal human being, it is selfish to be both selfish and altruist.

--Brant

in regard to your question, it needs to be better written for I can't quite figure out what you are asking--sorry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

getting tired, btw, of un-referenced Ayn Rand quotes expecting a discussion off them (and Rand's pursuit of "moral perfection" is the worst part of her "philosophy"--it's garbage)

Can you reference it, so that we may evaluate what it is she did so badly?

She pursued moral perfection. See post 106. (My apologies to ThatGuy, for he did reference the Rand quote, but too many do not.)

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

getting tired, btw, of un-referenced Ayn Rand quotes expecting a discussion off them (and Rand's pursuit of "moral perfection" is the worst part of her "philosophy"--it's garbage)

Can you reference it, so that we may evaluate what it is she did so badly?

She pursued moral perfection. See post 106. (My apologies to ThatGuy, for he did reference the Rand quote, but too many do not.)

--Brant

I read that. So how is this evident and why would it be bad?

And what standard do you use to determine what is Objectivism and what is not? I for one never claimed that everything that Rand said must have been in line with objectivism. But did I reference her? Yes. And I think most of what she said was. Should all of her works combined be labeled "objectivism"? I might be wrong, and I think about this still, but that is how I currently see things. That is, as long as we can show that there is logical congruence.

By the way, the "sacrifice" and "altruism" she rejected, were the ones visible in reiligion and other works of philosophy, such as that of Kant. (And, as you mention yourself, out in the real world at the time) She didn't intend primarily to attack the current definitions, but to rather to set things straight by showing what it meant to take them to their logical extremes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

getting tired, btw, of un-referenced Ayn Rand quotes expecting a discussion off them (and Rand's pursuit of "moral perfection" is the worst part of her "philosophy"--it's garbage)

Can you reference it, so that we may evaluate what it is she did so badly?

She pursued moral perfection. See post 106. (My apologies to ThatGuy, for he did reference the Rand quote, but too many do not.)

--Brant

I read that. So how is this evident and why would it be bad?

And what standard do you use to determine what is Objectivism and what is not? I for one never claimed that everything that Rand said must have been in line with objectivism. But did I reference her? Yes. And I think most of what she said was. Was it objectivism? I might be wrong, and I think about this still, but that is how I currently see things.

I use the scientific standard of reason applied to reality = the same thing as Objectivist metaphysics and epistemology. That's two of the four most basic principles of Objecivism.

Then for the ethics and politics--for the remaining principles--I use the basic formulations plus what is to be built on them and there is where I start deviating from classical Objectivism.

In the ethics (morality) and politics Objectivism strives for the perfectionist ideal. I don't. I don't for it's unattainable and even as a "city on a hill" a fantasy.

Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, is just about all her published opinions on all subjects. Well, that was her philosophy alone. Every Objectivist has his or her own "Objectivism" even if they think its hers. In so far as it is also hers its second-hand. At least for her it was first-handerism.

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Approach this as a philosopher. Try to see that "sacrifice" has for millennia been elevated as "a good thing". A virtue, to meekly surrender or renege on whatever makes life good for one. Point out the cruel contradiction by exposing the common definition for the lie it is: giving up a personal value to the 'greater good' - a vague collective of people or to God.

No, the common definition of "sacrifice" is not what is a lie. The actual lie, in the examples that you mention in the above statement, is anyone's claim that something is a "greater good" which in reality is a lesser good. When a politician tries to convince people of the falsehood that surrendering their money to government is the virtue of their sacrificing for the "greater good," we don't change the meanings of the words involved. We don't allow someone's misuse or abuse of words to redefine the words. If we followed that stupid method, then the words "good," "value" and "virtue," and many others, would also have to be redefined to mean bad things along with "sacrifice." Get it?

Politicians often claim that the harmful laws and the confiscation of wealth that they're proposing are needed because of moral righteousness. Politicians have done so for millennia. But we don't change the meanings of the words "moral" and "righteous" to mean imposing harm on people and screwing them over. "Sacrifice" is far from the only word that has been used in trying to disguise vicious intentions and pass them off as virtuous.

If a slithering politician were to say that innocent people needed to have their freedoms removed for the sake of good, then, using your mixed up thinking, the old, common usage of "good" would have to be declared to have been wrong, and therefore that the correct meaning of "good" is that it is evil. So, why is "sacrifice" the only word that you want to surrender to such politicians, and to redefine according to their behavior? *

If the King is deliberately 'sacrificed' by a player, that's real self-sacrifice, instant defeat and end of game. Yes?

No. That's not what "sacrifice" means. It's only what it means to you and Ayn Rand and a few other of her obedient followers. Everyone else understands reality.

The Queen 'sacrifice' ~ to win the game ~ is therefore no sacrifice. Do you feel like having it both ways?

What made that nonsense pop into your little brain? I've said nothing about wanting to have it both ways. Are you insane? Can you not pay attention and distinguish between what positions I've actually taken in reality versus what fantasy strawmen positions that you've assigned to me?!!!

J

* Answer: Because Ayn Rand did, and you obey her regardless of how irrational her position was.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good work, ThatGuy [#106]

Also I'm taken with your quotation: "They know of no better way to honor their god [than?] by hanging him on the cross".

Are you sure it was Nietzsche? I can't find it, tho it sounds like his

Anyway, he illustrates what men are capable of, in voluntarily relinquishing the best of themselves, "god" or no god.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I pick up an antipathy to the concept of sacrifice, here. At least, equivocation. That is, sacrifice is not always such a bad thing - or that it can only be forced on one (e.g. by politicians) - or that sacrifice is 'subjective' and variable, according to the definition you want to choose.

Without life - a life - there is no value. (And without values, no real life). Value can only be earned or discovered (for a value to be recognised, one has to have standards of value), and then - only for oneself. Value isn't conferred on men from Above, or automatic, nor can it be imitated from others. That standard of earned value, supposes unearned value, unrecognised value - and the sacrifice of value, all of which I believe is self-sacrifice. An indentured slave or a camp inmate may still have the mind of a proud and independent man, a mind of his own while not his body. One who meekly gives up the values of his consciousness (his 'soul') hasn't an excuse. "It's your mind they want..."[Galt]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now