How do you know murder is wrong?

[BaalChatzaf]

58 minutes ago, anthony said:

I have my doubts the hard Left will ever use the word "evil".

More likely  "sick"  or "inappropriate".....  Possibly "sociopathological"....

[moralist]

On ‎4‎/‎30‎/‎2017 at 9:15 AM, BaalChatzaf said:

And we would burn witches alive...

Bob, you freaking dummy... this is 2017, not 1692!

This is just one problem with secular liberal government educated dummies. They don't even know what year they're living in.

 

Greg

[anthony]

21 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

More likely  "sick"  or "inappropriate".....  Possibly "sociopathological"....

Thank you Bob. That's the truth of it. A murder would be "disturbing", "unfortunate", and the murderer, "disturbed" or "misguided". Our moral condemnation of either, would admit to the volition of man and the autonomy of each individual - and that we cannot allow!

[moralist]

On ‎4‎/‎30‎/‎2017 at 5:31 PM, Wolf DeVoon said:

Unwarranted fantasy, ridiculous. Burning a straw man, nothing to do with me. Incurious blockhead.

A contentless baseless empty response, Wolf.

Zinn pisses on Judeo Christian values just like you do...

...and it is this very fact which unites the secular libertine radical left with the secular libertine extreme right. They both share the same personal (im)morality.

 

Greg

[moralist]

22 hours ago, anthony said:

I have my doubts the hard Left will ever use the word "evil". Not in their vocab. It's that childishly simple, they replaced good and evil with love and hate. Only implied - is they are the same thing. The Love Experiment began to fall apart when the 'lovers' have exposed themselves for being as much and worse haters, as the "haters" were purported to be. They are too infantile to know it though.

You're right, Tony. The secular libertine radical left refuses to identify evil for what it is. Case in point: Radical Islam

Overt evil is clearly identified in the Bible...

...but it goes much further than that by identifying covert evil which poses as good as being worse than overt evil.

"The unholy which stands in the place of the Holy."

This is what makes the secular radical libertine left, as well as the secular libertine extreme right, so corrosive to Western civilization. One corrodes from without by public behavior... while the other corrodes from within by personal behavior.

 

Greg

[moralist]

2 hours ago, anthony said:

Thank you Bob. That's the truth of it. A murder would be "disturbing", "unfortunate", and the murderer, "disturbed" or "misguided". Our moral condemnation of either, would admit to the volition of man and the autonomy of each individual - and that we cannot allow!

Tony, I don't believe Bob actually recognizes moral volition. For him, human behavior is exclusively amoral deterministic neuro-electro-chemical reactions in the brain and nothing else.

Greg

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, anthony said:

Thank you Bob. That's the truth of it. A murder would be "disturbing", "unfortunate", and the murderer, "disturbed" or "misguided". Our moral condemnation of either, would admit to the volition of man and the autonomy of each individual - and that we cannot allow!

By referring to the evil doer as "sick"  or "disturbed"  or "misguided"   the evil does is excused of his deeds and becomes instead a person to be pitied or helped. One can do amazing things with language.  One can turn night into day,  black into white  and condemnation into pity and compassion.  <Golum Voice/on>We hatesssss the Left precioussssss and we wants to see them croaksssssss <Golum voice/off>

[Wolf DeVoon]

9 hours ago, moralist said:

Zinn pisses on Judeo Christian values just like you do...

...and it is this very fact which unites the secular libertine radical left with the secular libertine extreme right. They both share the same personal (im)morality.

Greg

Jeez, you're dense. You might as well say that Hitler did, or Mao, or Disney. Just give up the smears and pay attention. You and others believe that Judeo Christian values are the basis of law. It's upheld in US Supreme Court decisions, e.g. Engel v Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962) :

Quote

The history of man is inseparable from the history of religion. And perhaps it is not too much to say that since the beginning of that history many people have devoutly believed that "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." It was doubtless largely due to men who believed this that there grew up a sentiment that caused men to leave the cross-currents of officially established state religions and religious persecution in Europe and come to this country filled with the hope that they could find a place in which they could pray when they pleased to the God of their faith in the language they chose. And there were men of this same faith in the power of prayer who led the fight for adoption of our Constitution and also for our Bill of Rights ... These men knew that the First Amendment, which tried to put an end to governmental control of religion and of prayer, was not written to destroy either. [Black, J. for the majority]

compare: "We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being." Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 313

Got it? Plenty of people who agree with you. Natural rights argument, traditionally, from Locke to the present, sees rights as a gift from God.

No argument from me. Facts are facts. You hold a majoritarian view. It is fallacious -- and the defect has nothing to do with Zinn or the Left.

The rule of law is not discernible from Biblical sources, or Locke, or your idiotic whims. It has nothing to do with John Rawls or Ayn Rand, both of whom made arguments in favor of laws to implement their whims. The rule of law did not arise from moral values.

I regret you are so incurious. This conversation is finished, until you read Art. IV of The Freeman's Constitution.

[moralist]

41 minutes ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Plenty of people who agree with you. Natural rights argument, traditionally, from Locke to the present, sees rights as a gift from God.

You hold a majoritarian view. It is fallacious --

I'm speaking to you, not plenty of people. What's right isn't dependent upon how many people ascribe to it.

Quote

...and the defect has nothing to do with Zinn or the Left..

Your view that it's "fallacious" is identical to Zinn's... even though you're on the right while he's on the left.

This is just another example of how the secular libertine radical left and the secular libertine extreme right share so many of the same personal moral values. This is because the political spectrum is actually a circle...

... and if you go far enough to the right you'll meet up with the left on the dark side of the circle.

 

Greg

[Wolf DeVoon]

3 minutes ago, moralist said:

another example of how the secular libertine radical left and the secular libertine extreme right

You're a damn fool.

[BaalChatzaf]

2 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

 

The rule of law is not discernible from Biblical sources, or Locke, or your idiotic whims. It has nothing to do with John Rawls or Ayn Rand, both of whom made arguments in favor of laws to implement their whims. The rule of law did not arise from moral values.

 

I happen to agree with you that the rule of Law did not originate from religious mysticism.  Could you say briefly from what did the rule of law arise.

My impression is that it came about by experiment,  cut and try,  fiddle and diddle.  What worked was kept and what did not work was discarded. 

In a way, Law emerged in a very similar way to the manner in which carpentry or farming emerged.  

Humans are both smart and curious.  They try this and that to see what happens and they keep that which produces results they are happy with. One does not need a mystical connection with  the Woo Woo Infinite to do this. 

You might want to look at Daniel Dennett's latest book  "From Bacteria to Bach and Back"  in which he show how  comprehension arises in a bottom up  way from competences  empirically achieved.  Dennett believes in cranes,  rather than skyhooks.  

[Wolf DeVoon]

21 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

I happen to agree with you that the rule of Law did not originate from religious mysticism.  Could you say briefly from what did the rule of law arise.

My impression is that it came about by experiment,  cut and try,  fiddle and diddle.  What worked was kept and what did not work was discarded. 

In a way, Law emerged in a very similar way to the manner in which carpentry or farming emerged.  

Humans are both smart and curious.  They try this and that to see what happens and they keep that which produces results they are happy with. One does not need a mystical connection with  the Woo Woo Infinite to do this.

Generally agree, although it was mostly an issue of defining first principles. What would be fair and impartial? What constitutes due process?

Who is a person? What is custody? Particularly difficult, what is unconstitutional on its face?

[moralist]

3 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

You're a damn fool.

I got your number, Wolf.

So many of your views sound exactly like the radical left... but it's not because of leftism itself.

It's because you and the left share the same libertine secularist values...

... and that's what makes them your ideological bedfellows.

Greg

[Wolf DeVoon]

FYI, ignoring Moralist henceforth

[BaalChatzaf]

7 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Generally agree, although it was mostly an issue of defining first principles. What would be fair and impartial? What constitutes due process?

Who is a person? What is custody? Particularly difficult, what is unconstitutional on its face?

None of these difficult questions  can be answered  a priori.   Any "answers"   are there result of people doing what they think or feel is fair.   Primates (which include us)  seem to have an "intuition" about such things and an impulse  toward rectitude.  So chimpanzees and bonobos work out ways of establishing dominance and resolving conflicts.  Not a single answer or resolution is  graven upon tablets of stone. Answers from Above seem to be a story that humans like to  tell themselves. 

[moralist]

5 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

FYI, ignoring Moralist henceforth

Wise move, Wolf.

You should run away from this topic like a scalded cat, because I know the real reasons the extreme right shares so many views with the radical left. No one would ever dare to address the libertine secularism which is shared by the seemingly two opposite ends of the political spectrum.

It is this shared lack of standards of people who have failed to govern their own personal behavior which unites the "ends" of the political spectrum and forms a circle.

No issues are ever political.

They are always moral.

Greg

[anthony]

On 2017/05/02 at 5:26 PM, BaalChatzaf said:

By referring to the evil doer as "sick"  or "disturbed"  or "misguided"   the evil does is excused of his deeds and becomes instead a person to be pitied or helped. One can do amazing things with language.  One can turn night into day,  black into white  and condemnation into pity and compassion. 

Except, it's not the manipulation of language which is at fault. I think that's a reversal. The words don't have enough power, the (mis)identification does. It needs a deliberately evasive act of will to convert the reality and subsequent emotion of "the evil doer's" deeds, in order to make of it a fake reality and artificial emotion. Pity and compassion are good and fine, but they are ~personal~ emotions (responding to some existent, and in synch with one's specific values). The intended mission of Leftists is to browbeat everyone into universalized, lock-step 'compassion', but only for those specially selected Causes they decree are right for everyone else. Oppose them at your own risk... Observe how there are certain people or situations they show a united 'compassion' for, while showing scant pity for many others who merit it.

[BaalChatzaf]

20 minutes ago, anthony said:

Except, it's not the manipulation of language which is at fault. I think that's a reversal. The words don't have the power, the (mis)identification does. It needs a deliberately evasive act of will to convert the reality and subsequent emotion of "the evil doer's" deeds, in order to make of it a fake reality and artificial emotion. Pity and compassion are good and fine, but they are ~personal~ emotions (responding to some existent, and in synch with one's specific values). The intended mission of Leftists is to browbeat everyone into universalized, lock-step 'compassion', but only for those selected causes they decree are right for everyone else. Oppose them at your own risk... Observe how there are certain people or situations they show 'compassion' for, while showing scant pity for many others who merit it.

garbage in, garbage out if one chooses to be a garbage disposal...

[Peter]

Greg wrote: You should run away from this topic like a scalded cat, because I know the real reasons the extreme right shares so many views with the radical left . . . . It is this shared lack of standards of people who have failed to govern their own personal behavior which unites the "ends" of the political spectrum and forms a circle. No issues are ever political. They are always moral.  end quote

Interesting, and close to the scholarly version in some ways. How did Hitler, Stalin, or Mussolini fail to govern their own morality? Perhaps the following will enlighten you.

Robert Tracinski wrote on May 2:

_{But Communists are opposed to Fascism. How dare you say denying the evils of socialism is like denying the Holocaust? Don't you know that Communists are the sworn enemies of fascism? It was the Soviet Union who really defeated Hitler, and the Soviets were the ones who liberated Auschwitz. But notice something missing from this argument. Auschwitz was in German-occupied Poland. And who was the ally with whom Hitler divided up Poland? That's right, it was the Soviet Union, under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. I don't think the old Soviets deserve any moral credit for helping defeat an evil regime when the Nazis were originally their allies who double-crossed them. And when the Soviets did "liberate" a country, they imposed the same evils as the Nazis: mass deportations, torture, summary execution, suppression of free speech, and so on. One form of oppression was switched out for another.}

_{Presenting socialists as the alternative to fascists is an old bit of Soviet propaganda dating back to the 1930s, when Communists and Nazis used to brawl against one another in the streets of Germany. Yes, they were bitter and deadly rivals, but only because they were competing over who got to wear the jackboots. This is the Alien vs. Predator of political contests: whoever wins, we lose.}

_{The connection goes even deeper. The founder of fascism, Benito Mussolini, started out as a Communist and a leader of the Italian Socialist Party. When he turned against Communism, he set out to create a new ideology that retained a lot of the same features--particularly the ideas of total state control and rule by a party elite--but with a nationalist twist. The result was called "national socialism," which the Germans abbreviated to "Nazi." Far from socialism and fascism being ideological opposites, the one was created out of the other.  But creating confusion about that issue, and presenting themselves as the only alternative to fascism, was a centerpiece of Soviet propaganda, and to this day American leftists buy it hook, line, and sinker.}

_{Take just one example. The leftist folk-song guru and Communist fellow traveler Woody Guthrie used to carry a guitar with the label " This Machine Kills Fascists" while he supported the war effort in World War II, and it's a trope modern leftists still use. If you want to be really cloying and self-important, you can get a decal based on Guthrie's that you can attach to your Macbook. But the people who use this don't know the actual history behind it. Before he decided that his guitar was a machine that killed fascists, Guthrie was using it to record anti-war songs. He only adopted a pro-war message in 1941after Hitler invaded Russia and the Communists flipped their party line. So he was against fascism, but only if that was OK with Joseph Stalin.}

_{Or consider today's "antifacist" protesters, who dress all in black, embrace the use of violence and firebombs to shut down their political opponents, and generally look and act exactly like fascists.}

_{Ideologically, socialism and fascism are not opposites. Historically, the conflict between them has been a rivalry between two different enemies of liberty, which is now being repeated--whether as tragedy or farce depends on how you look at it--in the campus clashes between "alt-right" and "antifa" brawlers.} 

[Peter]

George H. Smith wrote on page 109 of “Why Atheism: Bacon’s secularism, while it did not challenge Christianity per se, exiled God to the nether regions of faith and theology  . . .  “ And George quoted Franklin Baumer about 17th Century thought: Secularism, unlike free thought, posed no threat to particular theological tenets. What it did was to outflank theology by staking out autonomous spheres of thought. The tendency was, more and more, to limit theology to the comparatively restricted sphere of faith and morals. end quote

 

Or as Will Shakespeare wrote about a female character: Get thee to a nunnery. end quote

 

It would be good to have a discussion about reason and morality, and not some “commandments.” In other words, “decrees” may or may not have anything to do with reality and they are just as likely to have something to do with fantasy. What makes one person’s decrees any better than someone else’s decrees if both people are not using reason and reality? In that sense a Muslim is as right as a Christian or a Hindu if morality is based on authoritarianism. And the only way to impose your morality is by force. Oh yeah? Says you! Put em up! Put em up!

  

Peter

[Peter]

 

Ba’al wrote, “Not a single answer or resolution is graven upon tablets of stone. Answers from Above seem to be a story that humans like to tell themselves.”

The Ten Commandments are OK if you delete the obnoxious one about obeying a god and the theologians. Here are some oldies from Atlantis “Ethics” and “Emergencies,” where The Ten Commandments are mentioned.

Peter   

From: "Gayle Dean" To: "Atlantis" Subject: ATL: Emergencies, Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 15:11:25 -0500

George Smith wrote:  >I contend that the man is acting morally, but that he is also violating the rights of another person, or which he should make restitution. And this is *clearly* what Rand was arguing as well.

What is clear is this is a contradiction.  Bill carefully, walked through his argument step-by-step, logically.  I don't think his argument can simply be dismissed by contradictory assertions.

Gayle

From: "George H. Smith" To: "Atlantis" <Atlantis> Subject: ATL: Re: Emergencies, Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 14:46:32 -0600.

I wrote: "I contend that the man is acting morally, but that he is also violating the rights of another person, for which he should make restitution. And this is *clearly* what Rand was arguing as well."

And Gayle Dean replied: "What is clear is this is a contradiction.  Bill carefully, walked through his argument step-by-step, logically.  I don't think his argument can simply be dismissed by contradictory assertions."

(1) Gayle, like Bill, apparently believes that Rand was really an altruist who believed that my needs can negate your rights. I am still waiting for one passage from Rand where she argues that my needs, however legitimate, can nullify your rights. I am still waiting for textual evidence that Rand was really a closet altruist.

(2) Does Gayle think that Rand denied the possibility of legitimate moral conflicts? Has she ever read Rand's novels? They are full of them.

(3) It is interesting to note that determinists, such as Bill and Gayle, also apply their mechanistic, push-pull notions of human motivation to the field of ethics -- as if a moral code were like a cookie cutter that need only be stamped on human dough to come out with a uniform product.

But Rand never adopted this "Ten Commandments" approach to ethics. She never denied or underestimated the role of personal judgment in moral decision-making. Moral principles are a guide to judgment, not a substitute for them. Life isn't always simple, and decisions are not always easy. There is far more involved in moral judgment than consulting a rule book.

(4) Since rights, according to Rand, exist as moral barriers against the aggressive actions of others, it makes no sense to say that it is impossible to violate these barriers if only your needs are sufficiently desperate -- for it is against those who are most desperate that we most need the protection of rights. Bill may have "walked through his argument step-by-step," but he also danced over three of Rand's key essays on the subject of rights and self-interest, dismissing them as irrelevant. Does anyone seriously believe that Rand would have similarly dismissed her foundational essays as irrelevant to the subject at hand?

Give me a break. Ghs

From: "Will Wilkinson" To: "George H. Smith" <atlantis> Subject: ATL: Re: Re: Emergencies

Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 16:29:23 -0500.

Rand did argue that there is no path from one person's needs to another's obligations. So think of it this way... According to Rand, rights are necessary for liberty, liberty for the exercise of reason, the exercise of reason for life and happiness. Having your rights respected means not being aggressed upon. So, by the transitivity of necessity, we all need to not be agressed upon for life and happiness. Now, if I happen to need to aggress upon you to survive, it remains that you need to not be aggressed upon. We have conflicting needs. Now, since there is no way to get from a need to an obligation, your need not to be agressed upon doesn't morally oblige me not to do so, and my need to agress upon you doesn't morally oblige you to allow me. The altruist position would either say that your need not to be aggressed upon obliges me not to (George's position, it seems, in which the need not to be agressed upon is more special than other needs) or that my need to agress upon you obliges you to let me (nobody's position). In situations like this, one can choose how to phrase it. Either rights disappear, or they don't disappear, but one is under no obligation to heed them. Will

 

From: Victor Levis To: "Atlantis" Subject: Re: ATL: Emergencies Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 17:18:12 -0500

At 03:11 PM 1/22/2001 -0500, Gayle Dean wrote: >George Smith wrote: >>I contend that the man is acting morally, but that he is also violating the rights of another person, for which he should make restitution. And this is *clearly* what Rand was arguing as well. What is clear is this is a contradiction.  Bill carefully, walked through his argument step-by-step, logically.  I don't think his argument can simply be dismissed by contradictory assertions.

Sorry, Gayle, I don't agree.  I see no reason why violating someone's rights can NEVER be the moral thing to, given the context. The same can be said for something like keeping one's word. Suppose I commit to take my son to the baseball game on Friday after school if he gets an A on his test.   My son, perhaps because of the extra motivation, puts in extra study hours and pulls an A.  However, Friday morning, my mother-in-law has a heart attack, and I choose to accompany my wife to the hospital.  Have I done something immoral with respect to my son?

Not necessarily.  Should I think in terms of compensating him in some way. Yes.  Indeed, were I NOT to think of compensation, I could arguably be acting immorally. Victor Levis

From: Ellen Stuttle To: atlantis Subject: ATL: Moral Complexities: (was Emergencies) Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 11:13:13 -0500.

[Sorry if this post appears twice; it duplicates a post which hasn't yet shown up.] I'll interject a personal comment here -- this isn't to be taken as a statement on how Rand would have analyzed things. If I were the person in the shipwreck scenario, I'd think of my helping myself to food from a convenient deserted house as borrowing on the presumed benevolence of the lender and with every intention of repaying the loan.

If it were a case of forcibly taking the food of some other shipwreck survivor, I wouldn't take the food.  I wouldn't be emotionally capable of doing this unless the someone else were someone I considered despicable (and there are few persons whom I consider despicable). Ellen S.

From: "Morganis Chamlo" To: atlantis Subject: Re: Benevolence (was Re: ATL: Existence Exists reply to BB) Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 09:34:04 -0000

>From: "James Koontz" >To: atlantis >Subject: Benevolence (was Re: ATL: Existence Exists reply to BB) >Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 15:20:10.

>Morganis Chamlo: Benevolence'...a 'virtue'? ... if we are going by Rand's/O-ism's meaning of 'virtue' (ie: "...recognition of the fact...X" where 'X' must "...pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness:...", I find it a bit hard to see where 'benevolence' stands beside 'rationality', 'pride', etc. anymore than 'mentoring'. In O-ist parlance, the virtues are characterized as recognition of  one fact >>or other within the definitional framework of 'virtue'. Could you  define the *virtue* of 'benevolence'...?

>>For the definitional framework: to quote Rand, "'Value' is that which one acts to gain and keep, virtue' is the action by which one gains and  keeps it." Objectivist virtues are behaviors by which one seeks to a ctualize Objectivist values.

>>"Benevolence" is a set of actions by which one expresses our values outside of ourselves.

May I suggest that it is not a 'set of actions', per se, so much as, possibly, an Emotionally mental propensity-tendency-orientation towards such? To behave benevolently towards your fellow man is an >expression of our views of Man (not just you individually) as a heroic being. >A general disposition towards (non-self-sacrificial) kindness,  civility, and respect is how we recognize the fact that Man's nature is rational, effective, and worthy of celebration. In the absence of any other  evidence, Objectivists (accepting the Benevolent Universe Premise rather than the Malevolent Universe Premise) treat others as if they are as equally heroic as ourselves.

To NOT behave benevolently demonstrates a view of Man as "bad"  unless they choose otherwise- that Man's nature is something evil that must be overcome. Benevolence is belief put into action that Man has value until an individual acts to destroy their own value.

(I'm not totally up on David Kelley either- I'm sure he's stated  this with much more intellectual rigor than I have in "Unrugged  Individualism." For a taste, you can read the introduction at >http://ios.org/pubs/Excerpt1.asp) James

Not bad. Problem is: I see 'virtue' as something to effortfully strive for. 'Benevolence' seems to be something that AUTOMATICALLY follows from the standard O-ist 'virtues', ergo, is not, per se, a *virtue* itself.

From: "George H. Smith" To: "*Atlantis" Subject: ATL: Re: Emergencies Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 16:45:28 -0600

Will Wilkinson wrote: "Rand did argue that there is no path from one person's needs to another's obligations. So think of it this way... According to Rand, rights are necessary for liberty, liberty for the exercise of reason, the exercise of reason for life and happiness. Having your rights respected means not being aggressed upon. So, by the transitivity of necessity, we all need to not be agressed upon for life and happiness. Now, if I happen to need to agress upon you to survive, it remains that you need to not be aggressed upon. We have conflicting needs. Now, since there is no way to get from a need to an obligation, your need not to be agressed upon doesn't morally oblige me not to do so, and my need to aggress upon you doesn't morally oblige you to allow me. The altruist position would either say that your need not to be agressed upon obliges me not to (George's position, it seems, in which the need not to  be agressed upon is more special than other needs) or that my need to agress upon you obliges you to let me (nobody's position). In situations like this, one can choose how to phrase it. Either rights disappear, or they don't disappear, but one is under no obligation to heed them."

 Let us recall how Rand addressed the emergency situation: "But to state the issue in brief, I would say that you would have the right to break in and eat the food that you need, and then when you reach the nearest policeman, admit what you have done, and undertake to repay the man when you are able to work. In other words, you may, in an emergency situation, save your life, but not as "of right." You would regard it as an emergency, and then, still recognizing the property right of the owner, you would restitute whatever you have taken, and that would be moral on both parts."

There is a possible confusion here, inasmuch as Rand says (1) "that you would have the right to break in and eat the food that you need," and (2)  "you may, in an emergency situation, save your life, but not as 'of right.'"

Now what does it mean to say that you "have the right to do x," but cannot do x "as of right"? What kind of distinction was Rand making between these two usages of "right"? Here is my take on this problem: Rand was speaking off the cuff, not writing an essay, so she was using "right" in the first sense in the same loose, informal way that many people use it, i.e., to mean "morally justified." Thus a wife who discovers her husband's infidelity might say, "You had no right to cheat on me." Or we might say to a deceitful friend, "You had no right to lie to me." Or we might say, "I had a right to expect more from you."

Such usages of "a right" refer to unenforceable moral claims against other people, i.e., moral claims that, since they do not involve the violation of rights, do not fall within the purview of *justice* and so cannot be coercively enforced. In modern political theory (such as we find in Pufendorf, Locke, and Hutcheson) these were often called "imperfect rights"; they were unenforceable moral claims, such as the "right" to be treated with due consideration by one's friends and with respect by one's children.

"Perfect rights," in contrast, were regarded as juridical rights (i.e., those pertaining to matters of justice) which may be coercively enforced. When Rand says that you may save your life in an emergency situation, "but not as 'of right,'" she is obviously making an important point (and one which Bill, Gayle, and others have not considered). What she is here saying, in my opinion, is that you have no juridical (or "perfect") right to another person's property, even in an emergency -- i.e., that you cannot expropriate his property as a matter of *justice.* In other words, you have in fact violated the other person's right to his property, so you must provide restitution.

This is the point of Rand's conclusion that, by providing restitution, you do what would be "moral on both parts." The two "parts" referred to here are the two different meanings of "right" -- one imperfect, the other perfect (as previously defined). In other words, it is restitution that ultimately reconciles what would otherwise be a conflict between your morally justified action, on the one hand, and the rights of others, on the other hand.

Given this, I cannot agree that Rand viewed juridical rights are irrelevant to emergencies. I cannot agree with Will that, according to Rand, "one is under no obligation to heed them." There is clearly an obligation, as indicated by Rand's stress on the need for restitution. What Rand is saying is that a juridical right may not be the *paramount* obligation during an emergency. But to say this is manifestly *not* to say that this obligation ceases to exist altogether. The starving man has stolen another man's property, to which he had no juridical right (i.e., his action was not "of right"). He has violated the owner's rights and so must pay restitution, even though he did so out of extreme need and may have been morally justified.

This simply means that other considerations may sometimes outweigh our obligation to respect the rights of other persons. It does not mean that their rights cease to exist altogether, and with them our obligations.  For if I am obligated to restitute the owner, as Rand insisted, then I must clearly have violated his rights in some fashion. I owe him restitution as a matter of *justice,* not merely because I happen to be a nice guy. I owe him restitution as a matter "of right."

Look at it this way: If, when confronted with an emergency, I injure an innocent person or deprive him of his property, would that person have the juridical right -- and I am speaking here of justice, not merely law -- to demand restitution from me, and to extract that restitution by force, if need be? Yes, of course he would. But he could have no such restitutive claims against me UNLESS I HAD FIRST VIOLATED HIS RIGHTS. Does Bill, Will or anyone else wish to argue that an innocent victim has no right to demand restitution from me, if my actions were taken under the duress of an emergency for which the victim was in no way responsible? On what possible moral grounds can we lay the burden of *my* misfortune on him in this manner? I am not saying that I personally agree with every aspect of this analysis. I am presenting it as the most reasonable interpretation of Rand's approach, taking into account her explicit statements in the emergency example and her manner of treating rights in various essays. As I have said repeatedly, to maintain that my needs can nullify the rights of others goes against everything that Rand ever wrote against altruism. Ghs

From: "George H. Smith" Reply-To: "*Atlantis" <atlantis> Subject: ATL: Ragnar, Rearden, and Justice Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 13:38:08 -0600. What's so special about rights, according to Ayn Rand's moral theory? After all, she defends egoism -- if of the natural-law variety – and rights appear to be "other regarding," in the sense that they demand we take the interests of others into account while pursuing our own interests. The question is not merely how Rand justified rights, but also *why* she placed such great emphasis on justice within her egoistic ethics. This is a very complex issue, but one place to begin is by exploring the views of Ragnar Danneskjold and Hank Rearden in "Atlas Shrugged." Ragnar describes the state of the world as follows: "There are two modes of living left to us today: to be a looter who robs disarmed victims or to be a victim who works for the benefit of his own despoilers. I did not choose to be either."

Ragnar depicts the world of "Atlas Shrugged" as having degenerated, in effect, into a Hobbesian state of nature, a world of conflicting interests (or what Hobbes called "a war of every man against every man") in which one must choose between exploiting others or being exploited by others. Thus it also represents a variant of the "emergency" situation that we have been discussing. Yet Ragnar "did not choose to be either" exploited or exploiter. What did he choose instead? When he is asked by Rearden, "But what sort of life have you chosen? To what purpose are you using your mind?" -- Ragnar replies with the single word, "Justice" (AS, Signet pb, 539)

Now Ragnar appears to the public as the most "selfish" of individuals in the conventional sense, a pirate who steals from others for his own benefit. Yet even in the degenerate social situation in which he finds himself, he nonetheless presents "justice" as the motive power of his life. Ragnar had  devoted himself to the cause of justice in the sense that his "piracy" was an ambitious scheme to provide restitution to those who, like Rearden, had had their wealth expropriated by others.

Ragnar was fighting "the idea that need is a sacred idol requiring human sacrifices," and he was opposing the popular symbol of Robin Hood, according to which "need, not achievement, is the source of rights" Ragnar, in other words, was combating the altruistic notion that "in order to be placed above principles, above morality, placed where anything is permitted to him, even plunder and murder, all a man has to do is to be in need" (p. 540).

Such passages (which recur throughout Rand's writings) are a clear indication that Rand did not believe that the rights of one person are contingent on the needs of others, even during an emergency where interests conflict, for Ragnar was operating within precisely that kind of crisis situation -- a global emergency, so to speak, in which the world was in "ruins" (p. 543).

More interesting, however, is the question of how an egoist like Ragnar could devote himself to the cause of justice, even in cases where he did not appear to benefit personally. Here is what Ragnar says: "Because my only love, the only value I care to live for, is that which has never been loved by the world, has never won recognition or friends or defenders: human ability. That is the love I am serving -- and if I should lose my life, to what better purpose could I give it" (p. 543).

Thus Ragnar was willing to *lose* his life in pursuit of the ideal of human ability, and while engaged in the struggle for justice. Moreover, although Rearden initially disapproves of Ragnar's methods, he too expresses a similar devotion to principles:

"I'll tell you that I have no hope left, but I have the knowledge that when the end comes, I will have lived by my own standards, even while I was the only one to whom they remained valid. I will have lived in the world in which I started and I will go down with the last of it."

This reinforces the point that the entire scenario of "Atlas Shrugged" is a prolonged state of emergency, in which some of the protagonists do not even expect to survive. Yet what do these "egoists" do in this situation? They adhere to their principles, especially the principle of justice, as essential to their well-being. As Rearden says elsewhere, "I do not recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life....[N]obody's good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices....[W]hen you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all...." (p. 452).

The relevant point here is that, according to Rand, adherence to the principle of justice -- a respect for the rights of others – is inextricably linked to one's *rational* self-interest, even during the kind of emergency situation that is depicted in "Atlas Shrugged." Indeed, Ragnar, Rearden and other Randian heroes are willing to sacrifice their own lives in pursuit of justice, including (in Ragnar's case) justice for others.

I won't here discuss why Rand took this view; I merely wish to emphasize that this was in fact her view. She did not adopt the position that your rights are contingent on my needs, or on my personal calculations of self-interest. Your rights are to be respected, period, to whatever extent is possible in a given situation. Does this mean that Rand was not really an egoist? Of course not. Rather, it means that Rand was correct in distinguishing her conception of "self-interest" from the conventional view.

Those who claim otherwise need to examine with care how Rand viewed the role of abstract principles, such as justice, in one's pursuit of happiness. Adherence to principles, for Rand, is an essential component of moral integrity, and such integrity, in turn, is necessary for happiness. And this is so even if it may result in one's death. Ghs

[anthony]

What fact of reality gave rise to the concept “justice”? The fact that man must draw conclusions about the things, people and events around him, i.e., must judge and evaluate them. Is his judgment automatically right? No. What causes his judgment to be wrong? The lack of sufficient evidence, or his evasion of the evidence, or his inclusion of considerations other than the facts of the case. How, then, is he to arrive at the right judgment? By basing it exclusively on the factual evidence and by considering all the relevant evidence available. But isn’t this a description of “objectivity”? Yes, “objective judgment” is one of the wider categories to which the concept “justice” belongs. What distinguishes “justice” from other instances of objective judgment? When one evaluates the nature or actions of inanimate objects, the criterion of judgment is determined by the particular purpose for which one evaluates them. But how does one determine a criterion for evaluating the character and actions of men, in view of the fact that men possess the faculty of volition? What science can provide an objective criterion of evaluation in regard to volitional matters? Ethics. Now, do I need a concept to designate the act of judging a man’s character and/or actions exclusively on the basis of all the factual evidence available, and of evaluating it by means of an objective moral criterion? Yes. That concept is “justice.”

“Definitions,”ITOE

---

Rand places "Justice" under the category, "objective judgment", i.e. - an individual's *just* evaluation of another individual, (positively or negatively) and openly expressed - emphatically and especially, with one's positive evaluation, I'd reckon.

Peter, I think Ghs made strong arguments.

However I can't fathom  "...according to Rand, adherence to the principle of justice-- a respect for the rights of others[?] --is inextricably linked to one's rational self interest ..." [Ghs]

Observing others' rights isn't the meaning or purpose of objective "justice". Surely?

[BaalChatzaf]

2 minutes ago, anthony said:

 

Observing others' rights isn't the meaning or purpose of objective "justice". Surely?

Justice for one is justice for all.  One cannot have justice unless the rights of all are upheld. 

[anthony]

21 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Justice for one is justice for all.  One cannot have justice unless the rights of all are upheld. 

See, you make the same error. This is "justice" in the personal arena.

Add: Justice is an Objectivist virtue, btw.

[anthony]

"It is not justice or equal treatment that you grant to men when you abstain equally from praising men’s virtues and from condemning men’s vices. When your impartial attitude declares, in effect, that neither the good nor the evil may expect anything from you—whom do you betray and whom do you encourage?"

“How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?".