Rand's Trichotomies

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Do you ever finish a book? I see in my imagination a huge tower of books on your nightstand, all with bookmarks somewhere around page 40 or so...

(sigh)

Busted.

Michael

[John Dailey]

studio:

~ I take 'trichotomy' as meant to be equivalent to 'dichotomy' where there are alternatives meant in terms of apparently 'mutually exclusive' and, only 1 is acceptable. I'm not sure about the 'we all know' presumptive part, but...

~ Whether dichotomies, trichotomies, quadratomies, whatever, uh...what's the concern here? Catagorizing mutually-exclusive subjects, and...that's it?

LLAP

J:D

[studiodekadent]

Andrew,

Here's another trichotomy in Rand:

1. Whatever is immoral ought to be illegal (theocratic conservatism, Nanny State-ism)

2. Moral justice is not legal justice, and some immoral acts should not be prohibited by law

3. Only what ought to be illegal is immoral ("economistic" libertarianism, "non-judgmental" modern liberalism)

Not unique to her, but she did give it a pretty crisp formulation.

Robert Campbell

Thankyou very much for that Robert. Its correct that its not unique to Rand but I like the formulation.

Relationship between Ethics and Law (Ethics/Politics)

1. The immoral should be illegal (Jesus fascism, Nanny-State liberalism)

2. Morality and Legality are connected only on the issue of individual rights, otherwise they are seperate (us)

3. Only the illegal is immoral (amoralistic libertarianism, some forms of modern liberalism)