Peikoff's Peculiar Notion of Honesty

[Philip Coates]

> But doesn't the very idea of individualism involve not asking oneself whether a Peikoff (or even a Kant or whoever else, doesn't matter) would "approve" of one's subjective choices to tell the truth to whom and under what circumstances? Isn't that delegating to another person one's own capability to come to a personal decision and assume responsiblity for it? [X-Ray]

Not necessarily. A proper view of individualism is not that no one ever listens to or learns from or is influenced or persuaded by anyone else. One is not an 'island' in that particular way. You listen to those you respect or who seem to have a good point. Then you use reason to decide.

Roark is presented for literary purposes as never listening to anyone about his work. Never learning [whoops, no, that's not quite true! What about Henry Cameron!] But, remember, Rand always distinguished between what was necessary in a story to -dramatize- the character in a 'stylized' manner what one might do or not in real life in every single, minute situation.

Again, best to read her writings instead of trying to debate this stuff in online forums with people casually posting off the tops of their heads. She explains it more clearly than I. Spend the time reading Rand, fiction and n-f. (and then courses if still interested.)

[Brant Gaede]

It was okay to blow them up in The Fountainhead, an alternate reality. That was the essence of Rand's genius--the creation of alternate realities.

--Brant

Rand explicitly stated that Roark was "the ideal man", "as man should be".

And would that be a desirable alternate reality where such acts of violence as Roark committed them are thought of as justified (by the author who created it in her book)?

He wasn't no matter what she said. He was hers.

Whatever was acceptable in 1943 regarding a "rape by engraved invitation" it was rape in at least the immediate consequences with Dominique dragging herself into the bathroom and lying there until morning. Rand simply didn't know what she was really writing about. She obviously wasn't thinking of rape but of a sexual conquest that Dominique wanted to be on the receiving end of. Rand was incompetent in her psychological knowledge, but back in those days almost everyone was, including the professionals.

You have to accept the novelist's world to enjoy a novel. That doesn't mean you subsequently live in that world as Rand did regarding Atlas the rest of her life. That's one reason she ceased being a novelist. Therefore Roark did NOT rape Dominique because a novel is fiction.

Ayn Rand is food for thought--lots of thought. One one level she always knew and welcomed that. On other levels she could not have imagined.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

There is not necessarily a physical gun involved, or bruises, etc. It includes for example: fraud, embezzlement, taking away of intellectual property...see any law book for more of this. If a contract requires a building be built a certain way and it is not, then the people who allowed that and/or promulgated that are involved in initiating force against Roark.

The characters in the novel who altered the building design had no contract with Roark. Roark conspired with Keating to commit the fraud of letting Keating take credit for his work. Roark not only didn't have a contract with those in charge of the project, but he actively hid his involvement in the project from them. The only person who had a contract with the government was Keating, and he wouldn't have been able to claim breach of contract while having first breached it himself by passing off someone else's design as his own.

Similar thing as what happened to Roark in regard to misapprehension of, let's call it, intellectual property would be this: I write a book advocating freedom and the publisher completely changes my words so that I'm advocating something else.

If you knew that a company disliked you and would not publish your book, but you and a friend then decided to commit the fraud of trying to get the company to publish your book anyway by claiming that your friend wrote it, that would be an example of the initiation of force. In other words, if you were to intentionally misrepresent your work so that you could take advantage of the company's resources -- their property and their labor -- against their will, it would be the same as putting a gun to their heads and ordering them to publish your book. That, in effect, is what Roark and Keating did.

J

[Brant Gaede]

Oh for Heaven's sake. Blow up the God-damned housing project!

And be happy she wrote the God-damned novel!

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

In The Fountainhead Rand was writing about the integrity of the esthetic vision which was more important to Roark than anything else. You might say what he did with the project came under The Ethics of Emergencies. He fixed up Keating's work, starting in college, for that reason, not so much to help Keating. Keating always came to Roark for help for himself, Roark helped what Keating was working on. If Keating had come to Roark for help with his paintings--he didn't--Roark would have done nothing. He didn't grab the canvas and start fixing it. He wasn't a painter.

So the pure essence of Roark's integrity had nothing to do with initiation of physical force yes or no but his own personal sublimation to his esthetic vision. He rescued design, when he had a chance. Only Keating gave him that chance, fortunately, or he'd have had no time for his own work. This way we can see him as a very part-time EMT. Remember, he even rescued one of his own buildings when he spotted a mistake--and paid out of his own pocket for the correction. This is another example of how Rand's heroes were essentially common with what we think of as heroes. They are more in society (minarchists) than out (anarchists) so God bless you Alan Greenspan. Do well in Washington.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

I question but do not know if the don't initiate force principle is absolutely primary in human relationships. Hiking in the Alaskan wilderness close to death I come upon a cabin with firewood and food. I partake of same and save my life. The owner comes upon me there and tells me he's going to arrest me and pulls out a gun. He's acting crazy, I think, and I'm afraid he's going to kill me. So I shoot him. I really would, too.

You need common sense and courtesy in human relationships. To make some human invention about the initiation of physical force give you moral cause to kill somebody or so threaten is to have this invention lead you about by the nose. I am not going to give this guy a chance to gun me down because I burned up half a cord or his wood and ate a can of his chef-boy-ar-de foul-tasting can of food. Or even two cans.

And what if I'd been with the love of my life? Let her die?

Understand that human rights are a human invention and to the extent they are honored in society they are enforced by physical force. Hence the government monopoly. One's right to self-defense is codified. You can't do this and you can do that. Why? Because one is the initiation of physical force and the other is self defense. But human rights like all philosophy--at least placed in words--is an invention. There is no "rights" in a human being. What is about a human being is his human nature which needs those rights so he can function socially and economically sans force, the force being reserved basically to the police, military and law courts. But the nature of (natural) rights dictates that one has the right to physically protect oneself from the initiation of force should an initiator appear on one's door. The crazy cabin owner jerking out his gun has taken the situation to a whole new level and I'm not going to let him gun me down. Police officers, BTW, initiate physical force every day. Thanks to video, it's harder for them to get away with it.

--Brant

Edited August 4, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[Philip Coates]

Brant, the whole freezing to death breaking into cabin in the woods thing is covered by Rand in "THe Ethics of Emergencies". Did you have a chance to read it?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Phil,

I am a bit amused at how Xray's rhetorical hooks work. Your posts to her are similar to mine way back when she arrived.

She has problems with the concept of context. (Her biggest dog and pony is to call almost all context "subjective" while claiming that there is no such thing as objective for values, and she has no meaning for objective other than some copy/paste from a dictionary, i.e. the words, not the ideas.)

I believe Rand's idea of being OK to lie to a thief would go right over her head if she ever found a passage where Rand said it was wrong to lie. She would just harp on an on about Rand contradicting herself, the impossibility of being honest, this is where Objectivism gets it wrong, yada yada yada.

But go for it. Who knows? Maybe you can get her to speak some English instead of Xray-speak.

Michael

[Guyau]

Johathan,

There is a real-life practice like an element within the part of the story in which Roark and Keating agree to have Keating be the front man for the creation and purposes of Roark. This real-life practice is only one element in the misrepresentation project that Roark and Keating were undertaking, but the rightness or wrongness of this element (additionally, the having or not having a legal right to do it) is something that would need to be settled if one were to assess the morality of this misrepresentation project in the story.

I do not have a stake in whether Howard Roark has made a moral error (of fictional action) or whether the author has made an intellectual error concerning what is right and what is wrong. There is a greater importance to the questions you raise, and that is the morality of such actions by real people in the real world.

The real-life practice I’m wondering about is when some individual or business firm contracts with various individuals to go out and buy real estate in their own name, but really as an intermediary for the secret individual or firm who is the real purchaser and real new owner. Electric utilities used to be able to do that to purchase strips of land for power lines. The practice allowed the firm to obtain land at feasible prices and without resorting to eminent domain. Do you think that sort of misrepresentation is a morally right thing to do? I’m not sure. What do you think?

[Xray]

Rand explicitly stated that Roark was "the ideal man", "as man should be".

And would that be a desirable alternate reality where such acts of violence as Roark committed them are thought of as justified (by the author who created it in her book)?

He wasn't no matter what she said. He was hers.

He was her ideal man, yes. If she had merely said "my" ideal man, the issue would only be marginally interesting. But she, via her novel, presented Roark "to the world" as "the" ideal man "as man should be".

To readers as a role model to be emulated. Rand had a real agenda there.

Just as I'm looking at the screen here, I see "John Galt-T-shirts" advertised. In the link, it also shows a cap "I'm John Galt". Women can choose among variety of Dagny Taggart T-shirts with "What would Dagny Taggart do?" written on them.

So there seems to exist the desire by quite a few Randists to identify with these fictional characters.

Whatever was acceptable in 1943 regarding a "rape by engraved invitation" it was rape in at least the immediate consequences with Dominique dragging herself into the bathroom and lying there until morning. Rand simply didn't know what she was really writing about.

There's food for thought in this assessment. Also in your comment "Rand was incompetent in her psychological knowledge, but back in those days almost everyone was, including the professionals."

You have to accept the novelist's world to enjoy a novel. That doesn't mean you subsequently live in that world as Rand did regarding Atlas the rest of her life. That's one reason she ceased being a novelist.

Good point about Rand creating her personal fantasy world and trying to actually live in it.

Therefore Roark did NOT rape Dominique because a novel is fiction.

But then one could also say that Galt did not make his speech because Atlas Shrugged is fiction.

Edited August 4, 2009 by Xray

[Brant Gaede]

Brant, the whole freezing to death breaking into cabin in the woods thing is covered by Rand in "THe Ethics of Emergencies". Did you have a chance to read it?

I don't think many libertarians have.

--Brant

PS: Phil, I think you gave the wrong reference. In any case, you make what restitution you can when you can.

Edited August 4, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[Brant Gaede]

But then one could also say that Galt did not make his speech because Atlas Shrugged is fiction.

Yes, literally speaking. I was merely pointing out that Rand was not trying to depict a rape or Roark as a rapist. Dominique could have easily stopped the "assault." The supposition is that such a woman wouldn't have some severe mental health problems that would be aggravated by what happened. Impressionable young people should see a warning, "Do not try this at home!"

Society was much more sexually repressed and ignorant in the 1940s than today, making what happened between Howard and Dominique more palatable and acceptable to the reader then. Today Dominique couldn't be such a loon and they could have spent the whole night together doing all kinds of different sexual things--she could even have been on top. This, though, would degrade The Fountainhead as a work of literary art. A young Ayn Rand today would write a different novel or maybe no novels at all, just non-fiction. Who knows?

--Brant

[Xray]

I think a lot of Rand's desire for privacy might have had serious roots in Soviet Russia where honesty could get you or family or friends killed.

-- Brant

It may well have begun even earlier. She was the child of a (heavily assimilated, but not converted) Jewish family in Czarist Russia. One Czarist Prime Minister is said to have summarized his policy towards Russian Jews as have a goal of one third converting to Russian Orthodoxy, one third emigrating from the Russian Empire--and the remaining one third he intended to starve to death. Although a lot rarer than in Soviet Russia, the mere fact of being a Jew could get "you or family or friends killed".

Imo Rand's horror at "man" being treated as "sacrificial animal" by the "looters" has its roots in her early years in Russia too. She viewed many people there as being exploited and treated like helpless animals led to the slaughterhouse, so to speak.

Even after her emigration to the USA, this early traumatic experience of being denied so many basic needs remained with her, spilling over into the world she created in her novels. The flaming speeches her heros give, the torrent of words accusing "the system" not recognizing "individual greatness" - this is always Rand herself speaking.

Rands' personal background perfectly explain her desire for utopias like Galt's Gulch a - fantasy world within the fictional world of ATLAS SHRUGGED.

Edited August 5, 2009 by Xray

[Barbara Branden]

Xray: "Imo Rand's horror at 'man' being treated as 'sacrificial animal' by the 'looters' has its roots in her early years in Russia too. She viewed many people there as being exploited and treated like helpless animals led to the slaughterhouse, so to speak.

Even after her emigration to the USA, this early traumatic experience of being denied so many basic needs remained with her, spilling over into the world she created in her novels. The flaming speeches her heros give, the torrent of words accusing 'the system' not recognizing 'individual greatness' - this is always Rand herself speaking.

Rands' personal background perfectly explain her desire for utopias like Galt's Gulch a - fantasy world within the fictional world of ATLAS SHRUGGED."

By this reasoning, by your attempt to explain away Rand's convictions, it would not be possible for people who were not brought up in dictatorships to agree with her -- to feel the same horror at the spectacle of men and women being treated as sacrificial animals.

Barbara

[Reidy]

Quite by coincidence the folks over at RoR have been on to this very topic (technically termed the genetic fallacy): http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Machan/Dismissing_Your_Thoughts.shtml

[Jonathan]

In The Fountainhead Rand was writing about the integrity of the esthetic vision which was more important to Roark than anything else.

I agree. I love the novel, just as I love Atlas Shrugged despite the fact that it contains a few scenes which may not come across as Rand intended, and which could be interpreted as Rand advocating things that she might not have.

So the pure essence of Roark's integrity had nothing to do with initiation of physical force yes or no but his own personal sublimation to his esthetic vision. He rescued design, when he had a chance. Only Keating gave him that chance...

I understand where you're coming from, and I agree with you that Roark had good intentions when it came to wanting to help Keating. But he also knew that he was seen as a rebel or maverick, and he believed that no committee, "public or private," would hire him to work on the type of projects that he dreamed of. He decided that he wanted to work on such a project anyway, and that those in charge did not have the right to refuse to hire him. He even comments about the fact that he opposes the idea of public housing, but he's willing to set aside his objections -- his morality -- because the thrill of working on the project is just too great a temptation for him.

J

[Jonathan]

The real-life practice I’m wondering about is when some individual or business firm contracts with various individuals to go out and buy real estate in their own name, but really as an intermediary for the secret individual or firm who is the real purchaser and real new owner. Electric utilities used to be able to do that to purchase strips of land for power lines. The practice allowed the firm to obtain land at feasible prices and without resorting to eminent domain. Do you think that sort of misrepresentation is a morally right thing to do? I’m not sure. What do you think?

I would say that if a person is employed as a sort of purchasing agent for someone else, he is morally obligated to disclose that information to the owner of a property that he's trying to buy. I think that contracts could be written to require such disclosure. And I also think that sellers have similar obligations. Would you want to live in a world where something like the following conversation might be a common occurrence after any transaction?

Buyer: "Hah! Now that we've officially closed on the deal, you might be interested to know that I'm employed by Bill Gates, who is planning on using this property, as well as that acquired from your neighbors, to build a relay base for a new technology. This location is vital to his plans. You could've held out for an additional $20,000, and Gates would have paid it."

Seller: "That reminds me, would you like to buy a map from me which gives precise details about the types and locations of land mines and other booby traps that are buried all over the property that I just sold to you? I'll sell it to you for $50,000. That's quite a deal, especially considering that it would probably cost you about 75,000 to hire someone else to locate and identify the devices."

J

[Xray]

Xray: "Imo Rand's horror at 'man' being treated as 'sacrificial animal' by the 'looters' has its roots in her early years in Russia too. She viewed many people there as being exploited and treated like helpless animals led to the slaughterhouse, so to speak.

Even after her emigration to the USA, this early traumatic experience of being denied so many basic needs remained with her, spilling over into the world she created in her novels. The flaming speeches her heros give, the torrent of words accusing 'the system' not recognizing 'individual greatness' - this is always Rand herself speaking.

Rands' personal background perfectly explain her desire for utopias like Galt's Gulch a - fantasy world within the fictional world of ATLAS SHRUGGED."

By this reasoning, by your attempt to explain away Rand's convictions, it would not e possible for people who were not brought up in dictatorships to agree with her -- to feel the same horror at the spectacle of men and women being treated as sacrificial animals.

Barbara

Barbara: I did not "explain it away" (this expression has the connotation of "downplaying", which is not my intention, on the contrary). For the influence these traumatic experiences had on Rand's life can't be weighed heavily enough.

As for your argument that, going by my reasoning, people who were not brought up in dictatorships would not be able to agree with Rand - it is not necessary to have lived through every experience oneself in order to understand what someone else has gone through. It is a matter of empathy, imagination we all are capable of, and also knowledge one has acquired via learning on how a totalitarian system works.

For example, in my job as a teacher, I have worked with quite a few children who came from war zones from which their families fled to Germany.

Although I myself have never had to live through the horrors of a war (so far), I am able understand what these children went through and also why they behave as they do.

People have of course different coping strategies in dealing with adverse circumstances, dramatic events, personal trauma.

Rand's work offers interesting insight in her coping strategies.

The question as to her philosohy was so attractive to many is complex.

For example, her ideology of unbridled capitalism is likely to attract those holding the same values.

American patriots are likely to be attracted by her view of the USA.

Others will be attracted by the term "individualism". I believe this is especially true for many young people, who are in search of "finding themselves", but also feel the need of being guided by a teacher figure.

Those denying transcendence and on the lookout for a philosophical system denying transcendence are also likely to land at Objectivsm's doorstep at one time or another.

What can often be observed is that, while they have shed their specific god, they have not been able to shed the god principle, which makes them especially vulnerable to worship the teacher as a guru.

These are just some motives off the cuff; they can of course also overlap and cluster, depending on the individual case.

Edited August 5, 2009 by Xray

[Alexander]

Do remember, that dishonesty isn't bad because its bad, like it would be under common morality, but bad because its not in your self interest. Roark wanted to see his building constructed, but couldn't if his identity was known, so its in his interest to lie.