Philosophy: Who Needs It
Posted by jchristyatty 10 years, 7 months ago to Philosophy
Ayn Rand's address To The Graduating Class of The United States Military Academy at West Point New York — March 6, 1974
fare.tunes.org/liberty/library/pwni.html
"In the titular essay, “Philosophy: Who Needs It,” Rand shows why, in order to deal with concrete, real-life problems, an individual needs some implicit or explicit view of the world, of man’s place in it, and of what goals and values he ought to pursue. The abstract premises an individual holds may be true and consistent, reached by conscientious thought—and the purpose of the science of philosophy is to teach one how to achieve this—or his premises may be a heap of clashing ideas unwittingly absorbed from the culture around him. But either way, she argues, the power of philosophy is inescapable. It is something everyone should be concerned with."
fare.tunes.org/liberty/library/pwni.html
"In the titular essay, “Philosophy: Who Needs It,” Rand shows why, in order to deal with concrete, real-life problems, an individual needs some implicit or explicit view of the world, of man’s place in it, and of what goals and values he ought to pursue. The abstract premises an individual holds may be true and consistent, reached by conscientious thought—and the purpose of the science of philosophy is to teach one how to achieve this—or his premises may be a heap of clashing ideas unwittingly absorbed from the culture around him. But either way, she argues, the power of philosophy is inescapable. It is something everyone should be concerned with."
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Her reference to "unless you're ready to begin a private uprising right now, which isn't very practical" was at a different time than Obama's pen, phone and guns -- even McGovern was overwhelmingly defeated except in Washington DC and Massachusetts -- but today it is still not practical to expect to take on the US government by force, nor would it help even if you could do it under today's widespread acceptance of statism and collectivism, which is worse than it was then. The chaos would only accelerate the decline and give them a concocted excuse to go after innocent people even more than they do now, especially against rational individuals who dare to speak out. We would not get another American Revolution, only a replay of the French Revolution.
But Ayn Rand's abhorrence of arbitrary force does not mean she was "anti-gun". It's important to keep the distinction clear, especially in today's context of a lot of people running around sounding as if they do want people with guns taking the law into their own hands, even if they don't always intend that literally. The answer to that is not "anti-gun". She wanted laws sanctioning direct self defense but not leading to "killing people at whim" in the name of that or worse. Today's statists want to squelch self defense and simultaneously do what they want to people "at whim" themselves, with the Constitution regarded as an anachronistic joke.
Also her statement on unions being the only ideologically decent group that will save the country should not be taken out of context to endorse everything unions were doing at the time (even aside from the bad economic affects she mentioned), let alone their ideological history or the kind of strong arm progressives they are today. At the time, some of the labor leaders were publicly making observations against Wesley Mouch-style statism and pandering to the Soviets in foreign policy.
beings too.
Much of the Leonard Peikoff's OPAR (as it's called) was assembled from presentations he gave in previous lectures on philosophy, mostly in the 1970s, and you may have encountered some of it in that form.
It is not a matter of 'one life is more valuable than another', but what kind of life is more valuable to whom for what purpose. The concepts of morality and rights do not pertain to the unborn and only _potential_ human.
To say that "human life begins at conception" and deduce "rights" for a blob of cells equivocates on what is meant by "human life". The human genes in cells are not the source of rights, and neither is the outline of the shape of a human hand in a fetus. Religious conservatives relying on the supernatural have no idea what the nature and source of rights is. Their assertions of "absolutes" under the claim that a "god" provides certainty and stability are subjective decrees leading to anything but certainty and stability, and are mystic incantations that provide no understanding whatsoever, but lead to countless bloody battles between warring sects, each decreeing its own absolute in a realm in which cognitive standards are impossible.
To the extent that the unborn as a potential human has value to someone (which it certainly does), the _rights_ of the mother prevail, not the desires of someone else and not the noncognitive automatic biological process of development of the pre-human entity.
Being born means no longer being a biological parasite; it is the point at which the new human begins to directly perceive the external world and use his mind to understand it. But at that level of 'timing' it is most important to specify an objective standard within a range of options so that everyone knows what the law is. That standard is not at the level of embryos, fetuses and cells.
The mystics ascribe "rights" to a "soul" in a cell, with no idea of where rights comes from in a rational philosophy, then outrageously call cell-biology and medicine "murder" while trying to ban contraception (as they once did), then try to pretend that they are only trying to deal with a border line case distinguishing birth at the last moment -- and proceed to argue like medieval scholastics counting angels on the head of a pin while ignoring essentials in the name of a supposed "precision".
The source of rights is through recognition of the nature of man and his mind, and objectively formulating and defining legal rights accordingly, not an out of context decree of 'intrinsic value' gleaned from subjective revelation of the supernatural promoted behind a smokescreen of last minute "precision" while accusing others of mysticism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADvHO-lG...
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