Since I am a fiction writer,
let us start with a short short story. Suppose that you are an astronaut whose
spaceship gets out of control and crashes on an unknown planet. When you regain
consciousness and find that you are not hurt badly, the first three questions
in or mind would be: Where am I? How can I discover it? What should I do?
You see unfamiliar vegetation
outside, and there is air to breathe; the sunlight seems paler than you
remember it and colder. You turn to look at the sky, but stop. You are struck
by a sudden feeling: if you don't look, you won't have to know that you are,
perhaps, too far from the earth and no return is possible; so long as you don't
know it, you are free to believe what you wish — and you experience a foggy,
pleasant, but somehow guilty, kind of hope.
You turn to your instruments:
they may be damaged, you don't know how seriously. But you stop, struck by a
sudden fear: how can you trust these instruments? How can you be sure that they
won't mislead you? How can you know whether they will work in a different
world? You turn away from the instruments.
Now you begin to wonder why you
have no desire to do anything. It seems so much safer just to wait for
something to turn up somehow; it is better, you tell yourself, not to rock the
spaceship. Far in the distance, you see some sort of living creatures approaching;
you don't know whether they are human, but they walk on two feet. They, you decide, will tell
you what to do.
You are never heard from again.
This is fantasy, you say? You
would not act like that and no astronaut ever would? Perhaps not. But this is
the way most men live their lives, here, on earth.
Most men spend their days
struggling to evade three questions, the answers to which underlie man's every
thought, feeling and action, whether he is consciously aware of it or not:
Where am I? How do I know it? What should I do?
By the time they are old enough
to understand these questions, men believe that they know the answers. Where am
I? Say, in New York City. How do I know it? It's self-evident. What should I
do? Here, they are not too sure — but the usual answer is: whatever everybody
does. The only trouble seems to be that they are not very active, not very
confident, not very happy — and they experience, at times, a causeless fear and
an undefined guilt, which they cannot explain or get rid of.
They have never discovered the
fact that the trouble comes from the three unanswered questions — and that
there is only one science that can answer them: philosophy.
Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of
man's relationship to existence. As against the special sciences, which deal
only with particular aspects, philosophy deals with those aspects of the
universe which pertain to everything that exists. In the realm of cognition,
the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the
forest possible.
Philosophy would not tell you,
for instance, whether you are in New York City or in Zanzibar (though it would
give you the means to find out). But here is what it would tell you: Are you in a universe which
is ruled by natural laws and, therefore, is stable, firm, absolute — and
knowable? Or are you in an incomprehensible chaos, a realm of inexplicable
miracles, an unpredictable, unknowable flux, which your mind is impotent to
grasp? Are the things you see around you real — or are they only an illusion?
Do they exist independent of any observer — or are they created by the
observer? Are they the object or the subject of man's consciousness? Are they what they are — or can they be changed by a mere act
of your consciousness, such as a wish?
The nature of your actions —
and of your ambition — will be different, according to which set of answers you
come to accept. These answers are the province of metaphysics — the study of existence as such or,
in Aristotle's words, of "being qua being" — the basic branch of
philosophy.
No matter what conclusions you
reach, you will be confronted by the necessity to answer another, corollary question: How do I know it? Since man
is not omniscient or infallible, you have to discover what you can claim as
knowledge and how to prove the validity of your conclusions. Does
man acquire knowledge by a process of reason — or by sudden revelation from a
supernatural power? Is reason a faculty that identifies and integrates the
material provided by man's senses — or is it fed by innate ideas, implanted in
man's mind before he was born? Is reason competent to perceive reality — or
does man possess some other cognitive faculty which is superior to reason? Can
man achieve certainty — or is he doomed to perpetual doubt?
The extent of your
self-confidence — and of your success — will be different, according to which
set of answers you accept. These answers are the province of epistemology, the theory of
knowledge, which studies man's means of cognition.
These two branches are the
theoretical foundation of philosophy. The third branch — ethics — may be regarded as its technology.
Ethics does not apply to everything that exists, only to man, but it applies to
every aspect of man's life: his character, his actions, his values, his
relationship to all of existence. Ethics, or morality, defines a code of values
to guide man's choices and actions — the choices and actions that determine the
course of his life.
Just as the astronaut in my
story did not know what he should do, because he refused to know where he was
and how to discover it, so you cannot know what you should do until you know
the nature of the universe you deal with, the nature of your means of cognition
— and your own nature. Before you come to ethics, you must answer the questions
posed by metaphysics and epistemology: Is man a rational being, able to deal
with reality — or is he a helplessly blind misfit, a chip buffeted by the
universal flux? Are achievement and enjoyment possible to man on earth — or is
he doomed to failure and distaste? Depending on the answers, you can proceed to
consider the questions posed by ethics: What is good or evil for man — and why?
Should man's primary concern be a quest for joy — or an escape from suffering?
Should man hold self-fulfillment — or self-destruction — as the goal of his
life? Should man pursue his values — or should he place the interests of others
above his own? Should man seek happiness — or self-sacrifice?
I do not have to point out the
different consequences of these two sets of answers. You can see them
everywhere — within you and around you.
The answers given by ethics
determine how man should treat other men, and this determines the fourth branch
of philosophy: politics,
which defines the principles of a proper social system. As an example of
philosophy's function, political philosophy will not tell you how much rationed
gas you should be given and on which day of the week — it will tell you whether
the government has the right to impose any rationing on anything.
The fifth and last branch of
philosophy is esthetics,
the study of art, which is based on metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Art
deals with the needs — the refueling — of man's consciousness.
Now some of you might say, as
many people do: "Aw, I never think in such abstract terms — I want to deal
with concrete, particular, real-life problems — what do I need philosophy
for?" My answer is: In order to be able to deal with concrete, particular,
real-life problems — i.e., in order to be able to live on earth.
You might claim — as most
people do — that you have never been influenced by philosophy. I will ask you
to check that claim. Have you ever thought or said the following? "Don't
be so sure — nobody can be certain of anything." You got that notion from
David Hume (and many, many others), even though you might never have heard of
him. Or: "This may be good in theory, but it doesn't work in
practice." You got that from Plato. Or: "That was a rotten thing to
do, but it's only human, nobody is perfect in this world." You got that
from Augustine. Or: "It may be true for you, but it's not true for
me." You got it from William James. Or: "I couldn't help it! Nobody
can help anything he does." You got it from Hegel. Or: "I can't prove
it, but I feel that it's true." You got it from
Kant. Or: "It's logical, but logic has nothing to do with reality."
You got it from Kant. Or: "It's evil, because it's selfish." You got
it from Kant. Have you heard the modern activists say: "Act first, think
afterward"? They got it from John Dewey.
Some people might answer:
"Sure, I've said those things at different times, but I don't have to
believe that stuff all of the time. It may have been true
yesterday, but it's not true today." They got it from Hegel. They might
say: "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." They got it from
a very little mind, Emerson. They might say: "But can't one compromise and
borrow different ideas from different philosophies according to the expediency
of the moment?" They got it from Richard Nixon — who got it from William
James.
Now ask yourself: if you are
not interested in abstract ideas, why do you (and all men) feel compelled to
use them? The fact is that abstract ideas are conceptual integrations which
subsume an incalculable number of concretes — and that without abstract ideas
you would not be able to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems.
You would be in the position of a newborn infant, to whom every object is a
unique, unprecedented phenomenon. The difference between his mental state and
yours lies in the number of conceptual integrations your mind has performed.
You have no choice about the
necessity to integrate your observations, your experiences, your knowledge into
abstract ideas, i.e., into principles. Your only choice is whether these
principles are true or false, whether they represent your conscious, rational
conviction — or a grab-bag of notions snatched at random, whose sources,
validity, context and consequences you do not know, notions which, more often than
not, you would drop like a hot potato if you knew.
But the principles you accept
(consciously or subconsciously) may clash with or contradict one another; they,
too, have to be integrated. What integrates them? Philosophy. A philosophic
system is an integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice
about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you
define you philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought
and scrupulously logical deliberation — or let your subconscious accumulate a
junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined
contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears,
thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of
mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and
chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown.
You might say, as many people
do, that it is not easy always to act on abstract principles. No, it is not
easy. But how much harder is it, to have to act on them without knowing what
they are?
Your subconscious is like a
computer — more complex a computer than men can build — and its main function
is the integration of your ideas. Who programs it? Your conscious mind. If you
default, if you don't reach any firm convictions, your subconscious is
programmed by chance — and you deliver yourself into the power of ideas you do
not know you have accepted. But one way or the other, your computer gives you
print-outs, daily and hourly, in the form of emotions— which are lightning-like estimates
of the things around you, calculated according to your values. If you
programmed your computer by conscious thinking, you know the nature of your
values and emotions. If you didn't, you don't.
Many people, particularly
today, claim that man cannot live by logic alone, that there's the emotional
element of his nature to consider, and that they rely on the guidance of their
emotions. Well, so did the astronaut in my story. The joke is on him — and on
them: man's values and emotions are determined by his fundamental view of life.
The ultimate programmer of his subconscious is philosophy— the science which, according to the
emotionalists, is impotent to affect or penetrate the murky mysteries of their
feelings.
The quality of a computer's
output is determined by the quality of its input. If your subconscious is
programmed by chance, its output will have a corresponding character. You have
probably heard the computer operators' eloquent term "gigo" — which
means: "Garbage in, garbage out." The same formula applies to the
relationship between a man's thinking and his emotions.
A man who is run by emotions is
like a man who is run by a computer whose print-outs he cannot read. He does
not know whether its programming is true or false, right or wrong, whether it's
set to lead him to success or destruction, whether it serves his goals or those
of some evil, unknowable power. He is blind on two fronts: blind to the world
around him and to his own inner world, unable to grasp reality or his own
motives, and he is in chronic terror of both. Emotions are not tools of
cognition. The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently:
they are most helplessly in its power.
The men who are not interested
in philosophy absorb its principles from the cultural atmosphere around them —
from schools, colleges, books, magazines, newspapers, movies, television, etc.
Who sets the tone of a culture? A small handful of men: the philosophers.
Others follow their lead, either by conviction or by default. For some two
hundred years, under the influence of Immanuel Kant, the dominant trend of
philosophy has been directed to a single goal: the destruction of man's mind,
of his confidence in the power of reason. Today, we are seeing the climax of
that trend.
When men abandon reason, they
find not only that their emotions cannot guide them, but that they can
experience no emotions save one: terror. The spread of drug addiction among
young people brought up on today's intellectual fashions, demonstrates the
unbearable inner state of men who are deprived of their means of cognition and
who seek escape from reality — from the terror of their impotence to deal with
existence. Observe these young people's dread of independence and their frantic
desire to "belong," to attach themselves to some group, clique or
gang. Most of them have never heard of philosophy, but they sense that they
need some fundamental answers to questions they dare not ask — and they hope
that the tribe will tell them how
to live. They are ready to be taken over by any witch doctor, guru, or
dictator. One of the most dangerous things a man can do is to surrender his moral autonomy to others: like the astronaut
in my story, he does not know whether they are human, even though they walk on
two feet.
Now you may ask: If philosophy
can be that evil, why should one study it? Particularly, why should one study
the philosophical theories which are blatantly false, make no sense, and bear
no relation to real life?
My answer is: In
self-protection — and in defense of truth, justice, freedom, and any value you
ever held or may ever hold.
Not all philosophies are evil,
though too many of them are, particularly in modern history. On the other hand,
at the root of every civilized achievement, such as science, technology,
progress, freedom — at the root of every value we enjoy today, including the
birth of this country — you will find the achievement of one man, who lived over two
thousand years ago: Aristotle.
If you feel nothing but boredom
when reading the virtually unintelligible theories of some philosophers, you have my deepest
sympathy. But if you brush them aside, saying: "Why should I study that
stuff when I know it's nonsense?" — you are
mistaken. It is nonsense, but you don't know it — not so long as you go on
accepting all their conclusions, all the vicious catch phrases generated by
those philosophers. And not so long as you are unable to refute them.
That nonsense deals with the
most crucial, the life-or-death issues of man's existence. At the root of every
significant philosophic theory, there is a legitimate issue — in the sense that
there is an authentic need of man's consciousness, which some theories struggle
to clarify and others struggle to obfuscate, to corrupt, to prevent man from
ever discovering. The battle of philosophers is a battle for man's mind. If you
do not understand their theories, you are vulnerable to the worst among them.
The best way to study
philosophy is to approach it as one approaches a detective story: follow every
trail, clue and implication, in order to discover who is a murderer and who is
a hero. The criterion of detection is two questions: Why? and How? If a given
tenet seems to be true — why? If another tenet seems to be false — why? and how
is it being put over? You will not find all the answers immediately, but you
will acquire an invaluable characteristic: the ability to think in terms of essentials.
Nothing is given to man
automatically, neither knowledge, nor self-confidence, nor inner serenity, nor
the right way to use his mind. Every value he needs or wants has to be
discovered, learned and acquired — even the proper posture of his body. In this
context, I want to say that I have always admired the posture of West Point
graduates, a posture that projects man in proud, disciplined control of his
body. Well, philosophical training gives man the proper intellectual posture — a proud, disciplined control
of his mind.
In your own profession, in
military science, you know the importance of keeping track of the enemy's
weapons, strategy and tactics — and of being prepared to counter them. The same
is true in philosophy: you have to understand the enemy's ideas and be prepared
to refute them, you have to know his basic arguments and be able to blast them.
In physical warfare, you would
not send your men into a booby trap: you would make every effort to discover
its location. Well, Kant's system is the biggest and most intricate booby trap
in the history of philosophy — but it's so full of holes that once you grasp
its gimmick, you can defuse it without any trouble and walk forward over it in
perfect safety. And, once it is defused, the lesser Kantians — the lower ranks
of his army, the philosophical sergeants, buck privates, and mercenaries of
today — will fall of their own weightlessness, by chain reaction.
There is a special reason why
you, the future leaders of the United States Army, need to be philosophically
armed today. You are the target of a special attack by the
Kantian-Hegelian-collectivist establishment that dominates our cultural
institutions at present. You are the army of the last semi-free country left on
earth, yet you are accused of being a tool of imperialism — and
"imperialism" is the name given to the foreign policy of this
country, which has never engaged in military conquest and has never profited
from the two world wars, which she did not initiate, but entered and won. (It
was, incidentally, a foolishly overgenerous policy, which made this country
waste her wealth on helping both her allies and her former enemies.) Something
called "the military-industrial complex" — which is a myth or worse —
is being blamed for all of this country's troubles. Bloody college hoodlums
scream demands that R.O.T.C. units be banned from college campuses. Our defense
budget is being attacked, denounced and undercut by people who claim that
financial priority should be given to ecological rose gardens and to classes in
esthetic self-expression for the residents of the slums.
Some of you may be bewildered
by this campaign and may be wondering, in good faith, what errors you committed
to bring it about. If so, it is urgently important for you to understand the
nature of the enemy. You are attacked, not for any errors or flaws, but for
your virtues. You are denounced, not for any weaknesses, but for your strength
and your competence. You are penalized for being the protectors of the United
States. On a lower level of the same issue, a similar kind of campaign is
conducted against the police force. Those who seek to destroy this country,
seek to disarm it — intellectually and physically. But it is not a mere
political issue; politics is not the cause, but the last consequence of
philosophical ideas. It is not a communist conspiracy, though some communists
may be involved — as maggots cashing in on a disaster they had no power to
originate. The motive of the destroyers is not love for communism, but hatred
for America. Why hatred? Because America is the living refutation of a Kantian
universe.
Today's mawkish concern with
and compassion for the feeble, the flawed, the suffering, the guilty, is a
cover for the profoundly Kantian hatred of the innocent, the strong, the able,
the successful, the virtuous, the confident, the happy. A philosophy out to
destroy man's mind is necessarily a philosophy of hatred for man, for man's
life, and for every human value. Hatred of the good for being the good, is the
hallmark of the twentieth century. This is the enemy you are facing.
A battle of this kind requires
special weapons. It has to be fought with a full understanding of your cause, a
full confidence in yourself, and the fullest certainty of the moral rightness of both. Only philosophy can
provide you with these weapons.
The assignment I gave myself
for tonight is not to sell you on my philosophy, but on philosophy as such.
I have, however, been speaking implicitly of my philosophy in every sentence —
since none of us and no statement can escape from philosophical premises. What
is my selfish interest in the matter? I am confident
enough to think that if you accept the importance of philosophy and the task of
examining it critically, it is my philosophy that you will come to accept.
Formally, I call it Objectivism, but informally I call it a philosophy for
living on earth. You will find an explicit presentation of it in my books,
particularly in Atlas
Shrugged.
In conclusion, allow me to
speak in personal terms. This evening means a great deal to me. I feel deeply
honored by the opportunity to address you. I can say — not as a patriotic
bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical,
epistemological, ethical, political and esthetic roots — that the United States
of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding
principles, the only moral country in the history of the
world. There is a kind of quiet radiance associated in my mind with the name
West Point — because you have preserved the spirit of those original founding
principles and you are their symbol. There were contradictions and omissions in
those principles, and there may be in yours — but I am speaking of the
essentials. There may be individuals in your history who did not live up to
your highest standards — as there are in every institution — since no
institutions and no social system can guarantee the automatic perfection of all
its members; this depends on an individual's free will. I am speaking of your
standards. You have preserved three qualities of character which were typical
at the time of America's birth, but are virtually nonexistent today:
earnestness — dedication — a sense of honor. Honor is self-esteem made visible
in action.
You have chosen to risk your
lives for the defense of this country. I will not insult you by saying that you
are dedicated to selfless service — it is not a virtue in my morality. In my morality, the defense
of one's country means that a man is personally unwilling to live as the
conquered slave of any enemy, foreign or domestic. This is an enormous virtue. Some of you may
not be consciously aware of it. I want to help you to realize it.
The army of a free country has
a great responsibility: the right to use force, but not as an instrument of
compulsion and brute conquest — as the armies of other countries have done in
their histories — only as an instrument of a free nation's self-defense, which
means: the defense of a man's individual rights. The principle of using force
only in retaliation against those who initiate its use, is the principle of
subordinating might to right. The highest integrity and sense of honor are
required for such a task. No other army in the world has achieved it. You have.
West Point has given America a
long line of heroes, known and unknown. You, this year's graduates, have a
glorious tradition to carry on — which I admire profoundly, not because it is a
tradition, but because it is glorious.
Since I came from a country
guilty of the worst tyranny on earth, I am particularly able to appreciate the
meaning, the greatness and the supreme value of that which you are defending.
So, in my own name and in the name of many people who think as I do, I want to
say, to all the men of West Point, past, present and future: Thank you.