Keeping It Real: Bringing Ideas Down to Earth by Leonard Peikoff

Author:Leonard Peikoff [Peikoff, Leonard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ayn Rand Institute Press
Published: 2019-02-26T06:00:00+00:00

HUMAN NATURE

You have to have consistency on the issues that count, subconsciously as well as consciously, before you can have unbreached self-esteem.

How can Objectivism be objective when it says the primary purpose of any man’s life is productive work? What about Mother Teresa? You can’t tell me she’d be happier if you took her out of missionary work and plopped her down at the desk of a Fortune 500 company.

I would say right away that Mother Teresa is never going to be happy at anything, given what she has made of herself, which I think is clear.

First of all, your statement that the primary purpose of life is productive work is wrong. That is not the Objectivist view. The Objectivist view is that the primary purpose is life, and the result of that is personal happiness. Productive work is a crucial necessity, a crucial value, that enables you to achieve a life of purpose and therefore to sustain yourself and achieve happiness—if you hold non-contradictory values. If you hold contradictory values, then even if your productive work is going well, you will not be happy. If you hold some form of altruism and self-sacrifice, then you’re going to be holding: “I must pursue X as a value, but I have to sacrifice X, and it’s the opposite of a value, so I’ll just give it away.” That’s built into Mother Teresa.

Moreover, if you hold, “I have to function according to my intelligence”—which every living being has to do to some extent—“but my intelligence is worthless compared to the knowledge I get from God,” then you contradict your own knowledge, your own value of your own ability, your own intelligence. And the result of that is a huge contradiction. Of course, I could multiply these.

Finally, your implication is that Mother Teresa is happy in missionary work. You cannot judge a person’s happiness from their facial expressions or public statements. To say someone is happy—not just that they’re enjoying themselves or having a good time, but that they’re happy—is a fundamental career description. You’re saying this person holds non-contradictory values and is pursuing a career, and hopefully a romance, that corresponds to and expresses them. They’re basically in harmony with reality, confident of their own mind and successfully pursuing their values. That is not something you can judge by anything other than a very, very lengthy acquaintance with somebody. A great many people appear to be happy at a party—even on vacation for a week—who are not happy. Maybe they’re not even faking; maybe they feel in a better mood, so they’re “up.” Read OPAR [Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand] on that question.8

—January 2008

Is it possible for a person to act in the absence of any emotional impetus to take that action?

I doubt it. I don’t think you can act without any emotional impetus, because that would mean acting without any value-commitment or involvement. The emotion doesn’t have to be a passion; your passion could even be in the opposite direction.

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