Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Friday talk in Houston, Texas

I’ll be giving a talk on Friday, March 12 to the Houston Property Rights Association on the topic of “Entrepreneurship, Politics, and Ayn Rand”:

“Why are business success and free markets so unpopular in some quarters? There are lots of reasons. One is that business is seen as immoral or boring or both. For the political left, business is money-grubbing and free markets merely let the strong exploit the weak. Even for many conservatives who reject the leftist account, business is what sober, responsible people do to pay the bills.

“Both sides miss the excitement, the nobility, and the romance of business. Ayn Rand’s vision of the entrepreneur — and of those who operate entrepreneurially within existing businesses — is of potentially heroic value creation. At our best, each person in business and in life is akin to the artist creating what was not there before.

“How does Rand’s vision of life and work fit into the current mainstream view of academia and party-in-power politics? Hollywood movies and humanities professors focus on rapacious CEOs and burned-out cubicle workers. Rand focuses on Howard Roark, Dagny Taggart, and the free market system that has empowered and enriched billions.”

Thanks to Rob Bradley of the Institute for Energy Research for the invitation.

A book recommendation

The main character is a young architect. A creative designer — he is visionary and innovative the use of materials. Before he can finish his formal training, a conflict with a teacher leads to his expulsion. So he has an extra challenge to breaking into his profession.

Another major character is a highly intelligent and independent woman. She loves the architect, but she has a confused, extreme, and occasionally idiosyncratic way of defining and pursuing her independence, which puts her in conflict with the architect.

Another key character is a younger man, who is dominated by his social-climber mother. To achieve his desired position in life, he manipulates, deceives, and otherwise maneuvers four men out of the way to get where he wants to be.

The book is Ken Follett’s World Without End. The characters mentioned above are Merthin, Caris, and Godwyn.

Before I read the book last summer, Marsha Enright recommended it to me and suggested that I would find in it strong echoes of another, classic work. Enright has published an article on the comparisons, along with a recommendation. I’m glad to second her recommendation, for World Without End is in its own right a gripping story, historically rich, and thematically deep. And she’s right about the striking parallels.

Past posts for the new semester

A collection of posts relevant to my courses this semester:

Before Philosophy: Homer’s world

Why does philosophy begin with Thales?
Philosophy begins: Thales’ revolution

Socrates’ two bad arguments for not escaping
Quotations from Apology and Crito on reason and character

Who is the real father of modern philosophy? [Descartes versus Bacon]

Education: Locke versus Kant

Freud and original sin
Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt School [on the usefulness of Freud's theories to the Frankfurt School's social psychology and politics]
The best footnote ever [on micturation]

John Dewey on education as socialization

Why C. S. Lewis gives me the creeps
Freud and original sin [with a comparison of Lewis's and Freud's views on human nature]

Ayn Rand [at The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
Ayn Rand and Contemporary Business Ethics [pdf]

Roark and Keating: First meetings
Toohey’s five strategies of altruism
Gordon Prescott: Heidegger’s disciple?

What is philosophy of history? [Section 2 of Nietzsche and the Nazis]

[This is Section 2 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.]

2. What is philosophy of history?

These are fascinating questions. As historians we study interesting individuals and cultures to understand how they lived, why they lived the way they did, and what impact they had on the course of human events. As philosophers we think more broadly and abstractly. We learn our lessons from the historians and ask: Are there broader explanations we can find in the dramatic rises and falls of cultures, or in the static nature of others?

History, from this perspective, is a huge laboratory of experiments in human living. Some of those experiments have been wildly successful, some have achieved middling results, leading their cultures to eke out an existence across the generations—and some have been outright disasters, causing misery and death on a large scale. Can we identify the fundamental causes at work? Can we learn why some cultures flourish while others stagnate, collapse, or descend into horror? Is there a moral to the story of history?

Let us turn to one major experiment, one that turned out to be one of the darkest eras in human history.

[This section can also be downloaded as a PDF at the Nietzsche and the Nazis page.]

In Defense of Advertising by Jerry Kirkpatrick

In the following video interview, I speak with Professor Jerry Kirkpatrick, author of In Defense of Advertising, about the value of advertising, the common criticisms of it, and his responses to them. Dr. Kirkpatrick is Professor of International Business and Marketing at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Part I:

Part II:

This video interview is also available at the CEE site. More of my interviews with CEE’s guest speakers are available here.

Toohey’s five strategies of altruism

The ethics of altruism holds that others are standard of value. One is good to the extent one puts the interests of other first, acts to achieve their interests, and, when necessary sacrifices one’s interests for their sake.

In The Fountainhead, Ellsworth Toohey is the major strategist of altruism, and in my reading he uses five distinct variants of altruism to achieve his ends:

(1) Altruism as a policy of collectivism for the purpose of mutual self support;

(2) Altruism as a tactic of the weak to protect themselves against the strong;

(3) Altruism as a tactic of the weak to get support from the strong;

(4) Altruism as a strategy of the weak to get power over the strong in order to rule them; and

(5) Altruism as a strategy by the weak to destroy the strong out of envy, hatred, or revenge.

History provides many examples of Type 1 altruism, in, for example, religious communities that isolate themselves and live communally. The key organizing concepts of such communities are collective assets, solidarity, and conformity.

In The Fountainhead, Type 1 is combined with Type 2 in the official philosophy Ellsworth Toohey uses when preaching to the masses — for example in his speech to the strikers of the building-trades union (I:9). The key concepts in Toohey’s speech are unity and brotherhood for its own sake, on the one hand; and on the other the aggression of the owners and the consequent role of unions as a self-protection agency to fight back.

Type 3 altruism appears less in The Fountainhead, e.g., in the tactics Keating’s mother uses to live vicariously, both psychologically and — later in the novel — materially, through him. (It is much more developed in Atlas Shrugged, e.g., in the case of the strategy that Rearden’s mother and brother pursue to ensure that he will continue to support them.)

Type 4 altruism is the altruism of power-lust. One sub-plot of The Fountainhead is the battle between Gail Wynand and Toohey. Wynand pursues the common “master” power strategy of physical wealth and intimidation (e.g., of his business competitors), while Toohey’s strategy is to use psychological power. An example from late in the novel when Toohey explains his philosophy to Peter Keating, who is now an empty shell of a man:

“It’s only a matter of discovering the lever. If you learn how to rule one single man’s soul, you can get the rest of mankind. It’s the soul, Peter, the soul. Not whips or swords or fire or guns. That’s why the Caesars, the Attilas, the Napoleons were fools and did not last. We will. The soul, Peter, is that which can’t be ruled. It must be broken” (4:14).

Toohey’s particular tactics to achieve the strategy are designed to make the strong doubt themselves. Toohey elaborates in detail:

“There are many ways. Here’s one. Make man feel small. Make him feel guilty. Kill his aspiration and his integrity. . . . Preach selflessness. Tell man that he must live for others. Tell man that altruism is the ideal. Not a single one of them has ever achieved it and not a single one ever will. His every living instinct screams against it. But don’t you see what you accomplish? Man realizes that he’s incapable of what he’s accepted as the noblest virtue — and it gives him a sense of guilt, of sin, of his own basic unworthiness” (4:14).

Guilty individuals are weakened and much easier to manipulate and rule.

Type 5 altruism is the most disturbing case of altruism. Type 4 altruism is about achieving power in order to rule, but ruling is still a positive goal. Type 5 is about getting power as a means purely to destroy. Rand clearly sees it operative, but many readers wonder whether she exaggerates her enemies’ positions.

Rand provides many examples of Type 5 altruism in Atlas, especially in the characters Lillian Rearden and James Taggart. But it was first made explicit by Toohey when he explained to Keating the real purpose behind his communal organizing, his writings critical of individuality, and his promotion of mediocrities. When Keating whinily asks him what he really wants, Toohey snaps: “Howard Roark’s neck” — and then elaborates: “I don’t want to kill him. I want him in jail. You understand? In jail. In a cell. Behind bars. Locked, stopped, strapped — and alive” (4:13). Toohey has no positive goal: he only wants to destroy an outstanding man.

Toohey is a fictional character, so his words alone don’t have much evidentiary status. But plenty of real-life individuals give us the evidence we need to see Rand’s point:

St. Augustine included the spectacle of Hell as one of the viewing pleasures for those in Heaven: “the good go out to see the punishment of the wicked . . . so as to witness the torments of the wicked in their bodily presence” (“The Saints’ Knowledge of the Punishment of the Wicked,” 426 CE).

Church father Tertullian exulted over his imagined destruction of the world and the torments of kings, philosophers, poets, and athletes in Hell:

“that last day of judgment, with its everlasting issues; that day unlooked for by the nations, the theme of their derision, when the world hoary with age, and all its many products, shall be consumed in one great flame! How vast a spectacle then bursts upon the eye! What there excites my admiration? What my derision? Which sight gives me joy? Which rouses me to exultation?—as I see so many illustrious monarchs, whose reception into the heavens was publicly announced, groaning now in the lowest darkness with great Jove himself, and those, too, who bore witness of their exultation; governors of provinces, too, who persecuted the Christian name, in fires more fierce than those with which in the days of their pride they raged against the followers of Christ. What world’s wise men besides, the very philosophers, in fact, who taught their followers that God had no concern in aught that is sublunary, and were wont to assure them that either they had no souls, or that they would never return to the bodies which at death they had left, now covered with shame before the poor deluded ones, as one fire consumes them! Poets also, trembling not before the judgment-seat of Rhadamanthus or Minos, but of the unexpected Christ! I shall have a better opportunity then of hearing the tragedians, louder voiced in their own calamity; of viewing the play-actors, much more ‘dissolute’ in the dissolving flame; of looking upon the charioteer, all glowing in his chariot of fire; of beholding the wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but tossing in the fiery billows …” (De Spectaculis, written 197–200 CE).

St. Thomas Aquinas echoed Augustine: “In order that the bliss of the saints may be more delightful for them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, it is given to them to see perfectly the punishment of the damned” (Summa Theologica, Supplement, Q. 94, Articles 1 and 3; written 1265–1274 CE).

And American “Great Awakening” leader, Jonathan Edwards gave a 1739 sermon entitled “The Eternity of Hell Torments” with the following disturbing affirmation:

“The sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever.” And: “Can the believing husband in Heaven be happy with his unbelieving wife in Hell? Can the believing father in Heaven be happy with his unbelieving children in Hell? Can the loving wife be happy in Heaven with her unbelieving husband in Hell? I tell you, yea! Such will be their sense of justice that it will increase rather than decrease their bliss.”

So Toohey is in “good” company, so to speak.

In a forthcoming journal article, “Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand,” I discuss these five strategies from The Fountainhead in fuller detail, Rand’s use of them in Atlas Shrugged, and I make connections and contrasts to Friedrich Nietzsche’s earlier harsh critique of altruism. The article is to be published in the next issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (Volume 10, Number 2).

In class: “Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable.”

Dominique has gone to Clayton, a faded town in Ohio, where Roark is working on a department store (Part 3, Chapter 5).

She can’t get over the fact that Roark has to work “in some nameless hole of a place” after having built skyscrapers in New York.

“Roark, it’s the quarry again.”

He smiled. “If you wish. Only it isn’t.”

“After the Enright House? After the Cord Building?”

“I don’t think of it that way.”

“How do you think of it?”

“I love doing it. Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable.”

The benevolence of that last line is wonderful. All human beings who haven’t betrayed it have a unique, irreplaceable specialness. And some go on to develop it awesomely.

The Fountainhead’s Gordon Prescott—Heidegger’s disciple?

Re-reading The Fountainhead makes me wonder: Is the character Gordon Prescott based on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy?

In Part II, Chapter 8, architect Prescott is giving a lecture to the nascent Council of American Builders, founded by Ellsworth Toohey. Reading it this time evoked in me a strong feeling of Heidegger’s “What Is Metaphysics?”, first delivered as a lecture at the University of Freiburg.

First, for your reading pleasure, here is Prescott’s speech:

“And thus the intrinsic significance of our craft lies in the philosophical fact that we deal in nothing. We create emptiness through which certain physical bodies are to move—we shall designate them for convenience as human. By emptiness I mean that which is commonly known as rooms. Thus it is only the crass layman who thinks that we put up some walls. We do nothing of the kind. We put up emptiness, as I have proved. This leads to a corollary of astronomical importance: to the unconditional acceptance of the premise the ‘absence’ is superior to ‘presence.’ That is, to the acceptance of non-acceptance. I shall state this in simpler terms—for the sake of clarity: ‘nothing’ is superior to ‘something.’ Thus it is clear that the architect is more than a bricklayer—since the fact of bricks is a secondary illusion anyway. The architect is a metaphysical priest dealing in basic essentials, who has the courage to face the primal conception of reality as nonreality—since there is nothing and he creates nothingness. If this sounds like a contradiction, it is not a proof of bad logic, but of a higher logic, the dialectics of all life and art. Should you wish to make the inevitable deductions from this basic conception, you may come to conclusions of vast sociological importance. You may see that a beautiful woman is inferior to a non-beautiful one, that the literate is inferior to the illiterate, that the rich is inferior to the poor, and the able to the incompetent. The architect is the concrete illustration of a cosmic paradox. Let us be modest in the vast pride of this realization. Everything else is twaddle.” (311)

Now let’s make some comparisons to Heidegger’s 1929 essay.

Heidegger’s prose is challenging and is often used as a clear example of obscurity. But there is a coherence there once you’re inside, so to speak. Page numbers refer to Heidegger’s essay in Walter Kaufmann’s anthology.

On the metaphysics:

* Prescott is “The architect is a metaphysical priest dealing in basic essentials, who has the courage to face the primal conception of reality as nonreality.”

* Heidegger too identifies Being and Nothing: “Nothing is that which makes the revelation of what-is as such possible for our human existence. Nothing not merely provides the conceptual opposite of what-is but is also an original part of essence. It is in the Being of what-is that the nihilation of Nothing occurs.” (251)

On the epistemology:

* Prescott is all about embracing the paradox: “If this sounds like a contradiction, it is not a proof of bad logic, but of a higher logic, the dialectics of all life and art.”

* Heidegger claims that “Because the truth of metaphysics is so unfathomable” (256) we have to set aside reason and logic: “If this breaks the sovereignty of reason in the field of enquiry into Nothing and Being, then the fate of the rule of ‘logic’ is also decided. The very idea of ‘logic’ disintegrates in the vortex of a more original questioning.” (253)

On our human relation to reality:

* Prescott: “certain physical bodies” (i.e., humans) move into “emptiness” (i.e., rooms).

* Heidegger’s term for humans is “da-sein,” which he chose as an abstract indicator with less baggage and which he defines as follows: “Da-sein means being projected into Nothing.” (251)

On the ethical implications:

* Prescott tells us that “‘nothing’ is superior to ‘something’” and so tells us to subordinate the beautiful, the literate, the rich, and the able to the non-beautiful, the illiterate, the poor, the incompetent. Which is to say, we subordinate the more to the less or the non-existent.

* Heidegger vigorously calls for us humans to sacrifice to Being: “Sacrifice is rooted in the nature of the event through which Being claims man for the truth of Being.” And: “sacrifice is the expense of our human being for the preservation of the truth of Being” (263). Of course, if the truth of Being is that it is Nothing, then Heidegger is calling for us to sacrifice ourselves for Nothing. Our actual human being is less significant than the non-being of Nothing.

Thus an intellectual history question: Did Rand base Prescott on a reading of Heidegger? Or did she absorb the themes from the zeitgeist and apply the logic of the illogic herself?

Or we might make a connection to Hegel. Rand was exposed to Hegel, of course, so she could have taken these themes from him. In “What Is Metaphysics?”, Heidegger too acknowledges Hegel as a source: “‘Pure Being and pure Nothing are thus one and the same.’ This proposition of Hegel’s … is correct” (255). But Heidegger’s 1929 essay was current in the decade that Rand was doing the research for her 1943 The Fountainhead.

So: Is there a Heidegger connection for one of Rand’s lesser-icky characters?