Suspend your disbelief for a moment, and imagine the 6-year-old daughter of a major world leader travels with her father to a major nuclear launch site. She is left unsupervised, and happens to wander into the launch room. There, out of curiosity, she presses the big red button.
This launches a nuclear weapon that immediately kills millions of people. Before the weapon has even detonated, other nations have launched missiles of their own. A single launch rapidly escalates to nuclear war. Billions of humans and nonhumans are killed, and the planet is left barely habitable.
This scenario is clearly implausible to the point of impossibility – the big red button, after all, doesn’t even exist. However, it is a useful archetype that raises serious questions for consequentialism. Consequentialism inadequacy in certain moral issues is clear when the accidental action of a small child leads to immense suffering. I’ll add another example that deals with similar issues, but that is far more likely.
A young boy happens to find a few matches on the floor of his family’s garage. While playing with them and scraping them across the rough floor, one of them ignites. In panic, the child rushes to the garbage and throws the match in. Then, losing interest, he walks inside and finds something else to do. The match lights a fire into the garbage which spreads into the house. The house burns to the ground, killing everyone inside. The fire spreads to nearby houses and kills or injures several more people.
This type of counterexample to consequentialism is demonstrably plausible, as there is empirical documentation of similar cases. According to the Washington Post, at least 265 Americans were accidently shot by children in 2015. Many of these shootings resulted in tragic deaths. Meanwhile, the number of American fatalities due to terrorism in 2015 was about 20, depending on certain counting methods.
In a truly consequentialist atmosphere, accidental shootings by children would be discussed far more than terror attacks – precisely 13.25 times as much. Moral deliberation on an action would be indexed to the amount of pain or happiness caused by the action. But in reality, the ethical issue of terrorism is discussed prolifically, while accidental shootings by children are virtually ignored. Why is this the case? I argue that while the amount of discussion on terrorism doesn’t reflect consequentialism, it does reflect our moral intuitions. We assign greater condemnation to actions not based on the numerical impact of these actions, but based on the intention of the actor, the nature of the action, and the emotional impact of the action.
The probability of child accidents will only increase in our modern world, as dangerous technologies proliferate and become more available, the population expands, and systems become more interconnected. A single accidental action by a child can result in unfathomable pain. However, our moral intuitions indicate that accidental actions by children are not blameworthy. Can consequentialism reconcile this problem?
“The belief that consequences are the only normative property that affects the rightness of an action.”
Or, in simpler terms, an action is made right or wrong only by its consequences. Consequences are the only morally relevant consideration.
Thus, if this essay shows that there are non-consequential normative properties that affect the rightness of an action, then consequentialism is false. I will use primarily an intuitionist approach to prove this claim – that is, showing that consequentialism is incompatible with clear moral intuitions. I will not touch on whether intuitionism is true; I will just discuss the consequences of its assumed truth.
Normative properties are defined as any ethical aspects of an action. This is a simple and non-rigorous definition that would be considered inadequate by many metaethicists, but it works well for the essay. For example, “rightness of intent” is a normative property, as it is an aspect that could impact the ethics of the action. Furthermore, this would be a non-consequential normative property.
What are the relevant normative properties in the examples above? I will consider the following:
Intent – the actor’s purpose or intended goal in a certain action.
Actor – the individual who commits the act.
Consequence – the morally relevant impacts of the action.
Different moral theories place different emphases on these properties; consequentialism is the theory that only the third property is relevant to the rightness of an action.
In the case of the child pressing the red button, I believe we have clear answers as to the ‘value’ of these properties. The consequences are certainly bad. The intent is morally indifferent, as the child did not intend for anyone to suffer nor for anyone to benefit from her pressing the button.
The most interesting property is the second. Our moral intuitions agree that the age of the actor is morally significant. If a child commits a crime, they are considered less morally responsible than adults. This intuition is ingrained in law – individuals are not usually morally responsible until the age of 18. Some religions have an ‘age of accountability,’ which makes people accountable to God for sins after it is reached. Since children are less capable of complex moral reasoning, they are less responsible for mistakes in this reasoning.
Furthermore, there are also arguments for the moral relevance of the age of the actor that are not based on intuitions. For example, the following deductive argument:
P1. One is not morally responsible for what one does not know.
P2. If one is not morally responsible for what one does not know, then people who know less than others are less morally responsible.
P3. Children know less than adults.
P4. Children are less morally responsible than adults.
Thus, when the child presses the red button, and she does not know that this will fire a nuclear weapon, she is not morally responsible for the nuclear war that ensues. This argument attempts to prove that children in general are less responsible, but it can also be applied in any case where lack of knowledge is involved. If someone does not know the consequences or nature of an action, they are not morally responsible for this action.
Based on clear moral intuitions and the above deductive argument, the action of pressing the button is either (1) less wrong or (2) morally indifferent when the actor is very young or when the actor does not know the consequences. Either case means that the actor – a non-consequential normative property – affects the rightness of the action, disproving consequentialism.
It seems undeniable that the specter of fake news has taken control of the media. It seems that we’ve now entered a dark age of journalism, where the fake is indistinguishable from the real. It seems that we have entered an unprecedented era of hoaxing and counterfeiting.
But journalism has never been free of fake news. The Columbia Journalism Review published a detailed history of fake news in the United States. In short: fake news isn’t new, and it has real impacts. For example, people fled the city in droves and marched into public parks with guns after the New York Herald published a fabricated report that dangerous animals had escaped the zoo.
And fake news existed even before Gutenberg invented the printing press. In 1475, an Italian preacher claimed that Jews had drunk the blood of an infant (source). This led a local Bishop to order the arrest of all local Jews, and fifteen Jews were burned alive. The fake story spawned even more hysteria about vampiric Jews, which spread across Europe despite declarations from the Pope to try and end the panic.
Fake news has unbelievable power. In Journalism: A Critical History, Martin Conboy demonstrated its dramatic role in history. In 1898, the USS Maine exploded off the coast of Havana, killing over 250 people. The cause was never explained. The Spanish government, which controlled Cuba, expressed sympathy for the disaster and denied any involvement. The captain of the Maine, one of the few survivors, urged Americans to withhold judgement to prevent conflict with the Spanish.
Regardless, Joseph Pulitzer, editor of the New York World, quickly condemned Spain, claiming that they sabotaged the Maine. The World published a cable showing that the Maine was not an accident – even though this cable was completely fake. Newspapers published imaginary drawings of the explosion – even though no one had seen it. Sales of the World skyrocketed, and the public demanded revenge. Fake news helped start the Spanish-American War. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that the namesake of the highest award in journalism, the Pulitzer prize, was a purveyor of fake news.
So is there anything new about the recent fake news? Yes – because Americans are far more dependent on news. News, both print and digital, takes far more forms than at any other point in history – videos, images, blogs, tweets, posts, articles. Almost all Americans can read basic English (source), 84% of Americans use the internet (source), and 79% of American internet users are on Facebook (source)
Never before the last decades has the vast majority of the population been simultaneously connected to a source of instant news. A meme, story, or fake event can spread across the public awareness in a few hours. The fundamental nature of fake news hasn’t changed. It has just become far more common and accessible – just as the modern transportation system allows viruses to spread far more quickly.
Furthermore, perhaps the American public has become increasingly vulnerable to fake news. While this claim is hard to demonstrate and somewhat unverifiable, it’s possible that the average reading level has declined. In 1776, the relatively complex, sophisticated pamphlet Common Sense sold 500,000 copies, roughly 20% of the colonial population (source). Now, less than 13% of Americans are proficient in “reading lengthy, complex, abstract prose texts” like Common Sense (source). It seems that the percent of Americans who can understand Common Sense is smaller than the proportion that owned Common Sense in 1776. Plus, the most recent studies show that American reading proficiency has declined over the last two decades (source). Even among college graduates, the proportion that can understand and reason about complex texts has decreased to less than 31% over the last decade (source).
It’s a viable theory that these two trends – increasing access to news and decreasing reading ability – have shaped a perfect storm for fake news. Americans aren’t as likely, or as able, to make nuanced, reasoned analyses about complex texts. They’re more likely to have access to the oversimplified and sensationalized world of internet news (and news in general). More people can be infected by the virus (fake news), and less people have the vaccine (critical thought). As a result, a single tweet can spawn a flurry of fake news that quickly becomes an accepted part of the American psyche.
However, the concept of fake news is also dangerous in other ways. It has already been used as a political weapon to shut down opposing journalism. The left has used it to deride right-wing sources, and the right has coopted it to attack left-wing news. Already, the LA Times and Washington Post haveclaimed that right-wing sites like the Ron Paul Institute and Breitbart.com are ‘fake news’ (source).
These sites could be derided as biased producers of dangerous propaganda, but this is not the type of fake news I’m interested in. Breitbart may be skewed, but it does base news loosely on actual events. Fake news is completely counterfeit – without referent in the real world. To avoid ‘fake news’ becoming a tool to eliminate enemy voices, we need to delineate the concept clearly and create solutions carefully.
Reports by @CNN that I will be working on The Apprentice during my Presidency, even part time, are ridiculous & untrue – FAKE NEWS!
This is an intro to some of my further research into fake news. This week, I’m going to write another article about the philosophy of fake news, and then one about the solutions to the problem. I’ll try to relate the issue to Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality, examine the differences between Kantian and utilitarian journalistic ethics, and look back to Plato’s critique of postmodernism. Maybe I’ll even make up some ideas of my own.
Why am I so interested? I think that fake news is a microcosm into the larger issue of the ‘postmodern condition,’ which is what I’m focusing on for my three-week independent study. It relates to the need for classical education, which is what I’m studying in a directed readings class. And it’s a good area for philosophical research that hasn’t been fully delved into.
I love The Office because it juxtaposes absurd, delusional people against unabashed authenticity. This comparison isn’t exactly subtle, but it is never explicitly said. Jim and Pam become protagonists not because they receive the most screen time, or the story is told from their perspective, or they overcome all their challenges and become exceptional – rather, it’s precisely the opposite. They aren’t heroes. They are merely authentic, and we can only relate to them because they are the only real people within this office landscape of hollow appearances.
What I find fascinating is the distinction between Michael’s inauthenticity and Dwight’s – are they truly different? Or just two renditions of the same kind of inauthenticity?
Michael’s relentless scrambling to avoid blame, display virtue, and underscore his own importance always fall flat. Usually, episodes end with a convoluted explanation from Michael about how he didn’t really fail, how he wasn’t really a bad person, or how he was the center of it all. The actual events of the episode, though, create a cringeworthy irony. Michael is never outright condemned as a hypocrite, but he is painted as one by the contrast between his own words and reality.
Dwight indefatigably grapples with the pain of an uncertain existence, where unfortunate realities can’t simply be labeled ‘false.’ He struggles to reconcile lived experience and his emotions with the theoretical constructs he has used to rigorously define the world. For example, he completely misses out on the party while examining the construction of the house. He ignores lived experience if it does not fit his hypothetical framework.
Kierkegaard argued that we should strike a balance between the finite and the infinite (similar to what other existentialists refer to as facticity vs transcendance, but not exactly the same). These two qualities exist in a dielectric relation: they are opposed to each other, but cannot exist without the other. For instance, the two sides of a scale are opposed to each other, but the scale cannot exist without both sides.
“A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two. Considered in this way a human being is still not a self…. In the relation between two, the relation is the third as a negative unity, and the two relate to the relation and in the relation to the relation; thus under the qualification of the psychical the relation between the psychical and the physical is a relation. If, however, the relation relates itself to itself, this relation is the positive third, and this is the self.”
The Finite – The finite represents our actuality or necessity, the concrete here and now. It is my reality as a definite thing in the world: the room I live in, the hands I hold with, the face I must present to the world, the physical structures I am embodied within.
Sartre and De Beauvoir referred to a similar idea as facticity. This word has many meanings for different thinkers, but these two thought of facticity as all the concrete details that frame our lives, by which human freedom is limited; the cement of our existence. Some examples of my facticity includes the fact that I was born, the time of my birth, the language I was taught, my race and the genetic composition of my DNA, the environment and year I was born into, and the inevitable prospect of my death. Even my own previous choices are factical. These past choices which I cannot change are the background against which I exist in the present moment, and they limit my freedom.
Facticity can also change. I might have a factical situation where I am unable to read. However, if I am given the resources and I make the choices necessary to become literate, this facticity could be transformed.
The Infinite – The infinite represents possibility, the capacity to envisage new thoughts and ideas, bring into existence new creations, change oneself and choose from innumerable potentialities.
Michael is too immersed in his own experience, Dwight is not immersed enough; Michael is too immanent and Dwight too transcendent. Dwight seems to have a kind of dissociated distance from others, from his world, and from the people around him. Michael is the opposite in many ways, as he is wholly immersed in a solipsistic fictional world he has constructed in which he is the primary character. Dwight is too finite, Michael too finite? I don’t know if that’s true, actually. Maybe both of them are in the same situation of being too finite. I’ll have to think more about that. Either way, both are inauthentic, in a mode of bad faith: they embracing one side of existence while rejecting another.
Inauthentic people – and by that, I mean people in general, because none of us are wholly authentic – use elaborate schemes to portray themselves in certain ways and ignore others. In The Office, these schemes are almost as obvious, hilarious, and pathetic as they are in the real world — the writers just point out how funny and cringey they are, usually through the lens of Jim or Pam. The writers of The Office express a perhaps unconscious understanding of the imperative for authenticity — just as Sartre urges us to reject our bad faith and recognize our freedom to escape any factical situation (which Dwight has difficulty understanding), and as Kierkegaard exhorts us to strike a balance between infinity and finitude (which Michael has difficult understanding). This is the existential wisdom of the show.
“The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. is bound to be noticed.”
I’m not going to argue for any of the candidates in this post. That’ll come later. For now, I think there are three main factors that should be considered in a president. They are all interrelated, and in order of importance. However, if a candidate doesn’t meet any one of these criteria, it is practically impossible to meet any of the other criteria.
Character – This consists mostly of the the moral standards and honesty of the candidate. If I do not trust a candidate, their competence becomes irrelevant, as it will not be used ethically. Their positions become meaningless because they will abandon policy and ethical standards at will. Character also includes temperament and personality, as an angry, irrational, and unstable candidate is a danger to the world and ineffective in diplomacy.
Competence – The proven experience of the candidate, their intelligence, and their ability to implement policies effectively. If a candidate isn’t politically competent, their policies won’t matter because they will never be implemented. Intelligence is not measured by IQ, but by the candidate’s understanding of the world, their rationality, their education, and their working ability.
Policy – The stated positions of the candidate. If every candidate could be trusted to follow their policy statements exactly and implement them effectively, this would be the only issue. Despite its importance, policy is by far the least-discussed issue in this election.
On Electability
Electability, for me, is mostly a non-issue. Of course, a candidate must have some chance of becoming president, or we will be divided into minuscule factions and candidates will only have to win a small portion of the vote to take the election. However, “some chance” is a low margin. For example, Zoltan Istvan, the transhumanist candidate, is not on the ballot in any state and is not polling at more than 5% in any state (source). This is below the “some chance” margin, as 25 days from the election, he has no path to the presidency. However, Evan McMullin, an independent candidate, is on the ballot in 11 states (source), has a significant chance of winning Utah (source), and has a growing campaign nationally. If a candidate passes this minimum threshold of electability, we should move on and consider the three most important factors.
Our democratic obligation is to vote for the candidate we support. Otherwise, our system degrades and no longer represents the population, as the contemporary philosopher Slavoj Zizek described:
We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligence to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be.
If we do not vote our conscience, we as a population fail to represent ourselves. We do not ‘throw our vote away’ when we vote for an unlikely candidate we genuinely support, rather, we throw our vote away when we do not vote what we believe. We are not voting for ourselves, but for someone else, for the polls, for the average. Popular opinion becomes the popular opinion of what the popular opinion is; democracy devolves into regressive guessing at the average. Furthermore, government is only legitimate when it represents the governed. When we do not represent ourselves, our government becomes illegitimate.
Finally, there are a ton of misconceptions about voting power in our democracy.
First, statistical analysis shows that, in general, your vote has the most power if you vote for a third-party candidate, not for a major party. I don’t really see the point of explaining this, as the linked post explains it very well. I’d definitely recommend reading it.
Second, the power of a single vote is extremely close to zero. This election, your vote will probably be around 1 in 125 million. Therefore, the best reason to vote is not really to control the election, but to represent ourselves. Don’t do it merely for the results; do it because you believe in your candidate.
Third, a lot of the time, your publicly expressed opinions matter more than your vote, because these opinions influence a significant amount of votes. Who you support actively matters more than who you vote for quietly.
Fourth, whether or not your candidate is elected is not the only measure of voting power. You could say all the Bernie Sanders votes this year were wasted because he didn’t win, but he still radically influenced the election and changed American politics permanently. Winning ≠ success.
Fifth, when you vote for a third party candidate, you break out of the mold. This draws attention far more than obediently voting for established candidates that adhere to the two-party system. Therefore, votes for a third party candidate are more influential than other votes.
That’s why I don’t think electability matters, and why don’t think it should matter. Vote your conscience this election.
Ayn Rand is generally hated by those who consider themselves altruists. This is because the general interpretation is that Rand is a lone mouthpiece for the doctrines of egotism and greed. While some of her arguments are clearly, irredeemably repulsive, such as her romanticization of rape, some areas are more ambiguous, and some segments of Rand’s writing are genuinely inspiring and valuable. Despite her flaws, I think Rand should be read and understood, and perhaps even quoted – but never accepted as a whole.
As a caveat, I have only read Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, a few of her essays, and skimmed over the critical response. I’m not a Rand scholar at all, and I’m not sure I want to be. I’ve heard that the Fountainhead is one of Rand’s more mild books, so it may be that my interpretation will change radically when I read Atlas Shrugged later this year.
Two Types of Selfishness
There are two archetypes, idealized characters that serve as pinnacles of two opposing moralities, in The Fountainhead. The first is Peter Keating, an extremely ‘successful’ architect in the sense that he is rich, who graduated at the top of his class from a renowned college and is famous as an architect and celebrity. His life is summarized in this passage:
In what act or thought of [Peter Keating] has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness—in other people’s eyes…Others dictated his convictions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that others believed he held them. Others were his motive power and his prime concern. He didn’t want to be great, but to be thought great. He didn’t want to build, but to be admired as a builder. He borrowed from others in order to make an impression on others. There’s your actual selflessness. It’s his ego that he’s betrayed and given up. But everybody calls him selfish. (Rand 65)
In contrast, Roark is an independent architect who was expelled from a major university for not following the widely accepted standards of architecture, and lived a life of poverty because he would only accept work that didn’t compromise his standards. He has intractable standards for his work, and is perfectly consistent with these standards:
The creation, not its users. The creation, not the benefits others derived from it. The creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things and against all men. (Rand 678)
These are the two types of ‘selfishness’ in Rand’s work: selfishness in the form of Keating, and self-reliance in the form of Roark. Rand is an impassioned advocate of the principles expressed by Thoreau in Self-Reliance: “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind,” and “Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide.”
The widespread misinterpretation of Ayn Rand stems from a conflation of the first type of selfishness with the second. In no sense does Rand advocate for selfishness in the form of greed for power, fame, or money. In fact, much of the book is focused on criticizing Keating’s mindless, ‘selfless’ greed. Rand analyzes the psychology of avarice, and the perverse pleasure Keating feels when he exercises power over others – “he had influenced the course of a human being, had thrown him off one path and pushed him into another” (67). This type of selfishness is contradictory in the sense that it cannot exist without others. It is entirely dependent.
When Keating didn’t have people to approve of his work, he didn’t have a way to value his work: “…it might be good. He was not sure. He had no one to ask” (Rand 171). Keating’s eminence dissipated when his admirers disappeared. “He was a great man – by the grace of those who depended on him” (Rand 233). This passage eloquently epitomizes this fundamentally dependent form of selfishness:
“He was great; great as the number of people who told him so. He was right, right; right as the number of people who believed it. He look at the faces, at the eyes; he saw himself born in them; he saw himself being granted the gift of life. That was Peter Keating, that, the reflection in the staring pupils, and his body was only its reflection.” (Rand 188)
In contrast, Roark might be seen as ideally self-reliant. His work is his passion, and his system of valuation stems from his self – the Fountainhead. Everything else is external and unessential. Others are a means to fulfill his standards: “I don’t intend to build in order to have clients. I intend to have clients in order to build” (26). He is, in short, the polar opposite of Keating in every way.
It is valuable to distinguish self-reliance, from selfishness, and this is the most important principle of The Fountainhead: “The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence” (681). We shouldn’t need to ask another whether our work, our thoughts, our actions are valuable – ultimately, only we can evaluate ourselves. Our attempts to delegate the choice of what to value ultimately collapse. When we ask another for advice, we choose to ask them rather than others because we seek a certain answer – thus, we are still making a choice. Furthermore, our interpretation of any advice is a choice. Advice is an illusion – all valuation stems from ourselves, and we cannot give this responsibility to another.
Now that we understand this distinction, it’s time to criticize Rand. Hopefully there is something valuable left when we’re finished.
The Collapse of Rand’s Morality
On any level of analysis beyond the literary, Rand’s moral system, if it can be called that, is pathetically inadequate. Her ‘ethics’ are summed up by Howard Roark’s statement in The Fountainhead: “All that which proceeds from man’s independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man’s dependence upon men is evil” (681). Like most generalizations in ethics, this claim collapses upon inspection. It requires an idealism divorced from reality, is riddled with paradox, and leads to appalling conclusions.
First, to Rand, any relationship with others is merely a means to an end – “To a creator, all relations with men are secondary” (680). This is fundamentally counter-ethical, as it treats the only relevant moral object as the self and the fulfillment of the self’s standards. Morality must deal with the conflicts of obligations between multiple selves, not just the interests of a single self. Rand entirely ignores the Other, and thus she does not really have an ethics.
Rand fails to have an ethics in a second way. She describes the need to have consistent standards, but does not discuss what these standards should be. Keeping one’s standards is necessary, but not sufficient, to be moral. For this principle fails the standard litmus test of morality: Hitler and the Holocaust. If standing by your standards is all is required to be moral, then it seems that Hitler is a paragon of morality. After all, Hitler staunchly upheld his monstrous standards. As a Jewish character in Elie Wiesel’s novel Night said,
I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people. (67)
He did whatever he thought was necessary to keep these promises, and he killed himself before he would forsake the struggle.
Clearly, there is more to ethics than just consistency. The other fundamental aspect of being moral, and the more difficult one, is to develop good standards.
Third, ethical solipsism is contradictory. If I believe that my own interests have value, and I believe others have the same fundamental, human characteristics as myself, then it follows that the interests of others must have value as well. If I accept this syllogism (I do), it becomes impossible to logically maintain the belief that only my own interests have value. Rand provides some insight onto how one should live one’s own life as an independent will, but she is almost completely absent when we inevitably encounter others.
Fourth, lived experience obstructs any effort towards egoism. To paraphrase Levinas, we do not encounter others as objects, but as infinite subjects that we cannot understand, who call out to us and require us to respond. We cannot maintain egoism when we encounter the other. For me, this encounter happened in India:
As we drive, I see a body without limbs, lying in an alley ahead. The rickshaw rattles forward, and the engine pulsates like the heart of a dying man. As we pass the corpse, it moves. It contorts its neck to look up. For a second I see his scarred, filthy face and he sees my washed one. In that instant of connection, my lifetime became worthless. My childhood had been a solipsistic simulation, a life without impact or any real need.
It is impossible, and fundamentally unethical, to live as if others do not exist or do not have morally relevant interests. Life is a matter of interdependency: we are raised by parents, mentored by teachers, taught by the minds that came before us, and forgiven by those who love us. If we believe that these experiences are valuable for ourselves, it must follow that they are valuable for others. Thus, we have an obligation to do the same for others.
Rand on Romance: Love as Domination
The relationship between Howard Roark and his lover, Dominique, is abhorrent. Dominique falls in love with Roark primarily because, as she says, he was the “abstraction of strength made visible” (Rand 205). She seeks to be dominated by him, but she also seeks to find some way in which she can own him – “She thought suddenly that the man below was only a common worker, owned by the owner of this place, and she was almost the owner of this place” (205). Roark rapes Dominique*, and there is a horrendous, Fifty Shades of Grey-esque response: “She found a dark satisfaction in pain – because that pain came from him” (209). Dominique’s only compensation is that she is also in a position of power: “she knew the kind of suffering she could impose on him” (210). Love in The Fountainhead is reduced to essentially a power relation, and almost all affection between Roark and Dominique consists in a struggle for power.
I almost stopped reading the book after these chapters. It would be too far to say that Rand redeems herself later. I would only say that she manages to contradict herself. As the relationship between Roark and Dominique matures, they begin to recognize their dependence on one another:
It was strange to be conscious of another person’s existence, to feel it as a close, urgent necessity; a necessity without qualifications. (Rand 218)
This is love as, well, love – interdependence, relying intimately on someone else without being controlled by them. It is needing another “in the total, undivided way…the kind of desire that becomes an ultimatum, ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and one can’t accept the no without ceasing to exist” (Rand 502). Surprisingly, Rand has common ground here with Levinas, the radically altruist philosopher:
Love remains a relation with the Other that turns into need, transcendent exteriority of the other, of the beloved. (Levinas)
This is love not just as a choice or a desire, but as a need. However, I am cherry-picking Rand. In context, her quotes are much less redeeming. In the same conversation that Roark describes love as an ‘ultimatum,’ he says:
I love you so much that nothing else can matter to me, not even you. Can you understand that? Only my love — not your answer. (Rand 502)
Roark argues that love itself is valuable, regardless of whether the love is reciprocated. This, of course, justifies rape. Without the other, what is love? It is merely possession of an object. After all, “If one could possess, grasp, and know the other, it would not be other” (Levinas). If we accept Rand’s perspective, the people we love are only alter-egos or figments of our own ego; they have no consciousness of their own, and can only be defined in the context of our self.
However, love can only be understood as a relationship between two subjects, and when either is treated as a means or as an object, the bond dissipates. What constitutes love is reciprocation – without this, it is only domination.
Aesthetics of the City
As The Fountainhead is a book about architects as well as a book about philosophy, it asks and answers several aesthetic questions, especially the foremost one: “What is beautiful, and why?”
I have always thought that nature is beautiful. I spend a lot of my free time exploring the mountains, usually on a bike. To some extent, I do this as an escape from the city. Most people would agree that the city is ugly, a scar on the land, a destruction of beauty. However, when describing the experience of looking up at a skyscraper, Rand argues that the city, the product of human creativity, is aesthetic:
It makes him no bigger than an ant–isn’t that the correct bromide for the occasion? The God-damn fools! It’s man who made it–the whole incredible mass of stone and steel. It doesn’t dwarf him, it makes him greater than the structure. It reveals his true dimensions to the world. What we love about these buildings, Dominique, is the creative faculty, the heroic in man. (553)
The fact that humanity created these magnificent buildings is itself beautiful, and these buildings represent this fact. They stand as a testament to our potential. If this is the case that the city can be beautiful, and beauty is worth protecting, then we have an obligation to protect the city through urban development, restoration, and preservation, just as we have a more widely-accepted obligation to protect nature. Now, I do not go into the mountains just to escape the city, but to discover and re-experience a different dimension of beauty.
One of the qualities of the beautiful is that it inspires us to look upward, towards a higher potential. We often think that what makes something beautiful is that it draws our gaze upward, but perhaps this is not the case: “He wondered whether the particular solemnity of looking at the sky comes, not from what one contemplates, but from the uplift of one’s head” (Rand 553). The sky itself is not what is beautiful, but our desire to understand the sky, to reach towards and above it. What creates beauty is not the object’s attraction, but the way we are inspired by the object to achieve our potential.
Should we read or reject The Fountainhead?
Daniel Taylor, author of The Healing Power of Stories, defines a ‘bent book’ as a story that portrays evil as good and good as evil (Taylor). He ultimately concludes that we should never read bent books. There are several problems with this binary.
First, of course, it presumes that we already know what is good and what is evil, an assumption that skips over all the dilemmas of ethics. Often, we read to seek after good and reveal evil in their hiding places – but we do not already know where they are hiding when we start. Reading is not just a process of reinforcing our standards, but of developing our standards. It would be dogmatic and arbitrary to automatically reject all books that seem bent, and it would presume that we are an absolute moral authority that has the ability to judge objectively whether a book is good or evil.
Second, it is not necessarily true that bent books will result in greater evil. Before I read The Fountainhead, I assumed that morality consisted of interdependence and altruism, merely because this is the most common conception of morality. Ayn Rand forced me to analyze and justify this belief. This is essential, for any belief we have justification for has more binding force than a belief we merely accept. Furthermore, through bent books like The Fountainhead, we are able to recognize the reverse of our values. If we begin to see this perversion arise in ourselves, we are able to root it out immediately. Thus, bent books encourage us to define ourselves in contrast to evil, thus promoting ethics.
Finally, the book has certain areas that vindicate its failures. It has an excellent and unique style of writing and storytelling, and this itself is valuable, for our method of expression can be almost as important as our content, and reading good writing allows us to write well. Even much of the content of The Fountainhead is worthy – this, I guess, can only be verified by reading the work yourself. In the end, scenes of wickedness are not enough to invalidate a book. As Leonardi Bruni argued, the Bible contains scenes that are “wicked, obscene, and disgusting, yet do we say that the Bible is not therefore to be read?” (Gamble 341).
I don’t contest that The Fountainhead is bent, rather, I think that bent books should still be read, as long as they have redeemable qualities. However, if you want to read more from The Fountainhead without reading the ‘bent’ parts, check out my notes on Google Drive.
Works Cited
Rand, Ayn. The Fountainhead. Centennial Edition. New York, NY: Signet, 1993. Print.
Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969. Print.
Taylor, Daniel. The Healing Power of Stories. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1996. Print.
Gamble, Richard. The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human Being. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007. Print.
Wiesel, Ellie. Night. New York, NY: Hill & Wang, 1960. Print.
* The book is not explicit in this scene. It only implies that the rape occurs, and does not describe it.
Today, Colin Kaepernick’s jersey is the fifth-most bought jersey in NFL history. Until the events of the last few weeks, the phrase “I bought a Kaepernick jersey” would be meaningless except to a select group of football fans. Now, to wear a Kaepernick jersey is to carry an immense weight, one almost as heavy as a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. Our commodities say as much or more than our speech.
Ethical commodities and opportunity costs
I’ve thought about buying a Black Lives Matter shirt, but realized that in Orem, Utah, I would be labeled, questioned, and possibly even despised for it. I had an intense personal dialogue about this. How can I start a conversation about racism if I don’t display my activism? Wait, but don’t I support a corrupt capitalist system by buying a shirt through the same companies that run sweatshops and manipulate democracy?
Many of the people I go to school with, and the authority figures in my life, consider Black Lives Matter an anti-white anti-police hate group. When we discussed meaningless activism in one of my classes, someone gave Black Lives Matter as an example in the first sentence – “they’re yelling at nothing, like Black Lives Matter.” As a self-considered member of the Black Lives Matter movement, for reasons I won’t describe now, this is painful to hear. A few words on a ~$10 shirt would affect how people think of me, my relationships with friends and family, and even my self-perception.
I didn’t order the shirt – and the reason was economic. It was based on the first bare fact of economics: scarcity, which leads to tradeoffs. As a very poor high school student, I could either buy the shirt, or I could buy a book: Just the Arguments, a book on philosophy. There are countless other ethical opportunity costs in this decision: how can I justify not buying a refugee activism shirt, or giving a donation to the LDS Church, or saving up for a humanitarian trip? Doesn’t my decision mean that I value learning about philosophy more than I value black lives?
I’m sure some would incriminate me for being an academic rather than an activist. I love philosophy and want to understand it, but I feel obligated to support resistance against oppression. This is agonizing. How can I choose between movements I’m passionate about? Even worse, how can I choose between them based on money?
Theoretically, people buy a Kaepernick jersey to send a message. It’s not just capitalism. Some may say it’s a donation, a way to directly support Kaepernick’s movement with money. Other justify it as a sign of protest, wearing the jersey to challenge the ‘whiteness ethic’ that devalues the lives of blacks. In this way, these products can be called ‘ethical commodities’ – they are products that have intense moral meanings.
There have always been ethical opportunity costs, but the deadly combination of capitalism and the Internet has dramatically expanded the awareness and amount of these opportunity costs. This has transformed nearly all commodities into ethical commodities.
A global economy has connected us, through the allocation of our incomes, to countless ethical implications. The Internet has made us intimately aware of these implications. We can watch Youtube videos of pigs squealing in agony as they are massacred in slaughterhouses, and we cannot help but connect this to our purchase of pork. Nike’s swoosh becomes much more symbolic when we see the horrifying conditions of the people who produce it. I could continue listing these implications endlessly. The only escape from the emotional pain of buying products is ignorance.
How companies and people promote ethical brands
There are countless ways to rationalize the decision to buy ethical commodities. But from a cynical capitalistic perspective, all of these rationalizations are merely forms of the same aspect of the human psyche: the drive to promote one’s personal brand. Our purchases of ethical commodities are similar to marketing decisions: they are meant to convey a message about our brand to a specific group of potential customers.
When we buy a Kaepernick jersey, we want to display our sensitivity to the suffering of blacks in an oppressive system, and we want to display this to a select group of activists. Maybe, on a subconscious level, we promote this ethical brand for profit, so people and potential employers will respond positively. Companies look to hire ethical employees so they can be seen as an ethical corporation. We take advantage of this, for example, by adding our volunteer hours to our LinkedIn profile. According to LinkedIn itself, “1 in 5 managers hired someone because of their volunteer experiences.”
When companies hire people, they hire the full person, not just their competencies. For example, my school, Maeser Prep, looks for a specific kind of teacher with a specific ethical background: deep-thinking, passionate about classical education, usually conservative and religious people.
If we take this perspective to its conclusion, I’m probably writing this essay so people will see me as a better, more enlightened person.
Increasingly, companies use ‘ethical marketing’ to sell their products. In this way, charities have become tools of for-profit institutions. They are made to fulfill an economic requirement: companies must be perceived as moral institutions. If enough people thought Nike was immoral for its abuses of Indian workers, the company could no longer stay in business. By donating to charity, they expand their moral brand, just as individuals build their moral brand by buying ethical commodities. Malawi’s Pizza promotes their product with the claim that some of your purchase will be donated to Africa. In this sense, donations are investments.
To give a current example, Wells Fargo has lost revenue for devaluing the humanities in its advertising campaign. The company’s response was revealing:
Wells Fargo counters the ethical challenges to its brand with a powerful marketing claim: it has donated $93 million to humanities. (Although that figure is very vague, and includes donation to ‘education’ in general). With donations, Wells Fargo justifies its moral failing. It seeks to prove that the ‘whole brand’ is ethical, and its mistakes are just mistakes in the context of an overall good person. Nike invests 1.5% of its pre-tax revenue (over $217 million) into charity, and has publicized its efforts to protect worker’s rights. Why not just stop producing at sweatshop factories? Because it costs less to promote an ethical brand than it does to be an ethical company.
All of this demonstrates that in a society pervaded by capitalism, all activism becomes suspect. Do you really care, or are you just promoting your brand? This isn’t just a question other people ask us. It’s a question we ask ourselves. Am I a good person, or am I just a brand? How can I know, in a world where everything and everyone seems self-interested? Capitalism calls our moral identity into question and turns the imposter syndrome into a universal affliction.
The answer?
I don’t know the answer. Of course, there are some easy escape routes, as there always are. However, as usual, these escapes aren’t complete, and will never be satisfying.
Consequentialism solves the moral issue of ethical commodities by making intention irrelevant. If self-interest in a certain situation leads to greater happiness, it’s moral by definition. I don’t have to worry about the imposter syndrome – if I’m doing good things, I’m a good person. It doesn’t matter that Nike is reducing its dependence on sweatshops to promote a brand, because it actually has increased workers rights by some degree.
There are some nuances to a consequentialist approach, for example, that consequentialism obligates us to seek for the most ethical system, not just a ethical system. In this sense, the only moral world is the best possible world. Thus, Nike is still immoral because it could conceivably be more moral than it is now. This creates a very high standard – which, I think, is necessary for ethics. Additionally, the world is very complex, and while an act might have certain good consequences, it might also have terrible unintended side-effects.
I don’t think I can give a complete refutation of this approach, because to do so would be to offer a final answer to the most debated question in ethics: are intentions or actions more important? Certainly, I think that we can endlessly banter on whether our intentions our correct, when we should focus on the tangible effects our actions have on living beings.
On the other hand, we can’t separate our intentions from our actions. Our intent affects how we act – for example, you can’t effectively help someone without having compassion for him/her. The person will know that your intentions aren’t consistent with your actions, and they’ll ignore your insincere approach to service.
Both ideas aren’t complete. Intentions are impossible to fully know, and consequences are impossible to fully evaluate. We can’t know that someone else is non-genuine, because we can’t know that person’s thoughts or intentions. I criticized Wells Fargo for its profit-based intention, but I don’t know the actual thoughts of the company’s decision-makers. We can’t say that an action is bad, because we can’t know the full consequences of the action. Nike could be immoral for its sweatshops, but maybe it’s moral for donating so much to charity. I don’t know which of these actions leads to more happiness.
What’s the answer? I won’t claim that I can construct a complete answer. It’s seen as more ethical to be absolute about your ethical system, but how can I claim that I know the right thing in the face of our fundamental uncertainties? I leave the question open, with the hope that someday I’ll be able to answer it.
In the beginning, there was Plato’s cave. There, only shadows without recognizable form existed, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. A prisoner freed himself, and escaped into the light. And he saw the light, and that it was good, and he recognized the origin of the shadows. He returned to the cave of his imprisonment, and said: “Let there be light.”
Entrenched in the core of the Western tradition is the metaphorical narrative of light from the darkness. It is central both in religion, as in Genesis 1, and philosophy, as in Plato’s allegory of the cave. I merged these two narratives together to show their fundamental similarity. They describe a myth in which everything is covered in shadow until an enlightened being – God in Genesis and the escaped prisoner in Plato – brings light to the darkness. But where did this metaphor come from? What does it really mean? Is it a valuable metaphor for society, metaphysics, and epistemology? Should we keep it, modify it, or scrap it entirely?
A History of Light
The first metaphors of light occur in religious texts. The origin myth in the Rig Veda, a founding collection of Hindu verses written around 1500 B.C., sounds almost eerily similar to Genesis:
At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness. All this was only unillumined water. That One which came to be, enclosed in nothing, arose at last, born of the power of heat.
— The Rig Veda
However, this narrative has one crucial difference from the Bible. In the Rig Veda, one of the most ancient texts ever discovered, heat is the first to come into being, not light. This reveals that until the last century, light and heat were virtually synonymous, because almost all light was generated by fire or the sun. Light and heat are the essence of basic physical — and perhaps metaphysical — comfort. The warmth of the fire provided early humans a refuge from the terrors of the cold, menacing night. Most importantly, it protected us from the fear of blindness: the lack of knowledge, the paucity of seeing.
In our ancient history, we feared the night not because of the darkness itself, but due to what darkness was associated with: savage beasts, murder, losing one’s way. Over time, this dread became so fundamental that we became afraid of the night in itself. The absence of light, became a primary cause of fear, not a secondary terror associated with more dangerous prospects. It is no surprise, then, that the metaphor of light has become ingrained in the human psyche, a permanent relic of more dangerous times.
From the golden age of the Indus valley to the founding of Rome, the world’s major religions were hard at work solidifying the metaphorical position of light as good, truth, and piety. The Quran is dotted with the phrase “He bringeth them out of darkness into light.” In the Hebrew Bible, John 8:12 directly connects light to God and righteousness:
“When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light.”
The Bible, John 8:12
In religious iconography from nearly every sect, priests, prophets, and saints are distinguished by a halo of light of some kind.
The Lighted Clearing: The Epistemology of the Enlightenment
The metaphor of light is not merely a decorative literary cliché. “Already in Plato,” writes Hans Blumenburg, “the metaphorics of light already has a metaphysics of light implicit in it.” The metaphor is at the core of the idea that the world submits itself to the light of reason. Without the language of light-dark duality, it would be challenging to formulate or understand enlightenment philosophy.
Light-dark dualism is connected with nearly every major European philosophical movement. In Greece, the birthplace of Western philosophy, the Sun was a god – Helios, “the Father of the piercing beams of light” (Pindar). Plato built upon the established iconography of light to represent his epistemology. In The Republic, light is knowledge, while darkness is ignorance. Daylight exposes the night’s filth, untruth, and vice, and therefore light is enlightenment and truth.
Centuries later, Descartes constructed the philosophical meaning of “the natural light of reason,” a phrase coined by Cicero. This light alone, said Descartes, can intuit truth beyond doubt, as it is disconnected from the senses and the corporeal world. He writes:
…for I cannot doubt that which the natural light causes me to believe to be true, as, for example, it has shown me that I am from the fact that I doubt, or other facts of the same kind. And I possess no other faculty whereby to distinguish truth. from falsehood, which can teach me that what this light shows me to be true is not really true, and no other faculty that is equally trustworthy.
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, pg. 14
This light, the lumen naturale, is the intuition of truth. Descartes recognizes that reason is not always a meticulous logical process. Often, he writes, it is simply a powerful intuition, a “spontaneous inclination.” We feel the logical coherence of certain truths, and we feel dissonance if we reject these truths. He recognizes the flaws of this intuition, but ultimately accepts it as the only method for discovering reality. In the preface to the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant writes that truth cannot escape the light of reason:
Nothing here can escape us, because what reason brings forth entirely out of itself cannot be hidden, but is brought to light by reason itself as soon as reason’s common principle has been discovered.
In short, the radiance of reason exposes all knowable things.
Later in the history of light, Heidegger uses the lichtung, or lighted clearing, as the location where being is disclosed. Lichtung, writes Heidegger, “designates a bringing to light which is also a clearing of space” (Garbutt). In the lichtung, truths are revealed. It is a site of revelation and exposure, where our inner selves can no longer be hidden.
Therefore, most philosophical figures of the Western tradition, including Kant, Plato, Heidegger and Descartes, use a conception of truth best described by the ancient Greek word for truth, alethia, which means “unconcealment.” This perspective assumes that everything can be illuminated by light or grasped by reason. This epistemology’s foundations are attacked as the postmodernist movement comes into its own.
The Collapse of the Metaphor of Light
In the 20th century, postmodern philosophers like Levinas and Derrida recognized that the world is not completely intelligible. By contesting the most fundamental imagery of the Platonic legacy, they are counter-philosophical (Sparrow). These deconstructionists are Simba in the Lion King. They are told that philosophy can understand all that the light touches, but this does not satisfy them. Exploring the borders of the epistemology they inherited, the postmodernists reach the edge of the kingdom and realize that there is existence in shadow and darkness.
The totalizing vision of the Western tradition restricts truth and reality to objects that fit the understandable mold of reason:
“what does not enter into form is banished from this world”
(Levinas 1).
This vision fails to see that the light of reason can only reveal objective knowledge. The Enlightenment framework assumes that because reason can only understand objective knowledge, objectivity is the only kind of knowledge. In this way, the Platonic legacy ignores subjectivity. Ironically, the disciples of Enlightenment epistemology are like the prisoners of Plato’s cave – they assume that what they can see is all that exists.
On the other hand, Levinas understood that the most basic fact of our relation with other people is that we cannot understand other people. This is alterity: the infinite otherness of everyone we know. To live is to come into contact with other beings that are fundamentally alien to us, to encounter another consciousness that “wells up inside of us to disrupt and menace the smooth operation of the intellect and the cultivation of a solipsistic identity” (Sparrow). Here, Pythagoras is relevant – in his writings, light represents limits, while darkness is infinity – shadow is associated “with the unexplored, indefinite interior” (Notopulos). Our world, then, is better represented by a dark forest than a lighted clearing. I am subjectivity and I live in the midst of subjectivity – all around me are unexplored selves, and I am an unexplored self.
Derrida made a more political criticism of light-dark dualism. In George Orwell’s novel 1984, the protagonist, Winston, is told he will meet his fellow resistor in “a place where there is no darkness.” He did not know what this meant, “only that in some way or another it would come true.” In the end, oppressive and all-powerful Party imprisons Winston in a cell where inescapable artificial light tortures him for all hours of the day. This demonstrates the political meaning of light as what allows beings to be revealed, manipulated, controlled, and used as tools toward an end. As Derrida wrote:
…the entire philosophical tradition, in its meaning and at bottom, would make common cause with oppression and with the totalitarianism of the same. The ancient clandestine friendship between light and power, the ancient complicity between theoretical objectivity and techno-political possession.
Violence and Metaphysics, pg 91
Derrida argues that the state cannot possess humans if they do not have the philosophy to justify their act of ownership. This justifying philosophy is the Enlightenment, which views subjectivity as penetrable to reason, and thus open to ownership. Light exposes objects so they can be used, while “A philosophy of the night recognizes that form disintegrates in the darkness, objects lose their graspability” (Sparrow).
In absolute visibility, humans become objects. As Foucalt might say, an anatomy textbook exposes the human body completely, which makes the body seem like an object that can be understood if we simply comprehend all the cells that compose it. If we view others in this way, what is the moral significance of owning a human? The state seems to say, a citizen is merely a beast of labor with a different conformation of cells. In reality, we do not encounter the Other as an object, but as an infinite force outside ourselves, with a subjectivity we cannot fully comprehend.
The traditional metaphor of light has failed philosophy. It collapses the moment we step away from our solitary philosophizing and into the world of others. The ancient need to expose, objectify, disclose, and grasp subjectivity causes us to ignore any realities which escape our attempt to understand. We should replace this all-exposing worldview with a philosophy of night that recognizes uncertainty and alterity.
Update: 4/7/20
I originally wrote this post when I was 16. Looking back on it, I’m proud of my intuitions. I still stick by them. I realize that I converged with Laurelle, the non-philosopher. They’re expressed in this (warning – spooky) video, based on Laurelle’s Of Black Universe in the Human Foundations of Color. Thank you to Trent Knebel for introducing me to this work. Laruelle has written here what might constitute a manifesto for the philosophy of night:
In the beginning there is Black–man and Universe, rather than philosopher and World…
Surrounding the philosopher everything becomes World and light. Surrounding man everything becomes Universe and opacity…
Light strikes the Earth with repeated blows, divides the World infinitely, solicits in vain the invisible Universe…
Man approaches the World only by way of transcendental darkness, into which he never entered and from which he will never leave…
Black is without opposite: even light, which tries to turn it into its opposite, fails in the face of the rigor of its secret….
Our uchromia: to learn to think from the point of view of Black as what determines color in the last instance rather than what limits it.
Philosophical technology has been withdrawn mimetically from the World, in order to reflect and reproduce it. Such technology is inadequate for thinking the Universe…
Our philosophers are children who are afraid of the Dark…
Philosophy is thinking by way of a generalized “black box”; it is the effort to fit black into light and to push it back to the rear of the caverns…
While I don’t claim to understand the full theoretical dimensions of Laruelle’s works, I agree with his intuitions. So even if he has a hard time expressing what he means in clean, terse, and logical philosophical prose (and I’m sure he’s easier to understand if you know French and can read him in his native language), I forgive him because I think he’s got the core ideas right. He’s gesturing at what Nietzsche called das ur-Eine, the primordial unity; the dark, inaccessible, opaque, contradictory nature of the Real which underlies and composes our existence.
Works Cited
Descartes, René. "Meditations on First Philosophy." Indianapolis: Hacket Press. 2000. Print.
Garbutt, Robert. "The Clearing: Heidegger's Lichtung and the Big Scrub." Southern Cross University. 2010. Print.
Levinas, Immanuel. "Phenomenon and Enigma." Collected Philosophical Papers. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987. Page 70.
Notopoulos, James. "The Symbolism of the Sun and Light in the Republic of Plato." Classical Philology, Vol. 39, No. 3. Pp. 163-172.University of Chicago Press. 1994. Print.
Pindar. "The Odes of Pindar." The University of Chicago Press. 1947. Print.
Sparrow, Tom. "Levinas Unhinged." John Hunt Publishing. 28 Jun 2013. Print.
What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards.
— Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism
The more computer science I learn, the more I find myself applying coding concepts to philosophy. I was reading Existentialism is a Humanism, and I realized that variable assignment and function definition could explain the crucial existential concept of “existence precedes essence” in a simple, exact way.
“Essence precedes existence” in code
This phrase is the antithesis of existentialism. Here it is in Javascript:
[snippet id=”12″]
To people somewhat familiar with computer science, this code can be highly meaningful. The identity is initially expressed in the form of an object. Obviously, a human identity can’t be comprehensively written in code. I arbitrarily chose an object to represent human identity. The object identity, which is outside of the function life, represents the idea that your identity is defined before your existence. Every aspect of yourself, from your name to your favorite activities to your personality, is constructed in exact detail before you are born. Then, when you begin to live, you start to discover this personality that was already laid out for you.
Most who subscribe to this idea say that God builds your identity, or your identity is defined in some kind of pre-existence. Others say that identity is pre-defined by genetics or human nature. These ideas are all fundamentally the same. Basically, they all express the oft-repeated axioms “Life is about finding yourself” and “essence precedes existence.” Someone or something defines your existence beforehand, and then it is passed to the function of life. Sartre explains this best in his Existentialism is a Humanism, so I’ll leave the in-depth explanation to him.
“Essence precedes existence” in code
[snippet id=”13″]
This is a self-executing function life in which an empty object called identity is first defined and then various attributes are appended to it later in the function. When certain experiences occur, the attributes are appended to the identity. There is a blank array called personality that has values pushed to it over time. Of course, I didn’t express the reality that in human personalities, values can also be overwritten and deleted.
It’s interesting to note that since all of these variables are defined within a function, they cannot be accessed by any other function. If someone else had another function for their life, they would be unable to take variables from this function. This code demonstrates the existentialist way of living, which is individualist, self-dependent, and self-defining. This is best expressed by the phrase “existence precedes essence.” The object identity first exists, and then it is defined as values are added to it.
This is all a gross oversimplification. I cannot fully express existentialism in a few lines of code, or express all of life as a function. In the end, this post is meant to paint a compelling picture of a more precise way of writing philosophy that can supplement our current literature.
Maeser Prep Debate / Jan-Feb 2015 / Jeremy Hadfield
Resolved: Just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage.
I agree with Martin Luther King Junior that, “an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” To restructure the system that produces poverty, and for many other reasons, I affirm the resolution: Just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage.
Pollin defines the living wage. Investopedia,. ‘Living Wage Definition | Investopedia’. N. p., 2007. Web. 7 Dec. 2014.
A theoretical wage level that allows the earner to affordadequate shelter, food and the othernecessities of life.The living wage should be substantial enough to ensure that no more than 30% of it needs to be spent on housing. The goal of the living wage is to allow employees to earn enough income for a satisfactory standard of living. It entails self-sufficiency.
I value justice, as implied by “just governments” in the resolution.
My value criterion is maximizing happiness, or utilitarianism.
Respect for human worth justifies utilitarianism.Cummiskey 90
Cummiskey, David. Associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. “Kantian Consequentiaism.” Ethics 100 (April 1990), University of Chicago. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381810
We must not obscure the issue by characterizing this type of case as the sacrifice of individuals for some abstract “social entity.” It is not a question of some persons having to bear the cost for some elusive “overall social good.” Instead, the question is whether some persons must bear the inescapable cost for the sake of other persons. Robert Nozick, for example, argues that “to use a person in this way does not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the only life he has.” But why is this not equally true of all those whom we do not save through our failure to act? By emphasizing solely the one who must bear the cost if we act, we fail to sufficiently respect and take account of the many otherseparate persons,each with only one life,who will bear the cost of our inaction. In such a situation, what would a conscientious Kantian agent, an agent motivated by the unconditional value of rational beings, choose? A morally good agent recognizes that the basis of all particular duties is the principle that “rational nature exists as an end in itself”. Rational nature as such is the supreme objective end of all conduct.If one truly believes that all rational beings have an equal value, then the rational solution to such a dilemma involves maximally promoting the lives and liberties of as many rational beings as possible. In order to avoid this conclusion, the non-consequentialist Kantian needs to justify agent-centered constraints.
Contention 1: A living wage improves the economy and reduces poverty.
Addressing the social problem of poverty is a primary responsibility the state has for its citizens.
Professors Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel writes that
Liam Murphy (Professor of Law and Philosophy at NYU) and Thomas Nagel (Professor of Law and Philosophy at NYU). “The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice.” Oxford University Press (2002)
Disagreements about the extent of public responsibility are not going to disappear; they are the essence of politics. But we would make the following point: In spite of the disagreements, there is an important area of agreement among those views that take government responsibility for the welfare of citizens seriously. Whether one is a utilitarian or a Rawlsian or a priority theorist, or a believer in a social safety net, or a defender of fair equality of opportunity, or of equal libertarianism, one will be concerned about poverty. Poverty is bad from all these points of view. The lives of the poor are hard, humiliating, and dehumanizing; poverty restricts human flourishing.However you slice it,an increase in the resources of poor people will do more good than a comparable increase in the resources of those who have more, or much more. That is the most general and straightforward basis for redistributive policies, and it holds in some degree for a wide range of views this side of libertarianism.
Thus, increases in the well-being of the least well-off outweigh increases in the well-being of the more well-off.
And a living wage reduces the problem of poverty. Seven reasons:
FIRST: States with living wages tend to have more employment
Beth Shulman 07, (Staff, Russell Sage Foundation’s Social Inequity and Future Work Project), ENDING POVERTY IN AMERICA: HOW TO RESTORE THE AMERICAN DREAM, 2007, 116.
In fact, a study by the Fiscal Policy Institute found thatin 12 states with minimum wages higher than the federal levelof $5.15 an hour, employment rose more than in states where the federal level was standard.This finding held true for small businesses as well. And why would it not?Workers’ increased buying power leads to new purchases, which boost the entire economy — and that creates more jobs. It is a virtuous circle, one that helped power the American boom in the years after minimum wages and unionization first swept the U.S. manufacturing sector.Washington state has the highest wage in the US, and also had the biggest increase in small business jobs last year.
SECOND: The academic consensus is that the minimum wage reduces poverty
According to Mike Konczal 14, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute
Mike Konczal (fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. His work has appeared in The Nation, Slate, and The American Prospect). “7 Bipartisan Reasons to Raise the Minimum Wage.” Boston Review. March 3, 2014.
Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would lift 4.6 million people out of poverty.It would also boost the incomes of those at the 10th percentile of the income distribution by $1,700 annually. That is a significant benefit for workers who have seen declining wages during the past forty years.In a review of the literature since the 1990s, Dube finds of fifty-four estimates of the relationship between poverty and the minimum wage, forty-eight, or 88%, show that a minimum wage reduces poverty. This reflects a remarkable consensus among economists. The effect of an increased minimum wage on poverty is real, and it would be positive.
THIRD: Living wage increases consumer spending, which is the driving force of the economy
Stephanie Luce, Professor, University of Massachusetts @ Amherst, 2004, Fighting for a Living Wage, p. 15 Joshua Crandall, 2001
A living wage, as opposed to a minimum wage,would place more money in the hands of consumers (workers), allowing for an increase in spending. The economy’s success lies in the ability of products to be purchased. If workers are paid a living wage,around $13 an hour, all would benefit, from the top to the bottom…Faith and labor can work together to pressure our government officials and businesses to put people before profit.
FOURTH: Reduces the amount of people on welfare, saving billions of dollars for taxpayers.
Unz 14.FORBES. FEB.11 2014. “Raising the Minimum Wage would Be Good for Wal-Mart and America. Ron Unz is a Silicon Valley software developer and chairman of the Higher Wages Alliance, which is sponsoring a California ballot initiative to raise the state minimum wage to $12 per hour
The American taxpayer would also be a huge beneficiary. Each year, over $250 billion in social welfare spending goes to working-poor householdsvia government programs such as Food Stamps, EITC checks, and Medicaid.As millions of those workers become much less poor, they would automatically lose their eligibility for anti-poverty assistance, saving taxpayers many tens of billions of dollars each year. Government programs often function as very leaky buckets, with a substantial fraction of the money spent never reaching its supposed beneficiaries. But wages paid by an employer go straight to the recipient, except for the portion withheld in government taxes.
Reducing the welfare budget reduces taxes, which increases the incomes of everyone in the nation.
FIFTH: Increases productivity
ChristineNiemczyk, JD Candidate,John Marshall Law School, 2007, “Boxing out Big Box Retailers,” The John Marshall Law Review, Summer, 40 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1339, p. 1355-6
Arguably,a living wage only costs companies a small percentage of profits.A recent study shows that while companies have experienced a growth of productivity of 33.4 percent over the last ten years, workers’ wages and health care benefits remain stagnant.n126 If companies apply some of the extra profits to payroll, workers will be more inclined to continue to increase productivity and growth for the company.n127Employees who receive higher wages perform better at work and are less likely to be absent or to quit.n128 Therefore, a living wage results in an increased standard of living for employees and provides companies with a higher quality workforce.
SIXTH: Reduces turnover
Oren M. Levin-Waldman, Public Affairs Professor – Metropolitan College of New York, 2005, The Political Economy of the Living Wage: A Study of Four Cities, p. 57-8
Similarly, in a study of the impact of the ordinances at San Francisco International Airport, Michael Reich,, Peter Hall, and Ken Jacobs found that despite a significant rise in overall labor costs, there was also a significant decrease in labor turnover. The direct cost of implementing the ordinance, which was also part of a larger quality standards program (QSP) to improve safety and security while also improving the labor market conditions at the airport, was approximately $42.7 million a year. Spillover costs to other workers and employers added another $14.9 million to employer costs. And yet,turnover fell by an average of 34 percent among all surveyed firms and 60 percent among those firms where average wages had increased by 10 percent or more.The greatest reduction in turnover, however, was among airport security screeners. During a fifteen-month period after QSP was implemented in April 2000, turnover fell by almost 80 percent, from 94.7 percent to 18.7 percent. Every time an average worker has to be replaced, employers have to pay about 4,275 dollars per worker in turnover costs. Therefore, as a function of raising wages, employers ended up savings $6.6 million each year in turnover costs. To the extent that employers experienced reduced turnover costs, they experienced productivity gains.Total observed wages increased by $56.6 million in annual wages for ground-based non-management employees. Many reported that the quality of work increased, and many workers themselves indicated that they were more inclined to put more effort into their work.
SEVENTH: COMPANIES WITH HIGHER WAGES CAN COMPETE WITH Low-WAGE FIRMS BECAUSE THEY HAVE LOWER COSTS
Robert Pollin, Professor Economics-Univ. Massachusetts, 2008, A Measure of Fairness: The Economics of Living Wages and Minimum Wages in the United States, eds. R. Pollin, M. Brenner, J. Wicks-Lim & S. Luce, p. 30
In fact, when we did this in Los Angeles we went to a firm that was competing with a minimum wage firm that was actually getting massive subsidies from the City of Los Angles —a very low-wage firm. The firm we spoke with was paying 30-40 percent above what the low-wage firm was paying its workers. We asked this high-wage firm how it could survive. The answer was “We survive through having higher morale among our workers.” In specific terms, this meant that this firm had a low turnoverof workers quitting their jobs, whereas the firm paying minimum wage had a very high turnover. The high-wage firm had almost no absenteeism andtherefore had very low costs for administering, hiring, and training. So, that is another thing that changes when living wages go up — the “all else equal” condition does not hold.
Contention 2: A living wage reduces income inequality.
Income inequality is growing now. Living wage reduces it.Owens 13
Richard Trumka (president of the AFL-CIO) and Christine Owens (executive director of the National Employment Law Project). “$7.25 an hour is not a living wage.” CNN Opinion. December 2nd, 2013. http://nelp.3cdn.net/1720761e12917005d2_ykm6ivauy.pdf (CNN) — For the first time since the Great Depression, the U.S. Census Bureau tells us,middle classfamily incomes have lost ground for more than a decade. The sad truth is that the rewards for productivity and hard work such as health care coverage, retirement security, opportunity — rewards that used to make America’s workers “middle class” — are on the rocks. All the wage increases over the past 15 years have gone to the wealthiest 10 percent according to the Economic Policy Institute. All of them. And almost all, 95%, of the income gains from 2009 to 2012, the first three years of recovery from the Great Recession, went to the very richest 1%.Something else has happened, too. The bottom has fallen out of America’s wage floor. And the erosion of the minimum wage has lowered pay and working standards for all of us. An increase in the minimum wage — which hasn’t risen since 2009 — is long overdue.If the minimum wage had just kept pace with inflation since 1968, it would be $10.77an hour today instead of $7.25. For tipped workers, the rate’s been stuck at a scandalous $2.13 for 20 years. “It will reduce inequality. The question is how much and for whom. It’s not going to have a huge impact, but that’s because there’s no politically feasible policy that would have a big impact,” said poverty and fiscal expert Isabel Sawhill, co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution.Consider the 5-figure paycheck of a janitor versus the 8-figure salary of a CEO. Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 from $7.25, as a leading proposal in Congress would do, wouldn’t narrow that chasm.There’s also a big gap between those making 6-figures and the bazillionaires at the very top. A higher minimum wage can’t touch that. Then there’s the gap between very low-wage and middle-wage workers. It’s this gap where advocates say some progress may be made if the minimum wage is raised sufficiently. At its peak in 1968, the minimum wage was equal to 54% of average hourly earnings in the private sector. Today, it comes in at 36%, according to the Congressional Research Service. “There are a lot of causes of inequality but [the erosion of the minimum wage] is one of the important ones for inequality at the bottom,” Jason Furman, chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, said this week. Obama, who backs the $10.10 proposal, has said raising the minimum wage would be good for the economy and good for families. A higher minimum wage could increase the pay not only for the 1.6 million workers who earn $7.25 today, but an estimated 17 million workers who make between $7.25 and $10.10. In selling the idea of a higher minimum, though, advocates also say it could result in raises for hourly workers across the board in what’s known as the “ripple” effect. To the extent that the living wage increases the incomes of the poor, it narrows the income inequality.
IMPACT: Income inequality is the most important cause of economic decline and also causes political instability. Harkinson 11Josh Harkinson (staff reporter). “Study: Income Inequality Kills Economic Growth.” Mother Jones. October 4th,2011.http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/10/study-income-inequality-kills-economic-growthCorporate chieftains often … the hard way.”
Corporate chieftains often claim that fixing the US economy requires signing new free trade deals, lowering government debt, and attracting lots of foreign investment. Buta major new study has found that those things matter less than an economic driver that CEOs hate talking about: equality.“Countries where income is more equally distributed tended to have longer growth spells,” says economist Andrew Berg, whose study appears in the current issue of Finance & Development, the quarterly magazine of the International Monetary Fund. Comparing six major economic variables across the world’s economies, Berg found that equality of incomes was the most important factor in preventing a major downturn. (See top chart.)For example, the bailouts and stimulus pulled the US economy out of recession but haven’t been enough to fuel a steady recovery. Berg’s research suggests that sky-high income inequality in the United Statescould be partly to blame. So how important is equality? According to the study,making an economy’s income distribution 10 percent more equitable prolongs its typical growth spells by 50 percent. In one case study, Berg looked at Latin America, which is historically much more economically stratified than emerging Asia and also has shorter periods of growth. He found that closing half of the inequality gap between Latin America and Asia would more than double the expected length of Latin America’s growth spells. Increasing income inequality has the opposite effect: “We find that more inequality lowers growth,” Berg says. (See bottom chart.). A population where many lack access to health care, education, and bank loans can’t contribute as much to the economy. And, of course, income inequality goes hand-in-hand with crippling political instability, as we’ve seen during the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. History shows that “sustainable reforms are only possible when the benefits are widely shared,”Berg says. “We hope that we don’t have to relearn that the hard way.”
Contention 3: A living wage increases democracy.
Low wages reduce democracy. John Heck (John, Minnesota 4-H Foundation Fellow at the National 4-H Center, worked for the late Congressman Bruce F. Vento and presently serves on the Saint Paul Charter Commission, publisher) “Minnesota 2020 Journal: Increasing Minimum Wage Increases Democracy” Minnesota 2020 Journal 2014 AT
On Tuesday, inside the State Capitol, Minnesotans rallied for a minimum wage hike. It was a rollicking good time with great speeches, music, call-and-response exhortation and lots and lots of signage. Participants made the case for a minimum wage increase’s positive economic impact on workers’, families’ and communities’ lives. Notably absent from the rally? A lot moreminimum wage-earning workers.Why? Because theycan’t afford to take the time off from work to advocate for democratic change.This raises an interesting, troubling question. If low and modest wage workers are too financially stressed to cast a ballot, attend a community meeting or advocate for policy change, [is the democracy truly representative]?resulting elections, meeting outcomes and policy proposals truly representative? Democracy requires citizen participation.We don’t enjoy pure democracy, where everyone gets together and decides everything. In a nation of 300-plus million and a state of 5.3 million, the pure Athenian democracy is functionally unworkable. Voting participation positively correlates with wealth, home ownership, education and age. Young people don’t vote to the same degree that older people vote. If you’re over 30, own a home, hold a college degree and earn at least the median income, you vote…at minimum wage, is $30. That might not seem like much to folks earning Minnesota’s $57,000 median family income but $30 is ten percent of $300 of weekly gross earnings. Structurally, minimum and low wage hourly pay reduces the likelihood of participating in voting, advocacy, opposition and the exercise of democracy’s promise. It further concentrates the impact of higher income interests through disproportionately representative concentration. Our democracy becomes, as a result, less democratic.
Democracy is key to a good world – loss of democracy leads to massive harmsLarry Diamond,Hoover Fellow @ Stanford, Fmr. Advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, 10-1995A report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict
This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy,with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons.Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another.They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments [they] do not ethnically “cleanse” their own populations [because they are ruled by their populations], and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments.They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret.Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law,democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.
As a closing note, a consensus of economic experts agree the benefits of raising the minimum wage outweigh the costs.Frydenborgno date Brian E. Frydenborg (Master of Science in peace operations from George Mason University’s School of Public Policy) “Ethical Issues of Raising the Minimum Wage” AT least 2013 because the author cites stuff from then Opposing Viewshttp://people.opposingviews.com/ethical-issues-raising-minimum-wage-6865.html
In 2013 the Initiative on Global Marketsat the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Businesssurveyed 38 economics experts about the minimum wage. About one-third agreed that raising the minimum wage in the U.S. would “make it noticeably harder for low-skilled workers to find employment,” about one-third disagreed that it would do so, and about one-quarter said they were “uncertain.” So the jury’s out on that one. But when asked if the costs of raising the minimum wage to $9 and tying it to inflation are “sufficiently small compared with the benefits” to minimum-wage workers such that “this would be a desirable policy,” 5 percent strongly agreed, 42 percent agreed, 8 percent disagreed, 3 percent strongly disagreed, and 32 percent were uncertain.That’s a total of 47 percent agreed to some degree vs. 11 percent disagreeing to some degree, a clear margin of economists in favor that, yes, there are negatives, but that the positives of raising the minimum wage at least somewhat clearly outweigh these negatives.