Free Capitalist

Dominique says, Aristotle replies,

TomL, Um that makes no sense. y_feldblum made a valid point that we cannot read other people's minds and prove conclusively whether they are being rational or not, in every single case. The only thing we can do is judge their actions, which regardless of their apparent rationality may or may not have a relationship with the actual rationality of a person. Some action may make no sense to us, but does make sense to a person and would to us too, if we had more info. Some other action makes perfect sense, yet the person who did it is completely irrational. The only way to judge rationality of someone is inductively, which requires a long life and a lot of life experience. This is not available in the context of this discussion. A vague answer typical of a person who doesn't really know what he's talking about. I don't mean to be insulting, even if it sounds like that's what it is. If you have something more specific to offer, please do; the fact that you didn't is indication that you don't, which is an indication hat you don't really understand. Galt's Gulch is owned by Midas Mulligan.

Iakeo, that sounds a little bit like intellectual laziness, because we are, after all, discussing Objectivism, and on an Objectivism forum to boot. So, if you make a claim about an Objectivist viewpoint, you have to point out where it was said. And if you don't state a view from an Objectivist viewpoint, you should state so from the outset, and then justify your position. You said the government's only purpose is to protect the Trader Principle. Please substantiate your claim, and your reasons for it.

That's why you get yourself elected by the citizens as the mayor, or get the mayor appoint you as chief of police, or go to work in the police department and become the chief man in charge of that area of the city, and clean it up. That's how a free society works. A quick resort to guns is not the miracle answer to all of life's problems. Especially for the good guys.

The question was not whether Dagny would sleep with Rearden if the world thought he was ugly, but whether she would if she thought so. And I think it's pretty obvious that she wouldn't; their relationship was not platonic, and the physical appearence of both of them was an important factor in their relationship. Not an exclusive factor by any means, but an important one. Just think of how many times, and in how many ways, AR described their physical attractiveness. The point is not that the world necessarily saw them as models, nor were they, but they were extremely physically appealing to each other, which is what matters.

I've seen you state this unusual formulation of relating the government to the Trader Principle. The two are related of course, but indirectly, so I'd like you to explain what you mean by your perrenial use of the Trader Principle in this context, and where AR said something to support your claims. From my understanding, the only moral concept she directly related to "government" was that of "rights", and the Trader Principle, among others, was related indirectly.

If you advocate that men should themselves practice the right to use force against whomever they deem to be offenders, for whatever reason they feel necessary, at their own private discretion, then you are advocating anarchy. Yes. But if the guy starts running away, it would be immoral, and therefore illegal, for you to chase after him with a baseball club and clubber him to death. And then go after his associates who helped him plan the attack on your house, and beat them up as well. That is anarchy, pure and simple. Only government can properly be allowed to go after criminals, outside of that one circumstance when your life is directly threatened and you must do something because the government cannot act in time to save you. All other instances must be left up to the government, in order for a proper society to flourish.

Why is prejudice, as such, immoral? Everyone has prejudice, in the sense that everyone has preliminary conception about other people, before meeting them. Prejudice would be immoral if it was retained after getting to know the person and choosing not to replace assumed information with real information.

As far as values go, there aren't any serious values that I try to be careful not to adopt from writers such as these. That would be rather foolish of me. My approach is that of a consumer, and their product is exceedingly healthy for my body. If I was a historian, however, I could take your question in a different light, and understand it to mean whether there was something in their style of history that I wouldn't adopt for my own. That's a completely different question, and I don't know the answer right away; I would definitely adopt their concern with morals, completely lacking from modern history (except in authors like Victor Hanson), but I also might might focus a little less on speeches. Then again that might be merely a modern prejudice, and a really minor issue either way. I don't know. There's nothing clearly big and opposite to my values, which is another reason why I find the books so valuable.

Burgess, I apologize if my references to ancient historians have been unclear. I have been engaged in a pretty serious argument in these two threads, and have mentioned various names here and there, so I thought the reference was clear. However, in browsing over this thread, it turns out that most of my specific references were made in the other one (Rome, Republic vs Empire). So I understand the source of confusion, and it will become clear below whom I was referring to. You ask, First and foremost, I try to imitate the values the ancients held about history. Ancients viewed history as a moral science -- a rational study concerned with facts (as can be seen from their bickering about what did or did not happen, and criticism of one other on various points of fact) -- and a moral study of rise and fall of men and nations. They viewed history as a kind of enormous canvas on which all of humanity was drawn on, for us to examine and to learn from. Instead of trying to go in more detail, because I won't do the historians any justice, I will instead let them speak in their own words, which I hope will you will bear the trouble of reading. The quotes will more than answer your question. Etc. History as it can and ought to be.

Don't you get it Tom? There's a fundamental gulf of difference between a merely a private person and a police officer. A police officer has the right to use retaliatory force as he sees fit. A private person does not. A police officer is a law unto himself, or at least he belongs to an organization (the government) that is a law unto itself. A private person is not a law unto itself. So the government can decide what the best weapons will be for its police officers, because the government has that right, by definition; the police officers, by extension, are merely government officers, and share in everything the goverment can do. So to answer your question, why does the police need some weapon or other? I don't know, and it's none of my business; it has the right to build whatever it wants. I may question the way it is spending my money, but if the money is allocated then it does not matter what the lethality and the destructiveness is of the weapon that's built. The government was invested with the power of the people precisely to make that decision, and to take that decision out of the hands of the individual citizens. There is room in the "right to bear arms" for protection against the government itself. However, that extra little principle could be taken too far, and could be taken to mean that each citizen has the right to own a nuke - no government will mess him if he has that, that's for sure! I don't know yet where to draw the line in the context of "Freedom fighters" but it seems clear that we cannot build an objective government and still retain the citizens with a privately owned destructive force. Either the government is invested with it, or the citizens are. Either the government is militarily powerful, in which case we have an objective rule of law, or the citizens are each individually militarily powerful, in which case the government dissolves and anarchy begins.

I should add that archaeology only began as a science in the middle of the 19th century. It is a completely fledgling new field, and although it can tell us a lot, it also cannot tell us even more. For the men of the Rennaissance and the Enlightenment, archaeology didn't even exist, which however did not stop their study of history, nor application of its lessons to the modern world. I won't even get into the ancient historians, and how far they were from the archaeological mindset, who still produced inestimable historical works of invaluable worth. Archaeology is valuable, but should be taken with a large grain of salt and care, rather than thrown about as the only true study of the past, as is done nowadays.

The only reason it became hallowed in the first place is because of great historians of the past, whose approach to history I mentioned above, and try to imitate. It did not only become hallowed in the modern era with the advent of modern cynics, who are actually destroying history as a valid field of study, just as they already destroyed the field of classics. By the way I have to add that no views expressed in this thread directly relate to Objectivism. History is a place to apply philosophy, so the philosophy itself stands aloof from however it is applied; no one can say their ideas constitute an Objectivist version of history, so that pseudo comment is out of line. However, Objectivism does underscore the importance of hero-worship, which the views expressed here against mine explicitly lack. It also talks about context, which again is sorely lacking here.

Korina, let's turn the table around on you and ask you to volunteer an opinion first. I.e. why is the question important to you, what interest do you personally have in ancient history, etc. RationalOne, what's there to like about the way that professor thinks?

And now for the rest of my post... You sound, Alon, as if an unforgivable lie had just been uttered, and you are embarking on a righteous crusade the right the wrongs. Instead of accusing me of having misplaced my allegiance and of having wrong view of history, it looks like you should listen to your own advice. I said no such thing. But, by your own admission Roman constitution was light years ahead of every other government anywhere else in the world, even Greek, and were it not for Rome there would be no American constitution which merely built on it, nothing more. If you believe I am saying that the Republic is the greatest government ever created, you're attacking a strawman and are strongly mistaken. Many admire Athenian democracy and are inspired by its achievement, but no one claims it was the greatest government ever. I view history in context. So please attack the arguments that I actually said, not those you imagine I might have said. I am talking about the entire era from the last kings, i.e. Tullus and Superbus, 600s BC, down to approximately the Gracchian reforms in the 130s BC, when signs were clear that the fabric of the people went downhill. By asking you to specify examples of Republican corruption and evils before the first century, what I really meant was for you to give examples before this Roman collapse, which may begin to be vaguely traced back to the end of the Second Punic War, but more acutely to around the sack of Carthage in 146BC. This is what I mean by the "first century" - the beginning of the end. It reached the apogee in the 1st century BC, but really started to grow in the latter half of the second century. The Second Punic War was the last and perhaps greatest example of the old Roman mentality, which to a cynic is a "bedtime story" but to me is a dream. That is a fine difference, but a real one. These later historians did not just sit on their bums scratching their foreheads about what fanciful tales to write that day. They had many primary records, such as for example the Fasti, ancient consular records going back to 485BC: http://webexhibits.org/calendars/year-text-Fasti.html and http://itsa.ucsf.edu/~snlrc/encyclopaedia_...r/antiates.html The triumphal records of the Fasti go back to Romulus in the 8th century: http://sights.seindal.dk/sight/931_Fasti_C...riumphales.html and http://www.attalus.org/translate/fasti.html The validity and reliability of the Fasti is discussed and confirmed here: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:DAbgo...man+fasti&hl=en Records in this form were available to all ancient historians, but this was just the beginning of the historical record, not the end. There abounded during those days a plethora of evidence about even the Regal era, let alone the Republican one: ancient inscriptions, personal records, sculptures, architecture. Much of it was destroyed since then, but a few of it remains to this day, such as the Capitoline Wolf, those Fasti, and others. That body of evidence is growing even now due to excavations, such as the ones you provided a link to about Rome's early kings. But more important than what we have now is what the historians have written down when it still existed in those days, and the existence of which must be taken unquestionably, because those were public monuments available to all for verification. An imaginary account about existence of such evidence would be just as impossible then as it would be now. For example, no Napoleonic historian today can write a book saying, "I saw this sculpture of Napoleon in Paris, where he himself had ordered inscribed that he won the Battle of Waterloo." Everyone could go and check for themselves whether such statue existed. Similar metaphysical status must be given to all such records, no matter how ancient. For most of the Republic, men like Cato were the rule, and you will be hardpressed to find exceptions. Indeed there were exceptions, either sinister in the form of the decemvirs, or even heroically tyrranical in the form of Coriolanus. But the exceptions prove the rule. First of all, proconsuls are not the same thing as consuls. Second of all, until the end of the First Punic War (last quarter of 3rd century BC), Rome never even had a province. It had a loose network of allies who were all conquered by Rome in previous wars, but were not demanded any tribute from, nor were otherwise burdened by any unjust demands that every other empire in history, including Athens, had levied upon those they conquered. The only thing Rome required from her allies were auxiliary troops, to fight alongside her own citizen soldiers in common defense against mutual enemies. Otherwise they were left to their own devices. How evil of Rome, eh? With the close of the First Punic War the first real provinces appeared - Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia. Even they were treated with utmost respect and justice, as record shows. Hiero, the king of Syracuse (the foremost city in Sicily, for those who don't know), has shown one of the most touching devotions to Rome in all of her history, standing by her when nearly everyone else had abandoned her. That's not how mistreated subjects, who are demeaned and trampled upon, act. That's how proud equals act. What a sinister empire Rome was! Let's join the chorus of condemnation. It is only after the end of the Second Punic War that Rome seriously got into the province business, adding Africa and beginning colonization of Spain and Northern Greece. Still, despite this, it is only by the second half of the 2nd century BC that you begin to find questionable acts, growing with increasing frequency until Cicero's time, when his own political integrity did become an exception. But all of this only proves the rule that Rome was not always so, and only shows that you cannot come up with any accusation of Rome that is before her downfall. No other empire in history comes even close to this kind of nobility of mind. Even a great city like Athens, when at its military and cultural pinnacle, admitted she held unjust tyranny over most of Aegean, but continued to press on her subjects with an iron fist. Even she could learn something from Rome. --- Look, I am kind of wasting my time here. I have just realized what a gargantuan post I had written, and could write even more if I didn't stop myself. The point is, the justification and proper scientific arguments for my claims about Rome's lofty history, can be found, and have always existed. That's the thing, they have always existed - not in such giant numbers as what we have left from the Empire, but still existant nonetheless. It's like The Night of January 16th - there's just enough evidence for, and just enough against; it is no longer the defendant who becomes on trial, but the jury itself. When our European civilization was noble, the evidence for Rome was enough to acquit the defendant with honors. We still looked for heroes, and we found them in history, not only in our fiction books; when we wanted to find heroes, as a culture, we did. The evidence is there, one only need to want to find it, and to believe that it exists. I do want to find it, which is why I was so grateful to your post about the archaeological find; I do want to believe it exists. You, on the other hand, in the best scenario don't seem to really care, and at worst do not want to find it. Because you hang out on an Objectivist Forum, I assumed you're a hero-worshipper too, that you do not cling to cynicism and do desperately desire to find men to admire, just like the rest of us. It looks like I was wrong, and you're more concerned to fit in with the modern historical community than to do what's right for yourself. You probably admire Jared Diamond, and detest Victor Hanson, whereas it is the latter who is so admirable, and the latter so detestable - not as much in the books they write and the arguments they use, but in the intentions they have behind their body of work. Even if you disagree with Diamond, your intentions appear to be are a lot more like his, and a lot less like Hanson's. That's why I will not try anymore to persuade you, per se. I don't think it can be done. If I will continue arguing with you, and I probably will, it is only for the sake of others out there just starting out, who desperately cling to hope that somewhere at some time there might have lived people worthy of tremendous admiration. Shame on you for trying to take that away from them.

Well, the first thing I'd like to reply to real quick is this accusation: Who ignores this fact, and why should anyone ignore it? Does some ancient state have a better track record than Rome for inclusion of other peoples and immigrants? Does mildly xenophobic Classical Athens? What about horrendously xenophobic Classical Sparta? Carthage? These are your best examples, because to them the notion of citizenship still mattered; the Hellenistic Era does not apply, because citizenship ceased to matter. And of course the rest of the world had not even a conception of citizenship or moral government at the time, so they completely cannot even qualify to be in this comparison. Historically speaking of the original polis as the cradle of Western civilization, when citizenship was important to a city-state, its people were invariably hostile to foreigners; and despite this, no true city-state in antiquity was more open to an infusion of other peoples than Rome. I will close this interlude of a post with a quote from Dionysius (I. 89):

Korina, I welcome further questions from you.

For the record, it's quite possible to make an argument in favor of the Empire, along the lines Edward Gibbon himself seems to have given. Alon's argument however is anithetical in spirit both to Gibbon's view and to mine.

Um Alon, Where? Now on to the rest of your post... Your entire attack focuses on Rome of the 1st century BC, so I'd like to hear some arguments about events before that time. The political system of the first century was not a Republic at all, but a dictatorship in the making. so since your examples against the Republic are from that century, they do not count. Yes, it's that simple. I could just as easily draw on the 5th century AD and claim that the Empire as such, for its entire duration, had an effete and rotten public, a pathetic military, and no strong central leadership, which had by then degenerated into a primitive feudal system. This description is true, but it wouldn't be very accurate of me to describe the entire duration of the empire by it, now would it? Nor would it of you to do the same to the Republic, which you were. So yes, I'd like to hear some examples of slave revolts and widespread slavery even in the 2nd century BC, if not earlier. Dates, names, numbers please if you have them - which I know you don't. I'd also like for you to tell us just how corrupt the Consuls during the 2nd Punic War were - that Fabius Maximus sure was condemnable, right? And don't get me started on Scipio Africanus, the corruptest of them all right? Unless you think we should dig deeper. Titus Manlius was pretty bad huh? Furius Camillus? Publius Valerius? Lucius Iunius Brutus? Let's hear some. Even during the crumbling 1st century, why don't you mention Cato, Cicero, men of the kind of character that I and most other people on this forum can only dream of equalling. Even the African prince Juba who helped them was a model. Even Brutus, Caesar's slayer, was and is a role model. Why don't you mention them? Yes it was violent. But why was it violent, for what reasons? That you still have to answer. Merely stating a fact proves nothing. Violence in and of itself is not a vice, unless you're prepared to accuse America of being violent and therefore somehow automatically evil. Are you calling me a liar? Are you calling Edward Gibbon, the model historian of our age a liar? How about Dio, Tacitus, Livy, Dionysius Halicarnassensus, Cicero, Polybius, Thucydides, Herodotus? All rotten liars, yes? Only our modern enlightened age has overcome the unforgivable defects of the past historians who barely deserve the title, right? As I said before, this mindset predominant among historians and classicists today is the very height of conceit and presumptiousness, and it's very unfortunate that you've bitten it as well. To exalt virtue as opposed to vice, and to teach the reader how the historical subject reached the former or the latter, is one of the proper purposes of history. The ancients believed this, and so did the men of the Enlightenment. It's one of the sins of our time that most historians today do not. Yes, that is precisely where each of the two resides in. Are you prepared to argue otherwise? --- The poster asked for differences between the Republic and the Principate, not for a cynical post against the Republic. I am more than willing to debate this with you, but the record should state that out of all possible subjects to discuss, you chose to inveigh against the Republic. When thinking of a reply to this thread, there was nothing more important to you than prevent my pro-Republican post to stand unchallenged. That, alone, says more than I ever could.

Then you and I have the opposite understanding of what history is, and what it is for. Without being sarcastic at all, I can say that this is one of the biggest compliments anyone can ever give me. So I appreciate it, though you probably didn't mean for me to.

Why do you need a grenade launcher to kill a guy, if a gun will do? The principle behind the "right to bear arms" is that you should have the weapon of smallest possible danger, that can still kill a possible criminal. The government then retains the right to the bigger weapons, and helps you fight off bigger criminals, such as Arab terrorists.

I think this thread should be called, "How to understand the message of Atlas Shrugged in a healthy and inductive way".

RationalOne, two points: 1) Atlas Shrugged is a fiction novel, which means the author creates facts and puts them in certain order in order to portray a theme. In a proper fiction story, all facts serve this ultimate task of helping to portray the theme, and it's one of the tell-tale signs of a bad writing when there are things that happen in the story which make no sense, or have no relevance to the story itself. For Ayn Rand, to have Eddie ask Dagny out would be a complete waste of her time, and the reader's time, because everyone knows that it's not going to work out. So, instead, she had him keep his appreciation for her inside; what he had for her wasn't even love in the true romantic sense, but a kind of humble worship. But it was a worship of a proper kind, because it was worship of heroism and highest achievement. 1) You are assuming that Atlas Shrugged is an exhaustive guide to your own life: everything that the characters in the book did, you should do; everything that they didn't do is somehow a sign that you shouldn't do it either. So if Eddie kept his affection for Dagny hidden, you are assuming that it is a direct indication to you that you must do something similar, in similar circumstances. Do you see a problem with this approach?

Major cultural differences: The Republic was intensely ethical for most of its existence, and strongly averse to violence. In other places, even Greece, where some groups of people got mad at other groups of people, usually they killed them off or applied the power of government to make them more malleable. In Rome, what did the plebeians do when felt oppressed by the patricians? They didn't go on murderous rampage, they simply packed up and peacefully moved out of Rome to a nearby hill. Then the patricians became in a more agreeable mood. The Empire had no real concern with virtue or moral standards. Some of the intellectuals and leaders certainly did, but the general populace at large did not. Unlike the Republic when the aristocrats were matched by the common people, the Empire was only as good as its current leader or king. In the first two centuries, when the intellectuals and emperors were generally Stoic and still concerned with ethical standards, the Empire flourished. When the emperors became weak, the Empire crumbled. Compare this with the early pre-Republican Roman kings. When they became intolerable, the Roman state did not collapse, but the Roman people kicked the kings out and established the Republic. Major political differences: The Republic was free, the Empire was not. That's essentially what the difference was. The Republic was founded on the rule of law, the Empire on the rule of the sword. When good emperors held the sword the Empire flourished, but when bad ones got a hold of it, the Empire fell. The other major difference between Republic and the Empire that you didn't ask about: The religion under the Republic was essentially the same one as practiced by the Greeks during the Archaic and Classical eras. It was a religion without any hint of altruism, a religion when the gods looked like men, and when even they were subordinate to the laws of reality. It was the opposite of a supernatural religion: a natural religion. The Empire, at first, was pagan too, though it gave up the ancient Roman gods by then. A mishmash of new Greek and Eastern religions poured in, which is what the common men were concerned with. The Egyptian religion prepared them for Christianity, the force that really destroyed the Roman empire. The more Christian it became, the more its people became effete, otherworldly, and passive. At the same time as their borders were beset by vigorous and numerous barbarians, Romans began to believe that compromise, negotiation were the best tools of foreign policy, started to condescendingly look down upon the army as more of a curse than a protector to a civilized society, and began to think that there was no point to really try to do anything in this life, except to be charitable and not too judgmental to anyone lest the feelings of those people were hurt. Sound familiar?

No Cole, to a Christian, God IS reality. The relationship between him and the physical world is subjective, but the latter is not reality. You're assuming everyone equates the physical world with reality, an assumption which I already said is an unwarranted one. If God is reality, then Christian metaphysics, and therefore ethics, are objective. And so is the method used to know this Christian reality(God) - faith. Just think Plato. He was the forerunner of Christian metaphysics, and his philosophy is clearly objective.