Sacrifice

[Boydstun]

Sacrifice

“This moment is a warning and an omen. This moment is a sacrament which calls us and dedicates our body to the service of some unknown duty we shall know. . . . / We beg our head, we beg our soul for guidance in answering this call no voice has spoken, yet we have heard.”  —A_nthem_ (1938)

“Ten thousand years of voices speaking of service and sacrifice—sacrifice is the prime rule of life . . . .”  —The Fountainhead

“A doctrine that gives you, as an ideal, the role of a sacrificial animal seeking slaughter on the altars of others, is giving you death as your standard. By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man—every man—is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake . . . . / The word that has destroyed you is ‘sacrifice’. . . . / ‘Sacrifice’ does not mean the rejection of the worthless but of the precious. . . . ‘Sacrifice’ is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don’t.”  —Atlas Shrugged

The first definition of SACRIFICE in my American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is “The act of offering something in propitiation or homage; especially, the ritual slaughter of an animal or person for this purpose.” The second definition is “The forfeiture of something highly valued . . . for the sake of someone or something considered to have a greater value or claim.” (Middle English, from Old French, from Latin sacrificiium: sacre, holy + facere, to do, to make.)

I suggest that Rand’s differences with precedent views on what is sacred is logically coupled with her rejection of various precedent views on sacrifice. In line with Rand’s view of the source of value and morality, one might reasonably eschew continued use of the notion ‘sacred’ in the conception and conduct of rational life. In her Anthem (1938), Rand spoke of the sacred within the purely earthly positive outlook she was innovating and holding forth at that time. Although she did not speak that way in the more complete and more solid positive outlook she was proposing in Atlas, I suggest that by the end of Galt’s Speech, one could consistently say that there is something sensible and sacred within the positive view, and that is our rational minds and lives in the world.

Rand’s rejection of a virtue-laden notion of sacrifice goes suitably with her mature, new notion of what is sacred because the two avenues of value and morality—the mystical, other-worldly or the paramountly social—at the outset of Galt’s Speech are sot with notions of sacrifice that are not only contrary the new notion of the sacred fitting for Rand’s genesis and character of value and morality; but because even continued use of a notion of sacrifice not contrary the new sacred runs against its spirit. Under the second dictionary definition of ‘sacrifice’ I gave above, one could say that Rearden sacrificed ten years of his life to his consuming metallurgical project. Yes, in his disciplined behavior, other lovely things in life were forgone. But the notion of sacrifice is too bound up with externally sourced values and obligations to bring ‘sacrifice’ into some service in the new positive outlook where Rearden can freely and rightly set his own projects.

[dream_weaver]

I would have described those ten years Rearden spent as an investment. In the pursuit of one value or set of values, necessarily cannot be also pursuing a different value or set thereof. Rearden’s evaluation of the end goal was such that it likely existed, if he only discovered the right processes to bring it about. 

 

[Boydstun]

On 3/20/2022 at 4:37 PM, dream_weaver said:

I would have described those ten years Rearden spent as an investment. In the pursuit of one value or set of values, necessarily cannot be also pursuing a different value or set thereof. Rearden’s evaluation of the end goal was such that it likely existed, if he only discovered the right processes to bring it about. 

 

Greg, in common parlance, we very well could hear in a praise of Rearden for those years “what personal sacrifices he had to make.” Or suppose someone never bought anything on credit and saved money and thereby accomplished a comfortable retirement. We might well hear praise for what she had had to sacrifice in order to accomplish that result. Often in the preface of a scholarly book that took years to complete, the author will acknowledge there was much hardship for his family during those years due to this project. Even though the family was all on board with value of the accomplishment as higher than what was forfeited of family life, we might hear talk of the author and his family making a sacrifice. In such ordinary talk, I don’t think the “sacrifice” made by Rearden rules out the notion that he was also making an investment. One nice thing I notice about such talk of sacrifice, when you begin to come up with enough specifics, such as in this paragraph, is that people using such sacrifice-talk in these contexts would not be maintaining or insinuating that the reason the accomplishment should be applauded was only because of the sacrifice or self-discipline required.

[Boydstun]

Very often what is rated a sacrifice under the dictionary definition 2 really is what Rand specially termed a sacrifice: the forfeit of a higher value for a lower value. That is, the alleged higher value in 2 is a fraud. She correctly had it that wherever value is talked of, sensibleness requires ability to specify “of value to whom and for what purpose.” Once those specifications are filled out, it is seen, I say, that many a sacrifice said to be a forfeit of a lower value for a higher value are the exact opposite of that. Then too, to forfeit something of significant value to you only to gain the value of eternal blissful life in heaven is to forfeit a value to nothing of value to rational valuers, which you and your loved ones and your community could see if they could drop enough of their irrationality. This is another reason for Rand to reject the notion of and talk of sacrifice tout court from genuine virtue.

Rand is correct, in my view, to address in Atlas Shrugged not only sacrifice in the sense of the pervasively fraudulent 2, but in the sense of 1 as well. Sacrifice in the sense of offering something in propitiation or homage; especially, the ritual slaughter of an animal or person for this purpose. In Moshe Halbertal’s  book On Sacrifice (2012), he observes that 1 is much older than 2 as meaning of sacrifice. Furthermore, 2 is a natural extension from 1.

giving up individual interests for others or a country, the verb “to sacrifice for” can be construed indirectly as a giving of a gift by the individual to the nation or for the good of others” (2).

I want to follow some of Halberta’s fleshing out of this connection between 2 and 1, for it opens further reasons why the notion of sacrifice under 1 or 2 is properly not a suitable notion to be allowed into Rand’s mature ethical theory as something praiseworthy.