This post is part of a series on Objectivism the Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff. Today’s topic is the metaphysically given being absolute.
The author classifies everything as belonging into two different categories for the purpose of moral judgement – determining how one should evaluate, judge, or question a thing. On one hand are the things that are metaphysically given – the things that reality provides. On the other hand are the man-made things – things created by a living, breathing, thinking human being.
The Objectivist position is that the things that are metaphysically given exist by necessity. In other words, these things exist because they must exist. They are entailed by the axiom of reality. As far a moral judgement goes, these things are outside the scope. They must be identified (which certainly may not be easy), and they must simply be accepted.
Regarding things that are man-made, the Objectivist position holds that these things are products of choice. Because they are products of choice, they do not exist by necessity. They must not be simply accepted – but instead they must be evaluated, judged, and questioned.
I know I’m dipping a bit into further knowledge here, but I think its necessary to point out that when Peikoff states that one must judge, evaluate, and question the man-made, he does not mean that one has a duty, or some sort of universal imperative (e.g. in the sense proposed by Immanuel Kant) to do so. Instead, Peikoff means that one must judge, evaluate, and question the man-made for the purpose of flourishing as a human being (i.e. to life a rewarding and satisfying life).
How can a person get into trouble with this concept? Peikoff gives a couple of illustrative examples.
Regarding the Man-Made as Immutable
If one regards the man-made as absolute, then the man-made is immutable. The moral judgement of society, the policies of government, what kind of statements can make you a social pariah and what you need to do to get along in society, are all somehow characteristics of reality – in the same sense as saying that the atomic weight of hydrogen is 1. They are beyond question, beyond comment, and beyond judgement. They simply are facets of reality that one must accept, behave accordingly, and move on with life.
As Peikoff states it, if one regards the man-made as immutable then he will come to believe that “you can’t fight city hall, or tradition, or the consensus of the times. That is reality.”
To clarify, I don’t think that Peikoff is saying that one must fight city hall, or that one needs to lead a crusade to change the social judgement of the times. Instead he is saying that you mustn’t ever let yourself truly think that the social judgement is beyond the scope of your own moral judgement. What actions you take after you’ve formed your judgement is another matter entirely.
Regarding the Metaphysically Give as Mutable
If one regards the metaphysically given as mutable, then one is doomed to a life of disappointment. The essence of this error is to wish for the fundamental characteristics of reality to be different than they are. As Peikoff states, the one who makes this error “yearns for a world free of failure, pain, and frustration.” However, he continues that “if the possibility of failure exists, then it exists by necessity.”
In other words, failure is not the product of a human choice. It is a given of reality. There is no reality that does not have the chance of failure, and wishing for such a reality is as useless as wishing for there to be such a thing as a square circle.
Peikoff explains that the possibility of failure is inherent in the facts that (1) achieving a value requires specific action and (2) humans are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. Success requires a specific course of action, but there is no guarantee that one knows what the path is – and neither can one achieve success no matter what course he follows.
If one follows this course of wishing away the features of reality, then Peikoff identifies that it leads to all manner of deep conflict in the soul. It leads to mistakenly identifying conflict of “my dreams vs the actual, value vs fact, the moral vs the practical, and the mind vs the body.”
Wrap Up
The solution here is to avoid making either error, and to correctly distinguish the metaphysically given from the man-made. Rand quotes the Serenity Prayer in her book, Philosophy Who Needs It, and I think it is perfectly suited to this topic. It requires the serenity to accept what I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
Ryan Sawatzky 