“Every human being is an end in himself, not the means to the ends or the welfare of others and therefore, man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself.” – Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness
It is taken as a self-evident axiom that selfishness is evil. But is it? And what exactly is selfishness? Why do some say it is a vice, and why does Ayn Rand say it is a virtue? And why does a human being need a moral code anyway?
In the Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand introduces her new morality—the ethics of rational self-interest—that attacks the altruist-collectivist thought of the past two thousand years. Known as Objectivism, her philosophy holds human life—the life proper to a rational being—as the standard of moral value and regards altruism as incompatible with human nature. In this series of essays, Rand asks why man needs morality in the first place, and arrives at an answer that redefines a new code of ethics based on the virtue of selfishness.”
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“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune
Frank Herbert’s classic masterpiece—a triumph of the imagination and one of the bestselling science fiction novels of all time.
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“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” ― George Orwell, 1984
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” ― George Orwell, 1984
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” ― George Orwell, 1984
Winston Smith is a model worker. He publicly supports the Party. He is good at his job rewriting history to Government order. Big Brother watches him, but there is nothing to see. Yet Winston struggles. He opposes the totalitarian world, but keeps it a closely guarded secret. His secret exists only in his mind … until he begins a secret love affair with a fellow worker, Julia.
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“There are many gifts that are unique in man; but at the centre of them all, the root from which all knowledge grows, lies the ability to draw conclusions from what we see to what we do not see, to move our minds through space and time, and to recognise ourselves in the past on the steps to the present. All over these caves the print of the hand says: ‘This is my mark. This is man.”
― Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man
Written in 1973, Bronowski traces human invention from the flint tool to geometry, agriculture to genetics, and from alchemy to the theory of relativity, showing how they all are expressions of our ability to understand and control nature.
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Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System by Tara Smith elaborates on how the concept objectivity applies to the proper functioning of the legal system in order to explain the conditions required for objective judicial review.
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