This article originally appeared in the Objectivist Forum, a bimonthly journal of ideas edited and published by Harry Binswanger, between February and April 1981. Copyright © 1981 by TOF Publications, Inc.; republished by permission.
Raphael’s painting “The School of Athens” portrays the great thinkers of Ancient Greece. Appropriately, the central figures dominating the scene are Plato and Aristotle. They are shown walking toward the viewer, engaged in earnest discussion. Raphael was able to convey the essential difference between these philosophic titans by means of the gestures they make: Plato crooks a finger toward the heavens, but Aristotle’s hand is stretched out, palm down, as if to bless the earth.
Whether or not Raphael understood it consciously, that is the root of the opposition between the two men and between the two world-views they represent: the mysticism of some “higher” dimension versus the commitment to life on this earth.
Since Copernicus and Galileo, it has become clear that Plato’s upthrust finger points only at the cold emptiness of outer space. Now that men have walked on the moon and laid bare the structure of the atom, mysticism has lost its credibility in the physical realm. But mysticism still haunts the realm of values. That realm has been fenced off as a special epistemological preserve which reason may not enter. Mysticism has distorted the very concepts used to make value-judgments. Many people who reject the metaphysics of the supernatural are yet victimized by the residual mysticism that infects their evaluative concepts. One concept particularly in need of philosophical disinfection is “perfection.”
We hear from all sides that perfection is an “impossible dream,” an ideal which always exceeds our grasp, and by doing so lures us on to ever greater achievements. In sanctimonious terms, Bertrand Russell pleads, “Let us admit that . . . the ideals to which we do and must adhere are not realized in the realm of matter. Let us preserve our respect for truth, for beauty, for the ideal of perfection which life does not permit us to attain.’’1 Religionists and atheists, liberals and conservatives, whim-worshippers and duty-worshippers — they all agree that “Nothing is perfect in this world.”
It is all perfect nonsense.
And it is dangerous nonsense. The idea that perfection is unattainable amounts to an assault on all values, on values as such. “Perfection,” as the mystics use that term, makes self-esteem impossible.
What is “perfection” supposed to mean? The Random House College Dictionary gives as one of its definitions of “perfect”: “excellent or complete beyond practical or theoretical improvement.”2 This definition represents pure mysticism: if only the unimprovable is perfect, then perfection would require omniscience — i.e., the beatific state of already knowing everything about everything, with no further improvements left to be discovered. What earthly purpose could justify using such an other-worldly standard of perfection?
The mystical version of perfection means that improvement retroactively debases that which was improved. This idea takes progress, which is actually the path from achievement to achievement, and converts it into a treadmill on which man moves from flaw to flaw, in a hopeless quest for the perfection that lies at infinity.
The dictionary is not to blame. It has reported accurately the legacy of mysticism that has become embedded in the term’s usage. Mysticism is so engrained in the concept that for many people the actual meaning of “perfect” is: supernaturally good. “Transcendence” is listed as a synonym for “perfection” in a standard thesaurus.3 On this view, to be is to be imperfect.
The philosopher who is primarily responsible for the mystical version of “perfection” is Plato. The essence of Plato’s philosophy is the positing of another, non-perceivable reality, a realm of static perfection, the world of ‘‘Forms.’’
“Platonic Forms are conceived as timeless and non-spatial objects, immutable entities set over against the changing world of sensible [i.e., sensorily perceivable] things. . . . Each [Form] is a perfect original, of which sensible things are imperfect copies.”4
Plato insisted that the perfection of an ideal, a Form, has nothing at all to do with the possibility of its attainment in this world. In the Republic, Plato asks us to imagine a painting of “the ideally beautiful man.” The perfection of his beauty, Plato holds, would not be diminished even if one were “not able to prove that it is actually possible for such a man to exist.”5 But if the painting depicts something that is contradictory to man’s nature, how can it be a representation of an ideal man? What is non-human human beauty?
Plato downgraded this world, but did not strip it of all value. That step awaited the advent of Christianity. In Christian doctrine, perfection was conceived as that which pertained to a higher reality of infinite goodness; man and this world were condemned as intrinsically evil. Accordingly, to say any man or human phenomenon can be perfect is to blaspheme God.
Historian W. T. Jones observes, “The orthodox determination to exalt God led inevitably to the conclusion that man is worthless, for to allow any value or significance to humanity was to derogate by just that amount from the majesty, perfection, and supreme value of God.”6
The practical result? “Since the perfection of the Deity gave the Christian an absolutely exalted ideal to aim at, the Christian always felt a sense of failure: No matter how good he was, he was not as good as he ought to be.”7
This is a correct description of the doctrine’s effect, but it is radically understated. To see the full effect on man’s self-estimate of Christianity’s impossible standards, one should consult the kind of pronouncements that came from the Church when it held absolute power and was free to bare its soul. Here, for instance, is a brief excerpt from On the Contempt of This World, written in the year 1198 A.D. by Pope Innocent III:
Man has been conceived in the desire of the flesh, in the heat of sensual lust, in the foul stench of wantonness. . . . he is destined to become the fuel of the everlasting, eternally painfull hellfire; the food of voracious, consuming worms. . . . reflecting upon the heavenly bodies he will become aware of his utter baseness. . . . Why are you proud, O mud? Wherefore art thou exalted? What are you, O ash, that you should boast?8
That naked hatred for man is the spiritual ancestor and undiluted version of today’s hayseed homily, “Nobody’s perfect in this world.”
After this sort of history, one may well question the basic validity of the term “perfection.” But the mystical-supernatural associations are not inextricably tied to the term (as they are to “saint,” for example). Is there any rational need for such a concept? Yes, provided one recognizes that “perfection” is a normative, not a metaphysical, concept.
Metaphysically, a thing is neither perfect nor imperfect — it simply is whatever it is. Apart from the goals, purposes, and values of a living being, there is no basis to rank things as “better” or “worse,” much less as “perfect” or “imperfect.” “Perfection” assumes an answer to the questions “Perfect—for what? By what standard?”
The actual meaning of “perfection” is: flawlessly complete satisfaction of a standard of value.
In its rational meaning, the concept of perfection denotes not the unimprovable but the best possible in a given context. If one has achieved a goal to the fullest extent possible in a given context, then the achievement is perfect, in the rational sense of that term. Subsequent improvements based on a wider range of knowledge or higher level of ability will not invalidate that achievement or subtract from its value: it remains perfect by the standards of the earlier context. Just as new knowledge cannot invalidate old knowledge, new achievements do not invalidate the old. Just as, in epistemology, certainty is contextual, so in the realm of values, perfection is contextual. Man can judge and act only within the context of the knowledge that is available to him. No standard can demand the impossible of reality or of man.
Further, one may distinguish between one’s personal standards of perfection and the standards defining the best possible to man as such. This is not subjectivism: one’s standard of perfectly achieving a given goal must be consistent with the facts of one’s own particular abilities, interests, knowledge, and hierarchy of values. For instance, the standard of perfect writing for a student in a fourth-grade English class is obviously not the same as that for a professional author. The contextual nature of such standards does not make perfection any the less objective or praiseworthy.
The one area in which the same standard of perfection applies to all men is morality.
In regard to moral values, the “imperfect” is not that which falls slightly short of the ideal, but that which betrays it altogether by instituting an immoral premise. It would be grossly misleading, for instance, to describe a man who tells the truth most of the time, but lies occasionally, as “imperfectly honest.” Such a man is simply dishonest.
In this sense, “moral perfection” is a redundancy. Moral principles do not admit of compromise. Either what is right is one’s supreme guide, or it is not. There is no such thing as an “almost supreme” principle — this phrase merely indicates that some other factor is supreme, and the principle enters, if at all, only as a secondary, dispensable consideration.
The term “perfection” as applied to morality serves the same purpose as the term “laissez-faire” when applied to capitalism. There is no other version of capitalism; if it is not laissez-faire capitalism, it is not capitalism. Likewise, if a choice is not morally perfect, it is not moral. But both terms are valuable for precisely their stress on the need for consistency. “Laissez-faire capitalism” means: the principle of capitalism (individual rights) carried through without exception to every political issue. “Moral perfection” means the principle of morality (the commitment to reason) carried through without exception to every choice one confronts. Since the need for this type of consistency is not self-evident, since it is only implicit in the nature of morality, the idea of’ “moral perfection” is profoundly valuable.
The concept of ‘‘perfection’’ is based on the need for precision and consistency in a value context. Eliminating this concept would act as an invitation for every form of the approximate, the uncompleted, the sloppy, and the subjective. This would be dangerous in any culture, but in an age like ours, when the educational system actively encourages sloppiness of thought and expression, when Pragmatist trial-and-error groping is considered “scientific” but adherence to principles is called “dogmatic,” when people do not pursue excellence but are “into” things (“I’m into acting”), the concept must not be abandoned to the mystics.
Rational perfection is determined by reference to a rational standard of value. The mystical idea of an unattainable perfection means that fantasy supplies the standard by which facts are to be held accountable. It means that the arbitrary contents of consciousness are that to which reality should (but stubbornly does not) yield. The philosophical term for this inversion is the primacy of consciousness.9
But “the primacy of consciousness” is almost too dignified a term here. To capture the perverse silliness of the use of impossible standards, imagine a man who designs an airplane, finds that it cannot get off the ground, and responds by blaming gravity for being too strong. In an ideal world, he muses, his airplane would fly — but the actual world is imperfect.
There is no difference in basic principle between such a man and those who hold equally impossible standards regarding man’s mind — such as the idea that to be perfect, one would have to be able to solve any problem immediately, never make an error of knowledge, never experience an out-of-context emotion, never feel fear or doubt, and always know just what to do in every situation. In all these cases, one is demanding the impossible of man. The fault lies not in man, but in the demand.
It would be a grave error to conclude from this that one has to settle for a second-best goal or lower one’s standards. That attitude represents a failure fully to reject the wrong standard — i.e., fully to accept reality. It means that one still regards the impossible as desirable, though not practical. The truth is that the impossible is, if anything, beneath the possible. It is not just that one should not “dream the impossible dream”: if it is truly impossible, it is not a dream but a nightmare.
The truly good is not a scaled-down, budget version of the fantasy good. One does not reach the truth by starting with fantasy, then making adjustments as a concession to “realism.” A rational man starts from reality — from what exists (actually and potentially) — and never casts a longing glance at the unreal.
The choice in regard to perfection is not: the hopeless quest for the unattainable or the abandonment of all ideals. The alternative is not the impossible dream versus cynical resignation. These irrational dilemmas are a manifestation of the wider false alternative that is ripping our culture apart: mysticism versus skepticism (or: intrinsicism versus subjectivism).
One side asserts that perfection is to be judged by the standards of the supernatural and concludes that perfection can be attained only in Heaven, not in this world. The other side agrees that perfection is to be judged by the standards of the supernatural but holds that Heaven is (probably) a myth and concludes that perfection cannot be attained anywhere. Both sides hold that without God man is doomed to failure, cognitively and morally; both hold that man qua man is an ignorant sinner.
It does no good to reject the mystics’ metaphysics while retaining their epistemology and ethics, i.e., to cling to other-worldly standards without the other world.
The truth is that proper, this-worldly standards are more demanding than standards which cannot be met — more demanding intellectually. Defining and applying rational standards takes a careful process of independent thought, while the mystical “standards” turn out to be simple-minded substitutes for mental effort: vague images, canned slogans, and floating abstractions. (The desire to escape mental effort is one reason why many people would rather demand the impossible of themselves than accept rational standards.)
The claim that perfection is impossible attempts to blame reality for the problems resulting from the cavalier misuse of concepts — from invalid definitions, equivocations, and “stolen concepts.” Consider three areas in which perfection is commonly believed to be unattainable.
1. Morality. The anti-perfection doctrine is most deeply entrenched and most disastrous in regard to morality. The impossibility of moral perfection is taken as a self-evident truth. But what is morality? Morality is “a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions.”10 Morality exists to evaluate the choices confronting man; the concept of “choice” logically precedes and delimits the scope of all moral concepts — including the concept of “moral perfection.” To speak of an impossible moral perfection is to violate this hierarchy of concepts, thus “stealing” the concept of “moral perfection” and engaging in self-contradiction. For if moral perfection is not merely rare but impossible, then man is saddled with some degree of unavoidable evil — i.e., an evil choice that he cannot stop himself from making — i.e., an unchosen choice.
Religionists often argue that to be morally perfect man would have to be metaphysically incapable of evil. Since man has free will, since he is free to choose between good and evil, he cannot attain moral perfection, they hold. This argument carries the “stolen concept” to its ultimate extreme: the factor that makes morality possible — free will — is held to be a violation of morality. The truth is that a being lacking the choice between good and evil would not be morally perfect, but amoral — i.e., outside the province of morality altogether.
In logic, the standard of morality must restrict moral evaluation to the issues over which man has volitional control. The Objectivist standard of morality, man’s survival qua man, recognizes this fact.
“Man’s survival qua man” means the terms, methods, conditions and goals required for the survival of a rational being through the whole of his lifespan-in all those aspects of existence which are open to his choice.11 (emphasis added)
The major cause of the near-universal belief that moral perfection is impossible lies in the specific version of morality that, since Kant, has monopolized the field: the code of self-sacrifice. The idea of a nonsacrificial morality is now treated as if it were a contradiction in terms. Philosophers today will tell you that principles to guide man in achieving his rational self-interest are by definition non-moral; such principles are matters of “prudence,” not of morality, they announce.
On the premise that morality equals self-sacrifice, it is easy to see why “moral perfection is impossible” is on everyone’s lips. The code of self-sacrifice is a code of self-destruction. To live is to violate the code. On this point, readers of Atlas Shrugged need no elaboration.
On a rational moral code, moral perfection is not merely possible, it is an absolute necessity. Since morality proceeds from the fundamental alternative man confronts — life or death — morality has first claim on a man’s choices, and nothing can justify the subordination of morality to any other consideration.
Discard that unlimited license to evil which consists of claiming that man is imperfect. By what standard do you damn him when you claim it? Accept the fact that in the realm of morality nothing less than perfection will do. But perfection is not to be gauged by mystic commandments to practice the impossible, and your moral stature is not to be gauged by matters not open to your choice. Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality . . .12
A “breached rationality,” or what Ayn Rand has called the “mixed economy of reason and emotion,” means the complete subordination of reason to emotion. Whenever a man elects to side with his emotions against his reason, his premise is, ‘‘I’ll go by reason — as long as my emotions permit it.” He establishes his feelings as the final authority that sets the domain in which his mind may operate. Unless he rejects that premise, reverses the priority, and commits himself to perfect rationality, the sphere in which he feels it is “safe” to be rational will constantly shrink, as his irrational feelings flex their muscles.
The literal mixed economy attempts to find a compromise between the opposite principles of freedom and force, but cannot succeed. The same is true of the moral “mixed economy” which seeks to find a compromise between the good and the evil, rather than to attain moral perfection.
2. Politics. Political freedom is a prime target of the anti-perfectionists. Man cannot be perfectly free, they maintain, because he is not omnipotent. His freedom of action is restrained by the limitations of his own capacities and by the laws of nature; his freedom to have what he wants is restricted by the fact that nature does not shower him with goods and that he must work in order to obtain values.
Moreover, they continue, man’s freedom from other men cannot be perfect because each man’s freedom conflicts with that of others. If I am to be free to do whatever I wish, then what becomes of your freedom when our desires conflict? What if, for instance, you and I both want the same job and only one of us can have it? What if I want to have your car, your money, your house? What if I want to enslave you? In all these cases of conflicting desires, they argue, at least one of us has to yield, surrendering thereby some or all of his freedom.
On the premise that perfect freedom is impossible, there is no difference in principle between capitalism and statism. Capitalists and statists are seen as differing merely over where they would draw the line between too few and too many restrictions on freedom. In fact, political “conservatives” argue in this manner that capitalism is the safe, moderate middle of the road between totalitarian dictatorship and the impossible dream of perfect freedom.
Sound inspiring? Ready to mount the barricades to defend “reasonable” restrictions on your freedom? Want to launch a crusade to preserve a “moderate” degree of enslavement?
This offensive nonsense results from accepting the irrational standard underlying the attack on perfect freedom. “Perfect freedom” is assumed to mean: the complete absence of obstacles to the fulfillment of one’s desires.
The irrationality of this standard lies in the fact that it subordinates reason to emotion. Desires are not irreducible primaries. They are the product of man’s value premises — premises which may be rational or irrational, consonant with or contradictory to the facts of reality. The fulfillment of a desire cannot be evaluated out of context; whim cannot serve as the basis for any political concept. When one evades that fact, the result is a definition by non-essentials, leading to exactly the sort of equivocations and confusions that characterize the anti-perfectionists’ stand on freedom.
The concept of political freedom does not pertain to man’s relationship to nature but to man’s relationship to man. The “obstacles” whose presence or absence the concept evaluates are man-made obstacles. The laws of nature are not “obstacles” to human action — but they are viewed as such by the irrationalist who takes his desires as the given, and only then turns to reality to see what it will “permit.”
(The word “freedom” can of course be used in a metaphorical or analogous sense to talk of freedom from pain, disease, etc., but then the word denotes a different concept. It is nothing but plain equivocation to switch from that concept to the political one, as the anti-perfection argument does.)
The actual obstacle whose absence is denoted by the concept of freedom — the thing a free man is free from — is coercive interference by other men. And the means by which coercion operates is physical force; only physical force can compel a man to act against his own judgment.
The issue of political freedom is not a primary. The alternative of freedom versus coercion arises only after one has arrived at the principle that man has a right to his life. On that foundation, one can proceed to identify the conditions which are necessary to implement man’s right to his life, including the fact that man must be free to act on his own judgment.
Since man survives by producing values, not by expropriating them, the notion of a “freedom” to rob, enslave, and murder is precluded at the outset. The idea that laws protecting individual rights restrict the “freedom” to commit criminal acts inverts the necessary hierarchical order and turns “freedom” into a “stolen concept.”
The best answer to the idea that absolute, perfect freedom is impossible was given almost 35 years ago by Ayn Rand: “Within the sphere of your own rights, your freedom is absolute.”13
3. Epistemology. Although the concept of “perfection” is primarily normative, assuming a standard of value, the term also has a wider usage. The dictionary gives the following additional meaning of “perfect”: “conforming absolutely to the description or definition of the type: a perfect sphere; a perfect gentleman.”14
The same anti-perfectionism crops up here. In fact, the alleged impossibility of a perfect sphere is a philosophical chestnut trotted out in every introductory philosophy course.
The argument is that no matter how nearly perfect a sphere seems to be, some deviation from perfect roundness will always be present. If an apparently perfect sphere, such as a (new) billiard ball, is examined under a powerful microscope, flaws will be observed. And ultimately, the billiard ball is composed of molecules that are in constant vibratory motion (due to heat energy). Thus the billiard ball’s shape, far from being perfectly spherical, is constantly undergoing very tiny changes. Conclusion: the mathematically perfect sphere is an “idealization” that is never realized in the physical world.
By extending this line of argument and applying it to tables, organisms, etc., philosophers can “prove” that all concepts apply only imperfectly to reality, that nothing conforms absolutely to any concept’s definition, that what we think of as “knowledge” is merely approximations built on approximations, and that no one has the right to demand precision, absolutes, or say “it is” about anything in this world.
The fallacy here is context-switching. What one sees under a microscope is not relevant to the concept of “sphere,” which is formed to denote precisely the sort of shape possessed by billiard balls. A billiard ball is a perfect sphere, by a rational, contextual standard. A “perfect sphere” means a sphere that is flawless in the context of man’s form of perception.
To a sub-amoeba living on the molecular level (if such an organism existed), a billiard ball would be a galaxy — an astronomically large, pulsating collection of entities. But what does that have to do with man? Man’s concept of “sphere” refers to a human scale, the scale on which man grasps and deals with reality.
All concepts, including the farthest reaches of mathematical abstraction, are derived from the perceptual level of man’s awareness, and all standards of perfection must be consistent with this fact. To borrow a passage from Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology,
It is here that Protagoras’ old dictum may be given a new meaning, the opposite of the one he intended: “Man is the measure of all things.” Man is the measure, epistemologically — not metaphysically. In regard to human knowledge, man has to be the measure, since he has to bring all things into the realm of the humanly knowable.15
* * *
The alleged impossibility of attaining perfection is invoked when an idea or standard conflicts with reality. We are expected to swallow the contradiction rather than to correct the idea or standard. In this regard, “You cannot have perfection” functions in the same manner as such familiar catchphrases as “That may be good in theory, but it’s bad in practice,” “Nothing is black or white,” and “There are no simple answers.” In each case the underlying message is: theories, principles, and standards cannot be applied to the problems of “real life.” The “realistic” man, we are told, recognizes that reason is only an approximate or partial guide; to be “practical” we must not insist on consistency, which is merely “the hobgoblin of little minds.”
In this way, the demonstration that an idea conflicts with reality — which ought to count as that idea’s refutation — is treated as a sign of the inadequacy of reason.
As an unattainable perfection undercuts reason in epistemology, so it undercuts virtue in ethics. For the conscientious man, the acceptance of an impossible standard of moral perfection sets his best trait, his idealism, against himself. The more he strives to be good, the more guilt he experiences from his inevitable failure to achieve the impossible. His own pride, his moral ambitiousness, becomes his worst enemy. But for the man who is indifferent to moral values, the impossible standard carries no such penalty. In fact, the set-up serves as an excuse for such a man’s indulgence in actual evil. He comes to have a vested interest in the doctrine that perfection is unattainable. He is eager to hear that there is no difference in principle between himself and the greatest hero: both are held guilty, the difference being only one of degree. The impossible standard ensures that every hero will turn out to have feet of clay, for the standard equates human flesh with clay, i.e., it damns man for being man. The impossible standard protects the evil man from condemnation: it guarantees that there will be no one without sin to cast the first stone.
Men would rebel if they were told that the good must surrender to the evil, that the good has no rights by virtue of the fact that it is the good, while any demand made by the evil must be honored because it is the evil. But tell them instead that no one can be perfectly moral and they leap to agree, thereby instituting the same inversion of morality quietly and by degrees. For,
When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it’s picked up by scoundrels — and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously uncompromising evil.16
As proof of the accuracy of this analysis, just recall the last thirty-five years of America’s foreign policy.
This brings us to the political motive for the anti-perfection attitude. By infecting man with unavoidable guilt, the mystics and collectivists aim to deprive man of the moral certainty required to assert his rights.
Do you recall the scene in which Lillian Rearden attempts to prevent Hank Rearden from defending himself at his trial?
I think you should remember that it’s not for you to make a stand on any sort of principle. . . . I think you should abandon the illusion of your own perfection, which you know full well to be an illusion. . . . The day of the hero is past. . . . Human beings are no longer expected to be saints nor to be punished for their sins. Nobody is right or wrong, we’re all in it together, we’re all human — and the human is the imperfect.17
And do you recall Ayn Rand’s analysis of the motive behind the collectivist ideal enunciated in the papal encyclical, “Populorum Progressio”?
It is not intended to be accepted and practiced; it is intended to be accepted and broken. . . . Men who accept as an ideal an irrational goal which they cannot achieve, never lift their heads thereafter — and never discover that their bowed heads were the only goal to be achieved.18
It was not always thus. There was a time in which unbowed heroes, armed with an inviolate confidence in the perfect justice of their cause, declared their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ‘‘And for the support of this declaration,” they wrote, “we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”
It is precisely the sanctity of a man’s honor, with the self-assertiveness it makes possible, that the anti-perfectionists seek to destroy. Such honor is impossible to an imperfect being. But not, as the Founding Fathers proved, to man.
“A Free Man’s Worship,” in “Why I am Not a Christian,” and Other Essays, ed. by Paul Edwards (George Allen & Unwin: 1957), p. 109.
The Random House College Dictionary, revised edition (Random House: 1980).
The New Roget’s Thesaurus, ed. by Norman Lewis (Garden City Books: 1961).
David Gallop, “Notes” in his translation of Plato’s Phaedo (Oxford University Press: 1974), p. 94.
Republic, Book V, 472D, trans. by Paul Shorey in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. by E. Hamilton and H. Cairns (Pantheon: 1961).
A History of Western Philosophy, Vol. II (Harcourt, Brace & World: 1969), second edition, p. 67.
Ibid., p. 70.
Two Views of Man, ed. by Bernard Murchland (Ungar: 1966), pp. 4–5.
Ayn Rand, “The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made,” The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. 2, No. 12.
The Virtue of Selfishness (New American Library: 1965), p. 2.
Ibid., p. 18.
Atlas Shrugged (Random House: 1957), p. 1059.
“Textbook of Americanism,” p. 7.
The Random House College Dictionary, op. cit.
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (Mentor: 1979), p. 10.
Atlas Shrugged, op. cit., pp. 1054–55.
Ibid. pp. 463–64.
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New American Library: 1967), 2nd ed., p. 313.
Thank you for an excellent article.
I actually disagree with Ayn Rand that [man is the measure of all things] isn't metaphysical: since sentience is the ultimate extression of nature, then the natural standard of measurement is sentience.