Back in the old-old days a philospher named Plato came along and presented the first integrated philosophical system of ideas in history. This was a great achievement, which makes Plato the greatest historical villain to modern deconstructionist thinkers that abhor "system-building" of any kind (in other words, putting two and two together and getting four.) Plato's system as such is not the focus of this blog, but his view of man's nature is.
As an Objectivist, I get side-tracked into many discussions about politics. I can understand this I suppose--it's not often that most people meet a laissez-faire capitalist--politics as a subject is kind of a bore for me. I observe the trends and do not concern myself with the day-to-day details of who said what and who advocates what program. Capitalism is the most obvious way, to most people, that Objectivism is a radical philosophy.
Capitalism is not the most radical element of Objectivism. It's view of man's nature is. But I cannot justify that statement without showing the view of man's nature that Objectivism rejects, and without showing that that view has dominated the world in one form or another, unchanged, since Plato.
Plato offered a famous metaphor to describe man's nature: he describes a charioteer pulled by two winged horses, each wishing to go in its own direction. The driver must exert himself to rein the two horses and drive them in a common direction lest the whole device be torn apart. The driver in this metaphor is the mind; one horse is supposed to be the spirit, and the other the body.
In Plato's view, man is a trifurcate: a being split into three parts. Each part is in conflict with the other. The desire's of the body are in conflict with the desires of the spirt. The mind's only role in this conflict is to mediate between two sets of conflicting and contradictory desires. Internal conflict, for Plato, is built into man's nature.
Enter Judaism and Christianity. Since Christianity is the flavor of religion that I was brought up on, I'll refer to the Judeo-Christian-Islamist tradition simply as "Christianity" as shorthand. However, my comments apply equally to all.
Christianity holds exactly the same view of man as Plato. The only invention was the personification of the good. In Plato's thought, The Good was an existing thing, much like a table is an existing thing. It had reality all its own, and everything that we saw that we thought was good was really just an imperfect manifestation of this actual Good. If this seems hard to understand, consider that Christianity basically personified The Good and renamed it God. Further, since The Good was personified, may as well personify evil too.
In the Christian view of man, man is caught between two powerful yet diametrically opposed forces: God and Satan. God seeks man's moral perfection, speaking through man's spiritual center. Satan seeks the moral corruption of man mainly through physical (worldly) pleasures. The classic animation of a man with a little devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other dramatizes this view wonderfully. Man's only choice in any situation is which of these he is to follow. It is given that he will sometimes choose the path of Satan and corruption, which is why he is incapable of moral perfection. While he is condemned for the evil choices that he will make, it is a foregone conclusion that life consists of this conflict between good and evil, God and Satan, the spiritual and the worldly, and that man's choice in any given situation is simply which of the two paths he is offered he will take. The idea that a man can forge his own path is absent from this view.
Freud secularized the Christian view of man, virtually unchanged. He hypothesized that man is a being of three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id was the low, base, physical and sexual urges that man had. The superego consisted of man's moral leanings which he learned from "society." The ego was his mind. Once again, he was caught between two sets of competing and contradictory urges, and his only choices was which set of urges he gave in to. Once again, conflict is built into man's nature.
We have seen The Good go from an inanimate force, to personified actors, to a secularized sub-feeling learned by social osmosis.
All three of these views share certain characteristics:
They divide man into 3 parts, two of which are primary, and one of which is secondary.
In each case, the two primary parts are spirit vs. physical.
In each case, the least important and least efficacious part is his mind.
In each case, the mind's only role--it's only choice--is to decide which half of himself to give in to.
In each case, internal conflict is seen as the normal and natural state of being for man.
Enter Objectivism. Objectivism sweeps this view of man out the door in its entirety. Objectivism says that man is an integrated being--his mind is a part of his body; his body is an extension of his mind. The two should be in harmony. The role of the mind is to create the path, and the role of the body is to follow it. His mind and body are not in conflict, and the act of satisfying the needs of his mind and body define "The Good." The mind's role is that of the basic tool of survival. Man must think, act on the basis of his thinking, produce via his actions, and consume the products of his effort. Each part of this chain is as important and necessary as each other part. Internal conflict is seen as abnormal, unnatural, and the to-be-unexpected. When internal conflict occurs, the mind must be used to identify the source of the conflict and resolve it.
The intent of this post is not to justify Objectivism's view of man, but only to show what that view is in contrast to the prevailing view of the last 2500 years, and to illustrate that it is Objectivism's view of man's nature that is the most radical element of the philosophy.
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