| | Laure's original post received the appreciation it deserved.
I found the exchange between Stephen Cathcart and Tibor Machan interesting. Prof. Machan dropped the discussion. Apparently, class was over; after all, he is not getting paid to tutor. Beyond that, though, I think that Cathcart's perspectives were valid, though I fail to see any basic disagreement.
That raises an issue for me that I am wrestling with while reading Leonard Peikoff's Understanding Objectivism. I will have more on that in a different topic. For now, though, as Objectivists, we implicitly insist that words have absolute meanings. So, when we speak to each other, if my words are not the same as yours, one of us must be wrong. Both could be; but we each know that we are right; therefore, the other person must be wrong. "Different but both right" is never an option. I believe that many of the resolveable discussions and arguments we have here come from not being inside someone else's head -- but wanting to be. Granting individual sovereignty to each other by walking away from a disagreement is a challenge.
Part of the problem is, as Laure pointed out a matter of definitions. And she used the phrase "sneak attack." While the world does have such people in it -- I tried watching political televiison on Sunday mornings, but it was unbearable -- most people really mean well.
Also, on that point, after 45 years with Objectivism, I understand that selfishness and capitalism are misunderstood and poorly defined in common culture, but "sacrifice" as we understand it is special to us and always needs clarification... if not argument.
In chess, sacrificing a piece to gain position is called a "gambit." As noted in the discussion, in common usage and dictionary definition, a sacrifice is made to gain a greater value. Objective considerations do shed a harsh light. The Semitic peoples had a practice of sacrificing their first borns to gain the favor of Yahweh or Ba'al or some other god or gods. Abraham would kill Isaac on Jehovah's command, and the practice continued from Ur to Tyre to Carthage. (It was the key reason Rome won. You cannot keep sacrificing your first-borns and maintain a compeititve advantage.) The objective truth - the absolute truth - is that there is no God (are no gods). At best, even if any celestial beings exist, they are not going to intervene in tribal affairs in return for the deaths of your best children. Thus, that paradigmatic sacrifice is a loss, always.
That all is a nice paragraph here. Getting it said in a social discussion would be unlikely. And it would not change the dictionary definition of sacrifice. ... or maybe in time, it could...
(Anyway, I gave the original post a sanction. Laure still swings by for a view.)
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