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Sola Fide
John, by replicable I mean that scientific discovery can be made at any time in history (once the precursory knowledge exists) while actual human history is radically non-repeatable. We cannot refight the civil war, bring back the dead, live all over again. I am not talking about the discovery of political principles - Lincoln didn't do that, he acted to direct history on a grand scale. Nor am I saying that Darwin's intellectual accomplishment wasn't amazing, or that he did not benefit mankind greatly with his conceptual inductions.
But the question was who was the greater man, not the greater intellectual or thinker.
Lincoln had to make and carry through with hundreds of individual unpopular decisions, when most opposed and challenged his every action. Some Objectivists cripe that the civil war lead to expanded Federal power but this was not in any way Lincoln's intent. He ran on an abolitionist plank, not a statist plank. He justified abolitionism based on the sanctity of individual human rights, not based on the idea that by liberating the slaves he would have a large voting block willing to vote for his new spending plans. The fact that Federal powers increased as an after effect of the civil war was due to the problems inherent in the system - and remember Lincoln opposed a harsh program of Federal retribution against the states, and it was congress that impeached Johnson for not putting through all the Federal legislation that the North wanted after the war was over. And yes, he suspended habeas corpus. Frankly, so what? It was done constitutionally. I would be much more impressed with that charge if someone could provide a list of political opponents who were jailed and despoiled of their property. The elections were held and held fare and square, and Lincoln could very well have lost, unlike today where no Democrat can ever lose a close election.
Lincoln was a great man precisely because he acted. Some Objectivists brag about how there simply "holding" a moral code amounts to their actual virtue:
For some, ethics is a thing, a codified body of thought, that resides outside. The awareness of it is something that is used as a tool to achieve a better life. On the other hand, there are those of us, myself included, that see our ethics as an integral part of ourselves. It is an element of our identity. It is not a tool to be wielded as needed, but an omnipresent aspect of our being. For those who treat it in this manner, we neither serve, nor are served by our ethics. It just is an existential aspect of the totality that makes us who we are. That's not to say that it is not something that can be examined and changed over the course of time, but I believe that this is still a significant distinction that goes a long way to understanding why there is such a wide variance in attitudes towards the various issues that are raised in these ethical discussions.
Assuming I understand what's being said, I think that's some of the most specious and, yes, most vicious claptrap I have ever heard. Virtue and greatness consist of virtue and greatness in the world, in action, in the concrete, not just in the imagination. The above doctrine, that belief constitutes virtue, is an explicit doctrine of Martin Luther's, one he took from Saint Paul. It's called Sola Fide - justification through faith alone, regardless of actions.
I have no stock in downplaying Darwin's achievement. But he did not have to fight a war against creationists and skeptics and statists to have his ideas accepted. Nor can I say that Lincoln was a happy man in his personal life. But he had a set of principles which he held to and which he acted upon in the world, over and over, against incredible obstacles, and to great effect. In my book that constitutes greatness as a man.
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