There is a great, basic contradiction in the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was one of the first great teachers to proclaim the basic principle of individualism -- the inviolate sanctity of man's soul, and the salvation of one's soul as one's first concern and highest goal; this means -- one's ego and the integrity of one's ego. But when it came to the next question, a code of ethics to observe for the salvation of one's soul -- (this means: what must one do in actual practice in order to save one's soul?) -- Jesus (or perhaps His interpreters) gave men a code of altruism, that is, a code which told them that in order to save one's soul, one must love or help or
live for others. This means, the subordination of one's soul (or ego) to the wishes, desires or needs of others, which means the subordination of one's soul to the souls of others.
This is a contradiction that cannot be resolved. This is why men have never succeeded in applying Christianity in practice, while they have preached it in theory for two thousand years. The reason of their failure was not men's natural depravity or hypocrisy, which is the superficial (and vicious) explanation usually given. The reason is that a contradiction cannot be made to work. That is why the history of Christianity has been a continuous civil war -- both literally (between sects and nations), and spiritually (within each man's soul).
http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/texts/jesus.htmlFaith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World
... What is the morality of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to live for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value ... Now there is one word -- a single word -- which can blast the morality of altruism out of existence and which it cannot withstand -- the word: "Why?" Why must man live for the sake of others? Why must he be a sacrificial animal? Why is that the good? There is no earthly reason for it ...
http://freedomkeys.com/faithandforce.htmLet us next read, informatively, something about Rand's path to her philosophy
Romancing the Stone-Cold Killer: Ayn Rand and William Hickman
by Michael Prescott
... In her journal circa 1928 Rand quoted the statement, "What is good for me is right," a credo attributed to a prominent figure of the day, William Edward Hickman. Her response was enthusiastic. "The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard," she exulted ...
William Edward Hickman was one of the most famous men in America in 1928. But he came by his fame in a way that perhaps should have given pause to Ayn Rand before she decided that he was a "real man" worthy of enshrinement in her pantheon of fictional heroes ...
In December of 1927, Hickman, nineteen years old, showed up at a Los Angeles public school and managed to get custody of a twelve-year-old girl, Marian (sometimes Marion) Parker. He was able to convince Marian's teacher that the girl's father, a well-known banker, had been seriously injured in a car accident and that the girl had to go to the hospital immediately. The story was a lie. Hickman disappeared with Marian, and over the next few days Mr. and Mrs. Parker received a series of ransom notes ...
"At the rendezvous, Mr. Parker handed over the money to a young man who was waiting for him in a parked car. When Mr. Parker paid the ransom, he could see his daughter, Marion, sitting in the passenger seat next to the suspect. As soon as the money was exchanged, the suspect drove off with the victim still in the car. At the end of the street, Marion's corpse was dumped onto the pavement ...
http://www.michaelprescott.net/hickman.htmAyn Rand's Admiration of Murderer-Dismemberer William Edward Hickman
by alternet
Sunday Mar 7th, 2010 6:17 AM
... Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation -- Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street -- on him.
What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'"
This echoes almost word for word Rand's later description of her character Howard Roark, the hero of her novel The Fountainhead: "He was born without the ability to consider others." ...
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/03/07/18640112.php Now I make some comments.
First, regarding moral reasoning and sociopaths:
It is, of course, true that one cannot provide an entirely a priori rational argument for considering other people. So someone who does not want to consider other people, and demands to be convinced by an a priori rational argument that one ought to do so, will never be convinced. Moreover, that demand for rational argument is not very sound: in fact, one cannot actually provide an entirely a priori rational argument for anything at all -- any rational discussion presupposes some common axioms and shared reasoning rules, and when these are lacking no one can convince anyone else of anything at all. Rather than constructing careful logical arguments against murder-for-fun-and-profit, societies therefore typically resort to other means to discourage such activities, by threatening to imprison or execute the killers, for example: the rational sociopath, of course, regards such a threat as a stupid logical fallacy (namely, appeal to force) and so remains unconvinced that murder-for-fun-and-profit is wrong; but most people seem to think dissuading people from actual murder-for-fun-and-profit has higher priority than engaging potential killers in long logically-pure arguments, that may not be effective
Second, regarding philosophical foundations:
Our world has a vast and unsurveyable scope, in comparison to our small minds. We therefore must all choose for ourselves which limited aspects of life we think deserve our attention: thus we can choose whether or not to take seriously our relations with other conscious beings. Someone who notices no important distinction between a kitten and a rock, or between a child and a rag doll, will act differently than someone who sees important differences there. What we practice noticing ultimately affects what we notice. The smallness of our minds, in comparison to the vastness of our world, also means that we will remain blind to most of what occurs and that any simplifying principles we adopt will be inadequate: our principles will always be gappy, mutually inconsistent, and potentially dangerous as ideology
Third, regarding Christianity and altruism:
Christianity sprang from a Jewish tradition that taught all humans were images of the One True G-d, and so put human relations at the core of religion. The old injunction, You must love your neighbor as you love youself: I am the LORD. Leviticus 19, is repeated again and again in the canonical Christian texts, both directly
The whole law is fulfilled in this one word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Galatians 5;
If you obey the royal law, to love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well. James 2;
and in paraphrase
If you claim to love God but hate your brother or sister, you are a liar, for how could love God whom you have never seen, if you do not love your brother or sister whom you do see? 1 John.
In some sense, of course, this view -- that one honors G-d by honoring neighbor -- could import mystical ideas into the field of human relationships; but it can also be understood without any standard religious trappings, as simply asserting that our relationships with others are extraordinarily important and deserve all the pious attention generally reserved for traditional religious rituals. There cannot be a rational argument for adopting this view of human relations: it is an existential choice -- one either chooses to regard human relations as really having such a transcendental importance, or one chooses to regard human relations as being less important than that. Certainly, the first choice cannot bring any instant automatic success in practice; to want to regard human relations as having transcendental importance, does not mean one will actually act as if human relations had transcendental importance. The ancient formula does not teach that we must hate others and love others: rather it teaches that we must give others the same love that we give ourselves when we love ourselves rightly; it is a formula that does respect individuals and their individuality -- but from the perspective that to be human is to form relationships with others
Finally, in conclusion, regarding Rand's views of Christianity and altruism:
Rand claims to find objectionable contradictions in Christianity -- in Christian attitudes towards individualism, for example. But Christianity does not purport to provide a coherent intellectual map of the world: rather it proposes a stance, in which one regards human relations as a religious core. One could attempt to work out the principles needed for such a stance, but (due to the smallest of our minds and the vastness of the world) one would not expect a satisfyingly seamlessly smooth result: one should always expect some tensions between the principles. Rand's attack on Christian altruism is a caricature: she misrepresents the Christian notion of agape; and she argues (unsurprisingly) like the sociopath who does not want to consider other people and who impossibly demands a rational reason to consider other people. In fact, Rand simply made an existential choice, to the effect that other people are unimportant and that our relationships with them are unimportant. She was, of course, free to make this choice; I think it a wrong choice; but she was certainly not the first to made this choice:
Now the Lord asked Cain, Where is your brother, Abel? And he replied, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? Genesis 4
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